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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 41433
   :PG.Title: Robert Kimberly
   :PG.Released: 2012-11-21
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Frank H. Spearman
   :MARCREL.ill: James Montgomery Flagg
   :DC.Title: Robert Kimberly
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1911
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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ROBERT KIMBERLY
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   .. _`Cover`:

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      Cover

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   .. _`I despise your threats," she said choking with her own words.  "I despise you."`:

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      :alt: I despise your threats," she said choking with her own words.  "I despise you."

      I despise your threats," she said choking with her own words.  "I despise you."

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      ROBERT
      KIMBERLY

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      BY
      FRANK H. SPEARMAN

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      ILLUSTRATED BY
      JAMES MONTGOMERY FLAGG

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      TORONTO
      McLEOD & ALLEN
      PUBLISHERS

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      COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY
      CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

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      Published February, 1911

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      TO MY WIFE

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      ILLUSTRATIONS

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      `I despise your threats," she said choking
      with her own words.  "I despise you."`_ . . . . . . *Frontispiece*

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      `Kimberly placed it without hesitation on her shoulders`_

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      `She sang for him "Caro Mio Ben"`_

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      `An acolyte, entering in the gray of the early morning, saw
      on the last of the kneeling benches a man resting with
      bowed head`_

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.. _`CHAPTER I`:

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   Robert Kimberly

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   CHAPTER I

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The dancing pavilion, separated from the
Casino itself by an arched passageway and
affording another pretty view of the lake in the
moonlight, was filled with young people when
Alice entered.

"It will be cool here, I think," suggested Dolly
De Castro, leading the way for her guest.  "The
Hickories is by no means a gay place," she
continued, seating herself beside Alice where they
could see the dancers moving in and out of the
long room.  "And it isn't a club.  There is just
this Casino and the fields for golf and polo.  It is
a neighborhood affair--and really the quietest
place of the kind in the Lake country.  Too bad
you could not have been here three weeks ago for
the Kermess."

"So Miss Venable said.  They are great fun."

"We revive one occasionally to preserve the
Dutch traditions of the family," continued Dolly.
"Mrs. Charles Kimberly--Imogene--gave it this
year.  Last year I gave it.  You would have seen
everybody, especially the Sea Ridge people.
Fritzie, dear?"  Dolly paused to stay a slender young
woman who was passing.  "Miss Venable," she
explained, still speaking to Alice, "is our favorite
cousin and will make you acquainted with every one."

Fritzie Venable whose lively, brown eyes
escaped beauty only through a certain keenness
of expression, stopped with a smile and waited
on Dolly's word.

"I want Mrs. MacBirney to go over to the
Nelsons' after a while.  This dance is really a
young people's affair," Dolly went on, turning
to Alice.  "These are friends of Grace's and
Larrie's and I don't know half of them.  Take
care of Mrs. MacBirney a moment, Fritzie, will
you, while I find Arthur?" asked Dolly, rising
and leaving the two together.

Alice looked after Dolly as she walked away.
Dolly had the Kimberly height and preserved it
with a care that gave dignity to her carriage.
Her dignity, indeed, showed in her words as well
as in her manner; but in both it battled with a
mental intensity that fought for immediate
expression.  Dolly persuaded and dictated unblushingly,
though it could not be said, unpleasingly.

"I know you are enjoying Mrs. De Castro and
her lovely home," said Fritzie to Alice.  "Of
course," she added as Alice assented, "The Towers
is on a much grander scale.  But I think Black
Rock is the 'homiest' place on Second Lake.  I
suppose since I saw you yesterday you have been
all around?"

"Not quite; but I've met many lovely people."

"You can't help liking Second Lake people.
They are a kind-hearted, generous set--notably
so for people of means."

"Aren't such people usually generous?"

Fritzie looked doubtful: "People of large means,
perhaps, yes.  Indeed, the only trouble here is,
there are too many of that sort.  Everybody is
prosperous and everybody, with, I think, two
exceptions, contented.  I," laughed Fritzie, "am
one of the exceptions.  There being no possibility
of preëminence in the line of means, I believe I
have in my rôle of discontent a certain distinction;
and as far as I can see, as much fun as anybody.
In fact, I've often thought the only place where
I should care to be rich would be among the
poor.  Where every one overflows with luxury
distinctions are necessarily lost--and I like
distinctions.  Isn't this pretty for dancing?"

"Everything over here is pretty," said Alice.

"The place takes its name, 'The Hickories,'
from the grove back of it.  You see there was
nothing about the Lake itself to serve the purpose
of a country club--no golf course, no polo field.
All this stretch of the eastern shore is a part of
The Towers estate, but Mr. Kimberly was good
enough to set it apart for the rest of us--you have
met Mr. Robert Kimberly?"

"Neither of the Mr. Kimberlys as yet."

"There is Charles now."  Fritzie indicated a
smooth-faced, youthful-looking man coming in
through one of the veranda openings.  "That is
he speaking to Dolly.  They call him the
handsome Kimberly."

Alice smiled: "For a man that's rather a
severe handicap, isn't it?"

"To be called handsome?"

"It suggests in a way that good looks are
exceptional in the family, and they are not, for their
sister, Mrs. De Castro is very handsome, I think.
Which brother is this?"

"The married brother; the other is Robert.
They call him the homely Kimberly.  He isn't
really homely, but his face in repose *is* heavy.
He is the bachelor."

"Mr. MacBirney tells me he is completely
wrapped up in business."

"Rather--yes; of late years."

"That, I presume, is why he has never married."

"Perhaps," assented Fritzie with a prudent
pause.  "Some men," she went on somewhat
vaguely, "get interested, when they are young, in
women in general.  And afterward never settle
down to any one woman, you know."

"I should think that kind of a man would be
tiresome."

Fritzie looked at young Mrs. MacBirney somewhat
in surprise, but there was nothing in Alice's
frank eyes to provoke criticism.  They met
Fritzie's with an assurance of good-nature that
forestalled hostility.  Then, too, Fritzie
remembered that Mrs. MacBirney was from the West
where people speak freely.  "Robert is deliberate
but not a bit tiresome," was all Fritzie said in
answer.  "Indeed, he is not communicative."

"I didn't mean in that way," explained Alice.
"I should only be afraid a man like that would
take himself so seriously."

Fritzie laughed: "He wouldn't know what that
meant.  You had music at your dinner to-night."

"Lovely music: the Hawaiian singers."

"I was sorry I couldn't be there.  They always
come out to sing for Robert when they are in the
States, and they are always in dreadful financial
straits when they get as far from home as this, and
he is always making up their deficits.  They used
to sing at The Towers, from barges on the lake.
But The Towers is hardly ever opened nowadays
for a function.  The music over the water
with the house illuminated was simply superb.
And the evening winding up with fireworks!"
sighed Fritzie in pleasing retrospect.

"There is Robert now," she continued..  "Do
you see him?  With Mrs. Charles Kimberly.
They are devoted.  Isn't she a slip?  And the
daintiest little thing.  Robert calls her his little
Quakeress--her people were Quakers.  She seems
lost among the Kimberlys--though Robert isn't
quite so tall as his brother, only more muscular
and slower."

Robert Kimberly with Imogene on his arm
entered from the opposite side of the room and
walked across the floor to take her to her husband.
His face was darker than that of Charles and
heavier eyebrows rendered his expression less alert.
Fritzie waved a hand at Imogene, who answered
with her fan and greeted Alice.

"And there comes Mrs. Nelson--the pale
brunette.  Heroic woman, I call her.  She has been
fighting her advancing weight for ten years.  Isn't
she trim?  Heavens, she ought to be.  She lives
in Paris half the time and does nothing but dress
and flirt."

"And who is it with her?"

"The stately creature with her is Dora Morgan.
She is a divorcée.  She likewise lives in Paris
and is quite a singer.  I haven't heard her lately
but she used to sing a little off the key; she dresses
a little off the key yet, to say nothing of the
way she acts sometimes.  They are going to dance."

A small orchestra of stringed instruments with
a French horn, hidden somewhere in a balcony,
began the faint strains of a German waltz.  The
night was warm.  Young people in white strolling
through dim veranda openings into the softly
lighted room moved at once out upon the floor
to the rhythm of the music.  Others, following,
paused within the doorways to spin out ends of
small talk or persist in negligible disputes.  The
dancers wore the pretty Hawaiian leis in honor of
the Island singers.

"There were some interesting men at the dinner
to-night," said Alice.

"You mean the German refiners?  Yes, they
are Charles Kimberly's guests," remarked Fritzie
as the floor filled.  "There they are now, in that
group in the archway with Mr. Nelson."

"But the smaller man was not at the dinner."

"No, that is Guyot, the French representative
of the Kimberlys.  He and George Doane, the bald,
good-looking man next to him, have the party in
charge.  You met the immense man, Herr
Gustav Baumann, at dinner.  He is a great refiner
and a Hawaiian planter.  They are on their way
to Honolulu now and leave within an hour or two
in Robert Kimberly's car for San Francisco.  The
Baumanns have known the Kimberlys for
generations.  Should you ever think Herr Baumann
could dance?  He is as light as a cat on his feet,
but he waltzes in the dreadful European
round-and-round way.  The black-haired man with the
big nose is Lambert, a friend of his, a promoter
and a particularly famous chemist whom Robert
Kimberly, by the way, hates--he is a Belgian.  I
can't bear him, either--and, Heavens, Guyot is
bringing him over here now to ask me to dance!"

Fritzie's fear proved true.  However, she
accepted graciously as Lambert was brought
forward and bowed in making his request.  But she
did not fail to observe that though he bowed low,
Lambert's bold eyes were glued on Alice even
while he was begging Fritzie for the dance.
Something in Alice's slender face, the white hardly
touched enough with pink, except under animation,
held Lambert's glance.  Alice, already
prejudiced, directed her eyes as far away as possible
under the inspection and was glad that Fritzie
rose at once.

Robert Kimberly joined Baumann and Edward
Nelson.  "You have not told me yet, Robert,"
Baumann began, "how you put in your time here
in the country."

"I have a good secretary and do a great deal of
my work here, Gustav."

"But one does not always work.  What else?
I remember," he continued, turning to Nelson,
"the stories my father used to tell about the
Kimberlys--your father, Robert, and especially your
Uncle John."  Baumann radiated interest in
everything American.  "Those men were busy
men.  Not alone sugar-refining, but horses,
steamboats, opera-houses, women--always, always some
excitement."

"Other times, other manners, Baumann,"
suggested Nelson.  "In those days a fine horse had
a national interest; to-day, everybody's horse
does his mile in two minutes.  The railroads long
ago killed the steamboats; newsboys build the
opera-houses now; sugar refines itself.  Mere
money-making, Baumann, has become so absorbing
that a Kimberly of this generation doesn't
have time to look at a woman."

"Nelson!" protested the good-natured and
perspiring German, "no time to look at a woman?
That, at least, cannot be true, can it, Robert?"

"Not quite.  But I imagine the interest has
waned," said Kimberly.  "When a man took his
life in his hand on such a venture the excitement
gave it a double zest--the reflection that you were
an outlaw but prepared, if necessary, to pay the
price with your life.  Nowadays, the husband has
fallen lower than the libertine.  If you break up
his home--he sues you.  There is nothing
hair-raising in that.  Will you dance, Gustav?"

"I want very much to dance.  Your women
dance better than ours."

"Why, your women dance beautifully.  Nelson
will find you a partner," suggested Kimberly.
"I must hunt up Mrs. Nelson.  I have a dance
with her, myself."

Alice sat for a moment alone.  Among the
dancers, Robert Kimberly moved past her with
Lottie Nelson on his arm.  Alice noticed how
handsome and well poised Lottie was on her feet;
Kimberly she thought too cold to be an attractive
partner.

Within a moment Dolly came back.  "I can't
find Arthur anywhere."

"He isn't on the floor, Mrs. De Castro."

"No matter, I will let him find me.  Isn't it a
pretty company?  I do love these fresh faces,"
remarked Dolly, sitting down.  "The young
people complain of our being exclusive.  That is
absurd.  We have to keep quiet, otherwise why
live in the country?  Besides, what would be
gained by opening the doors?"

Dolly had a pleasing way of appealing in
difficulties, or what seemed such, even to a stranger.
"We don't want ambitious people," she went on;
"they are killing, you know--and we certainly
don't want any more like ourselves.  As Arthur
says," Dolly laughed a little rippling laugh, "'we
have social liabilities enough of our own.'"

Arthur De Castro came up just in time to hear
his name: "What's that Arthur says, Dolly?"

"Oh, here you are!" exclaimed his wife.  "No
matter, dear, what it was."

"It is certain Arthur never said anything of
the kind, Mrs. MacBirney," interposed De Castro.
"If any one said it, it must have been you, Dolly."

Alice laughed at the two.  "No matter who
said it," remarked Dolly, dismissing the controversy,
"somebody said it.  It really sounds more
like Robert than anybody else."

"You will be aware very soon, Mrs. MacBirney,"
continued De Castro, "that the Kimberlys
say all manner of absurd things--and they are not
always considerate enough to father them on some
one else, either."

Alice turned to her hostess with amused interest:
"You, of course, are included because you are a
Kimberly."

"She is more Kimberly *than* the Kimberlys,"
asserted her husband.  "I am not a Kimberly."
Arthur De Castro in apologizing bowed with so
real a deprecation that both women laughed.

"Of course, the young people rebel," persisted
Dolly, pursuing her topic, and her dark hair
touched with gray somehow gave an authority to
her pronouncements, "young people always want
a circle enlarged, but a circle *never* should be.
What is it you want, Arthur?"

"I am merely listening."

"Don't pretend that you leave the men just to
listen to me.  You want Mrs. MacBirney to
dance."

"She is always like that," declared De Castro
to Alice, whom he found pleasing because her
graciousness seemed to invite its like.  "Just such
bursts of divination.  At times they are
overwhelming.  I remember how stunned I was when
she cried--quite before I could get my breath:
'You want to marry me!'"

"Was she right?" laughed Alice, looking from
one to the other.

"Absolutely."

"Is she right now?"

"Dolly is always right."

"Then I suppose I must dance."

"Not, of course, unless you want to."

Alice appealed to Dolly: "What did you do?"

"I said I wouldn't marry him."

"But you did," objected her companion.

"He was so persistent!"

Alice laughingly rose: "Then it would be
better to consent at once."

Dolly rose with her.  Two of the dancers
stopped before them: a tall, slender girl and a
ruddy-faced, boyish young man.

"Grace," said Dolly to the blue-eyed girl, "I
want you to meet Mrs. MacBirney.  This is my
niece, Grace De Castro."

The young girl looked with pretty expectancy
into Alice's face, and frankly held out her hand.

"Oh, what a bloom!" exclaimed Alice, looking
at the delicate features and transparent skin.
Grace laughed happily.  Alice kept her hand a
moment: "You are like a bit of morning come
to life, Grace."

"And this is my cousin, Mrs. MacBirney--Mr. Morgan,"
said Grace shyly.

Larrie Morgan, a bit self-conscious, stood for
an instant aloof.  Alice said nothing, but her eyes
in the interval worked their spell.  He suddenly
smiled.

"I'm mightily pleased to meet you, Mrs. MacBirney,"
he exclaimed with heartiness.  "We've
all heard about you.  Is Mr. MacBirney here?"
he continued, tendering the biggest compliment
he could think of.

"He is somewhere about, I think."

"We shall lose our waltz, Mrs. MacBirney,"
urged Arthur De Castro.

"Oh, we mustn't do that.  Let's run,"
whispered Alice, taking his arm.

"Who is Mrs. MacBirney?" asked Grace of
Larrie with an appealing look as Alice moved
away.

"Why, don't you know?  Her husband owns
some beet plants."

"What lovely manners she has."  Grace spoke
under her breath.  "And so quiet.  Where are
their refineries, Larrie?"

"In the West."

"Where in the West?"

"Somewhere out toward the Rocky Mountains,"
hazarded Larrie.

"Denver?" suggested Grace doubtfully.

"I fancy that's it.  Anyway," explained Larrie
coldly, "we are buying them."

"Are you?" asked Grace, lifting her soft eyes
timidly.

To her, Larrie was the entire Kimberly sugar
interest; and at the moment of making the
MacBirney purchase he looked, to Grace, the part.





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.. _`CHAPTER II`:

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   CHAPTER II

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Edward Nelson, the counsel, in some
measure the political adviser and, as to the
public, the buffer of the Kimberly sugar interests,
was fond of entertaining.  Being naturally an
amiable gourmet, his interests suited his tastes.
Moreover, his wife, Lottie Nelson, pleasing of
face, with a figure well proportioned and with
distinction in her bright, indolent eyes, loved to
entertain.  And she loved to entertain without
working hard to do so.  Morningside, her country
home at Second Lake, though both attractive and
spacious, and designed with a view to entertaining,
was already being replaced with a new home more
attractive and more spacious, and meant to be
filled with still more guests.

Observation and experience had convinced
Lottie that the easiest way to keep people in hand is
to feed them well.  And she quite understood that
a vital part of the feeding in such a philosophy is
the drinking.  There were difficulties, it is true,
but which of us has not difficulties?

People--provided, they were people of
consequence--diverted Lottie.  She had no
children--children had no place in her view of life--nor
was she vitally interested in her husband.  The
companionship of those whom she called her
friends thus became a necessity; the annoyance
being that not always would the particular
friends whom she wanted--men chiefly--gather to her.

On the evening of the De Castro dinner and
dance, Lottie was in better than her usual spirits.
She had brought home Charles Kimberly--who as
a yachtsman bore the title of Commodore--and
his wife, Imogene.  Imogene, the little Quakeress,
did not like her, as Lottie was aware, but Charles
Kimberly was always in sorts and always
tractable--different in that respect from Robert.
Charles and his wife took MacBirney and Fritzie
Venable to the Nelsons' with them and Alice was
to follow with the De Castros.

When Lottie reached home, Dora Morgan had
already come over with George Doane, one of the
Kimberly stock brokers.  These two assured the
evening.  In the dining-room only a few--of the
right sort--were needed for good company.

But more was in prospect for this
evening--Robert Kimberly was expected.  Nelson came
down from the library with MacBirney and left
him with Imogene while he followed Charles to
a smoking-room.  Fritzie and Mrs. Nelson joined
Doane and Dora Morgan in the music-room.
Cards were proposed, but no one had the energy
to get at them.

A servant passed in the hall to answer the door
and Lottie Nelson at once left the room.  When
she reached the vestibule the footman was taking
Robert Kimberly's coat.  She walked well up to
Robert before she spoke: "At last!"

"I went back to The Towers for a moment,"
said Kimberly in explanation.  "Are Charles and
Nelson here?"

"And is that all after a month--'Are Charles
and Nelson here?'!" echoed Lottie patiently and
with a touch of intimate reproach.

"We have a conference to-night, you know,
Lottie.  How are you?"

She put back her abundant hair: "Why didn't
you call up last week when you were home to
find out?"

"I was home only overnight.  And I came
late and left before you were awake.  You know
I have been at the new refinery for a week.  We
began melting yesterday."

"At the big one?"

"At the big one."

She took hold of the lei that he had worn over
from the dance and in a leisurely way made a
pretence of braiding the stem of a loose rose back
into it.  "This is the prettiest I've seen," said
Lottie.  "Who gave it to you?"

"Grace.  What is the matter with it?" he
asked looking down at her white fingers.

"You are losing your decoration," she murmured
with leisurely good-nature.  "Nobody to
do anything for you."

Kimberly looked at the parting lei with some
annoyance, but if he entertained doubts as to its
needing attention he expressed none.  "These
things are a nuisance anyway," he declared at
length, lifting the lei impatiently over his head and
depositing it without more ado on a console.  "We
will leave it there."

"Where else have you been all this time?"
demanded Lottie with an indolent interest.

"All over the country--even across the Rockies."

"Across the Rockies!  And a whole big car to
yourself!  You must love solitude.  And now you
are buying a lot of refineries."

"Not I--the companies are."

"Oh, it's all the same."

"Not precisely; this MacBirney purchase is
not by my advice or with my approval."

"He is in there now, Imogene is talking with him."

"The trip was extremely tedious," said Kimberly,
casting his eyes slowly around for means of escape.

"How could it be anything else with no friends
along?"

"With McCrea and two secretaries and a
stenographer, I hadn't time to take any friends."

"What is time for?"

"I should say in the West it is valuable for
getting home with."

"And when you do get home?"

"To build more; borrow more; control more;
sell more; spend more.  I'm speaking for all the
rest of you, not for myself.  I'm just the
centrifugal to throw the money out."

"Never by any chance to live more, I suppose?"

"You mean to eat and drink more?  How
could we?"

"I *don't* mean to eat and drink more.  I mean
just what I say, to live more!"

They were at the threshold of the music room.
He laughed good-naturedly, but Lottie declined
to be appeased.

"Lord, but I'm sick of it all!" she exclaimed
petulantly.

Kimberly used care not to offend, yet he always
interposed a screen between himself and her,
and however delicate the barrier, Lottie Nelson
had never been able to penetrate it.

"No sicker of it than I am," he returned.
"But I'm a part of the machine; I can't get out.
I suppose you are, and you can't get out.  But
you are too young to talk like that; wait till the
new home is finished.  Then you will shine."

She uttered a contemptuous exclamation, not
quite loud enough for the others to hear, as she
reëntered the room.  The others, in fact, scarcely
would have heard.  Fritzie, Doane, and Dora
Morgan were laughing immoderately.  Imogene
at the piano was playing softly.  Kimberly
stopped to speak to her.

"I forgot, by the way, to ask you when you
sail, Imogene," he said.

She answered with one hand running over the
keys: "That depends on you, doesn't it, Robert?
I do hope you'll get through soon."

"Anxious to get away, are you?"

"You know I always am."

"Where are you going this time?"

"To the Mediterranean, I suppose."

"You are fond of the Mediterranean."

"Every place else seems so savage after it."

"Lottie says you have been talking with MacBirney."

"Just a few minutes."

"How do you like him?" asked her brother-in-law.

Imogene laughed a little: "He is very intelligent.
He confuses me a little, though; he is so brisk."

"Is he entertaining?"

Imogene shrugged her shoulders: "Yes.  Only,
he rather makes you feel as if he were selling you
something, don't you know.  I suppose it's hardly
fair to judge of one from the first interview.  His
views are broad," smiled Imogene in retrospect.
"'I can't understand,' he said 'why our American
men should so unceasingly pursue money.  What
can more than a million or two possibly be good
for--unless to give away?'"  Imogene looked with
a droll smile into Kimberly's stolid face.  "When
he said, 'a million or two,' I thought of my wretched
brother-in-law struggling along with thirty or forty
that he hasn't yet managed to get rid of!"

"You don't think, then, he would accept a few
of them?" suggested Kimberly.

"Suppose you try him some time," smiled
Imogene as she walked with Kimberly to the
card-table where Fritzie and Dora Morgan sat with
Doane.

"Travelling agrees with you, Robert," observed Doane.

"The country agrees with you," returned
Kimberly.  "Good company, I suppose, George, is
the secret."

"How is the consolidation getting along?"

"There isn't any consolidation."

"Combination, then?"

"Slowly.  How is the market?"

"Our end of it is waiting on you.  When shall
you have some news for us?"

"You don't need news to make a market,"
returned Kimberly indifferently, as he sat down.
He looked at those around the table.  "What are
you doing?"

"Tell your story again, Dora," suggested Doane.

Dora Morgan looked at Kimberly defiantly.
"No," she said briefly.

"Pshaw, tell it," urged Doane.  "It's about the
Virgin Mary, Robert."

Dora was firm: "It's not a bachelor's story,"
she insisted.

"Most of your stories are bachelors' stories,
Dora," said Kimberly.

Dora threw away her cigarette.  "Listen to
that!  Didn't I tell you?" she asked appealing
to Doane.  "Robert is getting to be a real nice man."

In an effort to appease both sides, Doane
laughed, but somewhat carefully.

"I got into trouble only the other day in telling
that story," continued Dora, with the same
undercurrent of defiance.

Effectively dressed, though with a tendency to
color, and with dark, regular features, flushed a
little at night, Dora Morgan had a promise of
manner that contrasted peculiarly with her
freedom of tongue.

"Tell us about it, Dora?" said Lottie Nelson.

"It was over at The Towers.  I was telling the
story to Uncle John.  His blood is red, yet," she
added without looking at Robert Kimberly to
emphasize her implication.

"Uncle John!" echoed Fritzie, at fault.  "Did
Uncle John object?"

"Oh, no, you misunderstand.  It wasn't Uncle
John."  Every one but Kimberly laughed.  "I
was telling Uncle John the story, and his nurse--your
protégé, what's his name?  I never can
remember--Lazarus? the queer little Italian," she
said, appealing to Kimberly.

"Brother Francis," he answered.

"He's not so awfully little," interposed Fritzie.

"Well, he was in the room," continued Dora,
"and he got perfectly furious the moment he heard it."

"Furious, Dora?  Why, how funny!" exclaimed
Lottie Nelson, languidly.

"He turned on me like a thunder-cloud.  Poor
Uncle John was still laughing--he laughs on one
side of his face since his stroke, and looks so
fiendish, you know--when Lazarus began to
glower at me.  He was really insulting in his
manner.  'Oh, I didn't know you were here,' I
said to hush him up.  'What difference should
that make?' he asked, and his eyes were flashing,
I can tell you."

"'The Virgin Mary is no relation of yours, is
she?' I demanded frigidly.  You ought to have
seen the man.  You know how sallow he is; he
flushed to the roots of his hair and his lips snapped
like a trap.  Then he became ashamed of himself,
I dare say, and his eyes fell; he put his hand
on his breast and bowed to me as if I had been a
queen--they certainly have the prettiest manners,
these poor Italians--haven't they, Imogene?"

"But what did he say?" asked Fritzie.

"'Madame,' he exclaimed, as if I had stabbed
him to the heart, 'the Blessed Virgin is my
mother.'  You really would have thought I had
insulted his own mother.  They have such queer
ideas, these foreigners.  My, but he was mad!
Then, what do you think?  The next day I
passed him walking up from the lake and he came
over with such apologies!  He prayed I would
overlook his anger--he professed to have been so
shocked that he had forgotten himself--no doubt
he was afraid he would lose his job."

"George, you look sleepy," Lottie Nelson
complained, looking at Doane.  "You need
something to wake you up.  Suppose we adjourn to
the dining-room?"

Imogene returned to the piano.  Kimberly
walked to the door of the dining-room with the
others.  "I will go upstairs," he said to Lottie
Nelson.

"Don't stay all night," she returned peremptorily.
"And come have something before you go up."

"Perhaps when I come down."

Fritzie caught his arm, and walked with him
into the hall.  They talked for a moment.  "You
must meet her," declared Fritzie at length, "she
is perfectly lovely and will be over after a while
with Dolly."  Then she looked at him suddenly:
"I declare, I don't believe you've heard a word
of what I've been saying."

"I'm afraid not, Fritzie, but no matter, listen
to what I say.  Don't go in there and drink with
that bunch."

"I won't."

"Whiskey makes a fool of you."

Fritzie put up her hand: "Now don't scold."

Upstairs, Nelson and Charles Kimberly, facing
each other, were seated at a big table on which lay
a number of type-written sheets, beautifully clear
and distinct.  These they were examining.

"What are you going over?" asked Robert,
taking the chair Nelson drew up for him.

"The Colorado plants."

"Our own or the MacBirney?"

"Both."

Charles Kimberly with one hand in his pocket,
and supporting his head with the other as his
elbow rested on the table, turned to Robert with a
question.

"You've seen the MacBirney figures.  What do
you think of them?"

"They are high.  But I expected that."

"Do you really need the MacBirney plants to
control the Western market?" asked Charles
Kimberly.  With eyes half closed behind his
glasses he studied his brother's face, quite as
occupied with his thoughts as with his words.

Robert did not answer at once.  "I should hate
to say so, personally," he remarked at length.

"McCrea," continued Charles, "contends that
we do need them to forestall competition.  That
is, he thinks with the MacBirney crowd out of the
field we can have peace for ten years out there."

Nelson asked a question.  "What kind of
factories have they got?"

"Old-fashioned," answered Robert Kimberly.

"What kind of influence?"

"In public affairs, I don't know.  In trade
they are not dangerous, though MacBirney is
ambitious and full of energy.  The father-in-law
was a fine old fellow.  But he died just before the
reorganization.  I don't know how much money
they've got now."

"They haven't much," remarked Nelson.

"We bother them a good deal from San Francisco,"
continued Robert Kimberly, reflecting, "but
that is expensive.  Ultimately we must own more
factories in Colorado.  Of course, as far as that
goes, I would rather build new plants than
remodel rat-hospitals."

Charles Kimberly straightened up and turned
himself in his chair.  "Ten years of peace is worth
a good deal to us.  And if MacBirney can insure
that, we ought to have it.  All of this," he
appealed to Robert, as he spoke, "is supposing that
you are willing to assent."

"I do not assent, chiefly because I distrust
MacBirney.  If the rest of you are satisfied to
take him in, go ahead."

"The others seem to be, Robert."

"Then there is nothing more to be said.  Let's
get at the depreciation charges and the estimates
for next year's betterments, so we can go over the
new capitalization."

While the conference went on, the muffled hum
of gathering motor-cars came through the open
windows.

Robert Kimberly leaving the two men, walked
downstairs again.  The rooms were filling with
the overflow from the dance.  They who had
come were chiefly of the married set, though boys
and girls were among them.

After the manner of those quite at home,
the dancers, still wearing their flower leis, were
scattered in familiar fashion about small tables
where refreshment was being served.

At one end of the music room a group applauded
a clever young man, who, with his coat cuffs rolled
back, was entertaining with amateur sleight-of-hand.

At the other end of the room, surrounded by a
second group, Fritzie Venable played smashing
rag-time.  About the tables pretty, overfed
married women, of the plump, childless type, with
little feet, fattening hands, and rounding shoulders,
carried on a running chatter with men younger
than their husbands.

A young girl, attended at her table by married
men, was trying to tell a story, and to overcome
unobserved, her physical repugnance to the
whiskey she was drinking.

In the dining-room Lottie Nelson was the
centre of a lively company, and her familiar pallor,
which indulgence seemed to leave untouched,
contrasted with the heightened color in Dora
Morgan's face.

Robert Kimberly had paused to speak to some
one, when Fritzie Venable came up to ask a
question.  At that moment Arthur and Dolly
De Castro, with Alice on Dolly's left, entered
from the other end of the room.  Kimberly saw
again the attractive face of a woman he had
noticed dancing with Arthur at the Casino.  The
three passed on and into the hall.  Kimberly,
listening to Fritzie's question, looked after them.

"Fritzie, who is that with Dolly?" he asked
suddenly.

"That is Mrs. MacBirney."

"Mrs. MacBirney?" he echoed.  "Who is
Mrs. MacBirney?"

"Why, Mr. MacBirney's wife, of course.  How
stupid of you!  I told you all about her before
you went upstairs.  He has brought his wife on
with him.  Dolly knew her mother and has been
entertaining Alice for a week."

"Alice!  Oh, yes.  I've been away, you know.
MacBirney's wife?  Of course.  I was thinking of
something else.  Well--I suppose I ought to meet
her.  Come, Fritzie."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER III`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER III

.. vspace:: 2

They found Alice with the De Castros in the
hall.  Dolly looked pleased as her brother
came forward.  Alice collected herself.  She felt
a momentary trepidation at meeting this man,
from whom, she was already aware, much of what
she had seen and most of the people whom she had
met at Second Lake in some degree derived.

She had heard for years, since girlhood, indeed,
of the house of Kimberly.  Her own father's
struggle through life had been in the line of their
business, and the name of the Kimberlys could
not but be haloed wherever refiners discussed
their affairs.  Moreover, at the moment her own
husband was seeking, and with prospects of
success, an alliance with them.

Yet in a moment she found it all very easy.
Kimberly's manner as he met her was simplicity
itself.  His words were few and did not confuse
her, yet they were sufficient to relieve the necessity
of any effort on her part to avoid embarrassing
pauses.  She only noticed that the others rather
waited for Kimberly to speak; giving him a chance
to say without interruption whatever he pleased
to say.  Beyond this, that the conversation was
now reserved for herself and Kimberly, she was
at ease and wondered why she had been a little
afraid of him.  The surprise was that he was
younger than she had supposed.  She began to
wonder that his name should at times command
so much of the public interest.  Nor could any
but those who knew him have realized that under
his restraint Alice was experiencing his most
gracious manner.

But those who did know him saw instantly how
interested he was in her youth and inexperience.
Her cheeks were already flooded with pink, as if
she realized she must do her best to please and
was conscious that she was not wholly failing.
Timidity reflected itself in her answers, yet this
was no more than an involuntary compliment,
pleasing in itself.  And whenever possible, Alice
took refuge from the brother's more direct
questions by appealing to his sister Dolly.  Kimberly
was diverted to see her seek escape in this fashion
from his directness.

She expressed presently her admiration for the
decorations at the Casino and the talk turned
upon the Hawaiian singers; from them to Hawaii
and Honolulu.  Word at that moment came from
the music room that the singing was beginning.
Kimberly without any sign of giving up Alice,
followed Dolly and her husband down the hall
to where the guests were gathering.

The group paused near the foot of the stairs.
Alice asked an explanation of the chant that they
had heard at the Casino and Kimberly interpreted
the rhythm for her.  "But I should have thought,"
he added, "you would be familiar with it."

"Why so?"

"Because you have been at the Islands."

"Pray, how did you know that?"

"By your pronunciations."

"Ah, I see.  But I was there only once, when
I was quite young, with my father."

"And yet you have no lei to-night?  That is
hardly loyal, is it?"

"We came late and they had all been given
out, I suppose."

"I have one in reserve.  You must show your
good-will to the musicians.  Permit me."  He
turned with dignity to the console where he had so
unceremoniously discarded his own lei and picked
the garland up to lay it upon Alice's shoulders.

"But Robert," Fritzie cried, "you mustn't!
That is a rose lei."

"What is the difference?" asked Kimberly.

"There's a superstition, you know, about a rose lei."

"Mercy, what is it?" demanded Alice, pink and smiling.

"If a man gives you a rose lei you must marry
him or you will die."

"Fortunately," remarked Kimberly, lifting the
decoration quickly above Alice's head and placing
it without hesitation on her shoulders, "neither
Mrs. MacBirney nor I are superstitious.  And the
roses harmonize perfectly with your gown,
Mrs. MacBirney.  Don't you love the Islands?"

"I've always wanted to go back to them to stay.
I don't think if I had my choice I should ever
leave them."

"Neither should I.  We must get up a party
and have a yacht meet us in San Francisco for
the trip.  This fall would be a good time to get away."

His decisive manner was almost startling; the
trip seemed already under way.  And his
mannerisms were interesting.  A certain halting
confidence asserted itself under the affected indifference
of his utterance.  Whatever he proposed seemed
as easy as if done.  He carried his chin somewhat
low and it gave a dogmatism to his words.  While
he seemed to avoid using them obtrusively, his
eyes, penetrating and set under the straight heavy
brows which contracted easily, were a barometer
from which it was possible to read his intent.

"You have been frequently at the Islands?" returned Alice.

"Years ago I knew them very well."

"Father and I," Alice went on, "spent a month
at Honolulu."  And again the softness of her long
vowels fell agreeably on Kimberly's ear.  Her
voice, he thought, certainly was pretty.  "It is
like a paradise.  But they have their sorrows, do
they not?  I remember one evening," Alice turned
toward Fritzie to recount the incident, "just at the
sunset of a rarely perfect day.  We were walking
along the street, when we heard the most piercing
cries from a little weeping company of women and
children who were coming down the esplanade.
In front of them walked a man all alone--he
was a leper.  They were taking him away from
his family to be sent to Molokai.  It was the
most distressing thing I ever saw."  She turned to
Kimberly.  "You have never been at Molokai?"

"I have cruised more or less around it.  Do
you remember the windward cliffs just above the
leper settlement?  They are superb from the sea.
We put in once at Kalawao for a night and I called
on the priest in charge of the mission."

"It must have been very, very dreadful."

"Though like all dreadful places, disappointing
at first; nothing, apparently, to inspire horror.
But after we had breakfasted with the priest in
the morning, we went around with him to see his
people."  Kimberly's chin sank and his eyes
closed an instant as he moved his head.  "I
remember," he added slowly, "a freezing up
around the heart before we had gone very far."
Then he dismissed the recollection.  "The attendant
at home who takes care of my uncle--Francis--"
he continued, "had a brother in the leper
missions.  He died at Molokai.  Francis has
always wanted to go there."

.. _`Kimberly placed it without hesitation on her shoulders`:

.. figure:: images/img-034.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Kimberly placed it without hesitation on her shoulders

   Kimberly placed it without hesitation on her shoulders

The conversation waited a few moments on the
singing.  "Miss Venable tells me," said Alice,
presently, "these singers always come out to sing
for you when they visit this country."

"I have met most of them at one time or another
in Hawaii.  You know they are the gentlest, most
grateful people in the world.  Sha'n't we have
some refreshment, Mrs. MacBirney?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER IV`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER IV

.. vspace:: 2

"I am hoping it will all be settled satisfactorily
soon," said Dolly De Castro to Alice one
afternoon a few weeks afterward.  She had invited
Alice out from town for a fortnight at Black Rock
while MacBirney, with McCrea and the active
partners of the Kimberly interests were working
on the negotiations for the purchase of the
MacBirney factories.

"And when it is settled, I can congratulate you,
I think, my dear, most sincerely on any issue that
associates your husband and his interests with
those of my brothers."

"Indeed, I realize that it would be a matter for
congratulation, Mrs. De Castro.  I hope if they
do come to terms, your brothers will find
Mr. MacBirney's Western acquaintance and
experience of some value.  I am sorry you haven't
seen more of my husband----"

"I understand perfectly how engaged he has been."

"He is an unceasing worker.  I told him
yesterday, when he was leaving home, that
Mrs. De Castro would think I had no husband."

"Then," continued Dolly, pursuing her topic,
"if you can secure the little Cedar Lodge estate
on the west shore--and I think it can be
arranged--you will be very comfortable."

Dolly had suggested a drive around the lake,
and as she made an admirable guide Alice looked
forward with interest to the trip.  If it should be
objected that Dolly was not a good conversationalist,
it could be maintained that she was a fascinating talker.

It is true that people who talk well must, as
a penalty, say things.  They can have no
continued mental reserves, they must unburden their
inner selves.  They let you at once into the heart
of affairs about them--it is the price that the
brilliant talker must pay.  Such a one gives you for
the moment her plenary confidence, and before
Alice had known Dolly a month, she felt as if she
had known her for years.

On their drive the orders were to follow the
private roads, and as the villas around the entire lake
connected with one another, they were obliged to
use the high-roads but little.  Each of the places
had a story, and none of these lost anything in
Dolly's dramatic rendering.

From the lower end of the lake they drove to
Sunbury, the village--commonplace, but Colonial,
Dolly explained--and through it.  Taking the
ridge road back of the hills, they approached
another group of the country places.  The houses of
these estates belonged to an older day than those
of the lake itself.  Their type indicated the
descent from the earlier simplicity of the Colonial,
and afforded a melancholy reminder of the
architectural experiments following the period of the
Civil War.

"Our families have been coming out here for a
hundred years," observed Dolly.  "These dreadful
French roofs we have been passing, give you
the latest dates on this side of the ridge."  As she
spoke they approached a house of brown sandstone
set in an ellipse of heavy spruces.

"This was the Roger Morgan place.  Mrs. Morgan,
Bertha, was our half-sister, dear, the
only child of my father's first marriage--she died
seven years ago.  This villa belongs to Fritzie
Venable.  She was Roger Morgan's niece.  But
she hasn't opened it for years--she just keeps a
caretaker here and makes her home with
Imogene.  To me, spruces are depressing."

"And what is that?" asked Alice, indicating
an ivy-covered pile of stone in the midst of a
cluster of elms at some distance to the left of the
house and on a hill above it.  "How odd and pretty!"

"That is the Morgan chapel."

"Oh, may we see it?"

"Of course," assented Dolly, less enthusiastically.
"Do you really want to see it?"

It was Alice's turn to be interested: "Why, yes,
if we may.  How quaint-looking," she pursued,
scrutinizing the façade.

"It is, in fact, a mediæval style," said Dolly.

The car was turned into the driveway leading up
to the chapel.  When the two women had alighted
and walked up the steps to the porch, Alice found
the building larger than it had appeared from
below the Morgan house.

Dolly led the way within.  "It really is a
beautiful thing," she sighed as they entered.  "A
reproduction in part--this interior--of a little church
in Rome, that Mrs. Morgan was crazy about, Santa
Maria in--dear me, I never can remember, Santa
Maria in something or other.  But I want you
to look at this balustrade, and to walk up into
one of these ambones.  Can't you see some
dark-faced Savonarola preaching from one on the sins
of society?"  Dolly ascended the steps of one
ambone as she spoke, while Alice walked up into
the other.

"You look as if you might do very well there
yourself on that topic," suggested Alice.

"But I don't have to get into an ambone to
preach.  I do well anywhere, as long as I have an
audience," continued Dolly as she swept the modest
nave with a confident glance.

They walked back toward the door: "Here's a
perfect light on the chancel window," said Dolly
pausing.  "Superb coloring, I think."

Alice, held by the soft rich flame of the glass,
halted a moment, and saw in a niche removed
from casual sight the bronze figure of a knight
standing above a pavement tomb.  "Is this a
memorial?"

"Poor Bertha," continued Dolly; "ordered most
of these windows herself."

"But this bronze, Mrs. De Castro, what is it?"

"A memorial of a son of Bertha's, dear."

The shield of the belted figure bore the Morgan
arms.  An inscription set in the tomb at his feet
took Alice's attention, and Dolly without joining
her waited upon her interest.

"And in whose memory do you say this is?"
persisted Alice.

"In memory of one of Bertha's sons, dear."

"Is he buried here?"

"No, he lies in Kimberly Acre, the family
burial-ground on The Towers estate--where we
shall all with our troubles one day lie.  This poor
boy committed suicide."

"How dreadful!"

"It is too sad a story to tell."

"Of course."

"And I am morbidly sensitive about suicide."

"These Morgans then were relatives of the
Mrs. Morgan I met last night?"

"Relatives, yes.  But in this instance, that
signifies nothing.  These, as I told you, were Fritzie's
people and are *very* different."

They reëntered the car and drove rapidly down
the ridge.  In the distance, to the south and east,
the red gables of a cluster of buildings showed far
away among green, wooded hills.

"That is a school, is it?" asked Alice.

"No, it is a Catholic institution.  It is a school,
in a way, too, but not of the kind you
mean--something of a charitable and training school.
The Catholic church of the village stands just
beyond there.  There are a number of Catholics
over toward the seashore--delightful people.  We
have none in our set."

The ridge road led them far into the country
and they drove rapidly along ribboned highways
until a great hill confronted them and they began
to wind around its base toward the lake and home.
Half-way up they left the main road, turned into
an open gateway, and passing a lodge entered the
heavy woods of The Towers villa.

"The Towers is really our only show-place,"
explained Dolly, "though Robert, I think, neglects
it.  Of course, it is a place that stands hard
treatment.  But think of the opportunities on these
beautiful slopes for landscape gardening."

"It is very large."

"About two thousand acres.  Robert, I fancy,
cares for the trees more than anything else."

"And he lives here alone?"

"With Uncle John Kimberly.  Uncle John is
all alone in the world, and a paralytic."

"How unfortunate!"

"Yes.  It is unfortunate in some ways; in
others not so much so.  Don't be shocked.  Ours
is so big a family we have many kinds.  Uncle
John! mercy! he led his poor Lydia a life.  And
she was a saint if ever a wife was one.  I hope
she has gone to her reward.  She never saw
through all the weary years, never knew,
*outwardly*, anything of his wickedness."

Dolly looked ahead.  "There is the house.
See, up through the trees?  We shall get a fine
view in a minute.  I don't know why it has to be,
but each generation of our family has had a brainy
Kimberly and a wicked Kimberly.  The legend
is, that when they meet in one, the Kimberlys
will end."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER V`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER V

.. vspace:: 2

To afford Alice the effect of the main
approach to The Towers itself, Dolly ordered
a roundabout drive which gave her guest an idea
of the beauties of the villa grounds.

They passed glades of unusual size, bordered
by natural forests.  They drove among pleasing
successions of hills, followed up valleys with
occasional brooks, and emerged at length on wide,
open stretches of a plateau commanding the lake.

A further drive along the bluffs that rose high
above the water showed the bolder features of an
American landscape unspoiled by overtreatment.
The car finally brought them to the lower end of
a long, formal avenue of elms that made a setting
for the ample house of gray stone, placed on an
elevation that commanded the whole of Second
Lake and the southern country for many miles.

Its advantage of position was obvious and the
castellated effect, from which its name derived,
implied a strength of uncompromising pride
commonly associated with the Kimberlys themselves.

At Dolly's suggestion they walked around
through the south garden which lay toward the
lake.  At the garden entrance stood a sun-dial and
Alice paused to read the inscription:

   |   Per ogni ora che passa, im ricordo.
   |   Per ogni ora che batte, una felicità.
   |   Per ogni ora che viene, una speranza.
   |

"It is a duplicate of a dial that Robert fancied
in the garden of the Kimberly villa on Lago
Maggiore," Dolly explained.  "Come this way, I want
you to see the lake and the terrace."

From the terrace they looked back again at the
house.  Well-placed windows and ample
verandas afforded views in every direction of the
surrounding country.  Retracing their way to the
main entrance, they ascended a broad flight of
stone steps and entered the house itself.

Following Dolly into the hall, Alice saw a
chamber almost severe in spaciousness and still
somewhat untamed in its oak ruggedness.  But glimpses
into the apartments opening off it were delightfully
satisfying.

They peeped into the dining-room as they passed.
It was an old-day room, heavily beamed in gloomy
oak, with a massive round table and high chairs.
The room filled the whole southern exposure of
its wing and at one end Alice saw a fireplace above
which hung a great Dutch mirror framed in heavy
seventeenth-century style.  Dolly pointed to it:
"It is our sole heirloom, and Robert won't change
it from the fireplace.  The Kimberly mirror, we
call it--from Holland with our first Kimberly.
The oak in this room is good."

Taken as a whole, however, Dolly frankly
considered The Towers too evidently suggestive
of the old-fashioned.  This she satisfactorily
accounted for by the fact that the house lacked the
magic of a woman's presence.

Alice, walking with her, slowly and critically,
found nowhere any discordant notes.  The carpets
offered the delicate restraints of Eastern fancy, and
the wall pictures, seen in passing, invited more
leisurely inspection.

There was here something in marble, something
there Oriental, but nowhere were effects confused,
and they had been subdued until consciousness of
their art was not aroused.

Alice, sensitive to indefinable impressions, had
never seen anything comparable to what she now
saw, and an interior so restful should have put her
at ease.

Yet the first pleasing breath in this atmosphere
brought with it something, she could not have told
what, of uneasiness, and it was of this that she
was vaguely conscious, as Dolly questioned the
servant that met them.

"Is Mr. De Castro here yet?" she asked.

"Yes, Mrs. De Castro.  He is with Mr. Kimberly.
I think they are in the garden."

"Tell them we are here.  We will go up and
speak to Uncle John."

They were at the foot of the stairs: "Sha'n't I
wait for you?" suggested Alice.

"By no means.  Come with me.  He is really
the head of the family, you know," Dolly added
in an undertone, "and mustn't be slighted."

Alice, amused at the importance placed upon
the situation, smiled at Dolly's earnestness.  As
she ascended the stairs with her hostess, a little
wave of self-consciousness swept over her.

On the second floor was a long gallery opening
at the farther end upon a western belvedere,
lighted just then by the sun.  The effect of the
room, confusing at first in its arrangement, was,
in fact, that of a wide and irregular reception hall
for the apartments opening on the second floor.
At the moment the two women reached the archway,
a man walked in at the farther end from the terrace.

"There is Robert, now!" Dolly exclaimed.  He
was opening the door of a room near at hand
when he saw his sister with Alice, and came
forward to meet them.  As he did so, a door
mid-way down the hall opened and a man clad in a
black habit crossed between Kimberly and Alice.

"That is Francis, who takes care of Uncle
John," said Dolly.  Francis, walked toward the
balcony without seeing the visitors, but his ear
caught the tones of Dolly's voice and she waved
a hand at him as he turned his head.  He paused
to bow and continued his way through a balcony door.

As Kimberly came forward his face was so
nearly without a smile that Alice for a moment
was chilled.

"I brought Mrs. MacBirney in to see Uncle John
a moment, Robert.  How are you?" Dolly asked.

"Thank you, very well.  And it is a pleasure
to see Mrs. MacBirney, Dolly."

He looked into Alice's eyes as he spoke.  She
thanked him, simply.  Dolly made a remark but
Alice did not catch it.  In some confusion of
thought she was absurdly conscious that Kimberly
was looking at her and that his eyes were gray,
that he wore a suit of gray and that she now,
exchanging compliments with him, was clad in
lavender.  The three talked together for some
moments.  Yet something formal remained in
Kimberly's manner and Alice was already the
least bit on the defensive.

She was, at any rate, glad to feel that her motoring
rig would bear inspection, for it seemed as if
his eyes, without offensively appearing to do so,
took in the slightest detail of her appearance.
His words were of a piece with his manner.  They
were agreeable, but either what he said lacked
enthusiasm or preoccupation clouded his efforts to
be cordial.

"They told us," said Dolly, at length, "you
were in the garden."

"Arthur is down there somewhere," returned
Kimberly.  "We will go this way for Uncle John,"
he added.  "Francis is giving him an airing."

They walked out to the belvedere.  Facing the
sunset, Alice saw in an invalid chair an old man
with a wrinkled white face.  Dolly, hastening
forward, greeted him in elevated tones.  Kimberly
turned to Alice with a suggestion of humor as they
waited a little way from Dolly's hand.  "My sister,
curiously enough," said he, "always forgets that
Uncle John is *not* deaf.  And he doesn't like it a bit."

"Many people instinctively speak louder to
invalids," said Alice.  Uncle John's eyes turned
slowly toward Alice as he heard her voice.  Dolly,
evidently, was referring to her, and beckoned her
to come nearer.  Alice saw the old man looking at
her with the slow care of the paralytic--of one
who has learned to distrust his physical faculties.
Alice disliked his eyes.  He tried to rise, but Dolly
frowned on his attempt: it looked like a failure,
anyway, and he greeted Alice from his chair.

"You are getting altogether too spry, Uncle
John," cried Dolly.

His eyes turned slowly from Alice's face to
Dolly's and he looked at his talkative niece
quizzically: "Am I?"  Then, with the mildly
suspicious smile on his face, his eyes returned to Alice.
Kimberly watched his uncle.

"They say you want to ride horseback,"
continued Dolly, jocularly.  He looked at her again:
"Do they?"  Then he looked back at Alice.

Kimberly, his hands half-way in the pockets of
his sack-coat, turned in protest: "I think you
two go through this every time you come over,
Dolly."  Dolly waved her hand with a laugh.
Uncle John this time did not even take the trouble
to look around.  He continued to smile at Alice
even while he returned to Robert his
non-committal: "Do we?"

Alice felt desirous of edging away from Uncle
John's kind of Kimberly eyes.  "You ought to
get better here very fast, Mr. Kimberly," she said
to him briskly.  "This lovely prospect!" she
exclaimed, looking about her.  "And in every
direction."

"It is pretty toward the lake," Robert
volunteered, knowing that Uncle John would merely
look at Alice without response.

He led the way as he spoke toward the mirrored
sheet of water and, as Alice came to his side,
pointed out the features of the landscape.  Dolly
sat a moment with Uncle John and joined
Kimberly and Alice as they walked on.

They encountered the attendant, Brother
Francis, who had retreated as far as he could from the
visitors.  Dolly, greeting him warmly, turned to
Alice.  "Mrs. MacBirney, this is Brother Francis
who takes care--and such excellent care!--of Uncle
John."

Brother Francis's features were spare.  His
slender nose emphasized the strength of his face.
But if his expression at the moment was sober,
and his dark eyes looked as if his thoughts might
be away, they were kindly.  His eyes, too, fell
almost at the instant Dolly spoke and he only
bowed his greeting to Alice.  But with Francis
a bow was everything.  Whether he welcomed,
tolerated, or disapproved, his bow clearly and
sufficiently signified.

His greeting of Alice expressed deference and
sincerity.  But there was even more in it--something
of the sensible attitude of a gentleman who,
in meeting a lady in passing, and being himself
an attendant, desires to be so considered and seeks
with his greeting to dismiss himself from the
situation.  To this end, however, Francis's efforts
were unsuccessful.

"He is the most modest man in the world,"
murmured Dolly, in concluding a eulogium,
delivered to Alice almost in the poor Brother's face.

"Then why not spare his feelings?" suggested
Kimberly.

"Because I don't believe in hiding a light under
a bushel," returned Dolly, vigorously.  "There
is so little modesty left nowadays----"

"That you want to be rid of what there is,"
suggested Kimberly.

"That when I find it I think it a duty to
recognize it," Dolly persisted.

Brother Francis maintained his composure as
well as he could.  Indeed, self-consciousness
seemed quite lacking in him.  "Surely," he
smiled, bowing again, "Madame De Castro has a
good heart.  That," he added to Alice, italicizing
his words with an expressive forefinger, "is the
real secret.  But I see danger even if one *should*
possess a gift so precious as modesty," he
continued, raising his finger this time in mild
admonition; "when you--how do you say in English--'trot
out' the modesty and set it up to look
at"--Francis's large eyes grew luminous in
pantomime--"the first thing you know, pff!  Where is it?
You search."  Brother Francis beat the skirt of his
black gown with his hands, and shook it as if to
dislodge the missing virtue.  Then holding his
empty palms upward and outward, and adding
the dismay of his shoulders to the fancied
situation, he asked: "Where is it?  It is gone!"

"Which means we shouldn't tempt Brother
Francis's modesty," interposed Alice.

Francis looked at Alice inquiringly.  "You are
a Catholic?" he said, "your husband not."

Alice laughed: "How did you know?"

Francis waved his hand toward his informant:
"Mr. Kimberly."

The answer surprised Alice.  She looked at
Kimberly.

There was an instant of embarrassment.  "Francis
feels our pagan atmosphere so keenly," Kimberly
said slowly, "that I gave him the news about
you as a bracer--just to let him know we had a
friend at court even if we were shut out ourselves."

"He told me," continued Francis, with humor,
"that a Catholic lady was coming this afternoon,
and to put on my new habit."

"Which, of course, you did not do," interposed
Kimberly, regaining the situation.

Brother Francis looked deprecatingly at his
shiny serge.

Dolly and Alice laughed.  "Mr. Kimberly
didn't understand that you kept on your old one
out of humility," said Alice.  "But how did you
know anything about my religion?" she asked,
turning to Kimberly.

Francis took this chance to slip away to his charge.

"Arthur De Castro is the culprit," answered
Kimberly.  "He told me some time ago."

"You have a good memory."

"For some things.  Won't you pour tea for
Mrs. MacBirney, Dolly?  Let us go downstairs, anyway."

He walked with Alice into the house, talking as
they went.

Dolly bent over Uncle John's chair.  "Isn't
she nice?" she whispered, nodding toward Alice
as Alice disappeared with Kimberly.  "You
know Madame De Castro went to school in Paris
with her mother, who was a De Gallon, and her
father--Alice's grandfather--was the last man in
Louisville to wear a queue."

Uncle John seemed not greatly moved at this
information, but did look reminiscent.  "What
was her father's name?"

"Alice's father was named Marshall.  He and
her mother both are dead.  She has no near
relatives."

"I remember Marshall--he was a refiner."

"Precisely; he met with reverses a few years ago."

Uncle John looked after Alice with his feeble,
questioning grin.  "Fine looking," he muttered,
still looking after her much as the toothless giant
looked after Christian as he passed his cave.  "Fine
looking."

Dolly was annoyed: "Oh, you're always thinking
about fine looks!  She is nice."

Uncle John smiled undismayed.  "Is she?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER VI`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VI

.. vspace:: 2

Alice had been married five years--it seemed
a long time.  The first five years of married
life are likely to be long enough to chart pretty
accurately the currents of the future, however
insufficient to predict just where those currents will
carry one.

Much disillusioning comes in the first five
years; when they have passed we know less of
ourselves and more of our consort.  Undoubtedly
the complement of this is true, and our consort
knows more of us; but this thought, not always
reassuring, comes only when we reflect concerning
ourselves, which fortunately, perhaps, is not
often.  Married people, if we may judge from
what they say, tend to reflect more concerning
their mates.

Alice, it is certain, knew less of herself.  Much
of the confidence of five years earlier she had
parted with, some of it cruelly.  Yet coming
at twenty-five into the Kimberly circle, and with
the probability of remaining in it, of its being to
her a new picture of life, Alice gradually renewed
her youth.  Some current flowing from this joy
of living seemed to revive in her the illusions of
girlhood.  All that she now questioned was
whether it really was for her.

Her husband enjoyed her promise of success in
their new surroundings without realizing in the
least how clearly those about them discriminated
between his wife and himself.  She brought one
quality that was priceless among those with
whom she now mingled--freshness.

Among such people her wares of mental
aptness, intelligence, amiability, not to discuss a
charm of person that gave her a place among
women, were rated higher than they could have
been elsewhere.  She breathed in her new
atmosphere with a renewed confidence, for nothing
is more gratifying than to be judged by what we
believe to be the best in us; and nothing more
reassuring after being neglected by stupid people
than to find ourselves approved by the best.

Walter MacBirney, her husband, representing
himself and his Western associates, and now
looked on by them as a man who had forced
recognition from the Kimberly interests, made on his
side, too, a favorable impression among the men
with whom his affairs brought him for the first
time in contact.

If there was an exception to such an impression
it was with Robert Kimberly, but even with him
MacBirney maintained easily the reputation
accorded to Western men for general capacity and
a certain driving ability for putting things through.

He was described as self-made; and examined
with the quiet curiosity of those less fortunate
Eastern men who were unwilling or unable to
ascribe their authorship to themselves, he made
a satisfactory showing.

In the Kimberly coterie of men, which consisted
in truth more of the staff associates in the
Kimberly activities than of the Kimberlys
themselves, the appearance of MacBirney on the scene
at Second Lake was a matter of interest to every
one of the fledgling magnates, who, under the
larger wing of the Kimberlys, directed the
commercial end of their interests.

McCrea, known as Robert Kimberly's
right-hand man; Cready Hamilton, one of the
Kimberly bankers, and brother of Doctor Hamilton,
Robert's closest friend; Nelson, the Kimberly
counsel--all took a hand in going over MacBirney,
so to say, and grading him up.  They found
for one thing that he could talk without saying
anything; which in conducting negotiations was
an excellent trait.  And if not always a successful
story-teller, he was a shrewd listener.  In everything
his native energy gave him a show of interest
which, even when factitious, told in his favor.

Soon after the call on Uncle John, Dolly
arranged a dinner for the MacBirneys, at which
Charles Kimberly and his wife and Robert
Kimberly were to be the guests.  It followed a second
evening spent at the Nelsons', whence Robert
Kimberly had come home with the De Castros
and MacBirneys.  Alice had sung for them.  After
accepting for the De Castro dinner, Robert at the
last moment sent excuses.  Dolly masked her
feelings.  Imogene and Charles complained a little,
but Arthur De Castro was so good a host that he
alone would have made a dinner go.

MacBirney, after he and Alice had gone to their
rooms for the night, spoke of Robert's absence.
"I don't quite understand that man," he mused.
"What do you make of him, Alice?"

Alice was braiding her hair.  She turned from
her table.  "I've met him very little, you
know--when we called at his house, and twice at the
Nelsons'.  And I saw very little of him last night.
He was with that drinking set most of the evening."

MacBirney started.  "Don't say 'that drinking
set.'"

"Really, that describes them, Walter.  I don't
see that they excel in anything else.  I hate
drinking women."

"When you're in Rome, do as the Romans do,"
suggested MacBirney, curtly.

Alice's tone hardened a trifle.  "Or at least
let the Romans do as they please, without comment."

"Exactly," snapped her husband.  "I don't
know just what to make of Kimberly," he went on.

"Charles, or the brother?"

"Robert, Robert.  He's the one they all play
to here."  MacBirney, sitting in a lounging-chair,
emphasized the last words, as he could do when
impatient, and shut his teeth and lips as he did
when perplexed.  "I wonder why he didn't come
to-night?"

Alice had no explanation to offer.  "Charles,"
she suggested, tying her hair-ribbon, "is very nice."

"Why, yes--you and Charles are chummy
already.  I wish we could get better acquainted
with Robert," he continued, knitting his brows.
"I thought you were a little short with him last
night, Alice."

"Short?  Oh, Walter!  We didn't exchange a
dozen words."

"That's just the way it struck me."

"But we had no chance to.  I am sure I didn't
mean to be short.  I sang, didn't I?  And more
on his account, from what Dolly had said to me,
than anybody else's.  He didn't like my singing,
but I couldn't help that.  He didn't say a single word."

"Why, he did say something!"

"Just some stiff remark when he thanked me."

Alice, rising, left her table.  MacBirney laughed.

"Oh, I see.  That's what's the matter.  Well,
you're quite mistaken, my dear."  Catching Alice
in his arms as she passed, in a way he did when he
wished to seem affectionate, MacBirney drew his
wife to him.  "He *did* like it.  He remarked to
me just as he said good-night, that you had a fine
voice."

"That does not sound like him--possibly he
was ironical."

"And when I thanked him," continued
MacBirney, "he took the trouble to repeat: 'That
song was beautifully sung.'  Those were his exact
words."

In spite of painful experiences it rarely
occurred to Alice that her husband might be
deceiving her, nor did she learn till long afterward
that he had lied to her that night.  With her
feelings in some degree appeased she only made an
incredulous little exclamation: "He didn't ask
me to sing again," she added quietly.

MacBirney shrugged his shoulders.  "He is peculiar."

"I try, Walter," she went on, lifting her eyes to
his with an effort, "to be as pleasant as I can to
all of these people, for your sake."

"I know it, Alice."  He kissed her.  "I know
it.  Let us see now what we can do to cultivate
Robert Kimberly.  He is the third rail in this
combination, and he is the only one on the board
of directors who voted finally against taking us in."

"Is that true?"

"So Doane told Lambert, in confidence, and
Lambert told me."

"Oh, Lambert!  That detestable fellow.  I
wouldn't believe anything he said anyway."

MacBirney bared his teeth pleasantly.  "Pshaw!
You hate him because he makes fun of your
Church."

"No.  I despise him, because he is a Catholic
and ridicules his own."

Her husband knew controversy was not the way
to get a favor.  "I guess you're right about that,
Allie.  Anyway, try being pleasant to Kimberly.
The way you know how to be, Allie--the way you
caught me, eh?"  He drew her to him with breezy
enthusiasm.  Alice showed some distress.

"Don't say such things, please."

"That was only a joke."

"I hate such jokes."

"Very well, I mean, just be natural," persisted
MacBirney amiably, "you are fascinating enough
any old way."

Alice manifested little spirit.  "Does it make
so much difference to you, Walter, whether we
pay attention to *him*?"

MacBirney raised his eyebrows with a laughing
start.  "What an innocent you are," he cried in
a subdued tone.  And his ways of speech, if ever
attractive, were now too familiar.  "Difference!"
he exclaimed cheerily.  "When they buy he will
name the figure."

"But I thought they had decided to buy."

"The executive committee has authorized the
purchase.  But he, as president, has been given
the power to fix the price.  Don't you see?  We
can afford to smile a little, eh?"

"It would kill me to smile if I had to do it for
money."

"Oh, you are a baby in arms, Allie," exclaimed
her husband impatiently, "just like your father!
You'd starve to death if it weren't for me."

"No doubt."

MacBirney was still laughing at the idea when
he left his wife's room, and entering his own,
closed the door.

Alice, in her room, lay in the darkness for a
long time with open eyes.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER VII`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VII

.. vspace:: 2

The test of Alice's willingness to smile came
within a brief fortnight, when with the De
Castros, she was the guest of Imogene Kimberly
at The Cliffs, Imogene's home.

"This is all most informal," said Imogene, as
she went downstairs arm-in-arm with Alice; "as
you see, only one-half the house is open."

"The open half is so lovely," returned Alice,
"that I'm glad to take the other half on faith."

"It was my only chance--this week, and as
Dolly says, I 'jumped at it'!  I am sorry your
husband has disappointed us."

"He was called to town quite unexpectedly."

"But Providence has provided a substitute.
Robert Kimberly is coming."  Alice almost caught
her breath.  "He is another of those men,"
continued Imogene, "whom you never can get when
you want them.  Fortunately he telephoned a
moment ago saying he *must* see Charles.  I answered
that the only possible way to see him was to come
over now, for he is going fishing and leaves at
midnight.  The guides wired this morning that
the ice is out.  And when the ice goes out,"
Imogene raised her hands, "neither fire nor
earthquake can stop Charles.  Here is Robert
now.  Oh, and he has Doctor Hamilton with
him.  All the better.  If we can get both we shall
have no lack of men."

Robert Kimberly and Doctor Hamilton were
coming down the hall.  "How delightful!" cried
Imogene, advancing, "and I am so glad *you*'ve
come, doctor."

Kimberly paused.  He saw Alice lingering behind
her hostess and the De Castros with Fritzie
Venable coming downstairs.

"You have a dinner on," he said to Imogene.

"Only a small one."

"But you didn't tell me----"

"Just to give you a chance to show your
indifference to surprises, Robert."

She introduced Doctor Hamilton to Alice.
"These two are always together," she explained
to Alice, lifting her fan toward the doctor and her
brother-in-law.  "But any hostess is fortunate to
capture them like this, just the right moment."

Hamilton, greeting Alice, turned to Imogene:
"What is this about your husband's going to
Labrador to-morrow?"

"He is going to-night.  The salmon are doing
something or other."

"Deserted Gaspé, has he?"

"Temporarily," said Imogene, pausing to give
an order to a butler.  Robert waited a moment
for her attention.  "I brought the doctor," he
explained, "because I couldn't leave him to dine
alone.  And now----"

"And now," echoed Imogene, "you see how
beautifully it turns out.  The Nelsons declined,
Mr. MacBirney disappoints me, Charles goes
fishing, and can't get home to-night in time to dine.
But there are still seven of us--what could be
better?  Mrs. De Castro will claim the doctor.
Arthur won't desert me, and, Robert, you may give
an arm to Fritzie and one to Mrs. MacBirney."

There was now no escape from a smile, and
Alice resolved to be loyal to her hostess.  The
party moved into the drawing-room.

Fritzie Venable tried to engage Kimberly in
answering her questions about a saddle-horse that
one of his grooms had recommended.  Kimberly
professed to know nothing about it.  When it
became apparent that he really did know nothing
of the horse, Fritzie insisted on explaining.

Her spirited talk, whether concerning her own
troubles or those of other people, was not
uninteresting.  Soon she talked more especially to
Alice.  Kimberly listened not inattentively but
somewhat perfunctorily, and the manner, noticeable
at their second meeting, again impressed Alice.

Whether it was a constraint or an unpleasing
reserve was not clear; and it might have been the
abstraction of a busied man, one of that type
familiar in American life who are inherently
interesting, but whose business affairs never wholly
release their thought.

Whatever the cause, Fritzie was sufficiently
interested in her own stories to ignore it and in a
degree to overcome the effect of it.  She was sure
of her ground because she knew her distinguished
connection had a considerate spot in his heart for
her.  She finally attacked him directly, and at
first he did not go to the trouble of a defence.
When she at length accused him, rather sharply,
of letting business swallow him up, Kimberly,
with Alice listening, showed a trace of impatience.

"The old sugar business!" Fritzie exclaimed
reproachfully, "it is taking the spirituality
completely out of the Kimberly family."

Robert looked at her in genuine surprise and
burst into a laugh.  "What's that?" he demanded,
bending incredulously forward.

Fritzie tossed her head.  "I don't care!"

"Spirituality?" echoed Kimberly, with a quiet
malice.  His laugh annoyed Fritzie, but she stuck
to her guns: "Spirits, then; or gayety, or life!"
she cried.  "I don't care what you call it.
Anything besides everlastingly piling up money.  Oh,
these almighty dollars!"

"You tire of them so quickly, is it, Fritzie?  Or
is it that they don't feel on familiar terms enough
to stay long with you?" he asked, while Alice
was smiling at the encounter.

Fritzie summoned her dignity and pointed every
word with a nod.  "I simply don't want to see
*all* of my friends--ossify!  Should you?" she
demanded, turning to Alice for approval.

"Certainly not," responded Alice.

"Bone black is very useful in our business,"
observed Kimberly.

Fritzie's eyes snapped.  "Then buy it!  Don't
attempt to supply the demand out of your own
bones!"

It would have been churlish to refuse her her
laugh.  Kimberly and Alice for the first time
laughed together and found it pleasant.

Fritzie, following up her advantage, asked
Doctor Hamilton whether he had heard Dora
Morgan's latest joke.  "She had a dispute,"
continued Fritzie, "with George Doane last night
about Unitarians and Universalists----"

"Heavens, have those two got to talking
religion?" demanded Kimberly, wearily.

"George happened to say to Cready Hamilton
that Unitarians and Universalists believed just
about the same doctrine.  When Dora insisted it
was not so, George told her she couldn't name a
difference.  'Why, nonsense, George,' said Dora,
'Unitarians deny the divinity of Christ, but
Universalists don't believe in a damned thing.'  And
the funny part of it was, George got furious at
her," concluded Fritzie with merriment.

"I suppose you, too, fish," ventured Alice to
Kimberly as the party started for the dining-room.

"My fishing is something of a bluff," he
confessed.  "That is, I fish, but I don't get anything.
My brother really does get the fish," he said as
he seated her.  "He campaigns for them--one
has to nowadays, even for fish.  I can't scrape up
interest enough in it for that.  I whip one pool
after another and drag myself wearily over
portages and chase about in boats, and my guides
fable wisely but I get next to nothing."

Alice laughed.  Even though he assumed
incompetence it seemed assumed.  And in saying
that he got no fish one felt that he did get them.

Arthur was talking of Uncle John's nurse--whom
the circle had nicknamed "Lazarus."  He
referred to the sacrifices made sometimes by men.

"It won't do to say," De Castro maintained,
"that these men are mere clods, that they have
no nerves, no sensitiveness.  The first one you
meet may be such a one; the next, educated or
of gentle blood."

"'Lazarus,'" he continued, "is by no means a
common man.  He is a gentleman, the product of
centuries of culture--this is evident from five
minutes' talk with him.  Yet he has abandoned
everything--family, surroundings, luxuries--for
a work that none of us would dream of undertaking."

"And what about women, my dear?"
demanded Dolly.  "I don't say, take a class of
women--take any woman.  A woman's life is
nothing but sacrifice.  The trouble is that women
bear their burdens uncomplainingly.  That is
where all women make a mistake.  My life has
been a whole series of sacrifices, and I propose
people shall know it."

"No matter, Dolly," suggested Imogene, "your
wrongs shall be righted in the next world."

"I should just like the chance to tell my story
up there," continued Dolly, fervently.

Kimberly turned to Alice: "All that Dolly
fears," said he, in an aside, "is that heaven will
prove a disappointment.  But to change the
subject from heaven abruptly--you are from the
West, Mrs. MacBirney."

"Do you find the change so abrupt? and must
I confess again to the West?"

"Not if you feel it incriminates you."

"But I don't," protested Alice with spirit.

"Has your home always been there?"

"Yes, in St. Louis; and it is a very dear old
place.  Some of my early married life was spent
much farther West."

"How much farther?"

"So much that I can hardly make anybody
comprehend it--Colorado."

"How so?"

"They ask me such wild questions about buffalos
and Indians.  I have found one woman since
coming here who has been as far West as Chicago, once."

"In what part of Colorado were you?"

"South of Denver."

"You had beautiful surroundings."

"Oh, do you know that country?"

"Not nearly as well as I should like to.  It is
beautiful."

Alice laughed repentantly as she answered:
"More beautiful to me now, I'm afraid, than it
was then."

"Any town is quiet for a city girl, of course.
Was it a small town?"

"Quite small.  And odd in many ways."

"I see; where the people have 'best clothes'----"

"Don't make fun."

"And wear them on Sunday.  And there is
usually one three-story building in the town--I
was marooned over Sunday once in a little
Western town, with an uncle.  I saw a sign on a big
building: 'Odd Fellows' Hall.'  Who are the
Odd Fellows, uncle?' I asked.  He was a crusty
old fellow: 'Optimists, my son, optimists,' he
growled, 'They build three-story buildings in
two-story towns.'  What was your town, by the way?"

"Piedmont."

"Piedmont?"  Kimberly paused a moment.
"I ought to know something of that town."

Alice looked surprised.  "You?"

"The uncle I spoke of built a railroad through
there to the Gulf.  Isn't there a town below
Piedmont named Kimberly?"

"To be sure there is.  How stupid!  I never
thought it was named after your uncle."

"No, that uncle was a Morgan,", interposed
Imogene, listening, "the town was named after
your next neighbor."

"How interesting!  And how could you make
such fun of me--having me tell you of a country
you knew all about!  And a whole town named
after you!"

"That is a modest distinction," remarked
Kimberly.  "As a boy I was out there with an
engineering party and hunted a little.  My uncle gave
me the town as a Christmas present."

"A town for a Christmas present!"

"I suspected after I began paying taxes on my
present that my uncle had got tired of it.  They
used to sit up nights out there to figure out new
taxes.  In the matter of devising taxes it is the
most industrious, progressive, tireless community
I have ever known.  And their pleas were so
ingenious; they made you feel that if you opposed
them you were an enemy to mankind."

"Then they beguiled Robert every once in a
while," interposed Fritzie, "into a town hall or
public library or a park or electric lighting plant.
Once they asked him for a drinking fountain."  Fritzie
laughed immoderately at the recollection.
"He put in the fountain and afterward learned
there was no water within fifteen miles; they
then urged him to put in a water-works system to
get water to it."

"I suggested a brewery to supply the fountain,"
said Arthur, looking over, "and that he might
work out even by selling the surplus beer.  There
were difficulties, of course; if he supplied the
fountain with beer, nobody would buy it in bottles.
Then it was proposed to sell the surplus beer to the
neighboring towns.  But with the fountain
playing in Kimberly, these would pretty certainly be
depopulated.  Per contra, it was figured that this
might operate to raise the price of his Kimberly
lots.  But while we were working the thing out
for him, what do you think happened?"

"I haven't an idea," laughed Alice.

"The town voted for prohibition."

"Fancy," murmured Imogene, "and named Kimberly!"

"And what became of the fountain?"

"Oh, it is running; he put in the water-works."

"Generous man!"

"Generous!" echoed Hamilton.  "Don't be
deceived, Mrs. MacBirney.  You should see what
he charges them for water.  I should think it
would be on his conscience, if he has one.  He is
Jupiter with the frogs.  Whatever they ask, he
gives them.  But when they get it--how they do
get it!"

"Don't believe Doctor Hamilton, Mrs. MacBirney,"
said Robert Kimberly.  "I stand better
with my Western friends than I do with these
cynical Easterners.  And if my town will only
drink up the maintenance charges, I am satisfied."

"The percentage of lime in the water he supplies
is something fierce," persisted the doctor.
"It is enough to kill off the population every ten
years.  I suggested a hospital."

"But didn't Mr. MacBirney tell me they have
a sugar factory there?" asked Alice.

"They have," said De Castro.  "One of Robert's
chemists was out there once trying to analyze
the taxes.  Incidentally, he brought back some
of the soil, thinking there might be something in
it to account for the tax mania.  And behold, he
found it to be fine for sugar beets!  Irrigation
ditches and a factory were put in.  You should
see how swell they are out there now."

"Robert has had all kinds of resolutions from
the town," said Fritzie.

Kimberly turned to Alice to supplement the
remark.  "Quite true, I *have* had all kinds--they
are strong on resolutions.  But lately these have
been less sulphurous."

"Well, isn't it odd?  My father's ranch once
extended nearly all the way from Piedmont to
the very town you are speaking of!" exclaimed
Alice.

Kimberly looked at her with interest.  "Was
that really yours--the big ranch north of Kimberly?"

"I spent almost every summer there until I was
fifteen."

"That must have been until very lately."

Alice returned his look with the utmost
simplicity.  "No, indeed, it is ten years ago."

Kimberly threw back his head and it fell
forward a little on his chest.  "How curious," he
said reflectively; "I knew the ranch very well."

When they were saying good-night, Imogene
whispered to Alice: "I congratulate you."

Alice, flushed with the pleasure of the evening,
stood in her wraps.  She raised her brows in
pleased surprise.  "Pray what for?"

"Your success.  The evening, you know, was
in your honor; and you were decidedly the feature
of it."

"I really didn't suspect it."

"And you made a perfect success with your
unexpected neighbor."

"But I didn't do anything at all!"

"It isn't every woman that succeeds without
trying.  We have been working for a long time
to pull Robert out of the dumps."  Imogene
laughed softly.  "I noticed to-night while you
were talking to him that he tossed back his head
once or twice.  When he does that, he is waking
up!  Here is your car, Dolly," she added, as the
De Castros came into the vestibule.

"Arthur is going to take Doctor Hamilton
and Fritzie in our car, Imogene," explained Dolly.
"Robert has asked Mrs. MacBirney and me to
drive home around the south shore with him."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER VIII`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VIII

.. vspace:: 2

Charles Kimberly was at The Towers
the morning after the return from his fishing
trip, to confer with Uncle John and his brother
upon the negotiations for the MacBirney properties.
In the consideration of any question each of
the three Kimberlys began with a view-point quite
distinct from those of the others.

John Kimberly, even in old age and stricken
physically to an appalling degree, swerved not a
hair's-breadth from his constant philosophy of
life.  He believed first and last in force, and that
feeble remnant of vitality which disease, or what
Dolly would have termed, "God's vengeance," had
left him, was set on the use of force.

To the extent that fraud is an element of force,
he employed fraud; but it was only because fraud
is a part of force, and whoever sets store by the
one will not always shrink from the other.  Any
disposition of a question that lacked something
of this complexion seemed to Uncle John a dangerous one.

Charles had so long seen bludgeoning succeed
that it had become an accepted part of his
business philosophy.  But in the day he now faced,
new forces had arisen.  Public sentiment had
become a factor in industrial problems; John was
blind to its dangerous power; Charles was quite
alive to it.

New views of the problem of competition had
been advanced, and in advocating them, one of the
Kimberlys, Robert, was known to be a leader.
This school sought to draw the sting of competitive
loss through understandings, coöperation, and
peace, instead of suspicion, random effort, and war.

Charles saw this tendency with satisfaction;
Uncle John saw it sceptically.  But Charles,
influenced by the mastery of his uncle, became
unsettled in his conclusions and stood liable to veer in
his judgment to one side or the other of the
question, as he might be swayed by apprehensions
concerning the new conditions or rested in confidence
in the policies of the old.

Between these two Kimberly make-ups, the
one great in attack, the other in compromise, stood
Robert.  "Say what you please," Nelson often
repeated to McCrea, "John may be all right,
but his day is past.  Charlie forgets every day
more than the opposition know, all told.  But I
call Robert the devil of the family.  How does
he know when to be bold?  Can you tell?  How
does he know when to be prudent?  I know men,
if I do anything, McCrea--but I never can
measure that fellow."

Whatever Robert liked at least enlisted all of his
activities and his temperament turned these into
steam cylinders.  John Kimberly influenced
Robert in no way at all and after some years of
profanity and rage perceived that he never should.
This discovery was so astounding that after a
certain great family crisis he silently and secretly
handed the sceptre of family infallibility over to
his nephew.

Left thus to himself, Robert continued to think
for himself.  The same faculties that had served
John a generation earlier now served Robert.
John had forgotten that when a young man he had
never let anybody think for him, and the energy
that had once made John, also made his younger nephew.

The shrewdness that had once overcome
competition by war now united with competitors to
overcome the public by peace.  The real object
of industrial endeavor being to make money, a
white-winged and benevolent peace, as Nelson
termed it, should be the policy of all interests
concerned.  And after many hard words, peace with
eighty per cent. of the business was usually achieved
by the united Kimberlys.

It had cost something to reach this situation;
and now that the West had come into the sugar
world it became a Kimberly problem to determine
how the new interests should be taken care of.

On the morning that Charles called he found
Uncle John in his chair.  They sent for Robert,
and pending his appearance opened the conference.
At the end of a quarter of an hour Robert had
not appeared.  Charles looked impatiently at his
watch and despatched a second servant to summon
his brother.  After twenty-five minutes a third call
was sent.

During this time, in the sunniest corner of the
south garden, sheltered by a high stone wall
crested with English ivy and overgrown with
climbing roses, sat Robert Kimberly indolently
watching Brother Francis and a diminutive Skye
terrier named Sugar.

Sugar was one of Kimberly's dogs, but Francis
had nursed Sugar through an attack after the
kennel keepers had given him up.  And the little
dog although very sick and frowsy had finally
pulled through.  The intimacy thus established
between Sugar and Francis was never afterward
broken but by death.

In this sunny corner, Kimberly, in a loose, brown
suit of tweed, his eyes shaded by a straw hat, sat
in a hickory chair near a table.  It was the
corner of the garden in which Francis when off duty
could oftenest be found.  A sheltered walk led
to the pergola along which he paced for exercise.
Near the corner of the wall stood an oak.  And a
bench, some chairs and a table made the spot
attractive.  Sugar loved the bench, and, curled up
on it, usually kept watch while Francis walked.
On cold days the dog lay with one hair-curtained
eye on the coming and going black habit.  On
warm days, cocking one ear for the measured step,
he dozed.

Francis, when Sugar had got quite well,
expressed himself as scandalized that the poor dog
had never been taught anything.  He possessed,
his new master declared, neither manners nor
accomplishments, and Francis amid other duties
had undertaken, in his own words, to make a
man of the little fellow.

Robert, sitting lazily by, instead of attending
the conference call, and apparently thinking of
nothing--though no one could divine just what
might be going on under his black-banded
hat--was watching Francis put Sugar through some of
the hard paces he had laid out for him.

"That dog is naturally stupid, Francis--all my
dogs are.  They continually cheat me on dogs,"
said Kimberly presently.  "You don't think so?
Very well, I will bet you this bank-note," he took
one from his waistcoat as he spoke, "that you
cannot stop him this time on 'two'."

"I have no money to bet you, Robert."

"I will give you odds."

"You well know I do not bet--is it not so?"

"You are always wanting money; now I will
bet you the bank-note against one dollar, Francis,
that you cannot stop him on 'two'."

Francis threw an eye at the money in Kimberly's
hand.  "How much is the bank-note, Robert?"

"One hundred dollars."

Francis put the temptation behind him.  "You
would lose your money.  Sugar knows how to
stop.  In any case, I have no dollar."

"I will bet the money against ten cents."

"I have not even ten cents."

"I am sorry, Francis, to see a man receiving as
large a salary as you do, waste it in dissipation
and luxury.  However, if you have no money, I
will bet against your habit."

"If I should lose my habit, what would I do?"

"You could wear a shawl," argued Kimberly.

"All would laugh at me.  In any case, to bet
the clothes off my back would be a sin."

"I am so sure I am right, I will bet the money
against your snuff-box, Francis," persisted Kimberly.

"My snuff-box I cannot bet, since Cardinal
Santopaolo gave it to me."

"Francis, think of what you could do for your
good-for-nothing boys with one hundred dollars."

Francis lifted his dark eyes and shook his head.

"I will bet this," continued the tempter, "against
the snuff in your box, that you can't stop him this
time on 'two'."

"Sugar will stop on 'two'," declared Francis,
now wrought up.

"Dare you bet?"

"Enough!  I bet!  It is the snuff against the
money.  May my poor boys win!"

The sunny corner became active.  Kimberly
straightened up, and Francis began to talk to
Sugar.

"Now tell me again," said Kimberly, "what this
verse is."

"I say to him," explained Francis, "that the
good soldier goes to war----"

"I understand; then you say, 'One, two, three!'"

"Exactly."

"When you say 'three,' he gets the lump?"

"Yes."

"But the first time you say the verse you stop
at 'two.'  Then you repeat the verse.  If the dog
takes the lump before you reach the end the
second time and say 'three'----"

"You get the snuff!"  Francis laid the box on
the table beside Kimberly's bank-note.

"Sugar!  Guarda!"  The Skye terrier sat upright
on his haunches and lifted his paws.  Francis
gave him a preliminary admonition, took from a
mysterious pocket a lump of sugar, laid it on the
tip of the dog's nose, and holding up his finger,
began in a slow and clearly measured tone:

   |   "Buon soldato
   |   Va alia guerra,
   |   Mangia male,
   |   Dorme in terra.
   |   Uno, due--
   |   Buon soldato
   |   Va--"
   |

But here Sugar, to Francis's horror, snapped
the lump into his mouth and swallowed it.

"You lose," announced Kimberly.

Francis threw up his hands.  "My poor boys!"

"This is the time, Francis, your poor boys don't
get my money.  I get your snuff."

"Ah, Sugar, Sugar!  You ruin us."  The little
Skye sitting fast, looked innocently and affectionately
up at his distressed master.  "Why," demanded
the crestfallen Francis, "could you not
wait for the lump one little instant?"

"Sugar is like me," suggested Kimberly lazily,
"he wants what he wants when he wants it."

Alice, this morning, had been deeply in his
thoughts.  From the moment he woke he had been
toying indolently with her image--setting it up
before his imagination as a picture, then putting
it away, then tempting his lethargy again with the
pleasure of recalling it.

He drew a cigar-case from his pocket and carefully
emptied the snuff out of the box into it.
"When do you get more snuff, Francis?"

"On Saturday."

"This is Tuesday.  The box is nearly full.  It
looks like good stuff."  He paused between each
sentence.  "But you would bet."

Francis without looking busied himself with
his little pupil.

"I have emptied the box," announced Kimberly.
There was no answer.  "Do you want any
of it back?"

Francis waved the offer aside.

"A few pinches, Francis?"

"Nothing."

"That dog," continued Kimberly, rapping the
box to get every grain out and perceiving the
impossibility of harrying Francis in any other way,
"is good for nothing anyway.  He wasn't worth
saving."

"That dog," returned Francis earnestly, "is
a marvel of intelligence and patience.  He has so
sweet a temper, and he is so quick, Robert, to
comprehend."

"I fail to see it."

"You will see it.  The fault is in me."

"I don't see that either."

Francis looked at Kimberly appealingly and
pointed benevolently at Sugar.  "I ask too much
of that little dog.  He will learn.  'Patience,
Francis,' he says to me, 'patience; I will learn.'"

Summoning his philosophy to bridge over the
disappointment, Francis, as he stood up,
absent-mindedly felt in his deep pocket for his snuff-box.
It was in difficulties such as this that recourse to
a frugal pinch steadied him.  He recollected
instantly that the snuff was gone, and with some
haste and stepping about, he drew out his
handkerchief instead--glancing toward Kimberly as he
rubbed his nose vigorously to see if his slip had
been detected.

Needless to say it had been--less than that
would not have escaped Kimberly, and he was
already enjoying the momentary discomfiture.
Sugar at that moment saw a squirrel running
down the walk and tore after him.

Francis with simple dignity took the empty
snuff-box from the table and put it back in his
pocket.  His composure was restored and the
incident to him was closed.

Kimberly understood him so well that it was not
hard to turn the talk to a congenial subject.  "I
drove past the college the other day.  I see your
people are doing some building."

Francis shrugged his shoulders.  "A laundry, Robert."

"Not a big building, is it?"

"We must go slow."

"It is over toward where you said the academy
ought to go."

"My poor academy!  They do not think it
will ever come."

"You have more buildings now than you have
students.  What do you want with more buildings?"

"No, no.  We have three hundred students--three
hundred now."  Francis looked at his
questioner with eyes fiercely eager.  "That is
the college, Robert.  The academy is something
else--for what I told you."

"What did you tell me?"  Kimberly lighted
a cigar and Francis began again to explain.

"This is it: Our Sisters in the city take now
sixteen hundred boys from seven to eight years
old.  These boys they pick up from the orphan
courts, from the streets, from the poor parents.
When these boys are twelve the Sisters cannot
keep them longer, they must let them go and take
in others.

"Here we have our college and these boys are
ready for it when they are sixteen.  But, between
are four fatal years--from twelve to sixteen.  If
we had a school for *such* boys, think what we
could do.  They would be always in hand; now,
they drift away.  They must go to work in the
city filth and wickedness.  Ah, they need the
protection we could give them in those terrible
four years, Robert.  They need the training in
those years to make of them mechanics and
artisans--to give them a chance, to help them to do
more than drift without compass or rudder--do
you not see?

"Those boys that are bright, that we find ready
to go further, they are ready at sixteen for our
college; we keep and educate them.  But the
others--the greater part--at sixteen would leave
us, but trained to earn.  And strengthened
during those four critical years against evil.  Ah!"

Francis paused.  He spoke fast and with an
intensity that absorbed him.

Kimberly, leaning comfortably back, sat with
one foot resting on his knee.  He knocked the
ash of his cigar upon the heel of his shoe as
he listened--sometimes hearing Francis's words,
sometimes not.  He had heard all of them before
at one time or another; the plea was not new to
him, but he liked the fervor of it.

"Ah!  It is not for myself that I beg."  Brother
Francis's hands fell resignedly on his knees.  "It
is for those poor boys, to keep them, Robert, from
going to hell--from hell in this world and in the
next.  To think of it makes me always sorrowful--it
makes a beggar of me--a willing beggar."

Kimberly moved his cigar between his lips.

"But where shall I get so much money?"
exclaimed Francis, helplessly.  "It will take a
million dollars to do what we ought to do.  You are
a great man, Robert; tell me, how shall I find it?"

"I can't tell you how to find it; I can tell you
how to make it."

"How?"

"Go into the sugar business."

"Then I must leave God's business."

"Francis, if you will pardon me, I think for a
clever man you are in some respects a great fool.
I am not joking.  What I have often said about
your going into the sugar business, I repeat.  You
would be worth ten thousand dollars a year to me,
and I will pay you that much any day."

Francis looked at Kimberly as if he were a
madman, but contented himself with moving his head
slowly from side to side in protest.  "I cannot
leave God's business, Robert.  I must work for
him and pray to him for the money.  Sometime
it will come."

"Then tell Uncle John to raise your wages,"
suggested Kimberly, relapsing into indifference.

"Robert, will you not sometime give me a letter
to introduce me to the great banker who comes
here, Hamilton?"

"He will not give you anything."

"He has so much money; how can he possibly
need it all?"

"You forget, Francis, that nobody needs money
so much as those that have it."

"Ah!"

"Hamilton may have no more money than I
have, and you don't ask me for a million dollars."

"It is not necessary to ask you.  You know I
need it.  If you could give it to me, you would."

"If I gave you a million dollars how should I
ever get it back?"

Francis spoke with all seriousness.  "God will
pay you back."

"Yes, but when?  That is a good deal of money
to lend to God."

"It is a good deal."

"When do I get it back, and how?"

"He will surely pay you, Robert; God pays over there."

"That won't do--over there.  It isn't honest."

Francis started.  "Not honest?"

"You are offering deferred dividends, Francis.
What would my stockholders say if I tried that
kind of business?  Gad, they would drag me into
court."

"Ah, yes!  But, Robert; you pay for to-day:
he pays for eternity."

Kimberly smoked a moment.  "In a proposition
of that kind, Francis, it seems to me the question
of guarantees is exceedingly important.  You good
men are safe enough; but where would the bad
men come in on your eternal dividends?"

"You are not with the bad men, Robert.  Your
heart is not bad.  You are, perhaps, cruel----"

"*What?*"

"But generous.  Sometime God will give you
a chance."

"You mean, sometime I will give God a chance."

"No, Robert, what I say I mean--sometime,
God will give you a chance."

Charles Kimberly's impatient voice was heard
from the pergola.

"Robert!  We've been waiting thirty minutes,"
he stormed.

"I am just coming."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER IX`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER IX

.. vspace:: 2

That afternoon MacBirney played golf with
Charles Kimberly.  Toward five o'clock,
Alice in one of the De Castro cars drove around to
The Hickories after him.  When he came in, she
was sitting on the porch with a group of women,
among them Fritzie Venable and Lottie Nelson.

"I must be very displeasing to Mrs. Nelson,"
Alice said to her husband as they drove away.
"It upsets me completely to meet that woman."

"Why, what's the matter with *her*?" asked
MacBirney, in a tone which professing friendly
surprise really implied that the grievance might
after all be one of imagination.

"I haven't an idea," declared Alice a little
resentfully.  "I am not conscious of having done a
thing to offend her."

"You are oversensitive."

"But, Walter, I can tell when people mean to be rude."

"What did Mrs. Nelson do that was rude?"
asked her husband in his customary vein of
scepticism.

"She never does anything beyond ignoring
me," returned Alice.  "It must be, I think, that
she and I instinctively detest each other.  They
were talking about a dinner and musicale
Thursday night that Mr. Robert Kimberly is giving at
The Towers.  Miss Venable said she supposed
we were going, and I had to say I really didn't
know.  We haven't been asked, have we?"

"Not that I know of."

"Mrs. Nelson looked at me when Fritzie spoke;
I think it is the first time that she ever has looked
at me, except when she had to say 'good-morning'
or 'good-evening.'  I was confused a little
when I answered, I suppose; at any rate, she
enjoyed it.  Mr. Kimberly would not leave us out,
would he?"

"I don't think so.  He was playing golf this
afternoon with Cready Hamilton, and he stopped
to offer me his yacht for the week of the cup races."

"Why, how delightful!  How came he ever to
do that?"

"And I think he has made up his mind what he
is going to do about placing me on the board,"
continued MacBirney, resuming his hard, thin
manner and his eager tone of business.  "I wish
I knew just what is coming."

Alice had scarcely reached her room when she
found the dinner invitation.  She felt a little thrill
of triumph as she read it.  Her maid explained
that the note had been laid in the morning with
Mrs. De Castro's letters.

Late in the evening Kimberly came over with
his sister-in-law, Imogene.  The De Castros were
at the seashore overnight and the visitors' cards
were sent up to the MacBirneys.  It was warm
and the party sat on the south veranda.
Kimberly talked with Alice and she told him they
hoped to be present at his dinner.

"You are sure to be, aren't you?" he asked.
"The evening is given for you."

"For us?"

"No, not for 'us,' but for you," he said
distinctly.  "Mr. MacBirney has said he is fond
of the water--you like music; and I am trying
something for each of you.  I should have asked
you about your engagements before the cards
went out.  If there is any conflict the date can
easily be recalled."

"Oh, no.  That would be a pity."

"Not at all.  I change my arrangements when
necessary every ten minutes."

"But there isn't any conflict, and I shall be
delighted to come.  Pray, how do you know I like
music?"

"I heard you say so once to Arthur De Castro.
Tell me what you are amused about?"

"Have I betrayed any amusement?"

"For just about the hundredth part of a second,
in your eyes."

They were looking at each other and his gaze
though within restraint was undeniably alive.
Alice knew not whether she could quite ignore it
or whether her eyes would drop in an annoying
admission of self-consciousness.  She avoided the
latter by confessing.  "I am sure I don't know at
all what you are talking about----"

"I am sure you do, but you are privileged not
to tell if you don't want to."

"Then--our dinner card was mislaid and until
to-night we didn't know whether----"

"There was going to be any dinner."

"Oh, I knew that.  I was at the Casino this
afternoon----"

"I saw you."

"And when I was asked whether I was going
to the dinner at The Towers I couldn't, of course, say."

"Who asked you, Mrs. Nelson?"

"No, indeed.  What made you think it was she?"

"Because she asked me if you were to be there.
When I said you were, she laughed in such a way
I grew suspicious.  I thought, perhaps, for some
reason you could not come, and now *I* am
confessing--I ran over to-night expressly to find out."

"How ridiculous!"

"Rather ridiculous of me not to know before-hand."

"I don't mean that--just queer little complications."

"A mislaid dinner-card might be answerable
for more than that."

"It was Miss Venable who asked, quite innocently.
And had I known all I know now, I could
have taken a chance, perhaps, and said yes."

"You would have been taking no chance where
my hospitality is concerned."

"Thank you, Mr. Kimberly, for my husband
and myself."

"And you might have added in this instance
that if you did not go there would be no dinner."

Alice concealed an embarrassment under a little
laugh.  "My husband told me of your kindness in
placing your yacht at our disposal for the races."

"At his disposal."

"Oh, wasn't I included in that?"

"Certainly, if you would like to be.  But tastes
differ, and you and Mr. MacBirney being two----"

"Oh, no, Mr. Kimberly; my husband and I are one."

"--and possibly of different tastes," continued
Kimberly, "I thought only of him.  I hope it
wasn't ungracious, but some women, you know,
hate the water.  And I had no means of knowing
whether you liked it.  If you do----"

"And you are not going to the races, yourself?"

"If you do, I shall know better the next time
how to arrange."

"And you are not going to the races?"

"Probably not.  Do you like the water?"

"To be quite frank, I don't know."

"How so?"

"I like the ocean immensely, but I don't know
how good a sailor I should be on a yacht."

Imogene was ready to go home.  Kimberly
rose.  "I understand," he said, in the frank and
reassuring manner that was convincing because
quite natural.  "We will try you some time, up
the coast," he suggested, extending his hand.
"Good-night, Mrs. MacBirney."

"I believe Kimberly is coming to our side,"
declared MacBirney after he had gone upstairs
with Alice.

Annie had been dismissed and Alice was braiding
her hair.  "I hope so; I begin to feel like a
conspirator."

MacBirney was in high spirits.  "You don't
look like one.  You look just now like
Marguerite."  He put his hands around her shoulders,
and bending over her chair, kissed her.  The
caress left her cold.

"Poor Marguerite," she said softly.

"When is the dinner to be?"

"A week from Thursday.  Mr. Kimberly says
the yacht is for you, but the dinner is for me,"
continued Alice as she lifted her eyes toward her
husband.

"Good for you."

"He is the oddest combination," she mused
with a smile, and lingering for an instant on
the adjective.  "Blunt, and seemingly kind-hearted----"

"Not kind-hearted," MacBirney echoed,
incredulously.  "Why, even Nelson, and he's
supposed to think the world and all of him, calls him
as cold as the grave when he *wants* anything."

Alice stuck to her verdict.  "I can't help what
Nelson says; and I don't pretend to know how
Mr. Kimberly would act when he wants anything.
A kind-hearted man is kind to those he likes, and
a cold-blooded man is just the same to those he
likes and those he doesn't like.  There is always
something that stands between a cold-blooded
man and real consideration for those he likes--and
that something is himself."

Alice was quite willing her husband should apply
her words as he pleased.  She thought he had
given her ample reason for her reflection on the
subject.

But MacBirney was too self-satisfied to perceive
what her words meant and too pleased with the
situation to argue.  "Whatever he is," he
responded, "he is the wheel-horse in this
combination--everybody agrees on that--and the friendship
of these people is an asset the world over.  If
we can get it and keep it, we are the gainers."

"Whatever we do," returned Alice, "don't let
us trade on it.  I shrink from the very thought of
being a gainer by his or any other friendship.  If
we are to be friends, do let us be so through mutual
likes and interests.  Mr. Kimberly would know
instantly if we designed it in any other way, I am
sure.  I never saw such penetrating eyes.  Really,
he takes thoughts right out of my head."

MacBirney laughed in a hard way.  "He might
take them out of a woman's head.  I don't think
he would take many out of a man's."

"He wouldn't need to, dear.  A man's thought's,
you know, are clearly written on the end of his
nose.  I wish I knew what to wear to Mr. Kimberly's dinner."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER X`:

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   CHAPTER X

.. vspace:: 2

One morning shortly after the MacBirneys
had been entertained at The Towers John
Kimberly was wheeled into his library where
Charles and Robert were waiting for him.  Charles
leaned against the mantel and his brother stood at
a window looking across the lake toward Cedar
Point.  As Francis left the room Uncle John's
eyes followed him.  Presently they wandered back
with cheerful suspicion toward his nephews, and
he laid his good arm on the table as they took
chairs near him.

"Well?" he said lifting his eyebrows and
looking blandly from one to the other.

"Well?" echoed Charles good-naturedly, looking
from Uncle John to Robert.

"Well?" repeated Robert with mildly assumed
idiocy, looking from Charles back again to Uncle
John.

But Uncle John was not to be committed by
any resort to his own tactics, and he came back at
Charles on the flank.  "Get any fish?" he asked,
as if assured that Charles would make an effort to
deceive him in answering.

"We sat around for a while without doing a
thing, Uncle John.  Then they began to strike
and I had eight days of the best sport I ever saw
on the river,"

Uncle John buried his disappointment under a
smile.  "Good fishing, eh?"

"Excellent."

There was evidently no opening on this subject,
and Uncle John tried another tender spot.  "Yacht
go any better?"

"McAdams has done wonders with it, Uncle
John.  She never steamed so well since she was
launched."

"Cost a pretty penny, eh, Charlie?"

"That is what pretty pennies are for, isn't it?"

Unable to disturb his nephew's peace of mind,
Uncle John launched straight into business.
"What are you going to do with those fellows?"

"You mean the MacBirney syndicate?  Robert
tells me he has concluded to be liberal with them."

"He is giving too much, Charlie."

"He knows better what the stuff is worth than
we do."

Uncle John smiled sceptically.  "He will give
them more than they are worth, I am afraid."

Robert said nothing.

"Perhaps there is a reason for that," suggested
Charles.

They waited for Robert to speak.  He shifted
in his chair presently and spoke with some
decision.  His intonation might have been
unpleasant but that the depth and fulness of his
voice redeemed it.  The best note in his utterance
was its open frankness.

"Uncle John understands this matter just as
well as I do," he began, somewhat in protest.

"We have been over the ground often.  These
people have been an annoyance to us; this is
undeniable.  McCrea has complained of them for
two years.  Through a shift in the cards--this
money squeeze--we have them to-day in our
hands----"

Uncle John's eyes shone and he clasped the
fingers of one hand tightly in the other.  "That is
what I say; trim them!" he whispered eagerly.

Robert went on, unmoved: "Let us look at
that, too.  He wants me to trim them.  I have
steadily opposed buying them at all.  But the rest
of you have overruled me.  Very good.  They
know now that they are in our power.  They are,
one and all, bushwhackers and guerillas.  To
my mind there isn't a trustworthy man in the
crowd--not even MacBirney.

"They have made selling agreements with
McCrea again and again and left him to hold the
sack.  We can't do business in that way.  When
we give our word it must be good.  They give
their word to break it.  Whenever we make a
selling agreement with such people we get beaten,
invariably.  They have cut into us on the
Missouri River, at St. Paul, even at Chicago--from
their Kansas plants.  They make poor sugar, but
it sells, and even when it won't sell, it demoralizes
the trade.  Now they are on their knees.  They
want us to buy to save what they've got invested.
At a receiver's sale they would get nothing.  But
on the other hand Lambert might get the plants.
If we tried to bid them in there would be a howl
from the Legislature, perhaps."

Uncle John was growing moody, for the prey
was slipping through his fingers.  "It might be
better to stand pat," he muttered.

Robert paid no attention.  "What I propose,
and God knows I have explained it before, is this:
These people can be trimmed, or they can be
satisfied.  I say give them eleven millions--six millions
cash--three millions preferred and two millions in
our common for fifty per cent of their stock
instead of sixteen millions for all of their stock."

Uncle John looked horror stricken.  "It is
nothing to us," exclaimed Robert, impatiently.  "I
can make the whole capital back in twelve months
with McCrea to help MacBirney reorganize and
run the plants.  It is a fortune for them, and we
keep MacBirney and the rest of them, for ten
years at least, from scheming to start new plants.
Nelson says there are legal difficulties about
buying more than half their stock.  But the voting
control of all of it can be safely trusteed."

Uncle John could barely articulate: "Too
much, it is too much."

"Bosh.  This is a case where generosity is
'plainly indicated,' as Hamilton says."

"Too much."

"Robert is right," asserted Charles curtly.

Uncle John threw his hand up as if to say: "If
you are resolved to ruin us, go on!"

"You will be surprised at the success of it,"
concluded Robert.  "MacBirney wants to come
here to live, though Chicago would be the better
place for him.  Let him be responsible for the
Western territory.  With such an arrangement
we ought to have peace out there for ten years.
If we can, it means just one hundred millions
more in our pockets than we can make in the
face of this continual price cutting."

Charles rose.  "Then it is settled."

Uncle John ventured a last appeal.  "Make
the cash five and a half millions."

"Very good," assented Robert, who to meet
precisely this objection had raised the figure well
above what he intended to pay.  "As you like,
Uncle John," he said graciously.  "Charles, make
the cash five and a half millions."

And Uncle John went back to his loneliness,
treasuring in his heart the half million he had
saved, and encouraged by his frail triumph in
the conference over his never-quite-wholly-understood
nephew.

At a luncheon next day, the decision was laid
by Charles and Robert before the Kimberly
partners, by whom it was discussed and approved.

In the evening Charles, with Robert listening,
laid the proposal before MacBirney, who had
been sent for and whose astonishment at the
unexpected liberality overwhelmed him.

He was promptly whirled away from The
Towers in a De Castro car.  And from a simple
after-dinner conference, in which he had sat down
at ten o'clock a promoter, he had risen at
midnight with his brain reeling, a millionaire.

Alice excused herself when her husband
appeared at Black Rock, and followed him upstairs.
She saw how he was wrought up.  In their room,
with eyes burning with the fires of success, he told
her of the stupendous change in their fortunes.
With an affection that surprised and moved Alice,
who had long believed that never again could
anything from him move her, he caught her
closely in his arms.

Tears filled her eyes.  He wiped them away
and forced a laugh.  "Too good to be true, dearie,
isn't it?"

She faltered an instant.  "If it will only bring us
happiness, Walter."

"Alice, I'm afraid I have been harsh, at times."  Her
memory swept over bitter months and wasted
years, but her heart was touched.  "It is all
because I worry too much over business.  There
will be no more worries now--they are past and
gone.  And I want you to forget everything,
Allie."  He embraced her fervently.  "I have
had a good deal of anxiety first and last.  It is
over now.  Great God!  This is so easy here.
Everything is so easy for these people."

The telephone bell tinkled.  Through a mist of
tears Alice felt her husband's kiss.  She rose to
answer the bell.  Dolly was calling from downstairs.
"Come down both of you," she said.  "Charles
and Imogene are here with Fritzie and Robert."

With Charles and Imogene had come a famous
doctor from the city, Hamilton's friend, Doctor
Bryson.  Alice protested she could not come
down.  Dolly told her she "simply must."  The
controversy upset Alice but she had at last to give
way.  She bathed her face in cold water and her
husband deceived her with assurances that her
eyes showed no traces of tears.

Very uncertain about them, she followed
MacBirney down, taking refuge at once in a corner
with Imogene.

While the two were talking, Grace De Castro
and Larrie Morgan came in, bringing some young
friends.  "Aren't they the nicest couple?"
exclaimed Alice as they crossed the room.

"It is a blessing they are," said Imogene.
"You see, Grace will probably succeed to the De
Castro fortune, and Larrie is likely sometime to
have the Kimberly burdens.  It crushes me to
think that Charles and I have no children."

"Are you so fond of children?" Alice asked
wistfully.

"Why, of course, dear; aren't you?"

"Indeed I am, too fond of them.  I lost my only
child, a baby girl----"

"And you never have had another?"

"No."

"If Robert would marry, we should have a
family hope there," continued Imogene.  "But
I am afraid he never will.  How did you enjoy
your evening at The Towers?"

"We had a delightful time."

"Isn't Robert a good host?  I love to see him
preside.  And he hasn't given a dinner before for
years."

"Why is that?"

Imogene laid her hand gently on Alice's.  "It
is a long story, dear, a tragedy came into his life--into
all our lives, in fact.  It changed him greatly."

Soon after the MacBirneys came down, the
Nelsons arrived on the scene and the company
moved to a south room to get the breeze.
Imogene talked with Alice and MacBirney, but
Kimberly joined them and listened, taking part at
intervals in the conversation.

When Imogene's attention was taken by
MacBirney, Robert, asking Alice if she got the air
from the cooling windows, moved her chair to
where the breeze could be felt more perceptibly.
"I hope you haven't had bad news to-night," he
said, taking a seat on a divan near her.

She understood instantly that her eyes had not
escaped his scrutiny, but concealed her annoyance
as best she could.  "No, indeed.  But I had
some exciting news to-night."

"What was it?"

"Oh, I mayn't tell, may I?  I am not supposed
to know anything, am I?"

Her little uncertainty and appeal made her
charmingly pretty, he thought, as he watched her.
The traces in her eyes of tears attracted him more
than anything he had seen before.  Her first
little air of annoyed defiance and her effort to
throw him off the track, all interested him, and her
appeal now, made in a manner that plainly said
she was aware the secret of the news was his own,
pleased him.

He was in the mood of one who had made his
plans, put them through generously, and was
ready for the enjoyment that might follow.
"Certainly, you are supposed to know," said he
graciously.  "Why not?  And you may tell if you
like.  At any rate, I absolve you as far as *I'm*
concerned.  I couldn't conceive you guilty of a
very serious indiscretion."

"Then I suppose you know that we are very
happy, and why--don't you?"

"Perhaps; but that should be mere excitement.
How about the tears?"

She frowned an impatient protest and rose.
"Oh, I haven't said anything about tears.  They
are going out on the porch--shall we join
them?"  He got up reluctantly and followed her.

Arthur De Castro and Charles Kimberly offered
chairs to Alice.  They were under a cluster of
electric lamps, where she did not wish to sit for
inspection.  As she hesitated Robert Kimberly
spoke behind her.  "Possibly it will be pleasanter
over here, Mrs. MacBirney."

He was in the shadow and had drawn a chair
for her near Nelson outside the circle of light,
from which she was glad to escape.  He took the
seat under the light himself.  When an ice was
served, the small tables were drawn together.
Alice, occupied with Nelson, who inspired by his
vis-à-vis had summoned something of his grand
air, lost the conversation of the circle until she
heard Doctor Bryson, and turned with Nelson
to listen.  He was thanking Mrs. De Castro for
a compliment.

"I am always glad to hear anything kind of my
profession."  He spoke simply and his manner
Alice thought engaging.  "It *is* a high calling--and
I know of but one higher.  We hear the
complaint that nowadays medicine is a savagely
mercenary profession.  If a measure of truth lies in
the charge I think it is due to the fact that doctors
are victims of the mercenary spirit about them.
It's a part of the very air they breathe.  They
can't escape it.  The doctor, to begin with, must
spend one small fortune to get his degree.  He
must spend another to equip himself for his work.
Ten of the best years of his life go practically to
getting ready.  His expense for instruments,
appliances, and new and increasingly elaborate
appointments is continuous."

"But doctor," Fritzie Venable leaned forward
with a grave and lengthened face, "think of the fees!"

The doctor enjoyed the laugh.  "Quite true.
When you find an ambitious doctor, unless his
energy is restrained by a sense of his high responsibility,
he may be possessed of greed.  If a surgeon
be set too fast on fame he will affect the spectacular
and cut too much and too freely.  I admit all of
this.  My plea is for the conscientious doctor, and
believe me, there are many such.  Nor must you
forget that, at the best, half our lives we are too
young to please and half our lives too old."

"Hamilton said the other night," observed
Robert Kimberly, filling in the pause, "that a good
doctor must spend his time in killing, not his own
patients, but his own business."

"No other professional man is called on to do
that," observed Bryson.  "Indeed, the saddest of
all possible proofs of the difficulties of our calling
is found in the fact that the suicide rate among
doctors is the highest in the learned professions."

MacBirney expressed surprise.  "I had no
idea of such a thing.  Had you, Mr. Kimberly?"
he asked with his sudden energy.

"I have known it, but perhaps only because I
have been interested in questions of that kind."

Dolly's attention was arrested at once by the
mention of suicide.  "Oh, dear," she exclaimed,
"Don't let us talk about suicide."

But Robert Kimberly could not always be shut
off and this subject he pursued with a certain
firmness.  Some of the family were disturbed but
no one presumed to interfere.  "Suicide," he went
on, "has a painful interest for many people.  Has
your study of it, doctor, ever led you to believe
that it presupposes insanity?" he asked of Bryson.

"By no means."

"You conclude then that sane men and women
do commit suicide?"

"Frequently, Mr. Kimberly."

Kimberly drew back in his chair.  "I am glad
to be supported in my own conviction.  The fact
is," he went on in a humorous tone, "I am forced
either to hold in this way or conclude that I am
sprung from a race of lunatics."

"Robert," protested Dolly, "can't we talk about
something else?"

Kimberly, however, persisted, and he now had,
for some reason not clear to Alice, a circle of
painfully acute listeners.  "The insanity theory is in
many cases a comfortable one.  But I don't find
it so, and I must stick to the other and regard
suicide as the worst possible solution of any
possible difficulty."

Doctor Bryson nodded assent.  Kimberly spoke
on with a certain intensity.  "If every act of a
man's life had been a brave one," he continued,
"his suicide would be all the more the act of a
coward.  I don't believe that kind of a man can
commit suicide.  Understand, I am considering
the act of a man--not that of a youth or of one
immature."

"Well, I don't care what you are *considering*,
Robert," declared Dolly with unmistakable
emphasis, "we will *talk* about something else."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XI`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XI

.. vspace:: 2

The conversation split up.  Kimberly,
unruffled, turned to Alice and went on in an
undertone: "I am going to tell you Francis's
views on the subject anyway.  He has the most
intense way of expressing himself and the
pantomime is so contributing.  'Suicide, Mr. Kimberly,'
he said to me one day, 'is no good.  What would
a man look like going back to God, carrying his
head in his hand?  "Well, I am back, and here
are the brains you gave me."  "What did you do
with them?"  "I blew them out with a bullet!"  That
is a poor showing I think, Mr. Kimberly, for
business.  Suicide is *no* good.'"

"But who is this Brother Francis," asked Alice,
"whom I hear so much of?  Tell me about him."

"He is one of the fixtures at The Towers.  A
religious phenomenon whom I personally think a
great deal of; an attendant and a nurse.  He is
an Italian with the courtesy of a gentleman worn
under a black gown so shabby that it would be
absurd to offer it to a second-hand man."

"Does the combination seem so odd?"

"To me he *is* an extraordinary combination."

"How did you happen to get him?"

"That also is curious.  The Kimberlys are
cantankerous enough when well; when ill they
are likely to be insupportable.  Not only that,
but kindness and faithfulness are some of the
things that money cannot buy; they give
themselves but never sell themselves.  When my uncle
fell ill, after a great mental strain, we hired nurses
for him until we were distracted--men and
women, one worse than another.  We tried all
colors and conditions of human kind without
finding one that would suit Uncle John.  I began to
think of throwing him into the lake--and told
him so.  He cried like a child the day I had the
set-to with him.  To say the truth, the old
gentleman hasn't many friends left anywhere, but early
impressions are a great deal to us, you know, and
I remember him when he was a figure in the
councils of the sugar world.

"I recall," continued Kimberly, "a certain
Black Friday in our own little affairs when the
wolves got after us.  The banks were throwing
over our securities by the wagon-load, and this
old man who sits and swears and shakes there,
alone, upstairs, was all that remained between
us and destruction.  He stood in our down-town
office with fifty men fighting to get at him--struggling,
yelling, screaming, and cursing, and some
who couldn't even scream or curse, livid and
pawing the air.

"He stood behind his desk all day like a
field-marshal, counselling, advising, ordering, buying,
steadying, reassuring, juggling millions in his two
hands like conjuror's balls.  I could never forget
that.  I am not answering your question----"

"But do go on!"  There were no longer tears
in Alice's eyes.  They were alive with interest.
"That," she exclaimed, "was splendid!"

"He won out, and then he set himself on
vengeance.  That was the end of our dependence on
other people's banks.  Most people learn sooner
or later that a banking connection is an expensive
luxury.  He finally drove off the street the two
institutions that tried to save themselves at our
expense.  The father of Cready and Frank
Hamilton, Richard Hamilton, a rank outsider, helped
Uncle John in that crisis and Uncle John made
Richard Hamilton to pillow his head on tens of
millions.  Since that day we have been our own
bankers; that is, we own our own banks.  And
I this is curious, never from that day to this has
Uncle John completely trusted any man--not even
me--except this very man we are talking about."

"Brother Francis?"

"Brother Francis.  You asked how I got him;
it is not uninteresting; a sort of sermon on good
deeds.  Just before this big school in the valley
was started, the order to which he belongs had
been expelled from France--it was years ago;
the reformers over there needed their property.
Half a dozen of the Brothers landed down here in
the village with hardly a coat to their backs.  But
they went to work and in a few years had a little
school.  The industry of these people is astonishing."

"One day they came to The Towers for aid.
Old Brother Adrian, the head Brother, came
himself--as he long afterward told me--with a
heavy heart, indeed, with fear and trembling.
The iron gates and the Krupp eagles frightened
him, he said, when he entered the grounds.  And
when he asked for the mistress of the house, he
could hardly find voice to speak.  My mother was
away, so Aunt Lydia appeared--you have seen
her portrait, haven't you?"

"No."

"You must; it is not unlike you.  Aunt Lydia
and my mother were two of the loveliest women I
have ever known.  When she came down that
day, Brother Adrian supposing it was my mother
begged a slight aid for the work they had
undertaken in the valley.  Aunt Lydia heard him in
silence, and without saying a word went upstairs,
wrote out a cheque and brought it down.  He
glanced at the figures on it--fifty--thanked her,
gave it to the young Brother with him, and with
some little compliment to the beauty of The
Towers, rose to go.

"While they were moving toward the door the
young Brother, studying the cheque grew pale,
halted, looked at it again and handed it to his
superior.  Brother Adrian looked at the paper
and at the young Brother and stood speechless.
The two stared a moment at each other.  Aunt
Lydia enjoyed the situation.  Brother Adrian had
thought the gift had been fifty dollars--it was
fifty thousand.

"He fainted.  Servants were hurried in.  Even
when he recovered, he was dazed--he really for a
year had not had enough to eat.  Aunt Lydia
always delighted in telling how the young Brother
helped him down the avenue after he could walk.
This is a tediously long story."

"Do go on."

"When he again reached the big iron gates he
turned toward the house and with many strange
words and gestures called down the mercies of
Heaven on that roof and all that should ever
sleep under it----"

"How beautiful!"

"He blessed us right and left, up and down,
fore and aft--he was a fine old fellow, Adrian.
When my mother heard the story she was naturally
embarrassed.  It looked something like obtaining
blessings under false pretences.  The only thing
she could do to ease her conscience was to send
over a second cheque."

"Princely!"

"It came near killing Brother Adrian.  It seems
odd, too, compared with the cut-and-dried way in
which we solemnly endow institutions nowadays,
doesn't it?  They all three are dead, but we have
always stood, in a way, with Adrian's people.

"The young man that made the exciting call with
him is now the superior over there, Brother
Edmund.  After the trouble we had with Uncle John,
in finding some one he could stand and who could
stand him, I went one day in despair to Brother
Edmund.  I allowed him to commit himself
properly on what they owed to Aunt Lydia's
goodness and the rest, and then began to abuse
him and told him he ought to supply a nurse for
my uncle.  He told me theirs was a teaching order
and not a nursing order.  I redoubled my harshness.
'It is all very well when *you* need anything,'
I said, 'when *we* need anything it is different.
Did those women,' I thundered, 'ask what you
were, when you were starving here?'

"It wasn't precisely logical, but abuse should be
vigorous rather than logical, anyway, and I tried
to be vigorous.  They got very busy, I can tell
you.  They held a conclave of some sort and
decided that Uncle John must be taken care of.  If
he were a common pauper, they argued, they
would not refuse to take care of him; should they
refuse because he was a pauper of means?  They
concluded that it was a debt they owed to Aunt
Lydia and by Heaven, next morning over came
this sallow-faced, dark-eyed Brother Francis, and
there he is still with Uncle John."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XII`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XII

.. vspace:: 2

MacBirney's personal efforts in effecting
the combination with the Kimberly
interests were adjudged worthy of a substantial
recognition at the hands of the company and he was
given charge of the Western territory together with
a place on the big directorate of all the companies
and made one of the three voting trustees of the
syndicate stock.  The two other trustees were,
as a "matter of form," Kimberly men--McCrea
and Cready Hamilton.  This meant for MacBirney
a settled Eastern residence and one befitting
a gentleman called to an honor so unusual.  He
was made to feel that his new circumstances
entailed new backgrounds socially as well as those
that had been accorded him in a monetary way,
and through the Kimberlys, negotiations were
speedily concluded for his acquiring of the Cedar
Lodge villa some miles across the lake from The Towers.

At the end of a trying two months, the
MacBirneys were in their new home and Alice had
begun receiving from her intimates congratulations
over the telephone.  Another month, and a
busy one, went to finishing touches.  At the end
of that period there was apparently more than
ever to be done.  It seemed that a beginning had
hardly been made, but the new servants were at
home in their duties, and Alice thought she could
set a date for an evening.  Her head, night and
day, was in more or less of a whirl.

The excitement of new fortunes had come very
suddenly upon her and with her husband she
walked every day as if borne on the air of waking
dreams.  Dolly declared that Alice was working too
hard, and that her weary conferences with
decorators and furnishers were too continual.
Occasionally, Dolly took matters into her own hands
and was frequently in consultation on domestic
perplexities; sometimes she dragged Alice abruptly
from them.

Even before it had been generally seen, the new
home, once thrown open, secured Alice's reputation
among her friends.  What was within it reflected
her taste and discrimination.  And her appointments
were not only good, they were distinctive.
To be able to drape the vestments of a house so as
to make of it almost at once a home was not a
feat to pass unnoticed among people who studied
effects though they did not invariably secure them.

Robert Kimberly declared that Alice, under
many disadvantages, had achieved an air of
stability and permanence in her home.  Dolly told
Lottie Nelson that nothing around the lake
among the newer homes compared with it.  Lottie
Nelson naturally hated Alice more cordially than
ever for her success.  She ventured, when the
new house was being discussed at a dinner, to say
that Mr. MacBirney seemed to have excellent
taste; whereupon Charles Kimberly over a salad
bluntly replied that the time MacBirney had
shown his taste was when he chose a wife.  "But,"
added Charles, reflectively, "perhaps a man doesn't
prove his taste so much in getting a wife as in
keeping one.

"Any man," he continued, "may be lucky enough
to get a wife; we see that every day.  But who,
save a man of feeling, could keep, well, say
Imogene or Dolly, for instance?"

Robert agreed that if the MacBirney home
showed anything it showed the touch of an
agreeable woman.  "Any one," he declared,
paraphrasing his brother, "can buy pretty things, but
it takes a clever woman to combine them."

One result of the situation was a new cordiality
from Lottie Nelson to the MacBirneys.  And
since it had become necessary to pay court to
them, Lottie resolved to pay hers to Mr. MacBirney.
She was resourceful rather than deep,
and hoped by this to annoy Alice and possibly to
stir Robert Kimberly out of his exasperating
indifference.  The indifference of a Kimberly could
assume in its proportions the repose of a monument.

Lottie, too, was a mover in many of the
diversions arranged to keep the lake set amused.  But
as her efforts did not always tend to make things
easy for Alice, Dolly became active herself in
suggesting things.

One Saturday morning a message came from
her, directing Alice to forbid her husband's going
to town, drop everything, provide a lunch and join
a motoring party for the seashore.  MacBirney
following the lines of Robert Kimberly's
experience with cars had secured at his suggestion,
among others, a foreign car from which things
might reasonably be expected.

Imogene Kimberly and Charles took Alice with
them and Dolly rode with MacBirney, who had
Robert Kimberly with him in the new car to see
how it behaved.  Kimberly's own chauffeur drove
for them.  Doane took Arthur De Castro and
Fritzie Venable.  The servants and the lunch
followed with a De Castro chauffeur.

As the party climbed toward Sea Ridge a shower
drove them into the grounds of a country club.
While it rained, the women, their long veils thrown
back, walked through the club house, and the
men paced about, smoking.

Alice, seated at a table on the veranda, was
looking at an illustrated paper when Robert
Kimberly joined her.  He told her what
extravagant stories he had heard from Dolly about the
success of her new home.  She laughed over his
sister's enthusiasm, admitted her own, and
confessed at length how the effort to get satisfactory
effects had tired her.  He in turn described to
her what he had once been through in starting
a new refinery and how during the strain of six
weeks the hair upon his temples had perceptibly
whitened, turning brown again when the mental
pressure was relieved.

"I never heard of such a thing," exclaimed Alice.

"I don't know how unusual it is, but it has
happened more than once in our family.  I
remember my mother's hair once turned in that
way.  But my mother had much sadness in her life."

"Mrs. De Castro often speaks of your mother."

"She was a brave woman.  You have never
seen her portrait?  Sometime at The Towers you
must.  And you can see on her temples just what
I speak of.  But your home-making will have just
the opposite effect on you.  If care makes the
hair white, happiness ought to make it browner
than ever."

"I suppose happiness is wholly a matter of
illusion."

"I don't see that it makes much difference how
we define it; the thing is to be happy.  However,
if what you say is so, you should cling to your
illusions.  Get all you can--I should--and keep all
you can get."

"You don't mean to say you practise that?"

"Of course I do.  And I think for a man I've
kept my illusions very well."

"For a *man*!"  Alice threw her head back.
"That is very comfortable assurance."

He looked at her with composure.  "What is
it you object to in it?"

"To begin with," demanded Alice, "how can a
man have any illusions?  He knows everything
from the very beginning."

"Oh, by no means.  Far from it, I assure you."

"He has every chance to.  It is only the poor
women who are constantly disillusionized in life."

"You mustn't be disillusionized, Mrs. MacBirney.
Hope unceasingly."

She resented the personal application.  "I am
not speaking of myself."

"Nor am I speaking of you, only speaking
through you to womankind.  You 'poor women'
should not be discouraged."  He raised his head
as if he were very confident.  "If we can hope,
you can hope.  I hope every day.  I hope in a woman."

She bore his gaze as she had already borne it
once or twice before, steadily, but as one might
bear the gaze of a dangerous creature, if
strengthened by the certainty of iron bars before its
impassive eyes.  Kimberly was both too considerate
and possessed too much sense of fitness to overdo
the moment.  With his hand he indicated a
woman walking along a covered way in front of them.
"There, for instance, goes a woman," he continued,
following up his point.  "Look at her.  Isn't
she pretty?  I like her walk.  And a woman's walk!
It is impossible to say how much depends on the
walk.  And all women that walk well have good
feet; their heels set right and there is a pleasure
in watching each sure foot-fall.  Notice, for
instance, that woman's feet; her walk is perfect."

"How closely observant!"

"She is well gowned--but everybody is well
gowned.  And her figure is good.  Let us say, I
hope in her, hope she will be all she looks.  I
follow the dream.  In a breath, an instant, a
twinkling, the illusion has vanished!  She has spoken,
or she has looked my way and I have seen her
face.  But even then the face is only the dial of
the watch; it may be very fair.  Sometime I see
her mind--and everything is gone!"

"Would it be impertinent to ask who has put
women up in this way to be inspected and
criticised?" retorted Alice.

"Not in the least.  I am speaking only in
illustration and if you are annoyed with me I shall
miss making my point.  Do I give up merely
because I have lost an illusion?  Not at all.  Another
springs up at once, and I welcome it.  Let us live
in our illusions; every time we part with one and
find none to take its place we are poorer,
Mrs. MacBirney, believe me."

"Just the same, I think you are horridly critical
of women."

"Then you should advise me to cultivate my
illusions in their direction."

"I should if I thought it were necessary.  As I
have a very high opinion of women, I don't think
any illusions concerning them are necessary."

"Loftily said.  And I sha'n't allow you to think
my own opinion any less high.  When I was a
boy, women were all angels to me; they are not
quite that, we know."

"In spite of illusions."

"But I don't want to put them very much lower
than the angels--and I don't.  I keep them up
because I like to."

Her comment was still keen.  "Not because
they deserve it."

"I won't quarrel with you--because, then, they
do deserve it.  It is pleasant to be set right."

The shower had passed and the party was making
ready to start.  Alice rose.  "You haven't said
what you think of your own kind, as you call
them--menkind."

Kimberly held her coat for her to slip into.
"Of course, I try not to think of them."

When they reached the summit dividing the
lake country from the sea the sun was shining.
To the east, the sound lay at their feet.  In the
west stretched the heavy forests and the long chain
of lakes.  They followed the road to the sea and
after their shore luncheon relaxed for an hour at
the yacht club.  Driving back by the river road
they put the new car through some paces, and
halting at intervals to interchange passengers,
they proceeded homeward.

Going through Sunbury at five o'clock the cars
separated.  MacBirney, with whom Robert
Kimberly was again riding, had taken in Fritzie
Venable and Alice.  Leaving the village they chose the
hill road around the lake.  Brice, Kimberly's
chauffeur, took advantage of the long, straight
highway leading to it to let the car out a little.
They were running very fast when he noticed the
sparker was binding and stopped for a moment.
It was just below the Roger Morgan place and
Kimberly, who could never for a moment abide
idleness, suggested that they alight while Brice
worked.  He stood at the door of the tonneau and
gave his hand to Alice as she stepped from the
car.  In getting out, her foot slipped and she
turned her ankle.  She would have fallen but
that Kimberly caught her.  Alice recovered
herself immediately, yet not without an instant's
dependence on him that she would rather have
escaped.

Brice was slow in correcting the mechanical
difficulty, and finding it at last in the magneto
announced it would make a delay of twenty
minutes.  Fritzie suggested that they walk through
her park and meet the car at the lower end.
MacBirney started up one of the hill paths with Alice,
Kimberly and Fritzie following.  They passed
Morgan house and higher in the hills they reached
the chapel.  Alice took her husband in to see the
beauty of the interior.  She told him Dolly's story
of the building and when Fritzie and Kimberly
joined them, Alice was regretting that Dolly had
failed to recollect the name of the church in Rome
it was modelled after.  Kimberly came to her aid.
"Santa Maria in Cosmedin, I think."

"Oh, do you remember?  Thank you," exclaimed
Alice.  "Isn't it all beautiful, Walter?
And those old pulpits--I'm in love with them!"

MacBirney pronounced everything admirable
and prepared to move on.  He walked toward the
door with Fritzie.

Alice, with Kimberly, stood before the chancel
looking at the balustrade.  She stopped near the
north ambone, and turning saw in the soft light
of the aisle the face of the boy dreaming in the
silence of the bronze.

Below it, measured words of Keats were dimly
visible.  Alice repeated them half aloud.  "What
a strange inscription," she murmured almost to
herself.

Kimberly stood at her elbow.  "It is strange."

She was silent for a moment.  "I think it
is the most beautiful head of a boy I have ever
seen."

"Have you seen it before?"

"I was here once with Mrs. De Castro."

"She told you the story?"

"No, we remained only a moment."  Alice
read aloud the words raised in the bronze:
"'Robert Ten Broeck Morgan: ætat: 20.'"

"Should you like to hear it?"

"Very much."

"His father married my half-sister--Bertha;
Charles and I are sons of my father's second
marriage.  'Tennie' was Bertha's son--strangely shy
and sensitive from his childhood, even morbidly
sensitive.  I do not mean unbalanced in any way----"

"I understand."

"A sister of his, Marie, became engaged to a
young man of a Southern family who came here
after the war.  They were married and their
wedding was made the occasion of a great family
affair for the Morgans, and Alices and Legares and
Kimberlys.  Tennie was chosen for groomsman.
The house that you have seen below was filled
with wedding guests.  The hour came."

"And such a place for a wedding!" exclaimed Alice.

"But instead of the bridal procession that the
guests were looking for, a clergyman came down
the stairs with a white face.  When he could
speak, he announced as well as he could that the
wedding would not take place that night; that a
terrible accident had occurred, and that Tennie
Morgan was lying upstairs dead."

Alice could not recall, even afterward, that
Kimberly appeared under a strain; but she noticed as
she listened that he spoke with a care not quite
natural.

"You may imagine the scene," he continued.
"But the worst was to come----"

"Oh, you were there?"

"When you hear the rest you will think, if there
is a God, I should have been, for I might have
saved him.  I was in Honolulu.  I did not even
hear of it for ten days.  They found him in his
bathroom where he had dressed, thrown himself
on a couch, and shot himself."

"How terrible!"

"In his bedroom they found a letter.  It had
been sent to him within the hour by a party of
blackmailers, pressing a charge--of which he
was quite innocent--on the part of a designing
woman, and threatening that unless he complied
with some impossible demands, his exposure and
news of an action for damages should follow in
the papers containing the account of his sister's
wedding.  They found with this his own letter to
his mother.  He assured her the charge was
utterly false, but being a Kimberly he knew he
should not be believed because of the reputation
of his uncles, one of whom he named, and after
whom he himself was named, and to whom
he had always been closest.  This, he feared,
would condemn him no matter how innocent he
might be; he felt he should be unable to lift from
his name a disgrace that would always be recalled
with his sister's wedding; and that if he gave up
his life he knew the charges would be dropped
because he was absolutely innocent.  And so he died."

For a moment Alice stood in silence.  "Poor,
poor boy!" she said softly.  "How I pity him!"

"Do you so?  Then well may I.  For I am
the uncle whom he named in his letter."

Unable or unwilling to speak she pointed to the
tablet as if to say: "You said the uncle he was
named after."

He understood.  "Yes," he answered slowly,
"my name is Robert Ten Broeck Kimberly."

Her eyes fell to the tessellated pavement.  "It
is frightfully sad," she said haltingly.  Then as if
she must add something: "I am very sorry you
felt compelled to recall so painful a story."

"It isn't exactly that I felt compelled; yet
perhaps that expresses it, too.  I have expected
sometime to tell it to you."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XIII`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XIII

.. vspace:: 2

The showers returned in the night.  They
kept Alice company during several sleepless
hours.  In the morning the sun was out.  It was
Sunday and when Annie brought her mistress her
rolls and chocolate Alice asked the maid if she had
been to church.

"Kate and I went to early church," said Annie.

"And what time is late church, Annie?"

"Ten thirty, Mrs. MacBirney."

"I am going myself this morning."

"And what will you wear?"

"Anything that is cool."

Alice was thinking less of what she should wear
than of how she should tell her husband that she
had resolved upon going to church.  Painful
experience had taught her what ridicule and
resource of conjugal meanness to expect whenever
she found courage to say she meant to go to church.
Yet hope, consoling phantom, always suggested
that her husband the next time might prove more
amenable to reason.

When at last she managed casually to mention
her momentous resolve, MacBirney showed
that he had lost none of his alertness on the
subject.  He made use first of surprise to express
his annoyance.  "To church?"  Then he gave
vent to a contemptuous exclamation uttered with
a semblance of good-natured indifference.  "I
thought you had got that notion pretty well out
of your head, Alice."

"You have got it pretty well out for me, Walter.
Sometimes it comes back.  It came this morning--after
a wakeful night.  I haven't been for a
long time."

"What church do you want to go to?"

His disingenuousness did not stir her.  "To my
own, of course.  There is a little church in the
village, you know."

"Oh, that frame affair, yes.  Awfully cheap
looking, isn't it?  And it threatens rain again.
Don't mind getting wet?"

"Oh, no, I'll take the victoria."

"You can't; Peters is going to drive me over to
The Towers."

"Then give me one of the cars."

"I understand they are both out of order."

"Oh, Walter!  Can't you have Peters drive
you to The Towers after he takes me to Sunbury?"

"I have an engagement with Robert Kimberly
at eleven o'clock."

"Could you change it a little, do you think,
Walter?"

"An engagement with Robert Kimberly!"

"Or be just a little late for it?"

MacBirney used his opportunity to advantage.
"Keep *him* waiting!  Alice, when you get an idea
into your head about going to church you lose
your common-sense."

She turned to the window to look at the sky.
"I can't walk," she said hopelessly.  Her
husband made no comment.  As her eyes turned
toward the distant Towers she remembered that
Robert Kimberly the evening before had asked--and
so insistently that it had been one of the
causes of her wakefulness--for permission to
bring over in the morning some grapes from his
hot-houses.  He had wanted to come at eleven
o'clock and she had assured him she should not
be at home--this because, during some uneasy
moments when they were close together in the
car, she had resolved that the next morning she
should seek if only for an hour an influence long
neglected but quite removed from his.  It was
clear to her as she now stood at the window, that
Kimberly had sought every chance to be at her
personal service at eleven o'clock, even though
her husband professed an engagement with him.

"Couldn't Peters," she asked, turning again to
MacBirney, "drive me down half an hour earlier--before
you go?  I can wait at the church till he
comes back after me?"

MacBirney was reading the stock-market reports
in the morning paper.  "All right," he said
curtly.

She was contained this time.  There had been
occasions when scenes such as this had brought
hot tears, but five years of steady battering had
fairly subdued Alice.

At high mass, an hour later, villagers saw a
fine lady--a Second Lake lady, they shrewdly
fancied from the carriage that brought
her--kneeling among them in a pew close to the altar,
and quite oblivious of those about her, kneeling,
too, at times when they stood or sat; kneeling
often with her face--which they thought pretty--hidden
in her hands as if it somehow had offended;
kneeling from the credo until the stragglers in the
vestibule and about the church door began to slip
away from the last gospel.  There was an unusual
stir about the church because it was a confirmation
Sunday and an archbishop, a white-haired
man who had once been in charge of the little
Sunbury parish himself, was present.

Alice followed the last of the congregation out
of the door and into the village sunshine.  She
looked up and down the country road for her
horses but none were in sight.  Below the church
where the farmers' rigs stood, a big motor-car
watched by village boys was waiting.  They knew
that the car, with its black and olive trimmings,
was from The Towers because they were familiar
with the livery of the villa grooms.

Their curiosity was rewarded when they saw the
fine lady come out of the church.  The instant
she appeared a great gentleman stepped from the
black tonneau and, lifting his hat very high,
hastened across the muddy road to greet
her--certainly she made a picture as she stood on the
church steps in her tan pongee gown with her
brown hair curling under a rose-wreathed Leghorn hat.

Her heart gave a frightened jump when she saw
who was coming.  But when the gentleman spoke,
his voice was so quiet that even those loitering
near could not hear his words.  There was some
discussion between the two.  His slight gestures
as they talked, seemed to indicate something of
explanation and something of defence.  Then a
suggestion of urgency appeared in his manner.
The fine lady resisted.

From under her pongee parasol she looked
longingly up the road and down for her horses,
but for a while no horses came.  At last a carriage
looking like her own did come down the lake
road and she hoped for a moment.  Then as the
carriage drove rapidly past her face fell.

The great gentleman indicated his annoyance
at the insolent mud that spattered from the
carriage wheel by a look, but he kept quite near to
the fine lady and his eyes fell very kindly on her
pink cheeks.  Her carriage did not come even
after they had gone to his car and seated themselves
in the tonneau to await it.  He was too clever to
hurry her.  He allowed her to wait until she saw
her case was quite hopeless, then she told him he
might drive her home.

"I came," he explained, answering an annoyed
note in a second question that she asked, "because
I understood you were going to church----"

"But I did not say I was."

"I must have dreamed it."

Brice, sitting at the wheel in front of them,
smiled--but only within his heart--when this
came to his ears; because it was Brice who had
been asked during the morning where Mrs. MacBirney
was and Brice who had reported.  He
was senior to Peters, senior to all the Second Lake
coachmen and chauffeurs, and usually found out
whatever he wanted to find out.

"At any rate," Kimberly laughed good-naturedly,
"I have been waiting here half an hour for you."

Brice knew that this was true to the minute, for
in that half-hour there had been many glances at
two good watches and a hamper of hot-house
grapes.  Brice himself, since a certain missed
train, involving language that lingered yet in
his ears, carried a good watch.

But to-day not even amiable profanity, which
Brice recalled as normal during extended waits,
had accompanied the unusual detention.  No
messenger had been despatched to sound the young
village priest with a view of expediting the mass
and the fine lady had been in nowise interrupted
during her lengthened devotions.  Kimberly, in
this instance, had truthfully been a model of
patience.

"These are the grapes," Brice heard behind
him, as he let the machine out a bit and fancied
the top of the hamper being raised.  "Aren't they
exceptional?  I found the vines in Algeria.  There
are lilies on this side."

An expression of involuntary admiration came
from the tonneau.  "Assumption lilies!  For your
sister?"

"No, for you.  They are to celebrate the feast."

"The feast?  Why, of course!"  Then came a
categorical question, animated but delivered with
keenness: "How did you know that to-day is the
feast of the Assumption?"

A bland evasion followed.  "I supposed that
every one knew the fifteenth of August is the feast
of the Assumption.  Taste this grape."

"I am very sure *you* didn't know."

"But I *did*.  Taste the grape."

"Who told you?"

"Whence have you the faculties of the Inquisition?
Why do you rack me with questions?"

"I begin to suspect, Mr. Kimberly, that you
belong on the rack."

"No doubt.  At least I have spent most of my
life there."

"Come, please!  Who told you?"

"Francis, of course; now will you taste this grape?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XIV`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XIV

.. vspace:: 2

When MacBirney reached home with the
victoria Alice had not yet taken off her hat,
and a maid was bringing vases for the lilies.  He
had been driving toward Sea Ridge and taken the
wrong road and was sorry for his delay in getting
to the church.  Alice accepted his excuses in
good part.  He tried to explain his
misunderstanding about the engagement with Kimberly.
She relieved his endeavors by making everything
easy, telling him finally how Kimberly had brought
her home and had left the grapes and lilies.  When
the two sat down at luncheon, MacBirney noticed
Alice's preoccupation; she admitted she had a
slight headache.  She was glad, however, to have
him ask her to go for a long motor drive in the
afternoon, thinking the air would do her good,
and they spent three hours together.

When they got home it was dusk.  The dinner
served on the porch was satisfying and the day
which had opened with so little of promise seemed
to do better at the close.  Indeed, Alice all day
had sought quiet because she had something to
say which she was resolved to say this day.  After
dinner she remained with her husband in the
moonlight.  He was talking, over his cigar, of an
idea for adding a strip of woodland to the lower
end of their new estate, when she interrupted him.

"Should you be greatly shocked, Walter, if I
said I wish we could go away from here?"  She
was leaning toward him on the arm of her chair
when she spoke and her hands were clasped.

His astonishment was genuine.  "What do you mean?"

"I don't know.  Yet I feel as if we ought to go,
Walter."

"What for?"

She was looking earnestly at him, but in the
shadow he could not see, though he felt, her eyes.

"It is hard to explain."  She paused a moment.
"These people are delightful; you know I like
them as much as you do."

MacBirney took his cigar from his mouth to
express his surprise.  "I thought you were crazy
about the place and the people and everything
else," he exclaimed.  "I thought this was just
what you were looking for!  You've said so much
about refined luxury and lovely manners----"

"I am thinking of all that."  There was enough
in her tone of an intention to be heard to cause him
to forget his favorite expedient of drowning the
subject in a flood of words.  "But with all this,
or to enjoy it all, one needs peace of mind, and
my peace of mind is becoming disturbed."

Quite misunderstanding her, MacBirney thought
she referred to the question of church-going, and
that subject offered so much delicate ground that
Alice continued without molestation.

"It is very hard to say what I meant to say,
without saying too little or too much.  You know,
Walter, you were worried at one time about how
Mr. Robert Kimberly would look at your
proposals, and you told me you wanted me to be
agreeable to him.  And without treating him differently
from any one else here, I have tried to pay particular
regard to what he had to say and everything
of that kind.  It is awfully hard to specify," she
hesitated in perplexity.  "I am sure I haven't
discriminated him in any way from his brother,
or Mr. De Castro, for instance.  But I have
always shown an interest in things he had to point
out, and he seemed to enjoy--perhaps more than
the others--pointing things out.  And----"

"Well?"

"It seems to me now as if he has begun to take
an interest in everything *I* do----"

Her husband became jocular.  "Oh, has he?"

Alice's words came at last bluntly.  "And it
completely upsets me, Walter."

MacBirney laughed again.  "Why so?"

She took refuge in a shade of annoyance.
"Because I don't like to think about it."

"Think about what?"

"About any man's--if I must say it--paying
attention to me, except my husband."

"Now you are hitting me, aren't you, Alice?
You are pretty clever, after all," declared
MacBirney still laughing.

She threw herself back in her chair.  "Oh,
Walter, you don't understand at all!  Nothing
could be further from what I am thinking.  I
ought not to say he has been attentive enough
to speak of.  It is not that I dislike Mr. Kimberly.
But he does somehow make me uncomfortable.
Perhaps I don't understand their way here."

"Why, that is all there is to it, Alice.  It's
merely their way.  Give it no thought.  He is
simply being agreeable.  Don't imagine that every
man that sends you flowers is interested in you.
Is that all, Allie?"

"Yes."  Her acuteness divined about what he
would reply.  "And," she added, "I think,
however foolish it may sound, it is enough."

"Don't worry about bridges you will never have
to cross.  That's the motto I've followed."

"Yes, I know, but----"

"Just a moment.  All you have to do is to
treat everybody alike."

"But, Walter----"

"You would have to do that anywhere--shouldn't
you?  Of course.  Suppose we should
go somewhere else and find a man that threatened
to become an admirer----"

"Don't use such a word!"

"Call it what you please--we can't keep moving
away from that kind of a possibility, can we?"

"Still, Walter, I feel as if we might get away
from here.  I have merely told you exactly what
I thought."

"We can't get away.  This is where everything
is done in the sugar business.  This is the little
world where the big moves are decided upon.  If
you are not here, you are not in it.  We are in the
swim now; it took long enough to get in it, God
knows.  Now let us stay.  You can take care of
yourself, can't you?"

"How can you ask me!"

He pursued her with a touch of harshness.
"How can I ask you?  Aren't you talking about
running away from a situation?  *I* don't run
away from situations.  I call the man or woman
that runs away from a situation, a coward.  Face
it down, work it out--don't dodge it."

MacBirney finished without interruption.

In the living room the telephone bell rang.  He
went in to answer it and his wife heard him a
moment in conversation.  Then on the garage
wire he called up the chauffeur and ordered a car.
Coming out again on the porch he explained:
"Lottie wants us to come over."

"Lottie?"  There was a shade of resentment,
almost of contempt, in Alice's echo and inquiry.

"Lottie Nelson."

"Don't call her Lottie, Walter."

"She calls me Walter."

"She has no business to.  What did you tell
her?  Don't let us go out to-night."

"It is a little celebration of some kind and I
told her we would come."

"My head has ached all day."

"It will do your head good.  Come on.  I told
her we were coming."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XV`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XV

.. vspace:: 2

They found a lively party at the Nelsons'.
Guyot was there, with Lambert, thick-lipped
and voluble.  Dora Morgan with Doane
and Cready Hamilton had come, worn and
bedraggled, from a New England motoring trip.
Dora, still quite hoarse, was singing a music-hall
song when the MacBirneys entered the room.

She stopped.  "My ears are crazy to-night--I
can't sing," she complained, responding to
Alice's greeting.  "I feel as if there were a motor
in my head.  Tired?  Oh, no, not a bit.  But the
dust!"  Her smile died and her brows rose till
her pretty eyes shone full.  She threw her
expiring energy into two husky words: "*Something*
fierce!"

Dolly and her husband with Imogene and
Charles had responded to Lottie's invitation, and
Robert Kimberly came later with Fritzie Venable.
Dolly greeted Alice with apologies.  "I am here,"
she admitted with untroubled contempt, "but not
present.  I wanted to see what Lambert looks
like.  We hear so much about his discoveries.
Robert doesn't think much of them."

Mrs. Nelson, languidly composed, led
MacBirney to the men who were in an alcove off the
music room.  Near them sat Robert Kimberly
talking to Imogene.  Dora could not be coaxed to
sing again.  But the hostess meant to force the
fighting for a good time.  Dora joined the men
and Guyot, under Nelson's wing, came over to
meet Alice, who had taken refuge with Dolly.  At
a time when the groups were changing, Nelson
brought Lambert over.  But neither Alice nor
Dolly made objection when his host took him
away again.

Kimberly came after a while with Fritzie to
Alice's divan and, standing behind it, tried by
conversation and such attraction of manner as he
could offer, to interest Alice.  He failed to waken
any response.  She quite understood a woman's
refuge from what she wishes to avoid and
persevered in being indifferent to every effort.

Kimberly, not slow to perceive, left presently
for the party in the dining-room.  But even as he
walked away, Alice's attitude toward him called
to her mind a saying of Fritzie's, that it is not
pleasant to be unpleasant to pleasant people,
even if it is unpleasant to be pleasant to
unpleasant people.

"Were you tired after yesterday's ride?" asked
Dolly of Alice.

"Not too tired."

"Robert told you about Tennie Morgan's death."

Alice looked at her inquiringly.  "How did
you know?"

"You were in the Morgan chapel together.
And you looked upset when you came back.  I
had promised to tell you the story sometime
myself.  I know how easy it is to get a false
impression concerning family skeletons.  So I asked
Robert about it the minute you left the car, and I
was annoyed beyond everything when he said he
had told you the whole story."

"But dear Mrs. De Castro!  Why should you
be annoyed?"

Dolly answered with decision: "Robert has no
business ever to speak of the affair."  Alice could
not dispute her and Dolly went on: "I know
just how he would talk about it.  Not that I
know what he said to you.  But it would be like
him to take very much more of the blame on
himself than belongs to him.  Men, my dear, look at
these things differently from women, and usually
make less of them than women do.  In this case
it is exactly the reverse.  Robert has always had
an exaggerated idea of his responsibility in the
tragedy--that is why it annoys me ever to have
him speak about it.  I know my brother better, I
think, than anybody alive knows him, and I am
perfectly familiar with all the circumstances.  I
know what I am talking about."

Very much in earnest Dolly settled back.  "To
begin with, Tennie was an abnormal boy.  He
was as delicate in his mental texture as cobweb
lace.  His sensitiveness was something incredible
and twenty things might have happened to upset
his mental balance.  No one, my dear, likes to
talk state secrets."

"Pray do not, then.  It really is not necessary,"
pleaded Alice.

"Oh, it is," said Dolly decidedly, "I want you
to understand.  Suicide has been a spectre to the
Kimberlys for ages.  Two generations ago
Schuyler Kimberly committed suicide at sixty-six--think
of it!  Oh!  I could tell you stories.  There
has been no suicide in this generation.  But the
shadow," Dolly's tones were calm but inflected
with a burden of what cannot be helped may as
well be admitted, "seems only to have passed it
to fall upon the next in poor Tennie.  Two years
afterward they found his mother dead one
morning in bed.  I don't know what the trouble
was--it was in Florence.  Nobody knows--there was
just a little white froth on her lips.  The doctors
said heart disease.  She was a strange woman,
Bertha, strong-willed and self-indulgent--like all
the rest of us."

"Don't say that of yourself.  You are not
self-indulgent, you are generous."

"I am both, dear.  But I know the Kimberlys,
men and women, first and last, and that is why I
do not want you to get wrong impressions of them.
My brother Robert isn't a saint, neither is Charles.
But compare them with the average men of their
own family; compare them with the average men
in their own situation in life; compare them with
the Nelsons and the Doanes; compare them with
that old man that Robert is so patient with!
Compare them, my dear, to the men everywhere
in the world they move in--I don't think the
Kimberly men of this generation need apologize
particularly.

"Robert was so completely stunned by Tennie's
death that for years I did not know what would
happen.  Then a great industrial crisis came in
our affairs, though afterward it seemed, in a way,
providential.  Poor old Uncle John got it into
his head he could make sugar out of corn and
ended by nearly ruining us all.  If things had
gone on we should all have been living in
apartments within another year.  When we were so
deep in the thing that the end was in sight we
went to Robert on our knees, and begged him to
take hold of the business and save the family--oh,
it had come quite to that.  He had been doing
absolutely nothing for a year and I feared all
sorts of things about him.  But he listened and
*did* take hold and made the business so big--well,
dear heart, you have some idea what it is
now when they can take over a lot of factories,
such as those of your husband and his associates,
on one year's profits.  I suppose, of course, these
are state secrets--you mustn't repeat them----"

"Certainly not."

"And for years they have been the largest
lenders of ready money in the Street.  So you can't
wonder that we think a great deal of Robert.  And
he likes you--I can see that.  He has been more
natural since you came here than for years."

"Surely your brothers never can say they have
not a devoted sister."

"I can't account for it," persisted Dolly,
continuing.  "It is just that your influence is a good
one on him; no one can explain those things.  I
thought for years he would never be influenced
by any woman again.  You've seen how this
one," Dolly tossed her head in disgust as she
indicated Lottie Nelson, then passing, "throws
herself at him."  With the last words Dolly rose to
say she was going home.  Imogene was ready to
join her, and Lottie's protests were of no avail.
Charles was upstairs conferring with Nelson and
Imogene went up to get him.

Alice walked to the dining-room.  Her
husband, in an uncommonly good-humor, was drinking
with their hostess.  In the centre of the room,
Hamilton, Guyot, Lambert, and Dora Morgan
sat at the large table.  Guyot offered Alice a chair.
She sat down and found him entertaining.  He
took her after a time into the reception room where
Lottie had hung a Degas that Guyot had brought
over for her.  Alice admired the fascinating
swiftness and sureness of touch but did not agree with
Guyot that the charm was due to the merit of
color over line.  When the two returned to the
dining-room, Kimberly stood at a cellaret with
Fritzie.

Lottie and MacBirney sat with the group at the
big table.  "Oh, Robert," Lottie called to
Kimberly as Alice appeared in the doorway, "mix me
a cocktail."

Turning, Kimberly saw Alice: "I am out of
practice, Lottie," he said.

"Give me some plain whiskey then."

Kimberly's shortness of manner indicated his
annoyance.  "You have that at your hand," he
said sitting down.

"How rude, Robert," retorted Lottie, with
assumed impatience.  She glanced loftily around.
"Walter," she exclaimed, looking across the table
at Alice's husband and taking Alice's breath away
with the appeal, "give me some whiskey."

"Certainly, Mrs. Nelson."

"No, stop; mix me a cocktail."

"Is your husband an expert, Mrs. MacBirney?"
asked Guyot as MacBirney rose.

"Not to my knowledge," answered Alice frankly.
"I hope," she added, with a touch of asperity as
her husband stepped to a sideboard, "that
Mrs. Nelson is not fastidious."

"It is disgusting the way my friends are
behaving," complained Lottie turning to Lambert.
"This is my birthday----"

"Your birthday!"

"That is why you are all here.  And whoever
refuses now to drink my health I cast off forever."

"Is this a regular birthday or are you springing
an extra on us?" demanded Fritzie.

"Go on, MacBirney, with your mixture,"
exclaimed Lambert, "I'll serve at the table.  You
are going to join us, of course, Mrs. MacBirney?"

Alice answered in trepidation: "It must be
something very light for me."

"Try whiskey, Mrs. MacBirney," suggested
Dora Morgan benevolently, "it is really the easiest
of all."

Alice grew nervous.  Kimberly, without speaking,
pushed a half-filled glass toward her.  She
looked at him in distress.  "That will not hurt
you," he said curtly.

The men were talking Belgian politics.  Lambert
was explaining the antiquated customs of
the reactionaries and the battle of the liberals for
the laicizing of education.  He dwelt on the
stubbornness of the clericals and the difficulties met
with in modernizing their following.

Kimberly either through natural dislike for
Lambert or mere stubbornness objected to the
specific instances of mediævalism adduced and
soon had the energetic chemist nettled.  "What
do you know about the subject?" demanded
Lambert at length.  "Are you a Catholic?"

"I am not a Catholic," returned Kimberly
amiably.  "I am as far as possible, I suppose,
from being one.  The doors of the church are
wide, but if we can believe even a small part of
what is printed of us they would have to be
broadened materially to take in American refiners."

"If you are not a Catholic, what are you?"
persisted Lambert with heat.

"I have one serious religious conviction; that is,
that there are just two perfectly managed human
institutions; one, the Standard Oil Company, the
other the Catholic Church."

There was now a chance to drop the controversy
and the women together tried to effect a
diversion.  But Lambert's lips parted over his
white teeth in a smile.  "I have noticed
sometimes that what we know least about we talk best
about."  Kimberly stirred languidly.  "I was born
of Catholic parents," continued Lambert,
"baptized in the Catholic Church, educated in it.  I
should know something about it, shouldn't I?
You, Mr. Kimberly, must admit you know nothing
about it."  Kimberly snorted a little.  "All the
same, I take priests' fables for what they are
worth," added Lambert; "such, for example, as
the Resurrection of Christ."  Lambert laughed
heartily.  Fritzie looked uneasily at Alice as the
words fell.  Her cheeks were crimsoned.

"Can a central fact of Christianity such as the
Resurrection fairly be called a priests' fable?"
asked Kimberly.

"Why not?" demanded Lambert with
contemptuous brevity.  "None but fossilized
Catholics believe such nonsense!"

"There are still some Protestants left,"
suggested Kimberly mildly.

"No priest dictates to me," continued the
chemist, aroused.  "No superstition for me.  I want
Catholics educated, enlightened, made free.  I
should know something about the church, should
I not?  You admit you know nothing----"

"No, I did not admit that," returned Kimberly.
"You admitted it for me.  And you asked me a
moment ago what I was.  Lambert, what are you?"

"I am a Catholic--not a clerical!"  Lambert
emphasized the words by looking from one to
another in the circle.  Kimberly spread one of his
strong hands on the table.  Fritzie watching him
shrank back a little.

"You a Catholic?" Kimberly echoed slowly.
"Oh, no; this is a mistake."  His hand closed.
"You say you were born a Catholic.  And you
ridicule the very corner-stone of your faith.  The last
time I met you, you were talking the same sort
of stuff.  I wonder if you have any idea what it
has cost humanity to give you the faith you sneer
at, Lambert?  To give you Catholic parents,
men nineteen hundred years ago allowed
themselves to be nailed to crosses and torn by dogs.
Boys hardly seven years old withstood starvation
and scourging and boys of fifteen were burned in
pagan amphitheatres that you might be born a
Christian; female slaves were thrown into boiling
oil to give you the privilege of faith; delicate
women died in shameful agonies and Roman
maidens suffered their bodies to be torn to pieces
with red-hot irons to give you a Christian
mother--and you sit here to-night and ridicule
the Resurrection of Christ!  Call yourself liberal,
Lambert; call yourself enlightened; call yourself
Modern; but for God's sake don't call yourself a
Catholic."

"Stop a moment!" cried Lambert at white heat.

Lottie put out her arm.  "Don't let's be cross,"
she said with deliberate but unmistakable
authority.  "I hate a row."  She turned her languid
eyes on MacBirney.  "Walter, what are these
people drinking that makes them act in this way?
Do give Mr. Kimberly something else; he began it."

Kimberly made no effort to soothe any one's
feelings.  And when Fritzie and Alice found an
excuse to leave the room he rose and walked
leisurely into the hall after them.

The three talked a few moments.  A sound of
hilarity came from the music room.  Alice looked
uneasily down the hall.

"I never knew your husband could sing," said Fritzie.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XVI`:

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   CHAPTER XVI

.. vspace:: 2

It dawned only gradually on Alice that her
husband was developing a surprising tendency.
He walked into the life that went on at the Nelson
home as if he had been born to it.  From an
existence absorbed in the pursuit of business he gave
himself for the moment to one absorbed in pursuit
of the frivolous.  Alice wondered how he could
find anything in Lottie Nelson and her following
to interest him; but her husband had offered two
or three unpleasant, even distressing, surprises
within as few years and she took this new one with
less consternation than if it had been the first.

Yet it was impossible not to feel annoyance.
Lottie Nelson, in what she would have termed an
innocent way, for she cared nothing for
MacBirney, in effect appropriated him, and Alice
began to imagine herself almost third in the situation.

Tact served to carry the humiliated wife over
some of the more flagrant breaches of manners
that Mrs. Nelson did not hesitate at, if they
served her caprice.  MacBirney became "Walter"
to her everywhere.  She would call him from the
city in the morning or from his bed at night; no
hour was too early to summon him and none too
late.  The invitations to the Nelsons' evenings
were extended at first both to Alice and to him.
Alice accepted them in the beginning with a
hopeless sort of protest, knowing that her husband
would go anyway and persuading herself that
it was better to go with him.  If she went, she
could not enjoy herself.  Drinking was an
essential feature of these occasions and Alice's
efforts to avoid it made her the object of a
ridicule on Lottie's part that she took no pains to
conceal.

It was at these gatherings that Alice began to
look with a degree of hope for a presence she
would otherwise rather have avoided.  Kimberly
when he came, which was not often, brought to
her a sense of relief because experience had shown
that he would seek to shield her from embarrassment
rather than to expose her to it.

Lottie liked on every occasion to assume to
manage Kimberly together with the other men
of her acquaintance.  But from being, at first,
complaisant, or at least not unruly, Kimberly
developed mulish tendencies.  He would not, in
fact, be managed.  When Lottie attempted to
force him there were outbreaks.  One came about
over Alice, she being a subject on which both
were sensitive.

Alice, seeking once at the De Castros' to escape
both the burden of excusing herself and of
drinking with the company, appealed directly to
Kimberly.  "Mix me something mild, will you, please,
Mr. Kimberly?"

Kimberly made ready.  Lottie flushed with
irritation.  "Oh, Robert!"  She leaned backward in
her chair and spoke softly over her fan.  "Mix
me something mild, too, won't you?"

He ignored Lottie's first request but she was
foolish enough to repeat it.  Kimberly checked
the seltzer he was pouring long enough to reply
to her: "What do you mean, Lottie?  'Mix
you something mild!'  You were drinking raw
whiskey at dinner to-night.  Can you never
understand that all women haven't the palates of
ostriches?"  He pushed a glass toward Alice.  "I
don't know how it will taste."

Lottie turned angrily away.

"Now I have made trouble," said Alice.

"No," answered Kimberly imperturbably, "Mrs. Nelson
made trouble for herself.  I'm sorry to be
rude, but she seems lately to enjoy baiting me."

Kimberly appeared less and less at the Nelsons'
and the coolness between him and Lottie
increased.

She was too keen not to notice that he never
came to her house unless Alice came and that
served to increase her pique.  Such revenge as
she could take in making a follower of MacBirney
she took.

Alice chafed under the situation and made every
effort to ignore it.  When matters got to a point
where they became intolerable she uttered a
protest and what she dreaded followed--an
unpleasant scene with her husband.  While she feared
that succeeding quarrels of this kind would end
in something terrible, they ended, in matter of
fact, very much alike.  People quarrel, as they
rejoice or grieve, temperamentally, and a wife placed
as Alice was placed must needs in the end submit
or do worse.  MacBirney ridiculed a little, bullied
a little, consoled a little, promised a little, and
urged his wife to give up silly, old-fashioned ideas
and "broaden out."

He told her she must look at manners and
customs as other people looked at them.  When
Alice protested against Lottie Nelson's calling
him early and late on the telephone and receiving
him in her room in the morning--MacBirney had
once indiscreetly admitted that she sometimes did
this--he declared these were no incidents for
grievance.  If any one were to complain, Nelson,
surely, should be the one.  Alice maintained that
it was indecent.  Her husband retorted that it was
merely her way, that Lottie often received Robert
Kimberly in this way--though this, so far as Robert
was concerned, was a fiction--and that nobody
looked at the custom as Alice did.  However, he
promised to amend--anything, he pleaded, but
an everlasting row.

Alice had already begun to hate herself in these
futile scenes; to hate the emotion they cost; to
hate her heartaches and helplessness.  She learned
to endure more and more before engaging in them,
to care less and less for what her husband said in
them, less for what he did after them, less for
trying to come to any sort of an understanding
with him.

In spite of all, however, she was not minded to
surrender her husband willingly to another woman.
She even convinced herself that as his wife she was
not lively enough and resolved if he wanted gayety
he should have it at home.  The moment she
conceived the notion she threw the gage at Lottie's
aggressive head.  Dolly De Castro, who saw and
understood, warmly approved.  "Consideration
and peaceable methods are wasted on that kind of
a woman.  Humiliate her, my dear, and she will
fawn at your feet," said Dolly unreservedly.

Alice was no novice in the art of entertaining;
it remained only for her to turn her capabilities to
account.  She made herself mistress now of the
telephone appointment, of the motoring lunch, of
the dining-room gayety.  Nelson himself
complimented her on the success with which she had
stocked her liquor cabinets.

She conceived an ambition for a wine cellar
really worth while and abandoned it only when
Robert Kimberly intimated that in this something
more essential than ample means and the desire
to achieve were necessary.  But while gently
discouraging her own idea as being impractical, he
begged her at the same time to make use of The
Towers' cellars, which he complained had fallen
wholly into disuse; and was deterred only with
the utmost difficulty from sending over with his
baskets of flowers from the gardens of The Towers,
baskets of wines that Nelson and Doane with their
trained palates would have stared at if served by
Alice.  But MacBirney without these aids was
put at the very front of dinner hosts and his table
was given a presage that surprised him more than
any one else.  As a consequence, Cedar Lodge
invitations were not declined, unless perhaps at
times by Robert Kimberly.

He became less and less frequently a guest at
Alice's entertainments, and not to be able to count
on him as one in her new activities came after a time
as a realization not altogether welcome.  His
declining, which at first relieved her fears of seeing
him too often, became more of a vexation than she
liked to admit.

Steadily refusing herself, whenever possible, to
go to the Nelsons' she could hear only through her
husband of those who frequented Lottie's suppers,
and of the names MacBirney mentioned none
came oftener than that of Robert Kimberly.
Every time she heard it she resented his preferring
another woman's hospitalities, especially those of
a woman he professed not to like.

Mortifying some of her own pride she even
consented to go at times to the Nelsons' with her
husband to meet Kimberly there and rebuke him.
Then, too, she resolved to humiliate herself enough
to the hateful woman who so vexed her to observe
just how she made things attractive for her guests;
reasoning that Kimberly found some entertainment
at Lottie's which he missed at Cedar Lodge.

Being in the fight, one must win and Alice meant
to make Lottie Nelson weary of her warfare.
But somehow she could not meet Robert Kimberly
at the Nelsons'.  When she went he was never
there.  Moreover, at those infrequent intervals
in which he came to her own house he seemed ill
entertained.  At times she caught his eye when
she was in high humor herself--telling a story
or following her guests in their own lively
vein--regarding her in a curious or critical way; and
when in this fashion things were going at their best,
Kimberly seemed never quite to enter into the
mirth.

His indifference annoyed her so that as a guest
she would have given him up.  Yet this would
involve a social loss not pleasant to face.  Her
invitations continued, and his regrets were frequent.
Alice concluded she had in some way displeased him.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XVII`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XVII

.. vspace:: 2

One morning she called up The Towers to
ask Kimberly for a dinner.  He answered
the telephone himself and wanted to know if he
might not be excused from the dinner and come
over, if it were possible, in the evening.

Alice had almost expected the refusal.  "I wish
you would tell me," she said, laughing low and
pleasantly, "what I have done."

He paused.  "What you have done?"

"What I have done that you avoid coming to
Cedar Lodge any more?"

"I don't, do I?"  He waited for an answer but
Alice remained silent.  His tone was amiable and
his words simple, yet her heart was beating like
a hammer.  "You know I haven't gone about
much lately," he went on, "but whenever you
really want me for a dinner you have need only
to say so."

"I never ask a guest for dinner without wanting him."

It was his turn to laugh.  "Do you really
manage that, Mrs. MacBirney?  I can't; and yet I
think myself fairly independent."

"Oh, of course, we are all tied more or less, I
suppose, but--you know what I mean."

"Then you do want me to appear?"

Alice suddenly found her tongue.  "We should
never ask any one to whom Mr. MacBirney and I
are under so many obligations as we are to
Mr. Kimberly without 'wanting him,' as you express
it.  And we really want you very much to-morrow night."

He laughed, this time with amusement.  "You
are rather strong now on third persons and plurals.
But I think I understand that you really do want
me to come."

"Haven't I just said so?" she asked with
good-humored vexation.

"Not quite, but I shall arrive just the same."

Alice put up the receiver, agreeably stirred by the
little tilt.  It was a lift out of the ruck of
uncomfortable thought that went to make up her daily
portion, and the elation remained with her all day.

She decided that some vague and unwillingly
defined apprehensions concerning Kimberly's
feeling toward her were after all foolish.  Why make
herself miserable with scruples when she was
beset with actual perplexities at home?  Walter
himself was now more of what she wanted him
to be.  He perceived his wife's success in her
active hospitality and applauded it, and Alice
began to feel she could, after all, be safe in a nearer
acquaintance with Kimberly and thus lessen a
little Lottie Nelson's pretensions.

It is pleasant to a woman to dress with the
assurance that anticipates success.  Alice went to
her toilet the following afternoon with an
animation that she had not felt for weeks.  Every step
in it pleased her and Annie's approbation as she
progressed was very gratifying to her mistress.

The trifles in finishing were given twice their
time, and when Alice walked into her husband's
room he kissed her and held her out at arm's length
in admiration.  She hastened away to look at the
table and the stairs rose to meet her feet as she
tripped down the padded treads.

Passing the drawing-room the rustle of her steps
caused a man within it to turn from a picture he
was studying, and Alice to her surprise saw
Kimberly standing before a sanguine of herself.  She
gave a little exclamation.

"I asked not to be announced," he explained.
"I am early and did not want to hurry you."  He
extended his hand.  "How are you?"

"I couldn't imagine who it was, when I looked
in," exclaimed Alice cordially.  "I am glad to
see you."

He held out his hand and waited till she gave him
hers.  "You look simply stunning," he answered
quietly.  "There is something," he added without
giving her a chance to speak and turning from
the eyes of the portrait back again to her own,
"in your eyes very like and yet unlike this.  I find
now something in them more movingly beautiful;
perhaps twenty-five years against eighteen--I don't
know--perhaps a trace of tears."

"Oh, Mr. Kimberly, spare your extravagances.
I hear you have been away."

"At least, I have never seen you quite so
beautiful as you are this moment."

"I am not beautiful at all, and I am quite aware
of it, Mr. Kimberly."

"I would not wish you to think anything else.
There the beauty of your character begins."

Her repugnance was evident but she bore his
eyes without flinching.  "You humiliate me
exceedingly," was all she attempted to say.

"The truth should not humiliate you.  I----"

"Must I run away?"

"Not, I hope, because I tell you you are beautiful,
for I shall continue to tell you so every time I
see you."

"Surely you will not take advantage of your
hostess, Mr. Kimberly?"

"In what way?" he asked.

"By saying things most unpleasant for her to hear."

"I say things awkwardly, perhaps unpleasantly,
but always sincerely."

Alice looked down at her fan, but spoke with
even more firmness.  "If we are to be good friends,
you must excuse me even from sincerity on topics
of this kind."

"Don't cut me from your friendship.  We must
be the best of friends.  I cannot conceive of you
as being other than kind, even patient with me."

"Then do not say things I cannot listen to."

"I will never say anything you may not listen
to.  But concede me the privilege--for it is
one--of paying honest tribute to your loveliness when
I can't help it."

Without raising her eyes she spoke with decision.
"I positively will not listen."  With the word
she caught up her gown and started away.  He
walked with her.  "I am afraid," he said
regretfully, "you are sorry you sent for me."

She turned with burning eyes.  "You should
be the last to make me so, Mr. Kimberly."

"I wish to be the last.  Yet I hate to sacrifice
sincerity."

"There is something I put far above sincerity."

He looked mildly surprised.  "What can it be?"

"Consideration for the feelings of
another--particularly if she be somewhat helpless."

"Just a moment."  They were entering the
hall and he stopped her.  "In what way are you
helpless?"

"Through consideration on my part for my
guest to-night, for my husband's friend, for a
friend to whom we both owe much----"

"You owe that friend nothing.  If you really
think so, disabuse your mind.  And I have never
professed the slightest friendship for Mr. MacBirney.
Whatever we do, let us keep the facts
clear.  If we speak of consideration, what about
my feelings?  And about helplessness--I am up
against a stone wall all the time in trying to say
anything."

"You have no right to say anything!" exclaimed
Alice energetically and starting on as she spoke.

"Perhaps that is true.  One that can't say
things better than I do shouldn't attempt them.
If one of us must be humiliated let it be me.
Where are you taking me?"

She stopped.  "Nowhere at all, Mr. Kimberly.
Won't you----"

"Where are you going?"

"To look at my table.  Mr. MacBirney will
be right down.  Won't you wait for him in the
library?"

"No."

"I should be most grateful."

"I want to see the table myself."

Alice tossed her head.  "This way then."

At the threshold of the dining-room, Kimberly
paused.  The table was dressed in yellow with
the lowest tones in the fruits of the centrepiece.
The pears were russet, the grapes purple, and
pomegranates, apples, and golden plums
supplied the tints of autumn.  The handles of the
old silver basket were tied with knots of broad,
yellow ribbon.  Alice, touching the covers here
and there, passed behind the chairs.

"You get your effects very simply," observed
Kimberly.  "Only people with a sure touch can
do that."

"I thought there were to be no more compliments."

He looked at the sconces.  "Just one for the
lighting.  Even Dolly and Imogene sin in that
way.  They overdo it or underdo it, and
Mrs. Nelson is impossible.  Where have you put me?"

She pointed with her fan.  "Next to Mrs. Nelson."

"Next to Mrs. Nelson?" he echoed in surprise.

"Why not?"

"Did you say humiliation?  Do I deserve so much?"

"At dinner one tries, of course, to group
congenial people," suggested Alice coldly.

"But we are not congenial."

"I supposed you were Mrs. Nelson's most
frequent guest."

"I have not been at Mrs. Nelson's since the
evening Guyot and Lambert were there," said
Kimberly.  "You, yourself, were there that night."

Alice betrayed no confusion but she was shocked
a little to realize that she believed him instantly.
Kimberly, at least as to truthfulness, had won her
confidence.  Her own husband had forfeited it.
The difficulty now, she felt, would be ever to
believe him at all.

"I remember," she assented with returning
cordiality.  "I was very proud to listen that night."

Kimberly stood with his hand on the back of a
chair.  "Lambert is a brilliant fellow."

"Possibly; my sympathies were not with his views.

"So I sit here?" continued Kimberly patiently.
"Who sits next to you?"

"Your brother."

Kimberly spoke with resignation.  "Charles
always had the luck of the family."

A door opened and a butler entered the room.
On seeing Kimberly he attempted to withdraw.

"Come in, Bell," said Alice.  "What is it?"

"The juggler, Mrs. MacBirney; his assistant
has telephoned they've missed their train."

"Oh, Bell!" exclaimed his mistress in
indignant protest.  "Don't tell me that."

"And it's the last out, till ten-thirty o'clock."

Alice's face fell.  "That ends my evening.
Isn't it *too* exasperating.  Stupid jugglers!"

Kimberly intervened.  "What train did he
miss, Bell?"

"The seven-ten, sir, from town."

"Why don't you call up the division superintendent
and ask his office to stop the eight-ten?"

Bell looked at his mistress.  "I might do that, sir."

"Oh, can you?" cried Alice.

"You ought to have done it without being told,
Bell," observed Kimberly.  "You've done such
things before."

"Might I use your name, sir?"

"Use whatever is necessary to get him.  And
ask them to hunt up the juggler in the
waiting-room and put him aboard.  Who is he?"

"A China boy, sir, I understand."

"In that case, they could not miss him."

The butler left the room.  "Do you think they
will do it?" asked Alice anxiously.

"Don't give it further thought.  We could get
him out on a special if necessary."

Voices came from the front room.  Alice
started forward.  "There are guests."

"By-the-way," added Kimberly, pointing to the
card on his cover and that on his brother's, "you
don't mind my correcting this mistake, do you?"

Alice looked very frankly at him, for the success
of the dinner was keenly on her mind.  "You will
be of more assistance, Mr. Kimberly, if you will
not make any change.  Mrs. Nelson and Mrs. Morgan
are my difficulties and I hoped you would
solve them for me."

"By all means."

Dolly's voice was heard in the hall.  "Where are
you, Alice?  Here are the McCreas, from town,
and Doctor Hamilton."

They sat down fourteen at the table--the
Kimberlys, De Castros, Nelsons, McCreas, Hamilton,
Miss Venable, and Dora Morgan.

Alice was playing to the enemy and meant to
demonstrate to the Nelson coterie that she needed
no assistance from them to establish herself as a
hostess at Second Lake.  If she wished, on this
occasion, for a great success it was hers.  The
dinner was good, and the moment that Nelson
had assured himself of this he began
good-naturedly to help things on.

A remark from some one about the gulf between
law and justice gave him a chance.  "Why
associate the two at all?" he asked lazily.  "Law is
strictly a game of the wits.  It is played under the
convention of an appeal to justice, but justice is
invoked merely to satisfy the imagination.  If
people understood this there would be no
complaint about a gulf between the two.  We imagine
justice; we get law.  Similarly, we imagine heaven;
we get--what we deserve.  If the imagination be
satisfied, man will endure the sweat of Sisyphus;
most of us suffer it in this world, anyway.  Law
and justice are like chemical incompatibles and
there must be a gulf between them.  And law is
no better and no worse than other conventions
of society.  Who that studies human government
in any form has ever been able to regard it
otherwise than with contempt?"

"Certainly," interposed Fritzie Venable, with
formal irony.  "No one that takes care of the
Kimberly interests at Washington."

"The Kimberly interests at Washington,"
returned Nelson with complaisance, "are so well
behaved that they take care of themselves."

"Then I don't see what contempt you should
have for this government," retorted Fritzie vigorously.

"Only that it affords him no adequate exercise
for his ingenuity," suggested Arthur De Castro.

"I don't care," protested Fritzie; "I am an
American and I won't have our government abused.
I believe in sticking to your own."

"Well, if *we* haven't stuck to our own, I should
like to know who has?" observed Charles Kimberly
benevolently.  "We've stuck for fifty years
to our tariff builders, as Mustard would to a stot.
MacBirney's farmers are doing the work for us
now," he continued.  "Our beet growers guard
the sugar schedule at Washington.  These
wonderful Western States; lowest in illiteracy, highest
in political sagacity!  It is really a shame to take
the money."

"I don't see how *you* conscientiously can take
it," declared Hamilton, appealing to Robert Kimberly.

"I do it by educating my conscience, Doctor,"
responded Robert Kimberly.  "Every one that
takes the trouble to inquire knows I am a free
trader.  I abstain from the Reform Club, but
that is out of deference to my partners.  I
contribute to both campaign funds; to the one for
our shareholders, to the other for my conscience;
for as I say, personally I am a free trader."

"And a tariff beneficiary," added Arthur De Castro.

"Why not, Arthur?  Wasn't it Disraeli who
said sensible men are all of one religion?  He
might better have said, sensible men are all of one
politics.  It is true, we are tariff beneficiaries, but
this country is doing business under a protective
theory.  We are engaged, as we were long before
there was a tariff, in what is now a protected
industry.  We can't change our business because
the government changes its economic policy.

"And if anybody *is* to have protection here,
Arthur, why shouldn't we?  Who has a better
right to it?  Our warrants of occupation were
extorted from the Iroquois.  We fought the Indian,
we fought the French, we fought the English----"

"Was there anybody you didn't fight?"

"We put up our credit in Paris and Amsterdam
for the colonies and for the Federal Government
when the colonies and the Federal Government
had none.  Then along comes a little coterie of
steel men in our own day," Kimberly tossed his
head with disdainful impatience, "who make the
toil of a hundred years look like a farce--out-Herod
Herod in protection and pile up hundreds
of millions while we are up to our armpits in
molasses trying to grind out a mere living.
Protection!  We don't get half enough.  Who has any
better sanction for exercising that airy, invisible
pressure of a tariff tax?" he demanded, lifting
a glass of wine to the light.

"Picturesque old pirate," murmured Hamilton.

"And he needs the money," commented De
Castro.  "Why quarrel with him?"

"I am sure you will all pledge the sugar business,"
continued Kimberly, raising a refilled glass
blandly, "and join me in welcoming anybody that
wants to go into it.  This is a free country, gentlemen."

"What do you use on competitors, the rack and dungeon?"

"Nothing that savors of them."

"But you take care of competition," persisted
Hamilton.

Kimberly laughed.

"Certainly we do," interposed McCrea, quickly
and frankly.  "But without unnecessary cruelty,
as Mr. Robert Kimberly puts it.  No man that
ever fought the company and had horse-sense has
ever starved to death.  We can use such a man's
talents better than he can, and very often he
comes into camp and becomes our teacher; that
has happened.  Our system of combination has
brought comforts and luxuries into thousands of
homes that never would have known them under
the waste of competition.  Hundreds and thousands
of men have profited by uniting their efforts
with ours.  And no man that wasn't a business
lunatic has ever been the worse for anything we've
done."

"Your husband talks well, Mrs. McCrea,"
said Robert Kimberly, to a quiet little woman
near him.

"He has had able teachers," laughed Mrs. McCrea.

"No, it is because he believes in himself.  It's
a great thing to be able to believe in yourself."

"Don't you?"

"Far from it."

"You've made a good many others believe in you."

"Not always for their own best interests, I'm
afraid."

"Yes, I know," Dolly was saying to those of
the women who were listening to her, "the weight
of authority is against me.  But I have always
held, and hold yet, that a simple thing, such as
lapis-lazuli, is best set in gold--much better than
in silver.  Talk with Castellani about it
sometime, or Viola."

"Yes, and they'll tell you silver, every time,"
interrupted Fritzie vigorously.

Dolly waved her hand as if to dismiss controversy.

"Gold is so common," objected Lottie Nelson.

"Not more so than lapis," retorted Dolly.

"But isn't that the glory of gold," suggested
Robert, "that it is common?  It has the seal of
approval of mankind; what higher sanction do you
want?  You are always safe in resting with that
approval.  I believe in common things--pearls for
example and rubies.  I am just common enough
to like them."

Bell, passing behind his mistress, spoke in her
ear.  Alice's face lighted and she caught
Kimberly's eye.  "He is here," she nodded laughingly
across the table.

The juggler had come and as the dessert was
being served he followed a butler into the room
in his native robes and assumed his place as one
of Bell's assistants.  The Chinaman was handsome
and of great size and strength.  Alice only
hinted to her guests what awkwardness might be
looked for from the new footman, and the juggler
smiling in Oriental silence began to cajole the
senses of his spectators.

After he had amused them with trifles he floated
a gossamer veil of yellow silk over a huge glass
bowl filled with fruit from a serving table.  With
this in his hands he hastened to the fireplace at
the end of the room and turning heaved the bowl
swiftly toward the ceiling, catching it in his arms
as it descended filled with quivering goldfish
swimming in water of crystal clearness.

He took oranges from the side tables and, splitting
them, released song-birds into the air.  The
guests tossed fruit at him, and from apples and
pomegranates he cut favors for them--jewelled
stick-pins, belt agraffes and Florentine
bonbonières.  When the evening was over Alice thanked
her guests for their compliments.  Lottie Nelson's
words in particular left a flush of triumph in
Alice's cheeks and she looked so happy that
Kimberly paused before he spoke.

"Well?" said Alice questioningly.  And then:
"If you have had a good time, don't be afraid to
say so."

He looked at her as if pleased at her fervor.
"Are you a little bit sorry?" he asked quizzically.

Her brows rose with a pretty assumption of
ignorance.  "I have nothing to be sorry for."

"Then I suppose I must have."

She dropped her eyes for a moment to her
sandalwood fan.  "Of course, you will decide that."

"I presume," he continued, taking the fan
without apology from her hands, "I may come
over when you are not at home and look at your
portrait?"

"I am sure you don't realize how silly that
sounds.  I hear you have a new picture," she
added, looking up.

"It is to be hung next week.  MacBirney is to
bring you over to see it.  Are you sorry I came?"

"Oh, is *that* what you meant?  Why, such a
question!  You saved my evening."

"But are you sorry?"

"I shouldn't say so if I were, should I?"

"No, but answer, anyway."

Her expression of vexation was pleasing.  "How
obstinate!  No, then.  And you saved my evening besides."

"You must take me as I am."

"You cannot, I know, be less than you should be."

"How about you?"

She drew herself up the least bit.  "I hope no
friend of mine would wish me anything less."

"We are both then to be all we should be."

"Don't you think I am very patient?" she
demanded impatiently.

"You are.  We are both to be, aren't we?"

She did not conceal her annoyance.  "I sincerely
trust so," she said coldly.  "But there is a
limit to all things."

He held out his hand.  "Thank you for a delightful
evening."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XVIII`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XVIII

.. vspace:: 2

The new picture at The Towers made a
topic of interest among Kimberly's friends,
but Alice found excuses for not going to see it
until MacBirney would brook no further delays.
They drove over one afternoon and found Doctor
Hamilton and Imogene in the library.  Robert
Kimberly came downstairs with Charles and
greeted the MacBirneys.  Tea was brought
presently and Kimberly asked Alice to pour it.

"I haven't seen you since your dinner," said he,
sitting down after a time by Alice.  "You were
indisposed the day I called.  Imogene tells me you
intend spending the winter in town."

"Mr. MacBirney wants to."

"I hoped you would winter in the country."

"I like the country, but Mr. MacBirney likes
the town.  I shall enjoy it, too.  You know we
are really country folk and haven't had as much
town life as you have."

The others started for the east room.  "Come,"
said Dolly, beckoning Alice, "you want to see the
Rubens."

The new picture was hung as a panel between
a smaller Rubens and an unknown head of the
Virgin, in the manner of Botticelli.  Kimberly
seated Alice apart from the others and stood behind her.

"You have been in this room before?" he said
questioningly.

"Once before.  It is very much richer now."  She
indicated the new picture as she spoke, a
large canvas of the Crucifixion.  "There are two
titles for it," explained Kimberly, "a Latin and
a Dutch.  I like the Dutch best: 'The Ninth
Hour.'  This picture doesn't appeal so much to
my friends as it has appealed to me.  But see
what this master magician has chosen here; the
supreme moment of the Crucifixion."

Those with them were chatting apart.  Alice
sat in silence while Kimberly spoke and when
he had done they were silent together.  "I
hope you are going to like it," he said after a pause.

MacBirney asked a question, and Kimberly
walked to where he was seated.  When he came
back he seemed unable to wait longer for Alice's
comment.  "What is the verdict?"

"Nothing I have ever seen of Rubens's leaves
me unmoved," she answered.  "This is almost
overwhelming, terrible."

"Mrs. MacBirney likes my 'Crucifixion,' Dolly,"
observed Kimberly after another silence.

"Oh, you needn't quote Alice," exclaimed Dolly
from a window seat.  "So do I like it.  All I
said was, that it is a sin to pay so much for a
picture."

"No price is too great for a great inspiration.
See," he pointed for Alice to the face of a Roman
soldier cowering in the foreground of the canvas.
"There is one man's face.  Hamilton has studied
a good many pictures and watched unnumbered
faces in every expression of suffering.  He has
told me that, so far as he knows pictures, the
emotion of fear has never been depicted on the
human countenance except in that face.  As a great
surgeon, of a very wide experience, he may be said
to know what fear pictured on a human face
should be.  And there it is before us.  Conceive
what a triumph for that man to have achieved
this, so far from us in the dead centuries, and yet
so near to us in this magic of his skill.  Observe
what a background he has chosen to depict it
from--Jerusalem, bathed in the uncanny, terrifying
light that accompanies a convulsion of nature.
The earth rent, the dead issuing from their graves,
nature prostrate, and everywhere--brooding over
everything, but stamped most of all on this one
guilty face--fear.  How it all builds up the agony
of that death sweat on the cross!  By Heaven,
it is tremendous!  And Dolly says it is a sin to
spend so much money for it.  Brother Francis
doesn't agree with her; I found him in here early
one morning saying his prayers to it."

"Before it," said Alice instantly.

"I thought that no mean tribute.  Frankly, do
you think me extravagant?"

"Did you really pay the price named in the
newspapers?"

"Even then?"

"It does take one's breath away--at least, it
took mine."

"I have wanted this picture for years.  Hamilton
made one trip over with me to look at it--he
told me of it first.  Then I had to wait all these
years for the opportunity to acquire it."

"What patience!"

His eyes were fixed on the picture.  "It must
have taken patience to paint it.  But patience
gives us everything in this life."  Alice was silent.
"You don't agree with me?"

"How do you know that?"

"I feel it; the air is thick with your dissent.
But, Alice, I am right and you are wrong."

Her name coming so suddenly and for the first
time from his lips astonished her.  Her heart
sent its blood in protest to her very ears.  In a
room with other people nothing could be said.
But she rose and turning from Kimberly called
to her husband, asking if he were ready.

"Before you go I have a favor to ask," said
Kimberly, intervening, and Kimberly's petitions
had always something of the color of command.
"I told you," he said, speaking to Alice, "of my
mother's portrait.  It is upstairs; will you come
see it?"

"I should like very much to see it.  Come,
Walter," she held out her hand for her husband.
"Mr. Kimberly wants us to see his mother's portrait."

Kimberly made no comment, but the manner
with which he paused, waiting for MacBirney to
join them, sufficiently indicated that he was
conscious of waiting.  When MacBirney noticed his
attitude he moved from those he was with much
more quickly than he would have done at his
wife's behest.  Dolly came with MacBirney and
the four walked upstairs.  Kimberly's rooms
opened to the south.  There were five in the
apartment and while Kimberly excused himself to
take MacBirney in for a moment to speak to his
uncle, Dolly took Alice through Kimberly's suite.

"These rooms are charming!" exclaimed Alice,
when the men came in to them.  "You must see
them, Walter.  The breakfast room is dear."

They were standing in the library, which served
as a writing room and a conference room.  It was
finished in oak and on the east the breakfast room
opened, in white and green.

Alice took her husband's arm.  "See, Walter,"
she said passing through the open door; "isn't
this darling?  These tones must be restful to wake
to!"

"I had lunch here once," announced MacBirney
in his choppy way.  "With you and your brother
and McCrea," he added, turning to Kimberly.

"You never said a word to me about seeing
such a pretty place," remarked his wife.

"You've been in the west room?" asked Kimberly.

"Yes, Alice sang for me while you were with
Uncle John," responded Dolly.

"I thought I heard music," remarked Kimberly,
looking at Alice.  "What did you sing?"

"I only hummed an old air."

Kimberly tried to get her to go back to the piano
but could not.  "I miss music keenly," he said,
"I wish I could make a contract with you to
sing here every day."

Alice laughed.

"You would be in very good company,"
interposed Dolly.  "Some famous artistes have
sung at that piano.  Robert," she added, as the
two women walked toward his dressing-room,
"has everything here but what he ought to
have--a wife.  When mother lived, The Towers was
more than a habitation--it was a home."

In his bedroom, Kimberly indicated a portrait
above the fireplace.  "This is my mother," he
said to Alice.  "Sit down for just a moment--I
want you to like her."

"I like her very much, already," returned Alice.
"But I should like to sit a moment to enjoy
the portrait.  I wish I could have known your mother."

"This room I fancy best of them all," Dolly was
saying to MacBirney as they walked on.  "All
of this wall panelling and ceiling was made from
one mahogany log brought up from Santo
Domingo many years ago with a cargo of sugar."

Kimberly, sitting with Alice before his mother's
picture, showed a self-consciousness he did not
often betray, a solicitude, seemingly, that Alice
should agree with his own estimate of his mother.
"She was the most tender, kindly woman in the
world," he said after a moment.

"Such a mother ought to be an inspiration to
you for everything high and good, Mr. Kimberly."

"Yet I have never reached anything high and good."

"Sometime you will."

He looked at her curiously.  "Do you really
think that?"

"Yes, I do.  And thank you for letting me see
your mother."

"If you only could have met her!"  There was
an intensity of regret in his words.  "It was a
tragedy for such a woman to die young.  I have
long wanted you to see her portrait; you
constantly make me think of her, Alice."

She turned calmly and frankly.  "It is most
kind of you to say that, Mr. Kimberly.  So kind
that I am going to be bold enough to ask a
favor."

"I know what you are going to ask, but I wish
you wouldn't.  I want very much to do what you
are about to ask me not to do----"

"It is almost nothing--only not to call me Alice."

"There is no use my asking a favor, is there?"  He
turned with almost a boyish humor in his
manner.  His mother's eyes seemed to look at
her in his eyes as he spoke.

"Not, Mr. Kimberly, this time.  I want you to
oblige me."

"You are afraid of me."  There was no
resentment in the words; nothing beyond a regret.

Her answer was low but neither weak nor confused.
"Is it quite generous, Mr. Kimberly--here?"

"No," he answered in the same even voice, "it
is not.  Unhappily, there are times when
generosity is weakness.  I've been trying ever since I
have known you to think of you just as I think of
myself.  I believe I have tried to give you a little
the best of it--yet a selfish man can't always be
sure of doing that."

"I trust you think of me," she responded,
"only as one of the least important among your
friends."

"You are afraid of me.  And yet I want your
confidence above everything in this world--and I
must in some way deserve and win it."

"I do wish you would not say these things.  I
have to try very hard not to dislike you exceedingly
when you speak in this way."

"You do dislike me exceedingly when I speak
in this way.  I know it perfectly."

If her voice trembled the least bit it was with
indignation.  "I sometimes ask myself whether I
should suffer it even for my husband's sake.
You will force me to do something unpleasant, I fear."

"I never will force you to do anything.  I do
want to call you Alice.  But don't hate me for that."

She heard with relief Dolly talking to her
husband in the doorway.  "It was almost three years
before Imogene saw Charles again," Alice heard
Dolly say, "and, would you believe it, he began
exactly where he left off.  After that Imogene
decided it was of no use.  So, she is Mrs. Kimberly!"

"By Jove!  He had patience," laughed MacBirney.

Dolly laughed a little, too.  "That is the only
exasperating thing about the Kimberly men--their
patience."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XIX`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XIX

.. vspace:: 2

MacBirney's decision to spend the winter
in town became very welcome to Alice;
the atmosphere within a wide radius of The Towers
seemed too charged with electricity for mental
peace.  And her husband, having tasted for the
first time the excitement of the stock markets,
desired to be near his brokers.

Fritzie, who was an authority in town affairs,
made it easy for Alice to find acceptable quarters.
In general the Second Lake people cared less and
less for opening their town houses.  Robert
Kimberly's house, while nominally open, never saw its
master.  Charles and Imogene Kimberly for
several years had spent their winters cruising and
now made ready to take Grace De Castro to the
eastern Mediterranean.  Arthur and Dolly were
to winter at Biarritz and join Charles and Imogene
in Sicily on their return from the Levant.  Fritzie
accepted Alice's invitation to spend the season in
town with her.  Dora Morgan had already gone
to Paris for an indefinite stay and the Nelsons,
Congress being in session, were starting for Washington.

MacBirney came over to The Towers just
before leaving with Alice for town to see Robert
Kimberly.  When Kimberly asked him what was
on his mind, "I would like to know," MacBirney
answered frankly, "what I can make some money
in this winter."  It was the second time he had
brought the subject up and Kimberly who had
once evaded his inquiries saw that nothing was to
be gained by further effort in that direction.

Kimberly regarded him gravely.  "Buy standard
railway shares," he suggested, "on a
four-and-a-half-per-cent average."

"But I want to do better than four-and-a-half-per-cent.
It costs something to live."

"I mean, you would have your profit in the
advances.  But your present income ought to
cover a very liberal scale of living," said Kimberly.

MacBirney squirmed in his chair.  Kimberly
would have preferred he should sit still.  "That
is true," assented MacBirney, with smiling candor,
"but a poor man doesn't want to spend all his
money.  Isn't there a chance," he asked, coming
to the point in his mind, "to make some money
in our own stock?  I have heard a rumor there
would be, but I can't run it down."

"There are always chances if you are closely
enough in touch with general conditions.  Charles
keeps better track of those things than I do;
suppose you talk with him."

"Charles sends me to you," protested
MacBirney good naturedly.

"Our shares seem just now to be one of the
speculative favorites," returned Kimberly.  "That
means, as you know, violent fluctuations."

MacBirney was impatient of hazards.  "Put
me next on any one of your own plans, Mr. Kimberly,
that you might feel like trusting me with,"
said MacBirney, jocularly.

"I don't often have any speculative schemes
of my own," returned Kimberly.  "However,"
he hesitated a moment; MacBirney leaned
forward.  "Doane," continued Kimberly abruptly,
"has a strong party interested now in putting up
the common.  They profess to think that on its
earnings it should sell higher.  In fact, they have
sounded me about an extra dividend.  I am
opposed to that--until Congress adjourns, at any
rate.  But the company is making a great deal of
money.  I can't uncover Doane's deal, but I can
say this to you: I have agreed to help them as
much as I safely can.  By that, I mean, that
their speculative interests must always come
second to the investment interests of our shareholders."

"By Jove, I wish I could get in on a
movement like that, Mr. Kimberly.  With you behind
it----"

"I am not behind it--only not opposed to it.
For my part, I never advise any one to speculate
in our securities.  I can't do it.  I do business
with speculators, but I never speculate myself.
You don't credit that, do you?  What I mean is
this: I never take chances.  If it is necessary,
for cogent reasons, to move our securities up or
down, I am in a position to do so without taking
any extreme chances.  That is natural, isn't it?"

MacBirney laughed and swayed in his chair.
"I'd like to be fixed that way for just one year
of my life!" he exclaimed.

"If you were you would find plenty of other
things to engage your attention."

"Well, can you do anything for me on this
present deal?"

Kimberly reflected a moment.  "Yes," he said
finally, "if you will operate through the brokers I
name and do exactly as I say, and run the risk of
losing half the money you put up--I don't see
how you could lose more than that.  But if you
don't do exactly as I tell you, without question,
you might lose a great deal more.  I am not
supposing, of course, that you would risk more than
you could afford to lose."

"Not at all.  I want to play safe."

"Place your orders to-day and to-morrow then
for what common you can carry.  Hamilton will
let you have what money you need--or he will get
it for you.  Then forget all about your investment
until I tell you to sell.  Don't question the advice,
but get out promptly at that moment no matter
what you hear or what the market looks like.
Can you do that?  And keep your own counsel?"

"Trust me."

"Good luck then.  And if it should come bad,
try not to feel incensed at me," concluded
Kimberly, rising.

"Surely not!" exclaimed MacBirney.

Kimberly smiled.  "But you will, just the same.
At least, that is my experience."

"What about the winter, Mr. Kimberly--are
you going in town?"

"I haven't decided."

But although Kimberly had made no decision
he had made vague promises to every one.  With
Charles he talked about putting his own yacht
into commission, taking Larrie from the refineries
for a breathing spell and meeting Charlie's party
in February at Taormina.  He discussed with
Dolly a shorter vacation, one of taking passage to
Cherbourg, motoring with Arthur and herself
across France and meeting Charles at Nice, whence
all could come home together.

The Nelsons left the lake last.  Lottie gave
Kimberly a parting thrust as she said good-by,
delivering it in such a way that she hoped to
upset him.  "So you are in love with Alice
MacBirney?" she said smilingly.

Kimberly looked frankly into her clear,
sensuous eyes.  "What put that into your head,
Lottie?"

She laughed unsympathetically.  "I'm glad
you've got some one this time that will make you
do the walking--not one like the rest of us poor
creatures."

"Why do you talk about 'this time,' and 'us
poor creatures'?  Let me tell you something."

"Do, so I can tell it to Alice."

"You may at any time tell Mrs. MacBirney
anything I say.  It is this: if I should ever find a
woman to love, I expect to do the walking.  Tell
her that, will you?  I respect Mrs. MacBirney very
highly and admire her very much--is that clear?
But that is far from outraging her feelings by
coupling her name with mine or mine with hers.
Don't do that.  I will never forgive it."  She
had never seen him so angry.

He realized more than once during the long
winter that the slighted woman had told him only
the truth.  But from her it was an impertinent
truth.  And it galled him to be forced to admit
to the loose-thinking members of his own set what
he felt toward Alice.

Meantime, he spent the whole winter at The
Towers with Uncle John, the tireless Francis,
and his own unruly thoughts.  His time went to
conferences with his city associates, infrequent
inspections of the refineries, horseback rides over the
winter landscape, and to winter sunsets watched
alone from the great western windows.

In town Alice found Fritzie an admirable guide.

"I try," said Fritzie calmly, answering one of
Alice's jests at her wide acquaintance, "to move
with the best.  I suppose in heaven we shall
encounter all sorts.  And if we don't cultivate
the elect here we may never have another chance to."

"You are far-sighted, Fritzie dear," smiled
Alice.  "What I can't understand is, why you
don't marry."

"I have too many rich relations.  I couldn't
marry anybody in their class.  I should have to
pick up with some wretched millionaire and be
reduced to misery.  The Lord deliver us from
people that watch their incomes--they are the
limit.  And it must, I have always thought, be
terrible, Alice, to live with a man that has made
a million honestly.  He would be so mean.  Of
course, we are mean, too; but happily a good
part of our meannesses are underground--buried
with our ancestors."

Fritzie's light words struck home with an
unsuspected force.  Alice knew Fritzie had no
thought of painting MacBirney; it was only
Alice herself who recognized her husband's portrait.

Fritzie certainly had, as she admitted, an
appetite for the luxurious and even MacBirney liked
her novel extravagances.  In their few resting
hours the two women talked of Second Lake.
"Fritzie," said Alice one night when they were
together before the fire, "the first time I met you,
you said every one at Second Lake was contented,
with two exceptions.  You were one; who was
the other?"

"Robert, dear.  He is the most discontented
mortal alive.  Isn't it all a strange world?"

Alice, too, had thoughts that winter, but they
were confused thoughts and not always to be
tolerated.  She, likewise, was beginning to think it
a strange world.

MacBirney, guided by McCrea, followed the
pool operations with sleepless vigilance.  They
reached their height when Congress adjourned
early without disturbing the tariff.  The street
saw enormous gains ahead for the crowd
operating in the Kimberly stocks and with public
buying underway the upward movement in the shares
took on renewed strength.

It was just at this moment of the adjournment
of Congress that Kimberly sent McCrea to
MacBirney with directions to sell, and explicitly as to
how and through whom to sell.  MacBirney, to
McCrea's surprise, demurred at the advice and
argued that if he dropped out now he should
lose the best profits of the venture.

McCrea consented to talk to Kimberly again.
Doane, the Hamilton banking interests and their
associates were still ostensibly buying and were
talking even higher prices.  It did not look right
to MacBirney to sell under such circumstances
but McCrea came back the very next day with
one word: "Sell."  No reasons, no explanations
were given, nothing vouchsafed but a curt
command.

MacBirney, doubtful and excited, consulted
Alice, to whom indeed, in serious perplexity, he
often turned.  Knowing nothing about the
situation, she advised him to do precisely as Kimberly
directed and to do so without loss of time.  He
was still stubborn.  No one but himself knew
that he was carrying twice the load of stock he
had any right to assume, and battling thus between
greed and prudence he reluctantly placed the
selling orders.

Just as he had gotten fairly out of it, the market,
to his mortification, advanced.  A few days later
it ran quite away.  Huge blocks of stock thrown
into it made hardly any impression.  The market,
as MacBirney had predicted, continued strong.
At the end of the week he felt sure that Kimberly
had tricked him, and in spite of winning more
money than he had ever made in his life he was
in bad humor.  Kimberly himself deigned no
word of enlightenment.  McCrea tried to
explain to MacBirney that the public had run away
with the market--as it sometimes did.  But
MacBirney nursed resentment.

The Nelsons came over from Washington that
week--it was Holy Week--for the opera and the
week-end, and MacBirney asked his wife to
entertain them, together with Lambert, at dinner
on Friday night.

Alice fought the proposal, but MacBirney could
not be moved.  She endeavored to have the date
changed to Easter Sunday; MacBirney was
relentless.  He knew it was Good Friday and that
his wife was trying to avoid entertaining during
the evening.  But he thought it an opportunity
to discipline her.  Alice sent out her invitations
and they were accepted.  No such luck, she knew,
as a declination would be hers.

Lottie, amusing herself for the winter with
Lambert, was in excellent humor.  But Alice was
nervous and everything went wrong.  They rose
from the table to go to the opera, where Nelson
had the Robert Kimberly box.  Alice seeking the
retirement of an easy-chair gave her attention to
the stage and to her own thoughts.  In neither did
she find anything satisfying.  Mrs. Nelson, too
talkative with the men, was a mild irritation to her,
and of all nights in the year this was the last on
which Alice would have wished to be at the opera.
It was only one more link in the long chain of
sacrifices she wore for domestic peace, but to-night her
gyves lay heavy on her wrists.  She realized that
she was hardly amiable.  This box she was enjoying
the seclusion of, brought Kimberly close to her.
The difference there would be within it if he
himself were present, suggested itself indolently
to her in her depression.  How loath, she
reflected, Kimberly would have been to drag her
out when she wished to be at home.  It was not
the first time that she had compared him with her
husband, but this was the first time she was
conscious of having done so.  All they were
enjoying was his; yet she knew he would have been
indifferent to everything except what she preferred.

And it was not alone what he had indicated in
deferring to her wishes; it was what he often did
in deferring in indifferent things to the wishes of
others that had impressed itself upon her more
than any trait in his character.  How much happier
she should be if her own husband were to show a
mere trace of such a disposition, she felt past even
the possibility of telling him; it seemed too
useless.  He could not be made to understand.

For supper the party went with Nelson.  The
gayety of the others left Alice cold.  Nelson, with
the art of the practised entertainer, urged the
eating and drinking, and when the party left the
buzzing café some of them were heated and
unrestrained.  At two o'clock, Alice with her husband
and Fritzie reached their apartment, and Alice,
very tired, went directly to her own rooms.
MacBirney came in, somewhat out of humor.  "What's
the matter with you to-night?" he demanded.
Alice had dismissed Annie and her husband sat
down beside her table.

"With me?  Nothing, Walter; why?"

"You acted so cattish all the evening," he
complained, with an irritating little oath.

Alice was in no mood to help him along.  "How
so?" she asked tying her hair as she turned to
look at him.

An inelegant exclamation annoyed her further.
"You know what I mean just as well as I do," he
went on curtly.  "You never opened your mouth
the whole evening.  Lottie asked me what the
matter was with you----"

Alice repeated but one word of the complaining
sentence.  "Lottie!" she echoed.  Her
husband's anger grew.  "If Lottie would talk less,"
continued Alice quietly, "and drink less, I should
be less ashamed to be seen with her.  And
perhaps I could talk more myself."

"You never did like anybody that liked me.
So it is Lottie you're jealous of?"

"No, not 'jealous of,' only ashamed of.  Even
at the dinner she was scandalous, I thought."

Her husband regarded her with stubborn
contempt, and it hurt.  "You are very high and
mighty to-night.  I wonder," he said with a
scarcely concealed sneer, "whether prosperity has
turned your head."

"You need not look at me in that way, Walter,
and you need not taunt me."

"You have been abusing Lottie Nelson a good
deal lately.  I wish you would stop it."  He rose
and stood with one hand on the table.  Alice was
slipping her rings into the cup in front of her and
she dropped in the last with some spirit.

"I will stop it.  And I hope you will never
speak of her again.  I certainly never will entertain
her again under any circumstances," she exclaimed.

"You will entertain her the next time I tell you to."

Alice turned quite white.  "Have you anything
else to say to me?"

Her very restraint enraged him.  "Only that if you
try to ride your high horse with me," he replied,
"I will send you back to St. Louis some fine day."

"Is that all?"

"That is all.  And if you think I don't mean
what I say, try it sometime."  As he spoke he
pushed the chair in which he had been sitting
roughly aside.

Alice rose to her feet.  "I despise your threats,"
she said, choking with her own words.  "I despise
you.  I can't tell you how I despise you."  Her
heart beat rebelliously and she shook in every limb;
expressions that she would not have known for her
own fell stinging from her lips.  "You have bullied
me for the last time.  I have stood your abuse for
five years.  It will stop now.  You will do the
cringing and creeping from now on.  That woman
never shall sit down at a table with me again, not
if you beg it of me on your knees.  You are a
cowardly wretch; I know you perfectly; you
never were anything else.  I have paid dearly for
ever believing you a man."  Her contempt burned
the words she uttered.  "Now drive me one step
further," she sobbed wildly, "if you dare!"

She snapped out the light above her head with
an angry twist.  Another light shone through the
open door of her sleeping-room and through this
door she swiftly passed, slamming it shut and
locking it sharply behind her.

MacBirney had never seen his wife in such a
state.  He was surprised; but there could be no
mistake.  Her blood was certainly up.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XX`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XX

.. vspace:: 2

If Alice or her husband apprehended a stormy
sequel to the unpleasant scene in her dressing
room both were relieved that none followed.  Not
a word came up between them as a result of the
breach.  There was the usual silence that follows
a tempestuous outbreak and the usual indirect,
almost accidental, resumption of speaking relations
after the acute suspicion of renewed hostilities had
worn itself out.

MacBirney had the best of reasons for ignoring
what had passed.  He had, in fact, experienced
the most surprising moments of his life and caution
advised against the stirring up of any further
altercation.  Heretofore he had always known just
what his wife, when bullied, would do; but he no
longer knew and the uncertainty gave him pause.

He found matter for surprise, indeed for a series
of surprises, in the manner in which Alice stood
newly revealed to him.  Dependence and timidity
seemed suddenly to have left her.  She walked a
new path; not one of complete indifference to her
husband, but of decision complete in itself.  Forced
to cast aside his judgment and fall back on her
own, Alice accepted the alternative openly.  Her
new attitude made itself felt in unnumbered
ways--sometimes in no more than arranging for a day
down-town with Fritzie, sometimes in discussing
when Cedar Lodge should be opened and how.
MacBirney found himself no longer consulted;
Alice told him what she intended to do.  If he gave
arbitrary or unreasonable orders they were ignored.
If he followed the subject further his inquiries
were ignored.

Alice realized it was not right to live in a home
in this way, but MacBirney himself had taught
her so many ways of wrong living that compunction
had grown dull.  His pupil, long unwilling
to accept his debasing standards of married life,
long suffering the cruelty of finding them enforced
upon her, had at last become all that he had made
her and something unpleasantly more--she made
herself now complete mistress of her own affairs.

Nor was Alice less surprised at the abject
surrender of her husband.  She knew him in the
end better than he knew himself, and cowardly
though he was, she felt the new situation would
not endure forever--that worse must surely follow.
But those who learn to sleep on dumb reproach
and still for years the cry of waking apprehension,
learn also not to look with foreboding ahead.

There were, it is true, times in which Alice
asked herself if in her new attitude she were not
walking in a dream; slumbers in which the old
shrinking fear returned; moments in which she
could hardly realize her own determination.  But
the fear that had so long subdued her now served
to support her courage.  Go back she would not;
the present she had made her own, the future must
account for itself.

Moreover, as the acuteness of the crisis passed
everything looked better.  The present tends
always to justify itself.  And prosperous skies
opening on MacBirney's speculative ventures consoled
him for such loss of prestige as he suffered in his
own home.

He was again, curiously enough, Alice thought,
in cordial touch with Robert Kimberly.  She never
asked a question and did not know for a long time
what could account for this change, since he had
been abusing Kimberly vigorously during the life
of the market pool.  Kimberly had never called
at the town apartment and Alice heard of him
only through Fritzie, who visited The Towers on
monetary errands and always spoke interestingly
of Robert's affairs.

And now spring airs came even to town, and
Alice, breathing them, with the sudden sunshine
and the morning song of birds, longed for her
country home.  She kept the telephone wire busy
summoning her gardener to conferences and laid
out elaborate plans with him for making Cedar
Lodge more beautiful for the summer.  A number
of things conspired to keep her from getting out
to Second Lake early.  But the servants had been
installed and the lodge put in readiness for her
coming.

One night in May--a summer night, warm,
lighted by the moon and still--an impulse seized
Alice to break away from everything for the
country.  Morning found her with Fritzie, and
accompanied only by their maids, in a big motor-car
speeding over the ribbon roads toward Second
Lake.  A curious play of emotions possessed Alice
as they whirled through the dust of the village and
swung into the hills toward The Towers.  She
had given no instructions to her chauffeur as to
which road he should take and he had chosen the
southern road because the grades were better.

It was months since Alice had seen Kimberly.
But not until now did she realize with some
apprehension how much he had been in her mind all
winter.  The near prospect of meeting him
disturbed her and she felt an uneasiness at the thought.
It was too late to change the route.  She felt she
had been wrong not to give orders for the north
road in time.  Then the notion came that she
must meet him sometime, anyway, and whenever
they met he must be kept within bounds she had
set many times since their last hour together.  She
could see in the distance The Towers gates and
the lodge, sentinel-like, away up the road.  The
mere sight of the familiar entrance brought
Kimberly up sharply.  The chauffeur checked the
car to ask whether he should drive through the
grounds.  Fritzie said, "Yes."

Alice corrected her, "No, no."

"Why, my dear," exclaimed Fritzie, "not stop
to speak to Robert!"

"It will delay us, and I am crazy to get home."

"But it will cut off two miles!"

"And keep us an hour."

"It won't keep us five minutes and the grounds
are beautiful."

"We will see them to-morrow.  Drive straight
ahead, Peters."

Fritzie protested as they flew past the lodge.
"I feel like a heathen going by The Towers in
this way.  I hope Robert won't hear of it."

"I will take all the blame," returned Alice, with
a bravado she did not feel.  Then she laid her
hand on Fritzie's arm.  "You may come back
right after luncheon."

When they reached the hill beyond Black Rock
they saw Cedar Point lying below in the sunshine
of the lake.  Alice cried out at the beauty of it.
Her spirits rose with an emotion that surprised her.
For an instant she could not speak.  Her eyes
moistened and the load that had oppressed her a
moment earlier took wings.  Before she had quite
recovered, the car was down the hill and speeding
through the green gates, up the winding avenue
of maples, and swinging in an alarming ellipse
around to the front of the house.

She ran in through the open doors as if she had
left it all but yesterday.  Flowers were everywhere.
She passed from room to room with the bubbling
spirits of a child and dropped at last into her own
little chair at her toilet table.  Annie, infected with
the happiness of her mistress, was wreathed in
smiles as she took her hat, while Fritzie, sitting in
dusty veil and gloves, telephone in hand, was
calling The Towers and in the same breath begging
her maid to prepare her bath.  No response to
Fritzie's telephone message came until late in the
afternoon.  About four o'clock Robert Kimberly
called her up.

"I hear you have arrived," he said.

"This is a pretty time for you to be answering,
Robert.  Where have you been all day?"

"Driving with Francis.  He hasn't been very
well lately.  I took him over to the Sound.  How
is Mrs. MacBirney, Fritzie?"

"Come over and see."

"Call her to the telephone."

Alice took the receiver.  "How do you do, Mr. Kimberly?"

"Glad to hear your voice.  Fritzie has been
telling me stories about you all winter."

Alice controlled the pleasant excitement that
came with the familiar sound of his own voice.
"You mustn't believe the stories you hear," she
laughed.  "How are you all?"

"One story to-day sounded pretty straight."

"Sometimes those are the least reliable.  How
is your uncle?"

"Still I shall have to have it out with you--passing
us by this morning."

"But you weren't at home."

"Worse and worse--you didn't know that."

She laughed again happily.  "You may scold as
much as you like, I'm so happy to get home I'm
walking on air."

"How do you manage that?  I never can get
up any excitement over getting home.  I wish I
might come and see how it affects you."

"Do come."

"Unfortunately I am leaving to-night for the
Southwest."

"For the Southwest?" she echoed in surprise.
"But we heard of you just back from the West."

"Yes, and with some stories for you.  This
time it is New Orleans and a terminal project."

"So busy a man!  I hope we shall see you when
you return."

"I certainly hope so.  If I didn't, I shouldn't
go.  By-the-way," he added humorously, "I seem
to have dropped something."

"What can it be?"

"The string you held out a minute ago."

Alice's eyes danced but only the telephone
receiver saw them.  "What string?"

"About letting me come over.  A car was set in
this afternoon at Sunbury but the train doesn't
pick me up till eleven o'clock to-night.  I might
run over to see you on my way down----"

"Oh, by all means, do, Mr. Kimberly."

"--just to see how you look when you are happy."

"Do come; but I am always happy."

He hesitated a moment.  "If I were sure of that
I might not come."

"You *may* be 'sure,' I assure you.  And why,
pray, shouldn't you come?"

He retreated easily.  "Because in that case I
could see your happiness, without intruding on
you when you are tired--as you must be now.
However, I will run in for a few moments after
dinner."

Kimberly appeared shortly before nine o'clock.
Fritzie greeted him.  "Oh, aren't you youthful
to-night?" she exclaimed.  He was in a travelling
suit and his face was tanned from his Western
trip.  "You should never wear anything but gray,
Robert."

"Has she been as agreeable as this all winter?"
asked Kimberly turning to greet Alice.

"All winter," declared Fritzie, answering for
herself, "except once when Lottie Nelson's dog
chewed up a lace hat for me, and Robert, I have
spent this whole winter saying good things about
you--haven't I Alice?  Even when we saw they
were trying to put you in jail."

"Many worthy people seemed to sympathize
with that effort," responded Kimberly dryly.  "I
trust you didn't?" he added turning to Alice.

"I?  Not in the least.  If they had succeeded,
I should have brought you flowers."

The three sat down.  Kimberly looked at Alice.
"What have you been doing all winter?"

"Nothing."

"Listen to that!" exclaimed Fritzie.  "Why,
we've been as busy as ants all winter."

"Fritzie would never allow you to do nothing,"
said Kimberly.  "You met a lot of people she
tells me."

"I said 'nothing,' because the time went so
fast I found no time to do anything I had intended to."

Fritzie objected again: "You kept at your
singing all winter, didn't you?"

Kimberly showed interest at once.  "Good!
Let us hear now how your voice sounds in the
country air."

"I haven't any songs."

"You threw some into the wicker trunk,"
interposed Fritzie.

"Find them, Fritzie, do," said Kimberly.  "And
what else did you do?" he asked of Alice as
Fritzie ran upstairs.

"Everything that country people do," responded
Alice.  "And you've been West?  Tell me all about it."

Kimberly looked very comfortable in a Roman
chair as he bent his eyes upon her.  "Hardly a
spot in Colorado escaped me this time.  And I
went to Piedmont----"

"To Piedmont?" cried Alice.  "Oh, to see
the little factory."

"To see the house you lived in when you were there."

"What possible interest could that poor cottage
have for any one?  You must have realized that
we began housekeeping very modestly."

He brushed her suggestion away with a gesture.

"I wanted to see it merely because you had lived
in it."  He waited a moment.  "Can't you
understand that?"

"Frankly, I cannot."

"St. Louis was very interesting," he went on.

"Oh, I love St. Louis!" Alice exclaimed.

"So do I," assented Kimberly.  "And in
St. Louis I went to see the house you were born in.
It was worth looking at; your father's house was
a house of character and dignity----"

"Why, thank you!"

"--Like many of the older houses I ran across
in searching it out----"

Alice seemed unable to rise quite above her
embarrassment.  "I can hardly believe you are
not making fun of me.  What ridiculous quests
in St. Louis and in Piedmont!  Surely there must
have been incidents of more importance than
these in a three-weeks' trip."

He ignored her comment.  "I stood a long time
staring at your father's house, and wishing I
might have been born in that little old cottage
just across the street from where that rich little
girl of sixteen lived.  I would rather have known
you then than lived all I have lived since you were
born there."

Alice returned his look with control of every
feature.  "I did not live there till I was sixteen,
if you mean the old home.  And if you had been
born just across the street you would have had no
absurd idea about that little girl in your head.
Little girls are not usually interested in little boys
across the street.  Little boys born thousands of
miles away have better chances, I think, of
knowing them.  And it is better so--for *they*, at least,
don't know what absurd, selfish little things girls
across the street are."

"That is all wrong----"

"It is not," declared Alice pointedly.

But the force of everything she said was swept
away by his manner.  "Only give me the same
street and the meanest house in it!"  His
intensity would not be answered.  "*I* would have taken
the chances of winning."

"What confidence!"

"And I'd have done it or torn the house down."

Fritzie came back.  "I can't find the music
anywhere."

Kimberly rose to go to the music room.  "No
matter," he persisted, "sing anything you can
remember, Mrs. MacBirney--just sing."

It seemed easier, as it always seemed when
Kimberly persisted, to consent than to decline.
Alice sang an English ballad.  Then a scrap--all
she could remember--of a Moskowski song; then
an Italian ballad.  Kimberly leaned on the piano.

"Do you like any of those?" asked Alice with
her hands running over the keys.

"All of them.  But what was the last?"

"An Italian air."

"Yes, I remember it--in Italy.  Sing it again,
will you?"

"Tell me about that song," he said when she
had repeated it.  "It is lovely."

"I don't know much.  It is a very old song."

"Have I ever told you about a villa on Lago
Maggiore?"

"Fritzie has told me.  She says it is a dream."

"I should like to hear you sing that song there
sometime."

The moon was rising when Kimberly left for
the train.  Fritzie objected to his going.  "Give
up your trip.  Stay over to-night.  What's the
difference?"

"I can't, Fritzie.  I'm going like a minstrel
show, billed for one-night stands.  I have engagements
ahead of me all the way and if I miss a day
I upset the whole schedule."

"What's it all about?"

"A railroad terminal and reorganization.  And
I've just time to get around and back for Charles's
return."

"And the country dance!" said Fritzie.

"Dolly's country dance," explained Alice.

"Good.  I don't want to miss that."

Fritzie caught his sleeve.  "You disappointed
us last year."

"You may count on me," promised Kimberly.

Fritzie pouted.  "I know what that means,
'don't count on me!'"

"This time," returned Kimberly as the door
of his motor-car was opened for him, "it isn't
going to mean that, Fritzie."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXI`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXI

.. vspace:: 2

MacBirney followed his household to the
country after two weeks.  The De Castros
were then back and Dolly enlisted Alice and
Fritzie to make ready for the dance at Black Rock
barn which regularly signalized at Second Lake
what Nelson termed the "opening of navigation."

Alice, with Fritzie to help, was charged with the
decorations for the event, and two days before it,
the available men about the place, under their
direction, were emptying the green-houses and
laying the woods under tribute.

The lighting scheme Alice pronounced ineffective.
For years no one had given the subject any
attention.  At the last moment electricians were
brought out from town to work early and late and
lights were installed from which operators in
elevated cages could throw sheets of color on the
dancers.

When Imogene and Charles got home--and they
were late, arriving only the evening before the
party--Dolly, who met them at the train, drove
them directly to Black Rock, where Alice with her
husband, Fritzie, and Arthur De Castro was
conducting a rehearsal of the electrical effects.  The
kisses and embraces of the committee and the
arrivals took place under the rays of the new spot
lights.

"Now if Robert were here," cried Fritzie
impatiently, "everything would be complete.  No
one knows where he is.  Suppose he doesn't come?"

"He is in town and will be out to-morrow."
Imogene as she made the announcement put her
arm around Alice.  "Sweetheart, you must be dead."

Alice was sustained by the excitement.  "Nothing
of the sort.  I haven't done anything but
suggest," she said gayly.  "Fritzie has done all the
work.  In the morning we will bring in the apple
blossoms and we are through."

But when she had received all the enthusiasm
and compliments she went home tired.  MacBirney
came to her room to talk, but he had no word
for the successful decorations and Alice pleading
fatigue went directly to bed.

She woke with the sun streaming through the
east windows.  It was late and though still tired
she rose at once.  The morning was superb, and,
while dressing, Alice surprised Annie by singing
to herself.

Fritzie drove over with her to Black Rock.  Alice
running in to speak to Dolly found her in bed.
Dolly kissed her.  "You look so fresh, dear."  Alice
drew herself up with a laugh.  "It's the
morning, Dolly."

"By-the-way, Robert is here.  He came late
and he and Arthur talked so long he stayed all
night.  He is just across the hall in the blue room."

"Then every one is accounted for.  I must be
off, Dolly."

"Where are you going?"

"To the woods with Fritzie to get the blossoms."

An old coaching brake had been sent up from
the stables and Arthur De Castro was waiting for
the two women.  "I am going to drive you down
the field before I take my ride," he explained.

"You do need exercise.  You look sleepy,
Arthur," remarked Fritzie, critically.

"Robert kept me up all night."  Arthur turned
to Alice.  "You knew he was back?"

"Dolly told me."

"The lazy fellow isn't up yet," said Fritzie.

Arthur corrected her.  "He is up and gone
home.  But he will be over again this morning."

The horses were fresh and took Arthur's attention
across the field and the big wagon lurched as
the team danced along.  In the woods they found
Grace De Castro with the men who were to work.
Arthur's saddle-horse was in waiting.  The men
began loading the brake with elder blossoms, brier
roses, and branches from the forest trees.  Arthur
had meant to take his groom with him, but found
there would be nobody to drive the brake back to
the barn.

"No matter, Mr. De Castro," said Alice.  "Take
him.  I will drive back."  Arthur demurred, but
Alice insisted.  "I would rather drive the team
than not.  I drive our horses all the time."

Arthur and the groom rode away.  Fritzie
and Grace looked at Alice in astonishment when
the wagon had been loaded and Alice took the
driver's high seat, pulled her glove gauntlets back
taut and a gardener handed her the reins.

"Aren't you afraid?" cried Grace.

"Not in the least," Alice answered, slipping her
hands into the driving loops and putting her foot
on the wheel-brake.

"Really," declared Grace, "you have quite an air."

Fritzie was apprehensive.  "For Heaven's sake,
don't let them run away, Allie."

The men at the bridles stood aside, Alice spoke
and the team leaped swiftly ahead.  She gave
them leeway for a few moments, but kept them
under control and her manner was so confident that
Fritzie's fears were allayed before the brake had
crossed the first hill.  As Alice made the turn in
the road and looked laughingly back the two girls
waved approval at her.  They saw the brim of her
broad hat rising and falling like a bird's wings as
she nodded to them; then she threw on the
wheel-brake and started down the hill.

For a moment the difficulty of holding the pair
in check increased and by the time the barn was
in sight the struggle had stirred her blood.  It
colored two little circles in her cheeks and had
lighted fires of animation in her gray eyes.  She
saw the rising entrance to the barn and only took
heed that the doors were wide open.  Then she
gave all her strength to guiding the rushing horses
up the long incline.  Just as their heads shot
under the doorway the off horse shied.  The front
wheels of the brake bounced over the threshold
and Alice saw, standing within, Robert Kimberly.

She gave an exclamation of surprise as she
threw on the wheel-brake, pulled with all her
strength on the reins and brought her horses to a
halt.  Kimberly with one hand on the casement
stood perfectly still until she looked around.  Then
he came forward laughing.  "You certainly are a
capital whip."

"You frightened me nearly to death!" exclaimed
Alice with a long breath.  "Where, pray, did you
come from?" she demanded, looking down from
her eminence.

"From almost everywhere.  And you?"

"From the woods."

He laid a hand on the foot-board.  "Really, I
wonder whether there is anything you can't do."

"I am afraid there is one thing now.  I don't
see how I am going to get down.  Aren't there
any men around to take the horses?"

"The horses will stand.  Just hook your lines
and jump from the wheel."

Alice looked at the distance in dismay.  "That
is easy to say."

"Not hard to do," returned Kimberly.  "I'll
break your flight."

"I'm a wretched jumper."

"Nonsense.  You can't tell me you're a wretched
anything after that drive."

"Step away then and I'll jump.  Only, I don't
see just how I am going to stop after I start."

"What do you want to stop for?  Come ahead."

She put her foot cautiously on the wheel; it was
a very pretty foot.  Then she steadied herself and
with her hand swept little ringlets of hair from
her eyes.

She knew he was waiting to receive her and,
meaning to elude him, turned at the last instant
and jumped away from where he stood.  Kimberly,
in spite of her precaution, caught her as her
feet struck the floor, and leaned an instant over
her.  "Beautifully done!" he exclaimed, and
drawing her suddenly into his arms he kissed her.

She pushed him back with all her strength.
He met her consternation with good humor.  "I
couldn't help it."

Alice, burning with angry blushes, retreated.
He hoped it would end there and ignored the
outraged spirit in her eyes as she took her
handkerchief from her waist.

He tried to laugh again.  "Don't be angry."  But
Alice put both hands to her face and walked
quickly away.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXII`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXII

.. vspace:: 2

Kimberly followed her through the open
door.  "Where are you going?" he asked.
Her answer came in her quickened step.  He
repeated his words without eliciting any response.
Then he stepped directly in front of her in the
path.  "Stop for one moment.  Alice, you can't
go any farther while you are as angry at me as
you are now."

"I am Alice to no one but my husband," she
exclaimed controlling herself as well as she could.
"You shall not stop me, you have no right to."

"Where are you going?"

"I am going home."

"Listen; you are Alice to me--now, and forever;
remember that."

Her knees trembled as she strove to escape him.
She tried to pass through the shrubbery and could
not.  She felt faint and dizzy.  The very world
had changed with a kiss.  Everything in life
seemed upset, every safeguard gone.

He took her arm.  "Come back to the path,
Alice.  We must walk it together."

She paused an instant for breath and made an
effort to speak as she put his hand angrily away.
"I insist," she cried, "that you do not continue
to insult me."

"If you wait for me to insult you, Alice, you
will wait a long time.  I should be as likely to
insult my own mother."

"I have done nothing to deserve this," she
sobbed, frantic with confusion.

"You deserve more a thousand times than my
devotion ever can bring you.  But all it can ever
bring, from the moment I kissed you, is yours."

Her eyes blazed through her tears.  In her
helpless wrath she stamped her foot.  "You are
shameless.  I detest your conduct.  If you are going to
the house I will stay here.  If you are not, let me go."

He met her denunciation with steadiness.
"Nothing you can say will anger me."

"You mean you have no respect for me."  She
spoke so fast she could scarcely frame the words.
"Why don't you say so?  Are you too cowardly?"

The imputation stung him.  He seemed to
explode inwardly.  "I have nothing *but* respect for
you, Alice," he insisted with terrifying energy,
"but this thing must be fought out----"

She attempted to speak.  His words drowned
her.  "I want to say nothing that will wound or
offend you.  You make it very hard for me to
speak at all----"

"You have no right to speak----"

"But, Alice," he exclaimed, throwing all his
force into the words, "you don't love that man.
That is why I speak.  If you *did* love him, if even
he loved you, I could be silent."

"I love my husband as a wife should," she
cried, struggling vainly to escape his accusation.

"You do not.  You cannot!"

They spoke at white heat, she fighting vainly to
control her trembling limbs and Kimberly pausing
at times to deal better his sledge-hammer blows
at her pitiful strength.

"You do not love that man.  If I believed you
did," he spoke with a bitterness she had never
heard before, "I should never want to see another
sun rise.  I respect you above all women that
breathe; but in that I am right, I can't be wrong.
I have suppressed and stifled and smothered as
long as I can and it will come out!"

"I will not hear you!"

"Sometime, somewhere, you will hear me.
Don't speak!" he exclaimed vehemently.  The
veins knotted upon his forehead.  "I forgot myself
for a moment.  If you knew what it costs me to
remember!  But, Alice, for me it is you--or nothing
in this world.  Remember!  You or nothing!"

She searched his face for pity.  "I am sinking
with shame.  What further, what more humiliation
do you want?  We are in plain view of the
house.  I am utterly helpless.  Will you not have
the decency to leave me?"

"I wish I could have said this better; I do
nothing well.  If I have hurt you, I am very, very
sorry."  He strode away toward the garden.

Trying to compose herself, Alice walked to the
house.  Providentially, Dolly had already started
for the field.  Summoning a servant, Alice ordered
her car and with her head whirling started for
home.  As she was hurried over the country road
her mind gradually righted itself, and strange
thoughts ran like lightning flashes through her
brain.  Reaching home, she hastened upstairs
and locked her door.

What startled her most painfully in her reflections
was the unwelcome conviction that there was
nothing new, nothing surprising in her situation.
Nothing, at least, except this violent outburst
which she now realized she ought long ago to have
foreseen.  She was suddenly conscious that she
had long known Kimberly loved her, and that
one day he would call her to account--for the
crime of being loved in spite of herself, she
reflected bitterly.

She threw herself on her couch and held her
hands upon her burning temples.  He had caught
her in his arms and forced a kiss upon her.  The
blood suffused her face at the recollection.  Again
and again, though she turned from the picture,
imagination brought it back.  She saw his eyes as
he bent over her; the thought of the moment was
too much to support.  Her very forehead
crimsoned as the scene presented itself.  And worse,
was the realizing that something of fascination
lingered in the horror of that instant of
amazement and fear and mad repulsion of his embrace.
She hid her face in her pillow.

After a time she grew calmer, and with her racing
pulse quieted, her emotion wore itself somewhat
out.  Saner thoughts asserted themselves.  She
felt that she could fight it out.  She searched her
heart and found no wantonness within it.  Strongly
assailed, and not, she felt, through her own
fault, she would fight and resist.  He had
challenged her when he had said it should be fought
out.  She, too, resolved it should be.

She bathed her forehead, and when she felt
sure of herself, rang for Annie.  Lunch was served
in her room, but she could eat nothing.  At
moments she felt the comforting conviction of
having settled her mind.  Unhappily, her mind would
not stay settled.  Nothing would stay settled.  No
mood that brought relief would remain.  The
blood came unbidden to her cheeks even while
Annie was serving her and her breath would catch
at the opening of a door.

When she heard the hum of a motor-car on
the open highway her heart jumped.  She opened
the porch doors and went out to where she could
look on the lake.  Her eyes fell upon the distant
Towers and her anger against Kimberly rose.  She
resolved he should realize how he had outraged
her self-respect.  She picked from the troubled
current of her thought cutting things that she ought
to have said.  She despised herself for not having
more angrily resented his conduct, and determined,
if he dared further persist, to expose him
relentlessly to the circle of their friends, even if
they were his own relations.  There should be
no guilty secret between them; this, at least, she
could insure.

When the telephone bell rang, Annie answered
it.  Dolly was calling for Alice and went into a
state when told that Alice had come home affected
by the heat, and had given up and gone to bed;
she hoped yet, Annie said, to be all right for the
evening.  Fritzie took the wire at Black Rock to ask
what she could do, and Annie assured her there
was nothing her mistress needed but quiet and rest.

When the receiver had been hung up the first
bridge was crossed, for Alice was resolved above
all things not to be seen that night at the dance.
When Fritzie came back to Cedar Lodge to dress,
Alice was still in bed.  Her room was darkened
and Annie thought she might be sleeping.  At
dinner-time, MacBirney, who had been in town all
day, came in to see how she was.  She told her
husband that he would have to go to Dolly's with
Fritzie.

MacBirney bent over his wife and kissed her,
greatly to her mental discomfort.  An unwelcome
kiss from him seemed to bring back more confusingly
the recollection of Kimberly's kiss, and to
increase her perplexities.  She detested her
husband's caresses; they meant no real affection and
she did not intend he should think she believed
they did.  But she never could decide where to
draw the line with him, and was divided between
a desire to keep him always at a distance and a
wish not to seem always unamiable.

Fritzie, after she was dressed, tiptoed in.  The
room was lighted to show Alice the new gown.  It
was one of their spring achievements, and Alice
raised herself on her pillow to give a complete
approval of the effect.  "It is a stunning thing;
simply stunning.  If you would only stop running
yourself to death, Fritzie, and put on ten pounds,
you would be absolute perfection."

"If I stopped running myself to death what
would there be to live for?" demanded Fritzie,
refastening the last pin in her Dresden girdle.
"We all have to live for something."

Alice put her hand to her head.  "I wonder
what I have to live for?"

Fritzie turned sharply.  "You?  Why nothing
but to spend your money and have a good time.
Too bad about you, isn't it?  You'll soon have a
million a year for pin-money."

Alice shook her head.  "A dozen millions a
year would not interest me, Fritzie."

Fritzie laughed.  "Don't be too sure, my dear;
not too sure.  Well," Fritzie's hands ran carefully
over her hair for the last time, "there are a lot of
men coming over from the Sound to-night.  I
may meet my fate!"

"I wish you may with all my heart, Fritzie.
Why is it fates always come to people that don't
want them?"

"Don't you believe it," cried Fritzie, "they do
want them."

"They don't--not always."

"Don't you ever believe it--they only say they
don't or think they don't!" she exclaimed, with
accustomed vehemence.

Alice moved upon her pillow in impatient disapproval.
"I hope you'll have a good time to-night."

MacBirney was ready and Fritzie joined him.
The house grew quiet after they left.  Annie
brought up a tray and Alice took a cup of broth.
She did not long resist the drowsiness that followed.
She thought vaguely for a moment of a prayer
for safety.  But her married life had long excluded
prayer.  What good could come of praying to be
kept unharmed while living in a state that had in
itself driven her from prayer?  That, at least,
would be too absurd, and with a dull fear
gnawing and dying alternately at her heart she fell
asleep.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXIII`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXIII

.. vspace:: 2

At noon next day MacBirney, seeking his
wife, found her in her dressing-room.  She
had come from the garden and stood before a
table filled with flowers, which she was
arranging in vases.

"I've been looking for you."  MacBirney threw
himself into a convenient chair as he spoke.
"Robert Kimberly is downstairs."

"Mr. Kimberly?  To see you, I suppose."

"No, to see you."

"To see *me*?"  Alice with flowers in her hand,
paused.  Then she carried a vase to the
mantel-piece.  "At this time of day?"

"Well--to see us, he says."

She returned to the table.  "What in the world
does he want to see us about?"

MacBirney laughed.  "He says he has something
to say to both of us.  I told him I would
bring you down."

A breath would have toppled Alice over.  "I
can't dress to go down now," she managed to say.
"It may be something from Dolly.  Ask him to
give you any message he has."

Walking hurriedly to the mantel with another
jar of roses, she found her fear extreme.  Could
it be possible Kimberly would dream of saying
to her husband what he had said to her
yesterday?  She smothered at the thought, yet she
knew his appalling candor and felt unpleasantly
convinced that he was capable of repeating every
word of it.  The idea threw her into a panic.  She
resolved not to face him under such circumstances;
she was in no position to do so.  "Tell him," she
said abruptly, "that as much as I should like to
hear what he has to say, he will have to excuse me
this morning."

"He offered to come this evening if you preferred."

"We have other guests to-night," returned Alice
coldly.  "And I can't be bothered now."

"Bothered?" echoed MacBirney with sarcasm.
"Perhaps I had better tell him that."

"By all means, if you want to," she retorted in
desperation.  "Tell him anything you like."

Her husband rose.  "You are amiable this
morning."

"No, I am not, I'm sorry to say.  I am not quite
well--that is the real truth and must be my
excuse.  Make it for me or not as you like."

MacBirney walked downstairs.  After an interminable
time, Alice, breathing more freely, heard
Kimberly's car moving from the door.  When she
went down herself she watched narrowly the
expression of her husband's face.  But he was plainly
interested in nothing more serious than Fritzie's
account of the country dance.  When Alice
ventured to ask directly what Kimberly's messages
were, he answered that Kimberly had given none.
With Fritzie, Alice took a drive after luncheon
somewhat easier in mind.  Yet she reflected that
scarcely twenty-four hours had passed and she
already found herself in an atmosphere of suspense
and apprehension from which there seemed no escape.

While she was dressing that night, flowers from
The Towers' gardens were brought to Cedar
Lodge in boxfuls, just as they had regularly been
sent the year before--roses for the tables, violets
for Alice's rooms, orchids for herself.  If she only
dared send them back!  Not, she knew, that it
would make any difference with the sender, but it
would at least express her indignation.  She still
speculated as to whether Kimberly would dare to
tell her husband and upon what would happen if
he should tell him.

And her little dream of publicity as an
antidote!  What had become of it already?  So far
as Kimberly was concerned, she now firmly
believed he was ready to publish his attitude toward
her to the world.  And she shrank with every
instinct from the prospective shame and humiliation.

The water about her seemed very deep as she
reflected, and she felt singularly helpless.  She had
never heard of a situation just such as this, never
imagined one exactly like it.  This man seemed
different from every other she had ever conceived
of; more frankly brutal than other brutes and
more to be dreaded than other men.

A week passed before Kimberly and Alice met.
It was at Charles Kimberly's.  Doctor Bryson, the
Nelsons, and Fritzie were there.

As Alice and her husband came down, Charles
Kimberly and Robert walked out of the library.
Robert bowed to MacBirney and to Alice--who
scarcely allowed her eyes to answer his greeting.

"Are you always glad to get back to your own
country, Mrs. Kimberly?" asked MacBirney greeting
his hostess.

Imogene smiled.  "Dutifully glad."

"Is that all?"

"At least, I come back with the same feeling
of relief that I am getting back to democracy."

"That is," suggested Lottie Nelson, "getting
back to where you are the aristocracy."

Dolly, who with her husband joined them in
time to hear the remark, tossed her head.  "I
always thank Heaven, Lottie, that we have no
aristocracy here."

"But you are wrong, Dolly, we have," objected
Robert Kimberly as the party went into the
drawing-room.  "Democracy is nothing but an
aristocracy of ability.  What else can happen
when you give everybody a chance?  We began
in this country by ridding ourselves of an
aristocracy of heredity and privilege; and we have only
succeeded in substituting for it the coldest, cruelest
aristocracy known to man--the aristocracy of
brains.  This is the aristocracy that controls our
manufacturing, our transportation, our public
service and our finance; it makes our laws and
apportions our taxation.  And from this fell cause
done our present griefs arise."

"But you must rid yourself of the grossly
material conception of an aristocracy, Mr. Kimberly,"
said Nelson.  "Our real aristocracy, I take it, is
not our material one, as Robert Kimberly insists.
The true aristocrat, I hold, is the real but mere
gentleman."

"Exactly right," assented De Castro.  "The
gentleman and nothing else is the thing."

"There is nothing more interesting than the
gentleman," returned Robert Kimberly, "except
the gentleman plus the brute.  But the exception is
enormous, for it supplies our material aristocrat."

"You must remember, though, that ideas of
superiority and inferiority are very tricky,"
commented Imogene.  "And they persist for centuries.
To the Naples beggar, even to-day, the Germans
are 'barbarians.'  And whenever I encounter the
two I never can decide which *is* the aristocrat, the
traveller or the beggar."

"I read your speech at the New England dinner
last night," said Imogene, turning to Nelson,
"and I saw all the nice things that were said about
it this morning."

"If credit were due anywhere it would be to
the occasion," returned Nelson.  "There is always
something now in such gatherings to suggest the
discomforting reflection that our best native stock
is dying out."

Dolly looked distressed.  "Oh, dear, are those
unfortunate people still dying out?  I've been
worrying over their situation for years.  Can't
any one do anything?"

"Don't let it disturb you, Mrs. De Castro,"
said Bryson.

"But I am afraid it is getting on my nerves."

"Nothing dies out that doesn't deserve to die
out," continued Bryson.  "As to the people
Nelson speaks of, I incline to think they ought to die
out.  Their whole philosophy of life has been
bad.  Nature ought to be ashamed, of course, to
pass them by and turn to inferior races for her
recruits.  But since all races are inferior to them,
what can she do but take refuge with the despised
foreigner?  The men and women that take life
on the light-housekeeping plan may do so if they
will--for one generation.  What may safely be
counted on is that nature will find its workers in
the human hive even if it has to turn to the savage
tribes."

"But the poor savages, doctor--they also are on
the verge of extinction, are they not?" demanded
Dolly.

"Then nature will provide its workers from
one unfailing source--from those we have always
with us, the poor and the despised.  And it can
be depended on with equal certainty to cast the
satisfied, cultivated, and intellectual drones into
outer darkness."

"My dear, but the doctor is savage, isn't he?"
Lottie Nelson made the appeal indolently to
Imogene.  "We shall soon be asking, doctor," she
concluded languidly, "which tribe you belong to."

"He would answer, the medical tribe,"
suggested Fritzie.

"Speaking of savages," interposed Arthur De
Castro, "Charles and I were making a portage
once on the York River.  On the trail I met two
superb little Canadian lads--straight, swarthy,
handsome fellows.  They couldn't speak English.
'You must be French,' I suggested, addressing
the elder by way of compliment in that tongue.
Imagine my surprise when he answered with
perfect composure, 'Non, monsieur.  Nous sommes
des sauvages!'"

"For my part," said Imogene, "I am always
glad to hear Doctor Bryson defend families and
motherhood.  I don't care how savage he gets."

"I defend motherhood because to me it is the
highest state of womanhood.  Merely as an
instinct, its mysteries are a never-ending marvel."

Lottie Nelson looked patiently bored.  "Oh,
tell us about them, do, doctor."

"I will tell you of one," returned Bryson
undismayed.  "Take the young mother that brings her
first child into the world; from the day of its birth
until the day of that mother's death, her child is
never wholly out of her thought.  The child may
die, may be forgotten by every one else on earth,
may be to all other conscious existence in this world
as a thing that never was.  But in its mother's
heart it never dies.  I call that a mystery."

The doctor's glance as he finished fell on Alice's
face.  He was sorry at once that he had spoken at
all.  Her eyes were fixed on him with a look of
acute pain.

Alice hardly knew Doctor Bryson, but what he
saw in the sadness of her face he quite
understood.  And though they had never met, other
than in a formal way, he never afterward felt that
they were wholly strangers.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXIV`:

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   CHAPTER XXIV

.. vspace:: 2

"By the way, Nelson," said De Castro, "what
is there in this story in the afternoon papers
about Doane and Dora Morgan?"

"It is substantially true, I fancy.  They have
eloped."

"From whom could they possibly be eloping?"
asked Lottie.

"Why, you must know Doane has a wife and two
little girls," exclaimed Dolly indignantly.

"I supposed his wife was divorced," returned
Lottie helplessly.  "Why wasn't she?"

"Perhaps," suggested Fritzie, "there wasn't time."

"I don't care; Dora's life has been a very
unhappy one," persisted Lottie, "and frankly I am
sorry for her."

"Even though she has run away with another
woman's husband," said Imogene.

"Don't *you* think she deserves a great deal of
sympathy, Robert?" asked Lottie, appealing to
Kimberly.

"I can't say that I do," he answered slowly.
"What moves one in any consideration of a situation
of that kind is, in the first place, the standards
of those that fall into it.  Who, for instance, can
scrape up any interest in the affairs of the
abandoned?  Or of those who look on irregular
relations pretty much as they do on regular?  People
to enlist sympathy in their troubles must respect
themselves."

The conversation drifted and Alice, within
range of both tables, caught snatches of the talk
at each.  She presently heard Lottie Nelson
speaking petulantly, and as if repeating a question to
Kimberly.  "What *do* men most like, Robert?"  Alice
could not see Kimberly's face, but she
understood its expression so well that she could imagine
the brows either luminously raised if Kimberly
were interested, or patiently flat if he were not.

"You ought to know," she heard Kimberly
answer.  "You have been very successful in
pleasing them."

"And failed where I have most wanted to succeed.
Oh, no.  I am asking you.  What *do* they like?"

The answer halted.  "I can't tell you.  To me,
of course, few men seem worth pleasing."

"What should you do to please a man, if you
were a woman?"

"Nonsense."

"I'm asking purely out of curiosity," persisted
Lottie.  "I have failed.  I realize it and I shall
never try again.  But at the end--I'd like to know."

"You probably would not agree with me,"
answered Kimberly after a silence, "most women
would not.  Perhaps it would fail with most
men--but as I say, most men wouldn't interest me,
anyway.  If I had it to try, I would appeal to a
man's highest nature."

"What is his highest nature?"

"Whatever his best instincts are,"

"And then?"

"That's all."

"Oh, nonsense!"

"No, it isn't nonsense.  Only I am not good at
analyzing.  If I once caught a man in that way
I should know I had him fast forever.  There is
absolutely no use in flinging your mere
temptations at him.  Keep those quietly in the
background.  He will go after them fast enough when
you have made sure of him on the higher plane.
If you are compelled to display your temptations
at the start, the case is hopeless.  You have
surrendered your advantage of the high appeal.
Trust him to think about the other side of it, Lottie.
You can't suggest to him anything he doesn't know,
and perhaps--I'm not sure--he prefers to turn
to that side when he thinks you are not looking.
The difficulty is," he concluded, speaking slowly,
"even if you get him from the lower side, he won't
stay hooked.  You know how a salmon strikes at
a fly?  All human experience shows that a man
hooked from the side of his lower instincts, will
sooner or later shake the bait."

"It must be something even to have him on the
hook for a while, Robert."

"But you don't agree with me."

"No."

"No doubt, I'm wrong.  And it isn't, I
suppose, of much consequence whether the men stay
caught or not.  I look at it, probably, with a
business instinct.  When I do anything, I want it
to stay done forever.  When I make a deal or
fasten a point I want it to stay fastened for all
time.  That is my nature.  Now, that may not
be a woman's nature.  You shouldn't have asked
me, don't you see, because we 'begin' differently."

"I fancy that's it, Robert.  We 'begin' differently."

"Try another seer--there is De Castro.  Here
is Mrs. MacBirney.  Mrs. MacBirney," Kimberly
moved so he could command Alice's attention,
"Mrs. Nelson is trying to find out what a man
likes in a woman.  I haven't been able to tell
her----"

"It isn't that at all," smiled Lottie, wearily.
"Mr. Kimberly can tell.  He won't."

Kimberly appealed to Alice.  "It is a great
mistake not to trust your oracle when he is doing his
best--don't you think so, Mrs. MacBirney?"

"I suppose an oracle is consulted on his
reputation--and it is on his reputation that his clients
should rely," suggested Alice.

"Anyway," declared Lottie, rising, "I am
going to try another."

Kimberly turned his chair as she walked away
so that he could speak to Alice.  "Giving advice is
not my forte.  Whenever I attempt it I disappoint
somebody; and this time I had a difficult
subject.  Mrs. Nelson wants to know what men like
in women.  A much more interesting subject
would be, what women like in men.  I should
suppose, in my blundering way, that sincerity would
come before everything else, Mrs. MacBirney.
What do you think?"

"Sincerity ought to be of value."

"But there is a great deal else, you imply."

"Necessarily, I should think."

"As, for instance?"

"Unselfishness among other things," said Alice.

He objected frankly to her suggestion.  "I don't
know about unselfishness.  I have my doubts
about unselfishness.  Are you sure?"

"Most ideals include it, I believe."

"I don't know that I have any ideals--abstract
ideals, that is.  Though I once took quite an
interest in the Catholic Church."

"An academic interest."

"No, no; a real and concrete interest.  I admire
it greatly.  I tried once to look into its claims.
What in part discouraged me was the unpleasant
things Catholics themselves told me about their church."

"They must have been bad Catholics."

"I don't know enough about them to discriminate
between the good and the bad.  What, by
the way," he asked bluntly, "are you--a good
Catholic or a bad one?"

She was taken for an instant aback; then she
regarded him with an expression he did not often
see in her eyes.  "I am a bad one, I am ashamed
to say."

"Then these I speak of must have been good
ones," he remarked at once, "because they were
not in the least like you."

If he thought he had perplexed her he was soon
undeceived.  "There are varying degrees even of
badness," she returned steadily.  "I hope I shall
never fall low enough to speak slightingly of my
faith."

"I don't understand," he persisted, musing,
"why you should fall at all.  Now, if I were a
Catholic I should be a good one."

"Suppose you become one."

He disregarded her irony.  "I may sometime.
To be perfectly frank, what I found most lacking
when I looked into the question was some
sufficient inducement.  Of what use? I asked
myself.  If by following Christianity and its
precepts a man could make himself anything more
than he is--prolong his years, or recall his youth.
If he could achieve the Titanic, raise himself to
the power of a demigod!"  Kimberly's eyes shone
wide at the thought, then they closed to a
contrasting torpor.  "Will religion do this for any
one?  I think not.  But fancy what that would
mean; never to grow old, never to fall ill, never
to long for without possessing!"  A disdainful
pride was manifest in every word of his utterance,
but he spoke with the easy-mannered good-nature
that was his characteristic.

"A man that follows the dreams of religion,"
he resumed but with lessening assurance, for Alice
maintained a silence almost contemptuous and he
began to feel it, "is he not subject to the same
failures, the same pains, the same misfortunes that
we are subject to?  Even as the rest of us, he must
grow old and fail and die."

"Some men, of course," she suggested with
scant patience, "should have a different
dispensation from the average mortal."

Kimberly squirmed dissentingly.  "I don't like
that phrase, 'the average mortal.'  It has a
villainously hackneyed sound, don't you think?  No,
for my part I should be willing to let everybody in
on the greater, the splendid dispensation."

"You might be sorry if you did."

"You mean, there are men that should die--some
that should die early?"

"There are many reasons why it might not work."

He stopped.  "That is true--it might not work,
if universally applied.  It would do better
restricted to a few of us.  But no matter; since we
can't have it at all, we must do the best we can.
And the way to beat the game as it must be
played in this world at present," he continued
with contained energy, "is to fight for what we
want and defend it when won, against all comers.
Won't you wish me success in such an effort,
Alice?"

"I have asked you not to call me Alice."

"But wish me the success, won't you?  It's
awfully up-hill work fighting alone.  Two together
can do so much better.  With two the power is
raised almost to the infinite.  Together we could
be gods--or at least make the gods envy us."

She looked at him an instant without a word,
and rising, walked to an anteroom whither
MacBirney, Lottie Nelson, De Castro, and Fritzie had
gone to play at cards.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXV`:

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   CHAPTER XXV

.. vspace:: 2

When the season was fairly open the
Kimberlys made Alice the recipient of every
attention.  A solidarity had always seemed, in an
unusual degree, to animate the family.  They
were happy in their common interests and their
efforts united happily now to make Alice a
favored one in their activities.

In everything proposed by Dolly or Imogene,
Alice was consulted.  When functions were
arranged, guests lists were submitted to her.
Entertainment was decided upon after Alice had
been called in.  The result was a gay season even
for Second Lake.  And Dolly said it was the
influx of Alice's new blood into the attenuated
strain at the lake that accounted for the successful
summer.  Alice herself grew light-hearted.  In
social affairs the battalions inclined to her side.
Even Lottie Nelson could not stand out and was
fain to make such peace as she could.

In all of this Alice found consolation for the
neglect of her husband.  She had begun to realize that
this neglect was not so much a slight, personal
to her, as a subordination of everything to the
passion for money-getting.  It is impossible to
remain always angry and Alice's anger subsided in
the end into indifference as to what her husband
said or did.

She had, moreover--if it were a stimulus--the
continual stimulus of Kimberly's attitude.
Without insincerity or indifference he accommodated
his interest in her to satisfactory restraint.  This
gave Alice the pleasure of realizing that her
firmness had in nowise estranged him and that without
being turbulent he was always very fond of her.
She knew he could look to many other women for
whatever he chose to ask of favor, yet apparently he
looked to her alone for his pleasure in womankind;
and in a hundred delicate ways he allowed her to
feel this.

A handsome young Harvard man came to her
at the lake seeking an opening in the refineries.
His people were former Colorado acquaintances
whom Alice was extremely desirous of obliging.
She entertained her visitor and tried vainly to
interest her husband in him.  MacBirney promised
but did nothing, and one day Dolly calling at
Cedar Lodge found Alice writing a note to the
college boy, still waiting in town on MacBirney's
empty promises, telling him of the failure of her
efforts and advising him not to wait longer.

"But why worry?" asked Dolly, when Alice told
her.  "Speak to Robert about it.  He will place
him within twenty-four hours."

"I can't very well ask a favor of that kind from
Mr. Kimberly, Dolly."

"What nonsense!  Why not?"

Alice could not say precisely why.  "After my
own husband hasn't found a way to place him!"
she exclaimed.

Dolly did not hesitate.  "I will attend to it.
Give me his address.  Football, did you say?
Very good."

Within a week the young man wrote Alice--from
the Orange River refineries, where he was,
he picturesquely said, knee-deep in sugar--that
he had actually been before the sugar magnate,
Robert Kimberly himself, adding with the
impetuous spelling of a football man, that the
interview had been so gracious and lasted so long
he had grown nervous about the time Mr. Kimberly
was giving him.

Kimberly never referred to the matter nor did
Alice ever mention it to him.  It was merely
pleasant to think of.  And in such evidences as
the frequent letters from her protégé she read her
influence over the man who, even the chronicle of
the day could have told her, had she needed the
confirmation, extorted the interest of the world
in which he moved; and over whom, apparently,
no woman other than herself could claim influence.

She came tacitly to accept this position toward
Kimberly.  Its nature did not compromise her
conscience and it seemed in this way possible both
to have and not have.  She grew to lean upon the
thought of him as one of the consoling supports in
her whirling life--the life in which reflection never
reached conclusion, action never looked forward
to result, and denial had neither time nor place.

The pursuit of pleasure, sweetened by that
philanthropy and the munificent almsgiving which
was so esteemed by those about her, made up
her life.  Alice concluded that those of her circle
severely criticised by many who did not know
them, did much good.  Their failings, naturally,
would not condemn them with critics who, like
herself, came in contact with them at their best.

Some time after the placing of the young college
man, Alice, running in one morning on Dolly
found her in tears.  She had never before seen
Dolly even worried and was at once all solicitude.
For one of the very few times in her life, it
appeared, Dolly had clashed with her brother Robert.
Nor could Alice get clearly from her what the
difference had been about.  All that was evident
to Alice was that Dolly was very much grieved and
mortified over something Kimberly had said or
done, or refused to say or do, concerning a
distinguished actress who upon finishing an
American tour was to be entertained by Dolly.

Alice in the afternoon was over at Imogene's.
Robert Kimberly was there with his brother.
Afterward he joined Imogene and Alice under the
elms and asked them to drive.  While Imogene
went in to make ready Alice poured a cup of tea
for Kimberly.  "I suppose you know you have
made Dolly feel very bad," she said with a color
of reproach.

Kimberly responded with the family prudence.
"Have I?"  Alice handed him the tea and he
asked another question.  "What, pray, do you
know about it?"

"Nothing at all except that she is hurt, and that
I am sorry."

"She didn't tell you what the difference was?"

"Except that it concerned her coming guest."

"I offered Dolly my yacht for her week.  She
wanted me to go with the party.  Because I
declined, she became greatly incensed."

"She thought, naturally, you ought to have
obliged her."

"I pleaded I could not spare the time.  She
has the Nelsons and enough others, anyway."

"Her answer, of course, is that your time is your own."

"But the fact is, her guest made the request.
Dolly without consulting me promised I would go,
and now that I will not she is angry."

"I should think a week at sea would be a
diversion for you."

"To tag around a week in heavy seas with
wraps after a person of distinction?  And pace
the deck with her on damp nights?"

"That is unamiable.  She is a very great actress."

Kimberly continued to object.  "Suppose she
should be seasick.  I once went out with her and
she professed to be ill every morning.  I had to
sit in her cabin--it was a stuffy yacht of De
Castro's--and hold her hand."

"But you are so patient.  You would not mind that."

"Oh, no; I am not in the least patient.  The
Kimberlys are described as patient when they are
merely persistent.  If I am even amiable,
amiability is something quite other than patience.
Patience is almost mysterious to me.  Francis is
the only patient man I ever have known."

"In this case you are not even amiable.  We all
have to do things we don't want to do, to oblige
others.  And Dolly ought to be obliged."

"Very well.  If you will go, I will.  What do
you say?"

"You need not drag me in.  I shall have guests
of my own next week.  If Dolly made a mistake
about your inclination in the affair it would be
only generous to help her out."

"Very well, I will go."

"Now you are amiable."

"They can put in at Bar Point and I will join
them for the last two days.  I will urge McEntee,
the captain, to see that they are all sick, if
possible, before I come aboard.  Then they will not
need very much entertaining."

"How malicious!"

"Not a bit.  Dolly is a good sailor.  Her guest
cares nothing for me.  It is only to have an
American at her heels."

"They say that no one can resist her charm.
You may not escape it this time."

A fortnight passed before any news came to
Alice from the yachting party.  Then Fritzie came
home from Nelsons' one day with an interesting
account of the trip.  Until the story was all told,
Alice felt gratified at having smoothed over Dolly's
difficulty.

"They were gone longer than they expected,"
said Fritzie.  "Robert was having such a good
time.  Lottie Nelson tells me Dolly's guest made
the greatest sort of a hit with Robert.  He didn't
like her at first.  Then she sang a song that
attracted him, and he kept her singing that song
all the time.  He sat in a big chair near the piano
and wouldn't move.  The funny thing was, she
was awfully bored the way he acted.  By the way,
you must not miss the golf to-morrow.  Everybody
will be out."

Alice hardly heard the last words.  She was
thinking about Kimberly's entertaining the
celebrity.  Every other incident of the voyage had been
lost upon her.  When she found herself alone her
disappointment and resentment were keen.  Some
unaccountable dread annoyed her.  He was then,
she reflected, like all other men, filled with mere
professions of devotion.

Something more disturbed her.  The incident
revealed to her that he had grown to be more
in her thoughts than she realized.  Racks and
thumb-screws could not have dragged from her the
admission that she was interested in him.  It was
enough that he professed to be devoted to her
and had been led away by the first nod of another
woman.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXVI`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXVI

.. vspace:: 2

The golf course and the casino were crowded
next day when Alice arrived.  Yet among
the throng of men and women, her interest lay
only in the meeting of one, as in turn his interest
in all the summer company lay only in seeking
Alice.  She had hardly joined Imogene and the
lake coterie when Kimberly appeared.

The players had driven off and the favorites, of
whom there were many, could already be trailed
across the hills by their following.  When the
"out" score had been posted, De Castro suggested
that the party go down to the tenth hole to follow
the leaders in.

A sea-breeze tempered the sunshine and the
long, low lines of the club-house were gayly
decorated.  Pavilions, spread here and there among
the trees, gave the landscape a festival air.

On the course, the bright coloring of groups of
men and women moving across the fields made
a spectacle changing every moment in brilliancy.

Kimberly greeted Alice with a gracious
expectancy.  He was met with a lack of response
nothing less than chilling.  Surprised, though fairly
seasoned to rebuffs, and accepting the unexpected
merely as a difficulty, Kimberly set out to be
entertaining.

His resource in this regard was not scanty but
to-day Alice succeeded in taxing his reserves.  In his
half-mile tramp with her in the "gallery,"
punctuated by occasional halts, he managed but once
to separate her from the others.  The sun annoyed
him.  Alice was aware of his lifting his straw hat
frequently to press his handkerchief to beads of
perspiration that gathered on his swarthy
forehead, but she extended no sympathy.

In spite of his discomfort, however, his eyes
flashed with their accustomed spirit and his dogged
perseverance in the face of her coldness began to
plead for itself.  When the moving "gallery" had
at last left them for an instant behind, Kimberly
dropped on a bench under the friendly shade of
a thorn apple tree.

"Sit down a moment, do," he begged, "until I
get a breath."

"Do you find it warm?"

"Not at all," he responded with negligible irony.
"It is in some respects uncommonly chilly."  He
spoke without the slightest petulance.  "For
Heaven's sake, tell me what I have done!"

"I don't know what you mean."

"I mean, you are not kind in your manner
toward me.  I left you--I hoped you would
remember--to do a favor for you----"

"For me?"  Her tone was not in the least reassuring.

"At least, I conceived it to be for you," he replied.

"That is a mistake."

"Very good.  Let us call it mistake number
one.  I spent five days with Dolly and her
guests----"

"Guests," repeated Alice, lingering slightly on
the word, as she poked the turf slowly with her
sunshade, "or guest?"

"Guest!" he echoed, "Ah!"  He paused.
"Who has put me wrong in so simple a matter?
What I did was no more than to be agreeable to
Dolly's guests.  I spent much time with the guest
of honor at Dolly's repeated requests.  She
happened to sing a song that pleased me very much,
for one particular reason; it was your lovely little
Italian air; I am not ashamed to say it brought
back pleasant moments.  Since she could do
nothing else that was so pleasing," he continued,
"I kept her singing the song.  She became bored
and naturally ceased to be good-natured.  Then,
Dolly asked me to run around by Nantucket,
which we could have done in two days.  Not to
be churlish, I consented.  Then the coal gave out,
which took another day."

"What a mishap!  Well, I am glad to hear the
trip went pleasantly."

"If you are, something has gone wrong with
you----"

"Nothing whatever, I can assure you."

"You are offended with me."

"I assure you I am not."

"I assure you, you are."  He took the sunshade
from her hand.  "You remember the fable about
the man that tried to oblige everybody?  He
wasn't a refiner--he was a mere miller.  At the
start I really did my best for three days to
entertain Dolly's lovely vampire and at the end of that
time she made a face at me--and wound up by
telling Dolly my head was full of another woman.
Then--to be quite shamefully frank--I had to
dodge Lottie Nelson's apologies for her
unpleasant temper on an evening that you
remember; altogether my lot was not a happy one.  My
head was full of another woman.  You remember
you said nobody could resist her charm?  I
thought of it.  What is charm?  I often asked
myself.  I saw nothing of charm in that charming
woman.  Who can define it?  But penetration!
She could read you like a printed book.  We
talked one night of American women.  I dared to
say they were the loveliest in the world.  She grew
incensed.  'They know absolutely nothing!' she
exclaimed.  'That is why we like them' I
answered.  'They are innocent; you are as corrupt
as I am.'  Then she would call me a hypocrite."  He
stopped suddenly and Alice felt his eyes keenly
upon her.  "Is it possible you do not believe what
I am saying?"

"Innocent women believe whatever they are told."

"I don't deserve sarcasm.  I am telling the
simple truth.  For once I am wholly at fault,
Alice.  I don't know what the matter is.  *What*
has happened?"

"Nothing has happened; only to-day I seem
especially stupid."

"Are you as frank with me as I am with you?"

She made no answer.  He drew back as if
momentarily discouraged.  "If you no longer
believe me--what can I do?"

"It isn't at all that I do not believe you--what
difference should it make whether or no I believe
you?  Suppose I were frank enough to admit that
something I heard of you had disappointed me a
little.  What credit should I have for
commenting on what in no way concerns me?"

"Anything heard to my discredit should be carefully
received.  Believe the best of me as long as
you can.  It will never be necessary, Alice, for
any one to tell you I am unworthy; when that day
comes you will know it first from me.  And if I ever
am unworthy, it will not be because I willed to
be--only because through my baseness I never
could know what it means to be worthy of a
woman far above me."

She reached out her hand for her sunshade but
he refused to give it back.  She tried to rise; he
laid his hand on her arm.  "A moment!  It was
about me, was it?" he continued.  "Did you
receive it cautiously?  Put me in your position.
How do you think one would fare who came to
me with anything to your discredit?  Think of
it, Alice--how do you think one would fare--look
at me."

She looked up only for an instant and as if in
protest.  But in spite of herself something in her
own eyes of confidence in him, some tribute to his
honesty, stood revealed, and inspired him with a
new courage.

"You say what you hear of me does not
concern you.  Anything you hear of me does concern
you vitally."  His intensity frightened her, and
thinking to escape him, she still sat motionless.

"Everything I do, important or trivial, has its
relation to you.  Do you believe me?  Alice, you
must believe me.  You do believe me.  How can
you say that anything you hear of me does not
concern you?  It concerns you above every
living person.  It concerns your happiness----"

"Such wildness--such extravagance!" she
exclaimed trying to control her fear.

"I tell you I am neither wild nor extravagant.
Our happiness, our very lives are bound up
together.  It isn't that I say to you, you are
mine--I am yours."

The furious beating of her heart would not be
stilled.  "How can you say such things!"

"I say them because I can't escape your influence
in my life.  I only want to come up to where
you are--not to drag you down to where I am--to
where I have been condemned to be from the cradle.
If what you hear of me conflicts with what I say
to you, believe nothing of what you hear."  His
words fell like blows.  "If I could show you my
very heart I could not be more open.  It is you
who are everything to me--you alone."

Breathless and rigid she looked away.  Hardly
breathing himself, Kimberly watched her.  Her
lip quivered.  "Oh, my heart!" he murmured.
But in the words she heard an incredible
tenderness.  It moved her where intensity had failed.
It stilled the final pangs of revolt at his words.
She drifted for an instant in a dream.  New and
trembling thoughts woke in a reluctant dawn and
glowed in her heart like faint, far streamers of a
new day.

"Oh, my heart!"  The words came again, as
if out of another world.  She felt her hand taken
by a strong, warm hand.  "Do you tremble for
me?  Is my touch so heavy?  How shall I ever
safeguard the flower of your delicacy to my
clumsiness?"

She neither breathed nor moved.  "No matter.
You will teach me how, Alice.  Learning how
you can be happiest, I shall be happiest.  I feel
beggared when I lay my plea before you.  What
are all my words unless you breathe life upon
them?  A few things--not many--I have succeeded
in.  And I succeeded," the energy of success echoed
in his confession, "only because I let nothing of
effort stand between me and the goal.  You have
never been happy.  Let me try to succeed with
your happiness."

A silence followed, golden as the moment.
Neither felt burdened.  About them was quiet
and the stillness seemed to flow from the hush of
their thoughts.

"It is easy for you to speak," she faltered at
last, "too easy for me to listen.  I am
unhappy--so are many women; many would be strong
enough never to listen to what you have said.  I
myself should be if I were what you picture me.
And that is where all the trouble lies.  You
mistake me; you picture to yourself an Alice that
doesn't exist.  If I could return your interest
I should disappoint you.  I am not depreciating
myself to extort compliments--you would supply
them easily, I know.  Only--I know myself
better than you know me."

"What you say," he responded, "might have
point if I were a boy--it would have keen point.
While to me your beauty--do not shake your
head despairingly--your beauty is the delicacy of
girlhood, you yourself are a woman.  You have
known life, and sorrow.  I cannot lead you as a
fairy once led you from girlhood into womanhood--would
that I could have done it!  He should be
a very tender guide who does that for a woman.

"But I can lead you, I think, Alice, to
everything in this world that consoles a woman for
what she gives to it.  Do not say I do not know
you--that is saying I do not know myself, men,
women, life--it is saying I know nothing.  Modest
as I am," he smiled lightly, "I am not yet ready
to confess to that.  I do know; as men that have
lived and tasted and turned away and longed and
waited, know--so I know you.  And I knew from
the moment I saw you that all my happiness in
this world must come from you."

"Oh, I am ashamed to hear you say that.  I
am ashamed to hear you say anything.  What
base creature am I, that I have invited you to
speak!"  She turned and looked quickly at him,
but with fear and resolve in her eyes.  "This you
must know, here and now, that I can never be,
not if you kill me, another Dora Morgan."

He met her look with simple frankness.  "The
world is filled with Dora Morgans.  If you could
be, Alice, how could I say to you what I never
have said, or thought of saying, to any Dora Morgan?"

"To be a creature would kill me.  Do not be
deceived--I know."

"Or do worse than kill you.  No, you are like
me.  There is no half-way for you and me.
Everything--or nothing!"

She rose to her feet.  He saw that she
supported herself for a moment with one hand still
on the bench rail.  He took her other hand within
his own and drew her arm through his arm.

It was the close of the day.  The sun, setting,
touched the hills with evening, and below the
distant Towers great copses of oak lay like islands on
the mirrored landscape.  They walked from the
bench slowly together.  "Just a little help for the
start," he murmured playfully as he kept her at
his side.  "The path is a new one.  I shall make
it very easy for your feet."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXVII`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXVII

.. vspace:: 2

"I hope you rested well after your excitement,"
said Kimberly to Alice, laughing reassuringly
as he asked.  It was the day following their
parting at the golf grounds.  He had driven over to
Cedar Lodge and found Alice in the garden
waiting for Dolly.  The two crossed the terrace
to a sheltered corner of the garden overlooking the
bay where they could be alone.  After Alice had
seated herself Kimberly repeated his question.

She regarded him long and thoughtfully as she
answered, and with a sadness that was unexpected:
"I did not rest at all.  I do not even yet
understand--perhaps I never shall--why I let you talk
to me in that wild, wild way.  But if I did not
rest last night, I thought.  I am to blame--I
know that--as much as you are.  Don't tell me.
I am as much to blame as you are.  But this
cannot go on."

His eyes were upon her hands as they lay across
flowers in her lap.  He took a spray from her
while she spoke and bent his look upon it.  She
was all in white and he loved to see her in white.
In it she fulfilled to him a dream of womanhood.
"I ought to ask you what you mean when you
say and think these fearful things," she went on,
waiting for him to lift his eyes.  "I ought to ask
you; but you do not care what it means, at least
as far as you are concerned.  And you never ask
yourself what it means as far as I am concerned."

He replied with no hesitation.  "I began
asking myself that question almost the first time I
ever saw you.  I have asked myself nothing else
ever since.  It means for both of us exactly the
same thing; for you, everything you can ask that
I can give you; for me, everything I can give you
that you can ask."

"If there were no gulf between us--but there is.
And even if what you say were true, you can see
how impossible it would be for me to say those
words back to you."

He looked at the spray.  "Quite true; you
cannot.  But I shall ask so little--less of you
than of any woman in the world.  And you will
give only what you can, and when you can.  And
you alone are to be the judge of what you can
give and when, until our difficulties are worked out.

"I shall only show you now that I *can* be
patient.  I never have been--I have confessed to
that.  Now I am going to the test.  Meantime, you
don't realize, Alice, quite, how young you are,
do you?  Nor how much in earnest I am.  Let
us turn to that for a while."

From a shrub at his side he plucked sprigs
of rosemary and crushed them with the spray.
"Even love never begins but once.  So, for every
hour that passes, a memory; for every hour that
tarries, a happiness; for every hour that comes,
a hope.  Do you remember?"

"I read it on your sun-dial."

"Every one may read it there.  Where I want
you to read it is in my heart."

"I wonder whether it is most what you say, or
the way in which you say it, that gets people into
trouble?"

"On the contrary; my life has been spent in
getting people out of trouble, and in waiting to say
things to you."

"You are improving your opportunity in that
respect.  And you are losing a still more
delightful opportunity, for you don't know how much
relief you can give me by leaving most of them
unsaid."

"It is impossible, of course, to embrace all of
our opportunities--often impossible to embrace
the cause of them."

"Don't pick me up in that way, please."

He held his hands over hers and dropped the
crushed rosemary on them.  "Would that I could
in any way.  Since I cannot, let me annoy you."

Dolly appeared at a distance, and they walked
down the terrace to meet her.  She kissed Alice.
"What makes you look so girlish to-day?  And
what is all this color around your eyes?  Never
wear anything but white.  I never should myself,"
sighed Dolly.  "You know Alice and I are off for
the seashore," she added, turning to her brother.

"So I hear."

"Come along."

"Who is going?"

"Everybody, I suppose.  They all know about
the trip."

"Where do you dine?"

"On the shore near the light-house.  Arthur
is bringing some English friends out from town;
we are going to dance."

That night by the sea Kimberly and Alice
danced together.  He held her like a child, and
his strength, which for a moment startled her, was
a new charm when she glided across the long,
half-lighted floor within his arm.  Her grace
responded perfectly to the ease with which he led,
and they, stopped only when both were breathing
fast, to stroll out on the dark pier and drink in the
refreshment of the night wind from the ocean.

They remained out of doors a long time, talking
sometimes, laughing sometimes, walking sometimes,
sometimes sitting down for a moment or
kneeling upon the stone parapet benches to listen
to the surf pounding below them.  When they
went in, he begged her again to dance.  Not
answering in words she only lifted her arm with
a smile.  Making their way among those about
them they glided, he in long, undulating steps,
she retreating in swift, answering rhythm,
touching the floor as lightly as if she trod on air.

"This plume in your hat," he said as they moved
on and on to the low, sensuous strains of the
music, "it nods so lightly.  Where do you carry
your wings?"

The very effort of speaking was exhilarating.
"It is you," she answered, "who are supplying
the wings."

The gayety of the others drew them more closely
together.  Little confidences of thought and
feeling--in themselves nothing, in their
unforbidden exchange everything--mutual confessions of
early impressions each of the other, compliments
more eagerly ventured and ignored now rather
than resented.  Surprise read in each other's eyes,
dissent not ungracious and denial that only
laughingly denied--all went to feed a secret happiness
growing fearfully by leaps and bounds into ties
that never could be broken.

The dance with its exhilaration, the plunging
of her pulse and her quick, deep breathing, shone
in Alice's cheeks and in her eyes.  The two laughed
at everything; everything colored their happiness
because everything was colored by it.

The party drove home after a very late supper,
Alice heavily wrapped and beside Dolly in
Kimberly's car.  Entertainments for the English party
followed for a week and were wound up by
Kimberly with an elaborate evening for them at The
Towers.  For the first time in years the big house
was dressed *en fête* and the illuminations made a
picture that could be seen as far as the village.

Twenty-four sat at The Towers round table that
night.  Alice herself helped Dolly to pair the guests
and philosophically assigned her husband to
Lottie Nelson.  Kimberly complimented her upon her
arrangement.

"Why not?" she asked simply, though not
without a certain bitterness with which she always
spoke of her husband.  "People with tastes in
common seem to drift together whether you pair
them or not."

They were standing in an arbor and Kimberly
was plucking grapes for her.

"He is less than nothing to me," she continued,
"as you too well know--or I should not be here
now eating your grapes."

"Your grapes, Alice.  Everything here is yours.
I haven't spoken much about our difficulties--'our'
difficulties!  The sweetness of the one word
blots out the annoyance of the other.  But you
must know I shall never rest until you are installed
here with all due splendor as mistress, not alone
of the grapes, but of all you survey, for this is to
be wholly and simply yours.  And if I dare ask
you now and here, Alice--you whose every breath
is more to me than the thought of all other
women--I want you to be my wife."

Her lips tightened.  "And I am the wife of
another man--it is horrible."

He heard the tremor in her tone.  "Look at me."

"I cannot look at you."

"When you are free----"

"Free!"  Her voice rising in despair, fell again
into despair.  "I shall never be free."

"You shall, and that speedily, Alice!"  She
could imagine the blood surging into Kimberly's
neck and face as he spoke.  "I am growing
fearful that I cannot longer stand the thought of his
being under the same roof with you."

"He cannot even speak to me except before Annie."

Kimberly paused.  "I do not like it.  I want
it changed."

"How can I change it?"

"We shall find a way, and that very soon, to
arrange your divorce from him."

"It is the one word, the one thought that
crushes me."  She turned toward him as if with
a hard and quick resolve.  "You know I am a
Catholic, and you know I am ashamed to say it."

"Ashamed?"

"I have disgraced my faith."

"Nonsense, you are an ornament to any faith."

"Do not say that!"  She spoke with despairing
vehemence.  "You don't realize how grotesque
it sounds.  If what you say were true I should
not be here."

He drew himself up.  There was a resentful
note in his tone.  "I did not suppose myself such
a moral leper that it would be unsafe for any one
to talk to me.  Other Catholics--and good
ones--talk to me, and apparently without
contamination."

"It is only that *I* have no right to.  Now you
are going to be angry with me."

He saw her eyes quiver.  "God forbid!  I
misunderstood.  And you are sensitive, dearest."

"I am sensitive," she said reluctantly.  "More
than ever, perhaps, since I have ceased
practising my religion."

"But why have you ceased?"

Her words came unwillingly.  "I could not help it."

"Why could you not help it?"

"You ask terribly hard questions."

"You must have wanted to give it up."

"I did not want to.  I was forced to."

"Who could force you?"

He saw what an effort it cost her to answer.
The words were dragged from her.  "I could not
live with my husband and practise it."

"So much the more reason for quitting him,
isn't it?"

"Oh, I want to.  I want to be free.  If I only
could."

"Alice, you speak like one in despair.  There
is nothing to be so stirred about.  You want to be
free, I want you to be, you shall be.  Don't get
excited over the matter of a divorce.  Your eyes
are like saucers at the thought.  Why?"

"Only because for me it is the final disgrace--not
to be separated from him--but to marry again
with him alive!  It means the last step for me.
And the public scandal!  What will they say of
me, who knew me at home?"

"Alice, this is the wildest supersensitiveness.
The whole world lives in divorced marriages.
Public scandal?  No one will ever hear of your
divorce.  The courts that grant your plea will
attend to suppressing everything."

"Not everything!"

"Why not?  We abase them every day to so
many worse things that their delicate gorges will
not rise at a little favor like that."

She looked at him gravely.  "What does the
world say of you for doing such things?"

"I never ask.  You know, of course, I never
pay any attention to what the world says of
anything I do.  Why should I?  It would be
difficult for the world to despise me as much as I
despise it.  You don't understand the world.  All
you need is my strength.  I felt that from the very
first--that if I could give you my strength the
combination would be perfect.  That is why I am so
helplessly in love with you--my strength must be
yours.  I want to put you on a throne.  Then I
stand by, see?--and guard your majesty with a
great club.  And I can do it."

They laughed together, for he spoke guardedly,
as to being heard of others, but with ominous
energy.  "I believe you could," murmured Alice.

"Don't worry over your religion.  I will make
you practise it.  I will make a devotee of you."

"Robert!  Robert!"

He stooped for her hand and in spite of a little
struggle would not release it until he had kissed
it.  "Do you know it is the first time my name
has ever passed your lips?" he murmured.

She was silent and he went on with another
thought.  "Alice, I don't believe you are as bad
a Catholic as you think.  I'll tell you why.  I
have known Catholic women, and men, too, that
have given up their religion.  Understand, I know
nothing about your religion, but I do know
something about men and women.  And when they
begin elaborate explanations they think they
deceive me.  In matter of fact, they deceive only
themselves.  When they begin to talk about
progress, freedom of thought, decay of dogmas,
individual liberty and all that twaddle, and assume
a distinctly high, intellectual attitude, even though
I don't know what they have given up, I know
what they are assuming; I get their measure
instantly.  I've sometimes thought that when God
calls us up to speak on judgment day He will
say in the most amiable manner: 'Just tell your
own story in your own way.'  And that our own
stories, told in our own way, will be all the data
He will need to go ahead on.  Indeed, He would
not always need divine prescience to see through
them; in most cases mere human insight would
be enough.  Just listen to the ordinary story of
the ordinary man and notice how out of his own
mouth he condemns himself.  I see that sort of
posturing every day in weak-kneed men and
women who want to enlist large sums of money to
float magnificent schemes.  Now you are honest
with yourself and honest with me, and I see in
this a vital difference."

They walked back through the garden and
encountered Brother Francis who was taking the
air.  Kimberly stopped him.  Nelson and
Imogene joined the group.  "Ah, Francis!" exclaimed
Imogene, "have they caught you saying your beads?"

"Not this time, Mrs. Kimberly."

"Come now, confess.  What were you doing?"

Brother Francis demurred and protested but
there was no escape.  He pointed to The Towers.
"I came out to see the beautiful illumination.  It
is very beautiful, is it not?"

"But that isn't all, for when we came along you
were looking at the sky."

"Ah, the night is so clear--the stars are so strong
to-night----"

"Go on."

"I was thinking of Italy."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXVIII`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXVIII

.. vspace:: 2

"I never can catch Brother Francis, thinking
of anything but Italy," remarked Kimberly.

"Who can blame him?" exclaimed Imogene.

"Or the hereafter," added Kimberly.

Nelson grunted.  "I'm afraid he doesn't find
much sympathy here on that subject," he
observed, looking from one to another.

"Don't be mistaken, Nelson," said Kimberly,
"*I* think about it, and Francis will tell you so.  I
have already made tentative arrangements with
him on that score.  Francis is to play Lazarus to
my Dives.  When I am in hell I am to have my
cup of cold water from him.  And remember,
Francis, if you love me, the conditions.  Don't
forget the conditions; they are the essence of the
contract.  I am to have the water one drop at a
time.  Don't forget that; one drop at a time.
Eternity is a long, long while."

Francis, ill at ease, took a pinch of snuff to
compose himself.

"Your rôle doesn't seem altogether to your
liking, Francis," suggested Imogene.

"His rôle!  Why, it's paradise itself compared
to mine," urged Kimberly.

Brother Francis drew his handkerchief and
wiped his nose very simply.  "I pray, Robert,"
he said, "that you may never be in hell."

"But keep me in your eye, Francis.  Don't
relax your efforts.  A sugar man is liable to
stumble and fall in while your back is turned."

"We must get started for the lake," announced
Imogene.  "Brother Francis, we are all going
down to see The Towers from the water.  Will
you come?"

Francis excused himself, and his companions
joined the other guests who were gathering at the
water.  Oarsmen were waiting with barges and
fires burned from the pillars of the esplanade.
As the boats left the shore, music came across
the water.  Alice, with Kimberly, caught a glimpse
of her husband in a passing boat.  "Having a
good time?" he cried.  For answer she waved
her hand.

"Are you really having a good time?" Kimberly
asked.  "I mean, do you care at all for this
kind of thing?"

"Of course, I care for it.  Who could help it?
It is lovely.  Where are we going?"

"Down the lake a mile or two; then the boats
will return for the fireworks."

"You don't seem very lively yourself to-night.
Are you bored?"

"No; only wondering whether you will go
driving with me to-morrow."

"I said I would not."

"I hoped, of course, you might reconsider."

He did not again press the subject of the drive,
but when they were walking up the hill after the
rockets and showers of gold falling down the dark
sky, she told him he might come for her the next
day.  "I don't know how it is," she murmured,
"but you always have your own way.  You wind
me right around your finger."

He laughed.  "If I do, it is only because I
don't try to."

"I realize it; that is what puzzles me."

"The real secret is, not that I wind you around
my finger, but that you don't want to hurt my
feelings.  I find something to wonder at, too.
When I am with you--even when you are anywhere
near me, I am totally different.  Alone, I
am capable of withdrawing wholly within myself.
I am self-absorbed and concentrated.  With
you I am never wholly within myself.  I am,
seemingly, partly in your consciousness."

Alice shook her head.  "It is true," he persisted.
"It is one of the consequences of love; to
be drawn out of one's self.  I have it."  He
turned to her, questioningly, "Can you understand it?"

"I think so."

"But do you ever feel it?"

"Sometimes."

"Never, of course, for me?"

"Sometimes."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXIX`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXIX

.. vspace:: 2

"This is a courtship without any spring," said
Dolly one night to her husband.  They
were discussing her brother and Alice.  "At
first it was all winter, now it is all summer."

She thought they showed themselves together too
much in public, and their careless intimacy was,
in fact, outwardly unrestrained.

Not that Dolly was censorious.  Her philosophy
found refuge in fatalism.  And since what is to
be must be--especially where the Kimberlys were
concerned--why worry over the complications?
Seemliness, however, Dolly held, was to be
regarded, and concerning this she felt she ought to
be consulted.  The way to be consulted she had
long ago learned was to find fault.

But if she herself reproved Kimberly and Alice,
Dolly allowed no one else to make their affairs a
subject of comment.  Lottie Nelson, who could
never be wholly suppressed, was silenced when
occasion offered.  One afternoon at The Hickories,
Alice's name being mentioned, Lottie asked
whether Robert was still chasing her.

"Chasing her?" echoed Dolly contemptuously
and ringing the changes on the objectionable word,
"Of course; why shouldn't he chase her?  Who
else is there to chase?  He loves the excitement
of the hunt; and who else around here is there to
hunt?  The other women hunt him.  No man
wants anything that comes tumbling after him.
What we want is what we can't get; or at least
what we're not sure of getting."

Kimberly and Alice if not quite unconscious of
comment were at least oblivious of it.  They
motored a great deal, always at their own will,
and they accounted to no one for their excursions.

"They are just a pair of bad children," said
Imogene to Dolly.  "And they act like children."

One of their diversions in their rambling drives
was to stop children and talk with them or ask
questions of them.  One day near Sunbury they
encountered a puny, skeleton-faced boy, a
highway acquaintance, wheeling himself along in an
invalid chair.

They had never hitherto talked with this boy
and they now stopped their car and backed up.
Alice usually asked the questions.  "I thought
you lived away at the other end of the village,
laddie?"

"Yes'm, I do."

"You haven't wheeled yourself all this way?"

"Yes'm."

"What's the matter with you that you can't
walk, Tommie?" demanded Kimberly.

"My back is broken."

Alice made a sympathetic exclamation.  "My
dear little fellow--I'm very sorry for you!"

The boy smiled.  "Oh, don't be sorry for me."

"Not sorry for you?"

"I have a pretty good time; it's my mother--I'm
sorry for her."

"Ah, indeed, your mother!" echoed Alice, struck
by his words.  "I am sorry for both of you then.
And how did you break your back?"

"In our yard--climbing, ma'am."

"Poor devil, he's not the first one that has
broken his back climbing," muttered Kimberly,
taking a note from his waistcoat.  "Give him
something, Alice."

"As much as this?" cried Alice under her
breath, looking at the note and at Kimberly.

"Why not?  It's of no possible use to us, and
it will be a nine-months' wonder in that little
household."

Alice folded the note up and stretched her
white-gloved hand toward the boy.  "Take this home
to your mother."

"Thank you.  I can make little baskets," he
added shyly.

"Can you?" echoed Alice, pleased.  "Would
you make one for me?"

"I will bring one up to your house if you want
me to."

"That would be too far!  And you don't know
where I live."

The boy looked at the green and black car as if
he could not be mistaken.  "Up at The Towers,
ma'am."

Brice, who took more than a mild interest in the
situation, grinned inwardly.

Kimberly and Alice laughed together.  "Very
well; bring it to The Towers," directed Kimberly,
"I'll see that she gets it."

"Yes, sir."

"And see here; don't lose that note, Tommie.
By Heavens, he handles money more carelessly
than I do.  No matter, wait till his mother sees it."

While they were talking to the boy, Dolly drove
up in her car and stopped a moment to chat and
scold.  They laughed at her and she drove away
as if they were hopeless.

"Your sister is the dearest woman," remarked
Alice as Dolly's car disappeared.  "I am so fond
of her, I believe I am growing like her."

"Don't grow too like her."

"Why not?"

"Dolly has too much heart.  It gets her into
trouble."

"She says you have too much, yourself."

"I've paid for it, too; I've been in trouble."

"And I shall be, if you don't take me home
pretty soon."

"Don't let us go home as long as we can go
anywhere else," pleaded Kimberly.  "When we
go home we are separated."

He often attempted to talk with Alice of her
husband.  "Does he persecute you in any way?"
demanded Kimberly, trying vainly to get to details.

Alice's answer was always the same.  "Not now."

"But he used to?" Kimberly would persist.

"Don't ask me about that."

"If he ever should lay a hand on you,
Alice----"

"Pray, pray," she cried, "don't look like that.
And don't get excited; he is not going to lay a
hand on me."

They did not reach Cedar Lodge until
sundown and when they drove up to the house
MacBirney, out from town, was seated on the big
porch alone.  They called a greeting to him as
they slowed up and he answered in kind.
Kimberly, without any embarrassment, got out to
assist Alice from the car.  The courtesy of his
manner toward her seemed emphasized in
MacBirney's presence.

On this night, it was, perhaps, the picture of
Kimberly standing at the door of his own car
giving his hand to MacBirney's wife to alight, that
angered the husband more than anything that
had gone before.  Kimberly's consideration for
Alice was so pronounced as completely to ignore
MacBirney himself.

The small talk between the two when Alice
alighted, the laughing exchanges, the amiable
familiarity, all seemed to leave no place in the
situation for MacBirney, and were undoubtedly
meant so to be understood.  Kimberly
good-humoredly proffered his attentions to that end
and Alice could now accept them with the
utmost composure.

Fritzie had already come over to Cedar Lodge
from Imogene's for dinner and Kimberly returned
afterward from The Towers, talking till late in the
evening with MacBirney on business affairs.  He
then drove Fritzie back to The Cliffs.

MacBirney, smarting with the stings of
jealousy, found no outlet for his feeling until he
was left alone with his wife.  It was after eleven
o'clock when Alice, reading in her sitting-room,
heard her husband try the door connecting from
his apartments.  Finding it bolted, as usual,
MacBirney walked out on the loggia and came into
her room through the east door which she had
left open for the sea-breeze.  He was smoking and
he sat down on a divan.  Alice laid her book on
her knee.

It was a moment before he spoke.  "You seem
to be making Kimberly a pretty intimate member
of the family," he began.

"Oh, do you think so?  Charles or Robert?"

"You know very well who I mean."

"If you mean Robert, he is a familiar in every
family circle around the lake.  It is his way, isn't
it?  I don't suppose he is more intimate here than
at Lottie's, is he?  Or at Dolly's or Imogene's?"

"They are his sisters," returned MacBirney, curtly.

"Lottie isn't.  And I thought you wanted me
rather to cultivate Robert, didn't you, Walter?"
asked Alice indifferently.

He was annoyed to be reminded of the fact but
made no reply.

"Robert is a delightfully interesting man,"
continued Alice recklessly, "don't you think so?"

MacBirney returned to the quarrel from
another quarter.  "Do you know how much money
you have spent here at Cedar Lodge in the last
four months?"

Alice maintained her composure.  "I haven't
an idea."

He paused.  "I will tell you how much, since
you're so very superior to the subject.  Just twice
as much as we spent the first five years we were
married."

"Quite a difference, isn't it?"

"It is--quite a difference.  And the difference
is reckless extravagance.  You seem to have lost
your head."

"Suppose it is reckless extravagance!  What
do you mean to say--that I spent all the money?
This establishment is of your choosing, isn't it?
And have you spent nothing?  How do you expect
to move in a circle of people such as live around
this lake without reckless extravagance?"

"By using a little common-sense in your
expenditures."

For some moments they wrangled over various
details of the ménage.  Alice at length cut the
purposeless recrimination short.  "You spoke of
the first five years we were married.  You know
I spent literally nothing the first five years of
our married life.  You continually said you were
trying 'to build up.'  That was your cry from
morning till night, and like a dutiful wife, I wore
my own old clothes for the first two years.  Then
the next three years I wore made-over hats and
hunted up ready-made suits to enable you to
'build up.'"

"Yes," he muttered, "and we were a good deal
happier then than we are now."

She made an impatient gesture.  "Do speak
for yourself, Walter.  You were happier, no
doubt.  I can't remember that you ever gave me
any chance to be happy."

"Too bad about you.  You look like a poor,
unhappy thing--half-fed and half-clothed."

"Now that you have 'built up,'" continued
Alice, "and brought me into a circle not in the
least of my choosing, and instructed me again
and again to 'keep our end up,' you complain
of 'reckless extravagance.'"

"Well, for a woman that I took with a travelling
suit from a bankrupt father, and put at the head
of this establishment, you certainly can hold
your 'end up,'" laughed MacBirney harshly.

"Just a moment," returned Alice, with angry
eyes.  "You need not taunt me about my father.
When you were measuring every day the sugar
and coffee we were to use during the first five
years of our married life, you should have
foreseen you couldn't move as a millionaire among
multimillionaires without spending a lot of money."

MacBirney turned white.  "Thank you for reminding
me," he retorted, with shining teeth, "of
the thrift of which you have since had the advantages."

"Oh dear, no, Walter.  The advantages of that
kind of thrift are purely imaginary.  The least
spark of loving-kindness during those years would
have been more to me than all the petty meannesses
necessary to build up a fortune.  But it is too
late to discuss all this."

MacBirney could hardly believe his ears.  He
rose hastily and threw himself into another chair.
"You've changed your tune mightily since 'the
first five years of our married life,'" he said.

Alice tossed her head.

"But I want you to understand, *I* haven't."

"I believe that!"

"And I've brought you to time before now, with
all of your high airs, and I'll do it again."

"Oh, no; not again."

"I'll teach you who is master under this roof."

"How like the sweet first five years that sounds!"

He threw his cigar angrily away.  "I know
exactly what's the matter with you.  You have run
around with this lordly Kimberly till he has turned
your head.  Now you are going to stop it, now
and here!"

"Am I?"

"You are."

"Hadn't you better tell Mr. Kimberly that?"

"I will tell *you*, you are getting yourself talked
about, and it is going to stop.  Everybody is
talking about you."

Alice threw back her head.  "So?  Where did
you hear that?"

"Lambert told me yesterday."

"I hope you were manly enough to defend your
wife.  Where did you see Lambert?"

"I saw him in town."

"I shouldn't listen to silly gossip from Lambert,
and I shouldn't see Lambert again."

"How long have you been adviser as to whom
I had better or better not see?" asked
MacBirney contemptuously.

"You will find me a good adviser on some points
in your affairs, and that is one."

"If you value your advice highly, you should
part with it sparingly."

"I know what *you* value highly; and if Robert
Kimberly finds out you are consorting with
Lambert it will end your usefulness in *his*
combinations very suddenly."

The thrust, severe in any event, was made keener
by the fact that it frightened him into rage.
"Since you come from a family that has made such
a brilliant financial showing--" he began.

"Oh, I know," she returned wearily, "but you
had better take care."  He looked at his wife
astounded.  "You have insulted me enough," she
added calmly, "about the troubles of my father.
The 'first five years' are at an end.  I have spoiled
you, Walter, by taking your abuse so long
without striking back and I won't do it any more."

"What do you mean?" he cried, springing from
his chair.  "Do you think you are to keep your
doors bolted against me for six months at a time
and then browbeat and abuse me when I come
into your room to talk to you?  Who paid for
these clothes you wear?" he demanded, pointing
in a fury.

"I try never to think of that, Walter," replied
Alice, rising to her feet but controlling herself
more than she could have believed possible.  "I
try never to think of the price I have paid for
anything I have; if I did, I should go mad and
strip these rags from my shoulders."

She stood her ground with flashing eyes.  "*I,
not you*," she cried, "have paid for what I have
and the clothes I wear.  *I* paid for them--not
you--with my youth and health and hopes and
happiness.  I paid for them with the life of my
little girl; with all that a wretched woman can
sacrifice to a brute.  Paid for them!  God help me!
How haven't I paid for them?"

She stopped for sheer breath, but before he
could find words she spoke again.  "Now, I am
done with you forever.  I am out of your power
forever.  Thank God, some one will protect me
from your brutality for the rest of my life----"

MacBirney clutched the back of a chair.  "So
you have picked up a lover, have you?  This
sounds very edifying from my dear, dutiful,
religious wife."  Hardly able to form the words
between his trembling lips, he smiled horribly.

She turned on him like a tigress.  "No," she
panted, "no!  I am no longer your religious wife.
It wasn't enough that I should go shabby and
hungry to make you rich.  Because I still had
something left in my miserable life to help me
bear your cruelty and meanness you must take
that away too.  What harm did my religion do
you that you should ridicule it and sneer at it and
threaten and abuse me for it?  You grudged the
few hours I took from your household drudgery
to get to church.  You promised before you
married me that our children should be baptized in my
faith, and then refused baptism to my dying baby."

Her words rained on him in a torrent.  "You
robbed me of my religion.  You made me live in
continual sin.  When I pleaded for children, you
swore you would have no children.  When I told
you I was a mother you cursed and villified me."

"Stop!" he screamed, running at her with an oath.

The hatred and suffering of years were
compressed into her moment of revolt.  They flamed
in her cheeks and burned in her eyes as she cried
out her choking words.  "Stop me if you dare!"
she sobbed, watching him clench his fist.  "If you
raise your hand I will disgrace you publicly, now,
to-night!"

He struck her.  She disdained even to protect
herself and crying loudly for Annie fell backward.
Her head caught the edge of the table from which
she had risen.

Annie ran from the bedroom at the sound of
her mistress's voice.  But when she opened the
boudoir door, Alice was lying alone and
unconscious on the floor.





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   CHAPTER XXX

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She revived only after long and anxious
ministrations on Annie's part.  But with the
return of her senses the blood surged again in her
veins in defiance of her husband.  Her first
thought was one of passionate hatred of him,
and the throbbing pain in her head from her fall
against the table served to sharpen her resentment.

MacBirney, possessed of enough craft to slip
away from an unpleasant situation, returned early
to town, only hoping the affair would blow over,
and still somewhat dazed by the amazing
rebellion of an enduring wife.

He realized that a storm might break now at
any moment over his head.  Always heavily
committed in the speculative markets, he well
understood that if Kimberly should be roused to
vengeance by any word from Alice the consequences
to his own fortune might be appalling.

It chanced that Kimberly was away the following
day and Alice had twenty-four hours to let her
wrath cool.  Two days of reflection were enough.
The sense of her shame and her degradation as a
woman at the hands of a man so base as her
husband were alone enough to suggest moderation in
speaking to Kimberly of the quarrel.

But more than this was to be considered.  What
would Kimberly do if she told him everything?
A scandalous encounter, even a more serious
issue between the two men was too much to
think of.  She felt that Kimberly was capable in
anger of doing anything immoderate and it was
better by far, her calmer judgment told her, to
bury her humiliation in her own heart than to
risk something worse.  She was now, she well
knew, with this secret, a terror to her cowardly
husband, just as he had been, through a nightmare
of wretched years, her own terror.

For the first time, on the afternoon of the second
day, she found herself awaiting with burning
impatience some word from The Towers.  She had
resolved what to say to Kimberly and wanted now
to say it quickly.  When the telephone bell rang
promptly at four o'clock her heart dilated with
happiness; she knew the call came from one who
never would fail her.  Alice answered the bell
herself and her tones were never so maddening
in Kimberly's ears as when she told him, not
only that he might come, but that she was weary
with waiting.  She stood at the window when
his car drove up and tripped rapidly downstairs.
When she greeted him he bent down to kiss her hand.

She did not resist his eagerness.  She even drew
a deep breath as she returned his look, and having
made ready for him with a woman's lovely cunning,
enjoyed its reward.

"I've been crazy to see you," he cried.  "It is
two days, Alice.  How can I tell you how lovely
you are?"

Her eyes, cast down, were lifted to his when she
made her confession.  "Do you really like this
rig?  It is the first toilet I ever made with the
thought of nobody but you in my head.  So I
told Annie" she murmured, letting her hand rest
on his coat sleeve, "to be sure I was exactly right."

He caught her hands.

"Let's go into the garden," she said as he held
them.  "I have something to say to you."

They sat down together.  "Something has
happened since I saw you," she began.

"Has the break come?" demanded Kimberly instantly.

"We had a very painful scene night before last,"
said Alice.  "The break has come.  He has gone
to town--he went yesterday morning.  I have
asked myself many questions since then.  My
father and mother are dead.  I have no home to
go to, and I will not live even under the same
roof with him any longer.  I feel so strange.  I
feel turned out, though there was nothing of that
in what he said--indeed, I am afraid I did most
of the talking."

"I wish to God I had heard you!"

"It is better not.  Every heart knoweth its own
bitterness----"

"Let me help bear yours."

"I feel homeless, I feel so alone, so ashamed--I
don't know what I don't feel.  You will never
know what humiliation, what pain I have been
through for two days.  Robert--" her voice faltered
for an instant.  Then she spoke on, "I never can
tell you of the sickness and shame I have long felt
of even pretending to live with some one I could
not respect."

"Close the book of its recollection.  I came
into your life for just such a moment, to be
everything you need.  I am home, husband, and
protection--everything."

"If I could only make my senses believe my
ears."  She paused.  "It seems as if I am in a
dream and shall wake with a horror."

"No, this is a dream come true.  I foresaw this
time and I have provided for it.  Only delicacy
has kept me from asking you before about your
very personal affairs and your private purse,
Alice.  Understand at once," he took her hands
vehemently, "everything I have is yours without
the least reserve.  Do you understand?  Money
is the last thing to make any one happy, I well
know that, but in addition to the word of my
heart to your heart--the transfers to you, Alice,
have long been made and at this moment you have,
merely waiting for you to draw upon them, more
funds than you could make use of in ten lifetimes.
Everything is provided for.  There are tears in
your eyes.  Sit still for a moment and let me speak."

"No, I must speak.  I am in a horrible position.
I cannot at such a juncture receive anything
from you.  But there are matters to be faced.
Shall I stay here?  If I do, he must go.  Shall I
go?  And if I do go, where?"

"Let me answer with a suggestion.  My family
are all devoted to us.  Dolly and Imogene are good
counsellors.  I will lay the matter before them.
After a family council we shall know just what to
do and how.  I have my own idea; we shall see
what the others say.  Dolly, you know, has taken
you under her wing from the first, and Dolly
you will find is a powerful protector.  If I tell you
what I did to-day you will gasp with astonishment.
I cabled for a whole new set of photographs
of the Maggiore villa.  I want our first
year together, Alice, to be in Italy."





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.. _`CHAPTER XXXI`:

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   CHAPTER XXXI

.. vspace:: 2

Accompanied by Imogene, Dolly hastened
over to Cedar Lodge in the morning.
Alice met them in the hall.  "My dear," cried
Dolly, folding her impulsively in her arms, "you
are charged with fate!"

Then she drew back, laid her hands on Alice's
shoulders and, bringing her face tenderly forward,
kissed her.  "How can I blame Robert for falling
in love with you?  And yet!"  She turned to
Imogene.  "If we had been told that first night
that *this* was the woman of our destiny!  How
do you bear your new honors, dearie?  What!
Tears!  Nonsense, my child.  You are freighted
with the Kimberly hopes now.  You are one of
us.  Tears are at an end.  I, too, cried when I
first knew of it.  Come, sit down.  Imogene will
tell you everything."  And having announced this
much, Dolly proceeded with the telling herself.

"When you first knew of it?" echoed Alice.
"Pray, when was that?"

"Oh, long, long ago--before ever you did, my
dear.  But no matter now.  We talked last night,
Arthur, Charles, Imogene, and Robert and I
until midnight.  And this is what we said: 'The
dignity of your personal position is, before
everything else, to be rigidly maintained.'  Mr. MacBirney
will be required to do this.  He will be
counselled on this point--made to understand that
the obligation to maintain the dignity of his wife's
position is primary.  Robert, of course, objected
to this.  He was for allowing no one but himself
to do anything----"

"I hope you clearly understand, Dolly, I should
allow Mr. Kimberly to do nothing whatever at
this juncture," interposed Alice quickly.

"I understand perfectly, dear.  But there are
others of us, you know, friends of your own dear
mother, remember.  Only, aside from all of that,
we considered that the situation admitted of but
one arrangement.  Charles will tell Nelson exactly
what MacBirney is to do, and Nelson will see that
it is done.  The proper bankers will advise you
of your credits from your husband, for the
present--and they are to be very generous ones, my
dear," added Dolly significantly.  "So all that is
taken care of and Mr. MacBirney will further be
counselled not to come near Cedar Lodge or
Second Lake until further orders.  Do you understand?"

"Why, yes, Dolly," assented Alice perplexed,
"but Mr. MacBirney's acquiescence in all this is
very necessary it seems to me.  And he may agree
to none of it."

"My dear, it isn't at all a question of *his*
agreeing.  He will do as he is advised to do.  Do
you imagine he can afford breaking with the
Kimberlys?  A man that pursues money, dear heart,
is no longer a free agent.  His interests confront
him at every turn.  Fledgling millionaires are in
no way new to us.  Mercy, they pass in and out
of our lives every day!  A millionaire, dear, is
nothing but a million meannesses and they all
do exactly as they are told.  Really, I am sorry
for some of them.  Of all unfortunates they are
nowadays the worst.  They are simply ground to
powder between the multi-millionaires and the
laboring classes.  In this case, happily, it is only
a matter of making one do what he ought to do,
so give it no thought."

Dolly proved a good prophet concerning
MacBirney's course in the circumstances.  MacBirney,
desirous of playing at once to the lake
public in the affair of his domestic difficulties, made
unexceptional allowances for his wife's
maintenance.  Yet at every dollar that came to her
from his abundance she felt humiliated.  She
knew now why she had endured so much at his
hands for so long; it was because she had realized
her utter dependence on him and that her dreams
of self-support were likely, if she had ever acted
on them, to end in very bitter realities.

At the first sign of hot weather, Charles and
Imogene put to sea with a party for a coasting
cruise; Dolly sailed for the continent to bring
Grace back with her.  Robert Kimberly unwilling
to leave for any extended period would not
let Alice desert him; accordingly, Fritzie was
sent for and came over to stay with her.  The
lake country made a delightful roaming place
and Alice was shown by Kimberly's confidences
how close she was to him.

He confided to her the journal of the day,
whatever it might be.  Nothing was held back.  His
successes, failures, and worries all came to her at
night.  He often asked her for advice upon his
affairs and her wonder grew as the inwardness
of the monetary world in which he moved stood
revealed to her.  She spoke of it one day.

"To be sought after as you are--to have so
many men running out here to find you; to be
consulted by so many----"

Kimberly interrupted her.  "Do you know
why they seek me?  Because I make money for
them, Alice.  They would run after anybody
that could make them money.  But they are
wolves and if I lost for them they would try to
tear me to pieces.  No man is so alone as the
man the public follows for a day even while it hates
or fears him.  And the man the bankers like is the
man that can make money for them; their friendship
is as cold and thin as autumn ice."

"But even then, to have the ability for making
money and doing magnificent things; to be able
to succeed where so many men fail--it seems so
wonderful to me."

"Don't cherish any illusions about it.  Everyone
that makes money must be guilty of a thousand
cold-blooded things, a thousand sharp turns, a
thousand cruelties; it's a game of cruelties.
Fortunately, I'm not a brilliant success in that line,
anyway; people merely think I am.  The ideal
money-maker always is and always will be a man
without a temper, without a heart, and with an
infusion, in our day, of hypocrisy.  He takes
refuge in hypocrisy because the public hates him
and he is forced to do it to keep from hating
himself.  When public opinion gets too strong for
him he plays to it.  When it isn't too strong, he
plays to himself.  I can't do that; I have too
much vanity to play to anybody.  And the
recollection of a single defeat rankles above the
memory of a thousand victories.  This is all
wrong--far, far from the ideal of money getting; in fact,
I'm not a professional in the game at all--merely
an amateur.  A very successful man should never
be trusted anyway."

"Why not?"

"Because success comes first with him.  It
comes before friendship and he will sacrifice you
to success without a pang."

She looked at him with laughing interest.
"What is it?" he asked changing his tone.

"I was thinking of how I am impressed sometimes
by the most unexpected things.  You could
never imagine what most put me in awe of you
before I met you."

"There must have been a severe revulsion of
feeling when you did meet me," suggested Kimberly.

"We were going up the river in your yacht and
Mr. McCrea was showing us the refineries.  All
that I then knew of you was what I had read in
newspapers about calculating and cold-blooded
trust magnates.  Mr. McCrea was pointing out
the different plants as we went along."

"The river is very pretty at the Narrows."

"First, we passed the independent houses.
They kept getting bigger and bigger until I couldn't
imagine anything to overshadow them and I
began to get frightened and wonder what your
refineries would be like.  Then, just as we turned at
the island, Mr. McCrea pointed out a perfectly
huge cluster of buildings and said those were the
Kimberly plants.  Really, they took my breath
away.  And in the midst of them rose that
enormous oblong chimney-stack.  A soft, lazy column
of smoke hovered over it--such as hovers over
Vesuvius."  She smiled at the remembrance.
"But the repose and size of that chimney seemed
to me like the strength of the pyramids.  When
we steamed nearer I could read, near the top,
the great terra-cotta plaque: KIMBERLYS AND
COMPANY.  Then I thought: Oh, what a
tremendous personage Mr. Robert Kimberly must be!"

"The chimney is yours."

"Oh, no, keep it, pray--but it really did put me
wondering just what you were like."

"It must have been an inspiration that made
me build that chimney.  The directors thought I
would embarrass the company before we got the
foundations in.  I didn't know then whom I was
building it for, but I know now; and if you got
a single thrill out of it the expenditure is justified.
And I think mention of the thrill should go into the
directors' minutes on the page where they objected
to the bill--we will see about that.  But you never
expected at that moment to own the chimney,
did you?  You shall.  I will have the trustees
release it from the general mortgage and convey
it to you."

"And speaking of Vesuvius, you never dreamed
of a volcano lying in wait for you beneath the
lazy smoke of that chimney, did you?  And that
before very long you would not alone own the
chimney but would be carrying the volcano around
in your vanity bag?"





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.. _`CHAPTER XXXII`:

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   CHAPTER XXXII

.. vspace:: 2

One afternoon in the early autumn Kimberly
came to Cedar Lodge a little later than usual
and asked Alice, as he often did, to walk to the
lake.  He started down the path with something
more than his ordinary decision and inclined for
a time to reticence.  They stopped at a bench
near an elm overlooking the water.  "You have
been in town to-day," said Alice.

"Yes; a conference this morning on the market.
Something extraordinary happened."

"In the market?"

"Market conditions are bad enough, but this
was something personal."

"Tell me about it."

"MacBirney was present at the conference.
After the meeting he came to the head of the table
where I was talking with McCrea--and sat down.
When McCrea joined the others in the
lunchroom, MacBirney said he wanted to speak to
me a moment.  I told him to go ahead.

"He began at once about his differences with
you.  His talk puzzled me.  I was on the
defensive, naturally.  But as far as I could see, he
designed no attack on me; and of you he could
utter nothing but praise--it was rather trying to
listen to.  I could not fathom his purpose in bringing
the matter before me in this singular way, but
he ended with an appeal----"

"An appeal!"

"He asked me to bring a message to you.  I
told him I would deliver any message entrusted
to me.  He wants you to know that he is very
sorry for what has taken place.  He admits that
he has been in the wrong----"

"It is too late!"  Alice in her emotion rose to
her feet.

"And he asks you, through me," Kimberly spoke
under a strain he did not wholly conceal, "if he
may come back and let the past bury itself."

"It is too late."

"He said," Kimberly rose and faced Alice,
"there had been differences about religion----"

"Ask him," she returned evenly, "whether I
ever sought to interfere with his religious views or
practices."

"These, he promises, shall not come between
you again."

"Wretched man!  His words are not the
slightest guarantee of his conduct."

Kimberly took his hat from his head and wiped
his forehead.  "This was the message, Alice;
is he to come back to you?"

"Whatever becomes of me, I never will live
again with him."

"That is irrevocable?"

"Yes."

"I have kept my word--that you should have
his message as straight as I could carry it."

"I believe you have.  He certainly could not,
whatever his intentions, have paid you a higher
tribute than to entrust you with one for me."

"Then he does not and never can stand between
you and me, Alice?"

"He never can."

The expression of his eyes would have frightened
her at a moment less intense.  Slightly paler than
she had been a year earlier and showing in her
manner rather than in her face only indefinable
traces of the trouble she had been through, Alice
brought each day to Kimberly an attraction that
renewed itself unfailingly.

He looked now upon her eyes--he was always
asking whether they were blue or gray--and upon
her brown hair, as it framed her white forehead.  He
looked with tender fondness on the delicate cheeks
that made not alone a setting for her frank eyes
but for him added to the appeal of her lips.  He sat
down again, catching her hand to bring her close.

"Come," he urged, relaxing from his intensity,
"sit down.  By Heaven, I have suffered to-day!
But who wouldn't suffer for you?  Who but for
the love of woman would bear the cares and
burdens of this world?"

Alice smiled oddly.  "We have to bear them,
you know, for the love of man."  She sat down on
the bench beside him.  "Tell me, how have you
suffered to-day?"

"Do you want to know?"

"Of course, I want to know.  Don't you always
want to know how I have suffered?  Though I
used to think," she added, as if moved by
unpleasant recollections, "that nobody cares when a
woman suffers."

"The man that loves her cares.  It is one of
love's attributes.  It makes a woman's sorrow and
pain his, just as her joy and happiness are his.
Pleasure and pain are twins, anyway, and you
cannot separate them.  Alice!"  He looked suddenly
at her.  "You love me, don't you?"

Her face crimsoned, for she realized he was bent
on making her answer.

"Let us talk about something else, Robert."

He repeated his question.

"Don't make me put it into words yet, Robert,"
she said at last.  "You have so long known the
answer--and know that I still speak as his wife.  Do
I love you?"  She covered her face with her hands.

"Alice!"  His appeal drew her eyes back to
his.  They looked speechless at each other.  The
moment was too much.  Instinctively she sprang
in fear to her feet, but only to find herself caught
within his arm and to feel his burning lips on her
lips.  She fought his embrace in half-delirious
reproach.  Then her eyes submitted to his pleading
and their lips met with her soft, plunging pulse
beating swiftly upon his heart.

It was only for an instant.  She pushed him
away.  "I have answered you.  You must spare
me now or I shall sink with shame."

"But you are mine," he persisted, "all mine."

She led him up the path toward the house.

"Sometimes I am afraid I shall swallow you up,
as the sea swallows up the ship, in a storm of
passion."

"Oh no, you will not."

"Why not?"

"Because I am helpless.  Was there more to
your story?"

"You know then I haven't told it all."

"Tell me the rest."

"When he had finished, I told him I, too, had
something to say.  'I shall deliver your message
to Alice,' I said.  'But it is only fair to say to you
I mean to make her my wife if she will accept me,
and her choice will lie between you and me, MacBirney.'

"You should have seen his amazement.  Then
he collected himself for a stab--and I tried not to
let him see that it went deep.  'Whatever the
outcome,' he said, 'she will never marry you.'

"'You must recollect you have not been in her
confidence for some time,' I retorted.  He seemed
in no way disconcerted and ended by disconcerting
me.  'Remember what I tell you, Mr. Kimberly,'
he repeated, 'you will find me a good prophet.
She is a Catholic and will never marry you or any
other man while I live.'

"'You may be right,' I replied.  'But if Alice
marries me she will never live to regret it for one
moment on account of her religion.  I have no
religion myself, except her.  She is my religion,
she alone and her happiness.  You seem to
invoke her religion against me.  What right have
you to do this?  Have you helped her in its
practice?  Have you kept the promises you made
when you married a Catholic wife?  Or have you
made her life a hell on earth because she tried to
practise her religion, as you promised she should
be free to do?  Is she a better Catholic because
she believed in you, or a worse because to live in
peace with you she was forced to abandon the
practice of her religion?  These are questions
for you to think over, MacBirney.  I will give
her your message----'

"'Give her my message,' he sneered.  'You
would be likely to!'

"'Stop!' I said.  'My word, MacBirney, is
good.  Friend and foe of mine will tell you that.
Even my enemies accept my word.  But if I could
bring myself to deceive those that trust me I would
choose enemies to prey upon before I chose friends.
I could deceive my own partners.  I could play
false to my own brother--all this I could do and
more.  But if I could practise deceits a thousand
times viler than these, I could not, so help me
God, lie to a trusting girl that I had asked to be
my wife and the mother of my children!  Whatever
else of baseness I stooped to, *that* word should
be forever good!'

"Alice, I struck the table a blow that made
the inkstands jump.  My eye-glasses went with a
crash.  Nelson and McCrea came running in;
MacBirney turned white.  He tried to stretch his
lips in a smile; it was ghastly.  Everybody was
looking at me.  I got up without a word to any
one and left the room."

Alice caught his sleeve.  "Robert, I am proud
of you!  How much better you struck than you
knew!  Oh," she cried, "how could I help loving you?"

"Do you love me?"

"I would give my life for you."

"Don't give it for me; keep it for me.  You
will marry me; won't you?  What did the cur
mean by saying what he did, Alice?"

"He meant to taunt me; to remind me of how
long I tried to live in some measure up to the
religion that he used every means to drive me
from--and did drive me from."

"We will restore all that."

"He meant I must come to you without its
blessing."

He looked suddenly and keenly at her.  "Should
you be happier with its blessing?"

"Ah, Robert."

"But should you?"

She gazed away.  "It is a happiness I have lost."

"Then you shall have it again."

"I will trust to God for *some* escape from my
difficulties.  What else can I do?  My husband!"
she exclaimed bitterly--"generous man to remind
me of religion!"

Kimberly spoke with a quick resolve.  "I am
going to look into this matter of where you stand
as a wife.  I am going to know why you can't
have a chance to live your life with me.  If I
give you back what he has robbed you of, our
happiness will be doubled."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXIII`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXXIII

.. vspace:: 2

When Kimberly reached The Towers it was
dusk.  Brother Francis was walking on
the terrace.  Kimberly joined him.  "How is
Uncle John to-day, Francis?"

"Always the same.  It is an astonishing vitality
in your family, Robert."

"They need all they have."

"But all that need strength do not have it.
How is your market to-day?"

"Bad," muttered Kimberly absently.

"I am sorry that you are worried."

"More than the market worries me, Francis.
But the market is getting worse and worse.  We
met again to-day and reduced prices.  The
outsiders are cutting.  We retaliate to protect our
customers.  When *we* cut, the cut is universal.
Their warfare is guerilla.  They are here to-day,
there to-morrow."

"I have thought of what you said last night.
Cutting you say, has failed.  Try something else.
To-morrow advance all of your standard brands
one quarter.  Be bold; cut with your own outside
refineries.  The profit from the one hand pays
the cost of the war on the other."

Kimberly stopped.  "How childish of you to
waste your life in a shabby black gown, nursing
people!  Absolutely childish!  If you will go into
the sugar business, I tell you again, Francis, I
will pay you twenty thousand dollars a year for
ten years and set aside as much more preferred
stock for you."

"Nonsense, Robert."

"You are a merchant.  You could make a
name for yourself.  The world would respect you.
There are enough to do the nursing, and too few
brains in the sugar business.  To-night I will
give the orders and the advance shall be made
when the market opens."

"But your directors?"

"We will direct the directors.  They have had
two months to figure how to fight the scalpers;
you show me in twenty-four hours.  Some monks
were in to see me this morning; I was too busy.
They told my secretary they were building an
asylum for old men.  I told him to say, not a
dollar for old men; to come to me when they
were building an asylum for old women.  What
do you say to my offer, Francis?"

"What do I say?  Ah, Robert, although you
are a very big paymaster, I am working for a
Paymaster much bigger than you.  What do I say?
I say to you, give up this sugar business and come
with me to the nursing.  I will give you rags in
place of riches, fasting in place of fine dinners,
toil in place of repose, but my Paymaster--He
will reward you there for all you endure here."

"Always deferred dividends.  Besides, I should
make a poor nurse, Francis, and you would make
a good sugar man.  And you seem to imply I am
a bad man in the sugar business.  I am not; I
am a very excellent man, but you don't seem to
know it."

"I hope so; I hope you are.  God has given
you splendid talents--he has given you more
reason, more heart, more judgment than he has given
to these men around you.  If you waste, you are
in danger of the greater punishment."

"But I don't waste.  I build up.  What can a
man do in this world without power?  He must
have the sinews of empire to make himself felt.
Francis, what would Cromwell, Frederick,
Napoleon have been without power?"

"Ah!  These are your heroes; they are not
mine.  I give glory to no man that overcomes by
force, violence, and worse--fraud, broken faith,
misrule, falsehood.  What is more detestable
than the triumph of mere brains?  Your heroes,
do they not tax, extort, pillage, slaughter, and
burn for their own glory?  Do they not ride over
law, morality, and justice, your world's heroes?
They are not my heroes.  When men shrink at
nothing to gain their success--what shall we say of
them?  But to hold law, morality, and justice
inviolable; to conquer strength but only by
weakness, to vanquish with pity, to crush with
mercy--that alone is moving greatness."

"Where do you find it?" demanded Kimberly sharply.

"Never where you look for your heroes; often
where I look for mine--among the saints of God.
Not in men of bronze but in men of clay.  It is
only Christ who puts the souls of heroes into
hearts of flesh and blood."

"But you have, along with your saints, some
very foolish rules in your church, Francis.  Take
the case of Mrs. MacBirney.  There is a woman
who has done evil to no one and good to every one.
She finds herself married to a man who thenceforth
devotes himself to but one object in life--the
piling up of money.  She is forgotten and
neglected.  That is not the worst; he, with no
religion of his own, makes it his business to harass
and worry her in the practice of hers.  He is filled
with insane jealousies, and moved by equally
insane hatreds of whatever she desires.  I come
into their lives.  I see this proud and unhappy
woman struggling to keep her trials hidden.  I
break down the barriers of her reserve--not easily,
not without being repulsed and humiliated as I
never before have been by a woman--and at last
make her, unwillingly, tell me the truth.
Meantime her husband, after a scene--of which I have
never yet learned the real facts--has left her.
I say such a woman has the right to free herself
from a brute such as this; your church says 'no.'"

"Robert, I see what you are coming to.  But
do not make the case harder than it is.  She may
free herself from him if she cannot live in peace
with him; she may leave him under intolerable
conditions.  But not marry again."

"Precisely.  And I offer her my devotion and
a home and only ask to make her truly my wife
and restore to her the religion he has robbed her
of.  And this very religion that he has trampled
on and throttled, what does it say?  'No.'"

"You state a hard case.  Your reasoning is very
plausible; you plead for the individual.  There
is no law, human or divine, against which the
individual might not show a case of hardship.  The
law that you find a hardship protects society.
But to-day, society is nothing, the individual
everything.  And while society perishes we praise the
tolerant anarchism that destroys it."

"Francis, you invoke cruelty.  What do I care
for society?  What has society done for me?"

"No, I invoke responsibility, which none of us
can forever escape.  You seek remarriage.  Your
care is for the body; but there is also the soul."

"Your law is intolerant."

"Yours is fatal.  How often have you said to
me--for you have seen it, as all thoughtful men see
it--that woman is sinking every day from the high
estate to which marriage once lifted her.  And
the law that safeguards this marriage and against
which you protest is the law of God.  I cannot
apologize for it if I would; I would not if I could.
Think what you do when you break down the
barrier that He has placed about a woman.  It is
not alone that the Giver of this law died a shameful
death for the souls of men.  You do not believe
that Christ was God, and Calvary means nothing to you.

"But, Robert, to place woman in that high
position, millions of men like you and me, men
with the same instincts, the same appetites, the
same passions as yours and mine, have crucified
their desires, curbed their appetites, and mastered
their passions--and this sacrifice has been going
on for nineteen hundred years and goes on about
us every day.  Who realizes it?

"Faith is ridiculed, fasting is despised, the very
idea of self-denial is as absurd to pagan to-day as
it was nineteen hundred years ago to pagan Rome.
And with its frivolous marriages and easy divorces
the world again drags woman back to the couch
of the concubine from which Christianity with so
much blood and tears lifted her up nineteen
hundred years ago."

"Francis, you are a dreamer.  Society is gone;
you can't restore it.  I see only a lovely woman
its victim.  I am not responsible for the condition
that made her one and I certainly shall not stand
by and see her suffer because the world is
rotten--nor would you--don't protest, I know you, too.
So I am going to raise her as high as man can
raise a woman.  She deserves it.  She deserves
infinitely more.  I am only sorry I can't raise her
higher.  I am going to make her my wife; and
you, Francis, shall dance at the wedding.  Oh,
you needn't throw up your hands--you are going
to dance at the wedding."

"Non posso, non posso.  I cannot dance, Robert."

"You don't mean, Francis," demanded Kimberly
severely suspicious, "to tell me you would
like me the less--that you would be other than
you have been to me--if you saw me happily
married?"

"How could I ever be different to you from
what I have been?  Every day, Robert, I pray
for you."

Kimberly's brows contracted.  "Don't do it."

Francis's face fell.  "Not?"

"For the present let me alone.  I'm doing very
well.  The situation is delicate."

Francis's distress was apparent, and Kimberly
continued good-naturedly to explain.  "Don't stir
God up, Francis; don't you see?  Don't attract
his attention to me.  I'm doing very well.  All I
want is to be let alone."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXIV.`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXXIV.

.. vspace:: 2

"By the way, how does it seem to be quite a
free woman?" said Kimberly one evening
to Alice.

"What do you mean?"

"Your decree was granted to-day."

She steeled herself with an exclamation.  "*That*
nightmare!  Is it really over?"

He nodded.  "Now, pray forget it.  You see,
you were called to the city but once.  You spent
only ten minutes in the judge's chambers, and
answered hardly half a dozen questions.  You
have suffered over it because you are too
sensitive--you are as delicate as Dresden.  And this is
why I try to stand between you and everything
unpleasant."

"But sha'n't you be tired of always standing
between me and everything unpleasant?"

He gazed into her eyes and they returned his
searching look with the simplicity of faith.  In
their expression he felt the measure of his
happiness.  "No," he answered, "I like it.  It is my
part of the job.  And when I look upon you,
when I am near you, even when I breathe the
fragrance of your belongings--of a glove, a fan,
a handkerchief--I have my reward.  Every trifle
of yours takes your charm upon itself."

He laid a bulky package in her lap.  "Here
are the maps and photographs."

"Oh, this is the villa."  Alice's eye ran with
delight over the views as she spread them before
her.  "Tell me everything about it."

"I have not seen it since I was a boy.  But
above Stresa a pebbled Roman highway winds into
the northern hills.  It is flanked with low walls of
rotten stone and shaded with plane trees.  Half
an hour above the town an ilex grove marks a
villa entrance."

He handed her a photograph.  "This is the grove,
these are the gates--they are by Krupp, and you
will like them.  Above them are the Dutch
Kimberly arms--to which we have no right whatever
that I can discover.  But wasn't it delightfully
American for Dolly to appropriate them?

"The roadway grows narrower as it climbs.
Again and again it sinks into the red hill-side,
leaving a wall tapestried with ivy.  Indeed, it winds
about with hardly any regard for a fixed destination,
but the air is so bland and the skies at every
turn are so soft, that pretty soon you don't care
whether you ever get anywhere or not.  The hills
are studded with olives and oranges.

"When you have forgotten that you have a
destination the road opens on a lovely *pineto*.
You cross it to a casino on the eastern edge and
there is the lake, two hundred feet below and
stretching away into the Alps.

"Above the casino you lose yourself among
cedars, chestnuts, magnolias, and there are little
gorges with clumps of wild laurel.  Figs and
pomegranates begin beyond the gorge.  The
arbors are hidden by oleander trees and terraces
of camellias rise to the belvedere--the tree you
see just beside it there is a magnolia.

"Back of this lies the garden, laid out in the
old Italian style, and crowning a point far above
the lake stands the house.  The view is a promise
of paradise--you have the lake, the mountains,
the lowlands, the walnut groves, yellow campaniles,
buff villas, and Alpine sunsets."

"You paint a lovely picture."

"But incomplete; to-night you are free to tell
me when I can take you.  Make it an early day,
Alice.  The moment we are married, we start.
We will land at any little port along the Riviera
that strikes your fancy, have a car to meet
us, and drive thence by easy stages to the lake.
From the moment we touch at Gibraltar you
will fall in love with everything anew; there is
only one Mediterranean--one Italy, cara mia
ben.  Let us go in.  I want you to sing my song."

They walked into the house and to the dimly
lighted music room.  There they sat down
together on the piano bench and she sang for him,
"Caro Mio Ben."

.. _`She sang for him "Caro Mio Ben"`:

.. figure:: images/img-338.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: She sang for him "Caro Mio Ben"

   She sang for him "Caro Mio Ben"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXV`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXXV

.. vspace:: 2

Not every day brought unalloyed happiness.
Moments of depression asserted themselves
with Alice and, if tolerated, led to periods of
despondency.  She found herself seeking a
happiness that seemed to elude her.

Even her depression, banished by recreation, left
behind something of a painful subconsciousness
like the uneasy subsidence of a physical pain.
Activity thus became a part of her daily routine
and she gained a reputation for lively spirits.

Kimberly, whose perception was not often at
fault, puzzled over the strain of gayety that seemed
to disclose a new phase in Alice's nature.  Once,
after a gay day at Sea Ridge, he surprised her at
home in the evening and found her too depressed
to dissemble.

"Now," he said, taking both her hands, "you
are going to tell me what the matter is."

"Robert, nothing is the matter."

"Something is the matter," he persisted.  "Tell
me what it is."

"It is less than nothing.  Just a miserable
spectre that haunts me sometimes.  And when I
feel in that way, I think I am still his wife.  Now
you are vexed with me."

"Not for an instant, darling; only perplexed.
Your worries are mine and we must work out
some relief for them, that is all.  And when things
worry me you will help me do away with my
spectres, won't you?"

He soothed and quieted her, not by ridicule
and harshness but by sympathy and understanding,
and her love for him, which had found a timid
foothold in the frailest response of her womanly
reserve, now sent its roots deep into her nature.

It was nothing to her that he was great in the
world's eyes; that in itself would have repelled
her--she knew what the world would say of her
ambition in marrying him.  But he grew in her
eyes because he grew in her heart as she came to
realize more and more his solicitude for her
happiness--the only happiness, he told her, in which
he ever should find his own.

"I know how it will end, Robert."  They
were parting after a moment the most intense
they had ever allowed themselves together.  She
was putting away his unwilling arms, as she
looked in the darkness of the garden up into
his face.

"How will it end?" he asked.

"In my loving you as much as you love me."

Winter passed and the spring was again upon
them before they realized it.  In the entertaining
around the lake they had been fêted until it was
a relief to run away from it all, as they often did.
To escape the park-like regularity of their own
domains, they sought for their riding or driving
the neglected country below the village.
Sometimes on their horses they would explore the
backwoods roads and attempt swampy lanes where
frogs and cowslips disputed their entry and boggy
pools menaced escape.

Alice, hatless and flushed with laughter and the
wind, would lead the way into abandoned
wood-paths and sometimes they found one that led
through a forest waste to a hidden pond where
the sun, unseen of men, mirrored itself in glassy
waters and dogwood reddened the margin where
their horses drank.

In the woods, if she offered a race, Kimberly
could never catch Alice no matter what his mount.
She loved to thread a reckless way among sapling
trees, heedless of branches that caught her neck
and kissed her cheeks as she hurried on--riding
gave them delightful hours.

They were coming into the village one May
morning after a long cross-country run when they
encountered a procession of young girls moving
across the road from the parish school to the
church and singing as they went.  The church
itself was *en fête*.  Country folk gathered along
the road-side and clustered about the church door
where a priest in surplice waited the coming procession.

Kimberly and Alice, breathing their horses,
halted.  Dressed in white, like child brides, the
little maidens advanced in the sunshine, their eyes
cast down in recollection and moving together in
awkward, measured step.  From their wrists hung
rosaries.  In their clasped hands they carried
prayer-books and white flowers, and white veils
hung from the rose wreaths on their foreheads.

"How pretty!" exclaimed Kimberly as the
children came nearer.

"Robert," asked Alice suddenly, "what day is this?"

"Thursday, isn't it?"

"It is Ascension Thursday."

The church-bells began to ring clamorously and
the little girls, walking slowly, ceased their song.
The lovers waited.  Childhood, hushed with
expectancy and moving in the unconscious appeal
of its own innocence, was passing them.

The line met by the young priest reached the
open door.  Kimberly noted the wistful look in
Alice's eyes as the little band entered the church.
She watched until the last child disappeared and
when she spoke to her horse her eyes were wet.
Her companion was too tactful to venture a
question.  They rode until his silence told her he
was aware of her agitation and she turned to him.

"Do you know," she said, slowly searching his
eyes, "that you are awfully good?"

"If I am," he responded, "it is a discovery.
And the honor, I fear, is wholly yours."

"It is something," she smiled, her voice very
sweet, "to have lived to give that news to the world."

They rode again in silence.  She felt it would be
easier if he were to question her, but it was only
after some time that he said: "Tell me what the
little procession was about."

"I am ashamed to have acted in this way.  But
this was the day of my First Communion,
Ascension Thursday.  It was only a coincidence that
I should see a First Communion class this morning."

"What is First Communion?"

"Oh, don't you know?"  There was a sadness
in the tone.  "You don't, of course, you dear
pagan.  It is *you* who should have been the Christian
and I a pagan.  You would never have fallen away."

"You only think you have fallen away, Alice.
You haven't.  Sometimes you seem to act as if
you had fallen from some high estate.  You have
not; don't think it.  You are good enough to be
a saint--do you give me credit for no insight?  I
tell you, you haven't fallen away from your
religion.  If you had, you would be quite at ease,
and you are very ill at ease over it.  Alice," he
turned about in his saddle, "you would be happier
if our marriage could be approved by your church."

"It never can be."

"I have led a number of forlorn hopes in my
day.  I am going to try this one.  I have made
up my mind to see your archbishop--I have
spoken with Francis about it.  I am going to
find out, if nothing more, exactly where we stand."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXVI`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXXVI

.. vspace:: 2

In response to a request from Kimberly,
Hamilton came out to spend the night at The
Towers.  Dolly was leaving just as the doctor
arrived.  She beckoned him to her car.

"You are to save the sixteenth for us, doctor;
don't forget to tell Mrs. Hamilton," she said.
"We have persuaded Robert to give a lawn fête for
Grace and Larrie and we want you.  Then, too--but
this is a secret--Robert's own wedding occurs
two weeks later.  That will be private, of course,
so the affair on the sixteenth will include all of our
friends, and we want you to be sure to be here."

When the doctor sat down with Kimberly in
the library after dinner, the latter spoke of his
coming marriage.  "You know," he said briefly,
as the doctor took a book from the table, "I am
going to make Mrs. MacBirney my wife."

"I do.  I rejoice in it.  You know what I
think of her."

"She has at last set the date and we are to be
married on the thirtieth of June.  It will be very
quiet, of course.  And, by the way, save the
sixteenth of June for us, doctor."

"Mrs. De Castro has told me.  We shall be
glad to come out."

"You, I know, do not approve of marriages made
through divorce," continued Kimberly, bluntly.

"No, nor do you," returned the doctor.  "Not
as a general proposition.  In this case, frankly, I
look on it as the most fortunate thing that has
happened in the Kimberly family since your own
mother married into it."

"She was a Whitney," muttered Kimberly,
leaning back and lifting his chest as he often did
when talking.  "Arthur De Castro has a strain
of that blood.  He has all her refinement.  The
Kimberlys are brutes.

"MacBirney," he went on abruptly, "complained
to McCrea yesterday--among other things
that he wants to quarrel about--that I had broken
up his home.  I have not; I think you know that."

"A man came to me the other day"--the doctor
laid aside his book--"to say he was going to stand
on his 'rights' and sue for alienation a man who had
run off with his wife.  He asked me what I thought
of it.  'I suppose you want my honest opinion,'
I replied.  'Yet I am afraid it won't comfort you
much.  What "rights" have you established in
your marriage that anybody is bound to respect?'  He
looked at me astonished.  'The rights of a
husband,' he answered.  'Doesn't the law, doesn't
society give them to me?'  'A man that asks equity
from society,' said I, 'ought to come into court with
clean hands.'  I should like to know whose
hands are cleaner than mine,' he replied, 'I
married, made a home for my wife and supported her.'"

Kimberly leaning further back let his chin sink
on his breast, but his eyes shining under his black
brows showed that he followed the story.

"'But where are the fruits of your marriage?' I
asked," continued the doctor, narrating.  "'Don't
stare at me--where are the children?  How have
you lived with your wife?  As nature and law and
society intended you should--or as a mere
paramour?  Children would have protected your
wife as a woman; the care of children would have
filled her life and turned her mind from the
distraction of listening to another man.  Why didn't
you make a wife and mother of the woman you
married instead of a creature?  In that case you
might have pleaded "rights."  But you thought
you could beat the game; and the game has beaten
you.  You thought you could take the indulgence
of marriage without its responsibilities.  Either
you debased your wife to your level or allowed
her to debase you to hers.  Don't talk about
"rights," you haven't any.'"

Hamilton ceased.

"What did the fellow say?" asked Kimberly.

"What could he say?" demanded Hamilton.

They sat a moment in silence.

Kimberly broke it.  "It is a humiliating fact,
Hamilton--I often think of it," he said
moodily--"that the only way in which we can determine
our own moral standing is by measuring the
standards of our vicious classes.  I mean by our
vicious classes the social driftwood who figure in
the divorce courts and the scandal of the day and
should be placed in a social penitentiary.

"What is really alarming to-day is that our
standards of what constitutes vice have fallen so
low.  We speak of husbands; has there ever been
a period in the history of our race when husbands
have fallen so low?  There was a time when the
man that spoke the English tongue would defend
his home with his life----"

"In those days they had homes to defend."

"--when it meant death to the man that
crossed the threshold of his honor----"

"They had honor, too."

"But consider the baseness the American
husband has reached.  When he suspects his wife's
infidelity, instead of hiding his possible disgrace,
he employs detectives to make public the
humiliating proofs of it.  He advertises himself in
the bill he files in the courts.  He calls on all
men to witness his abasement.  He proclaims his
shame from the housetops and wears his stripes
as a robe of honor.  And instead of killing the
interloper he brands the woman that bears his
name, perhaps the mother of his children, as a
public creature--isn't it curiously infamous?  And
this is what our humane, enlightened, and
progressive social views have brought us to--we have
fallen too low to shoot!

"However," concluded Kimberly, shaking
himself free from the subject, "my own situation
presents quite other difficulties.  And, by the way,
Francis is still ailing.  He asked the superior
yesterday for a substitute and went home ill.
You have seen Uncle John?"

"A moment, before dinner."

"Is he failing, Hamilton?"

"Mentally, no; physically, he loses ground lately."

"We die hard," said Kimberly, reflecting, "we
can't help it.  The old gentleman certainly
brightened up after he heard of my coming marriage.
Not that I told him--Dolly did so.  It pleased him
marvellously.  I couldn't understand exactly why,
but Dolly suggested it was one of the natural
instincts of Uncle John coming out.  His eyes
sparkle when the subject is mentioned,"
continued Kimberly dryly.  "I really think it is the
covetous instinct in him that is gratified.  He has
always disliked MacBirney and always itched to
see him 'trimmed.'  This seems to satisfy,
heroically, Uncle John's idea of 'trimming' him.  He
is as elated as if he were doing the 'trimming'
himself."

Kimberly explained to Hamilton why he had
sent for him and asked him for a letter of
introduction to the archbishop, whom he desired to
meet.

"You are on one or two executive boards with
him, I think," suggested Kimberly.  "Do you
know him well enough to oblige me?"

"I know him very well," returned Hamilton.
"And you, too, ought to know him."

The surgeon wrote the note at once.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: smaller

   "MOST REVEREND AND DEAR ARCHBISHOP:

.. vspace:: 1

.. class: smaller

   "I am glad to introduce to you my lifelong friend,
   Mr. Robert Kimberly.  It is a misfortune that you and he
   should not have known each other before.  However, I am
   doubly glad that it is my privilege to make you acquainted.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class: smaller white-space-pre-line

   "Sincerely,
        "FRANK H. HAMILTON."

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXVII`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXXVII

.. vspace:: 2

Kimberly was lunching next day at the
city office when MacBirney's name came in
with a request for an interview.  He was admitted
without delay and while a valet removed the trays
and the table, Kimberly greeted his visitor and,
indicating a chair, asked him to sit down.  He saw
at a glance the suppressed feeling in MacBirney's
manner; the latter, in fact, carried himself as a
man fully resolved to carry out a course yet
fearful of the results.

"I have come to give notice of my withdrawal
from the June pool in common," began MacBirney
without preface.

"I am not the one to give notice to," returned
Kimberly civilly, "inasmuch as I am not in the
June pool and not in touch with its operations."

"Well, I've sold--I am selling," MacBirney
corrected himself hastily, "my allotment, no
matter who is at interest."

"McCrea and my brother are the organizers----"

"I understand," interjected MacBirney, "that
you made a good deal of talk about my action in
the December pool a year ago--I give you no
chance to say I haven't served ample notice this time."

"On the contrary, I quieted a great deal of
talk about your action a year ago.  It was so
grossly unfair to your associates that I ascribed
your unloading of your stock without notifying
them to rank ignorance, and was disposed to
overlook it on that ground."

MacBirney smiled with some sarcasm.  "Though
you were careful enough to say publicly that you
would never be caught in another pool with me."

"I never have been, have I?  And I did not
'say publicly'; I said so to McCrea, who had my
permission to tell you.  It cost me six hundred
thousand dollars at that time to support the
market against you for three days.  And while I like
to see my associates make money, I object to their
making it out of me."

"You didn't say so to poison my wife against me?"

"I have never, MacBirney, spoken of that or of
any other of your business affairs to your wife.
I never have spoken even your name to your wife,
in praise or in blame, until you left her--except
twice to ask her if she loved you.  Even that she
treated as an insult."

"You must have made some progress since then."

Kimberly's head began to move slowly from
side to side.  "I am told," added MacBirney,
in a thin, hard voice, "you are getting ready to
marry her."

"Quite true, I am."

MacBirney's rage forced him to his feet.  "I
am beginning to understand now, Kimberly," he
framed the words slowly and carefully, "the way
you have plotted against me from the start.  I was
warned before I ever saw you that you had no
respect for the law of God or man where a woman
was concerned.  I was warned that no woman
was safe near you."

Kimberly eyed his enraged associate calmly.
"You are travelling far in a few words, MacBirney.
I hope you understand, once for all, that certain
limits cover a situation even such as this.  I don't
like your last phrase.  It might be made to apply
unpleasantly to a woman now very dear to me.  I
am used to angry men, and what you say about me----"

"What I say about----"

"What you say about me is allowable, no
matter what I think of it.  But understand this, if
you say one word about her--here or elsewhere,
now or hereafter--I will stop you, if I have to
choke you with my own hands."

"You can't scare me, Kimberly."

"I don't want to; I don't want to choke you;
but if you wish to see me try it, pass that limit
just once.  Now go on, MacBirney."

"I could have nothing to say against Alice."

Kimberly nodded heartily in approval.

"But I have something to say about a man who
pretended to be my friend----"

"I never pretended to be your friend."

"--And played traitor to me as you have done.
But it's of a piece with your whole record.  First
you got me down here----"

"I never got you down here."

"--Then you began to lay your plans to ruin
my home."

"What were you doing all this time?  Trying
to circumvent me by making your home happy
or trying to help me by neglecting it?"

MacBirney shook his finger at Kimberly in
rage.  "You can't escape with smooth phrases.
You broke up my home!"

Kimberly had regained his coolness.  "No, you
broke it up.  Long before I ever saw you, you
broke up your home.  It was broken up and only
waiting for some one to save your wife from the
wreck.  MacBirney, you have made a success of
your business; one one-hundredth of the effort you
have given to your business would have saved your
home.  Yet you thought you could treat your wife
like a servant, humiliate and abuse her and still
hold her forth a figurehead for your 'home'!"
muttered Kimberly with scorn.

"You, yourself, put her up to the divorce.
Deny that, will you?"

"No, I will not deny it," retorted Kimberly
relapsing into indifference.  "After I came into her
life she followed my advice.  I believe I have
advised her for the best."

"I see your finger trailing through every turn of
my trouble now.  I saw it too late.  But I'm not
done with you.  And I'm not the only man that
understands your trickery.  Lambert will have
you on your knees in the sugar business before
you are very much older.  Now, I have come to
you with a straight proposition.  I want the
escrow control of the Western refineries.  If you are
ready to give it to me we will make a working
agreement and have peace.  If you are not, I will
back Lambert in a string of modern plants that
will drive you out of the Western field.  We are
ready; the question for you to consider is whether
you want to compromise."

At this threat Kimberly, so far as the words
could be used of him, went to pieces.  To be
outfaced in his own headquarters by one whom he
would have termed a hare-brained upstart in the
refining world was too much for his poise.  The
only outward indication of his surprise and
disgust was a smile; but it was a dangerous smile.
"I am afraid I am not enough of a business man
to compromise, MacBirney," he responded in
low tones.  "You can't have the escrow control
of the Western refineries."

"Very good.  That decision suits me.  I am
now practically out of your stock; we shall see
what we shall see."

"One moment, MacBirney," said Kimberly,
moved by some sudden impulse of mercy following
his rage, as if MacBirney were really too small
fry to pit himself against.  "You have brought a
personal affair and a business affair before me.
The business affair, as you are still my associate, I
may say a word on.  Don't put any money you
can't afford to lose behind Lambert, for it will
all go.  I myself have not got resources enough to
give that man a free hand.  He has a genius in one
direction--that of talking men out of their money.

"Moreover, in this case there is a personal
friction of long standing between him and me, and
I will never let him lift his head in the sugar
business in this country while I am at the head of
these companies, not if I have to work twenty-four
hours a day to clean him out.  But that would
not be necessary--for he will not only attend to
ruining himself but to ruining every man that
goes with him.  If you want to quit us, do so.
Build as many refineries as you like and we will
try to get on peaceably with you--though I
myself would not put a dollar into new refineries
to-day.  You are rich; you had eight hundred
thousand dollars when I paid you for your junk,
and you made two million dollars in the December
pool alone--a good part of it out of me.  You
will take from these offices eight million dollars in
less than three years."

MacBirney's alarm at Kimberly's intimate
knowledge of his resources showed in his face.
"In railroads you might make it forty millions
in the next ten years, with even average prudence,"
continued Kimberly calmly.  "Sugar will be a
load, anyway you go into it; but sugar and
Lambert will beat you to a frazzle."

Charles Kimberly walked into the room as his
brother concluded.  "Talk a few moments with
Charles about this," suggested Kimberly, coolly,
ringing for his office secretary.

"MacBirney," explained Robert Kimberly to
his brother, "has sold out his common and has
a lot of money loose.  I am telling him to go in
for railroads."

The secretary entered.  Robert Kimberly after
giving him some directions, got into his car and
was driven up-town to the residence of the
archbishop.  He alighted before a large, remodelled
city house not far from the cathedral.  A
messenger had already delivered Hamilton's letter of
introduction and Kimberly was presenting
himself by appointment.

At the door a man-servant took his card and he
was met in the reception room by a young
clergyman, who conducted him to the second floor.  As
Kimberly entered the large room into which he
was ushered he saw the prelate rising from his
table.  He was a grave man and somewhat spare
in his height, slightly stooped with the passing of
seventy years, and bearing in the weariness of his
face an expression of kindliness and intelligence.

"This is a pleasure, Mr. Kimberly," he said,
extending his hand.

"It is a pleasure for me, your grace."

"Come this way," continued the archbishop,
indicating a divan in one corner of the room.

"I brought no letter of introduction other than
that from Doctor Hamilton, which I sent you,"
Kimberly began as the archbishop seated himself.

"Surely, you did not consider even Doctor
Hamilton's note necessary," returned the archbishop,
while his secretary withdrew.  "Your name and
that of your family have been familiar to me for
many years.  And I fear those of my people who
venture in upon you with their petitions do not
always bring letters."

"You have occupied this see for many years,"
suggested Kimberly in compliment.

"As priest and bishop I have lived in this diocese
more than forty years.  It seems a long time.  Yet
the name of Kimberly was very old here when I
came, and without ever meeting one of your family,
I have heard much of you all since.  So if there
were no other reason, I should welcome your call
as an opportunity to tell you how grateful I am,
and the charities of the archdiocese are, for your
repeated generosities.  You know we are not
blessed among our own people with many benefactors
of large means.  And the calls come upon
us with surprising frequency."

"My father," responded Kimberly, "who was
more of a philosopher than a merchant,
impressed me very early with the truth that your
church was a bulwark of social order--one which
to that extent laid all thoughtful men under a
debt to it."

"You are a man of wide interests, Mr. Kimberly."

"The country grows too fast, your grace.
There seems no escape from expansion."

"Yet you find time for all of your work?"

Kimberly made a deprecatory gesture.  "My
chief affair is to find men to do my work for me.
Personally, I am fairly free."

"From all save responsibility, perhaps.  I
know how hard it is to delegate that.  And you
give all of your energy to business.  You have
no family?"

"No, and this brings me to the object of my
visit."  Kimberly paused a moment.  "I shall
soon enter into marriage."

"Ah, I see!"

"And the subject is a difficult one to lay before
your grace."

The archbishop saw an indefinable embarrassment
in his visitor's manner and raised his thin
hand.  "Then it has every claim to sympathetic
consideration.  Forget for a moment that I am
almost a stranger--I am certainly no stranger to
difficulties.  And do no longer address me
formally.  I said a moment ago that I was glad to
meet you if only to thank you for your responses
to our numerous needs.  But there is another reason.

"When I was a young man, first ordained, my
charge was the little village of Sunbury up in the
lake country.  You may imagine how familiar
the Kimberly estates became to me in my daily
rounds of exercise.  I heard much of your
people.  Some of their households were of my
congregation.  Your mother I never met.  I used
to hear of her as exceedingly frail in health.
Once, at least, I recall seeing her driving.  But
her servants at The Towers were always
instructed not alone to offer me flowers for the
altar but diligently to see that the altar was
generously provided from her gardens and hot-houses.

"I once learned," the archbishop's head drooped
slightly in the reminiscence and his eyes rested full
upon his visitor, "that she was passing through a
dreaded ordeal, concerning which many feared for
her.  It was on a Sunday before mass that the
word came to me.  And at the mass I told my
little flock that the patroness to whom we owed
our constant offering of altar flowers was passing
that morning through the valley of the shadow
of death, and I asked them to pray for her with
me.  You were born on a Sunday, Mr. Kimberly."  Kimberly
did not break the silence and the
archbishop spoke on.  "You see I am quite old enough
myself to be your father.  I remember reading an
account of your baptism."

Kimberly looked keenly into the clear, gray
eyes.  Not a shade of thought in the mind of the
man before him was lost upon his penetration.
"Any recollection of my mother," he said slowly,
"touches me deeply.  To think that you recall her
so beautifully is very grateful to me--as you may
well imagine.  And that was my birthday!  Then
if my mother was, or I have ever been, able to
help you I am sure we are repaid in being so
remembered all these years.  I lost my father and
my mother many years ago----"

He paused.  "It is very pleasant to be remembered,"
he repeated uncertainly, as if collecting
himself.  "I shall never forget what you have
just told me.  And I thank you now for the
prayers you said for my mother when she brought
me into the world.  Your grace," he added
abruptly, "I am greatly perplexed."

"Tell me frankly, how and why."

"I came here with some confidence of getting
what I should ask for.  I am naturally a
confident man.  Yet my assurance deserts me.  It
seems, suddenly, that my mission here is vain,
that my hopes have deluded me--I even ask
myself why I have come.  I could almost say I
am sorry that I have come."

The archbishop lifted his hand to speak.  "Believe
me, it is not other than for good that you
have come," he said.

Kimberly looked at him questioningly.  "I
cannot tell for what good," added the archbishop
as if to say he could not answer the unspoken
question.  "But believe me, you have done
right and not wrong in coming--of that I am
sure.  Tell me, first, what you came to tell me,
what it is in your heart that has brought you here."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXVIII`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXXVIII

.. vspace:: 2

"I must tell you," began Kimberly, "that while
seemingly in a wide authority in directing the
business with which I am connected I am not
always able to do just as I please.  Either voluntarily
or involuntarily, I yield at times to the views
of those associated with me.  If my authority *is*
final, I prefer not to let the fact obtrude itself.
Again, circumstances are at times too strong for
any business man to set his mere personal views
against.  Yielding some years ago to the
representations of my associates I took into our
companies a group of Western factories controlled by
a man whom I distrusted.

"To protect our interests it was necessary to
move, in the premises, in one of two ways.  I
favored the alternative or driving him out of the
business then and there.  There were difficulties
in either direction.  If we ruined him we should
be accused of 'trust methods,' of crushing a
competitor, and should thus incur added public enmity.
On the other hand, I contended if the man were
untrustworthy he would grow more dangerous
with power.  I need hardly explain to an intelligent
man, regardless of his views on trusts, that
any man of integrity, no matter how threatening
or violent a competitor he may be in the beginning,
is a man we welcome as an associate into our
business.  We need him just as he needs
us--but that is aside.  We took the man in----"

"Against your judgment?"

"Against my judgment.  I never met him
until he came East.  My estimates of him were
made wholly on his record, and I knew what is
known to but few--that he had ruined his own
father-in-law, who died a bankrupt directly
through this man's machinations, and without
ever suspecting him.  This seemed to me so
unspeakable, so cannibalistic, that I never needed to
know anything further of the man.  Yet I took
him in, determined only to add a new care in
watching him and still to keep him in my power
so that I could crush him if he ever played false.

"He came to us--and brought his wife.  I knew
the man thoroughly the instant I set eyes on him.
His appearance confirmed my impression.  But I
met his wife, and found in her a woman to
engage respect, homage, and devotion, one with a
charm of manner and person to me unequalled;
with a modesty coupled with spirit and humor that
confounded my ideas of women--a woman, in a
word, like my own mother.  I am keeping
nothing from you----"

"Your confidence is safely bestowed."

"I was moved the moment I saw her.  But
unhappy experiences had checked and changed me
somewhat.  I did not disclose my feelings though
I already knew how she affected me.  If I had
misjudged her husband I would make amends--on
her account.  Then as I watched them the
question came to me--how is he treating her?  I
will make, for her sake, a new judgment of him, I
said.  But I saw him as indifferent to her as if she
did not exist.  I saw him neglect her and go out
of his way to humiliate her with attentions to
women of our circle that were not fit to be her
servants.  I asked myself whether she could be
happy--and I saw that as far as affection was
concerned she sat at a hearthstone of ashes.

"Even her religion--she was a Catholic--with
petty and contemptible persecutions he had
robbed her of.  She was wretched and I knew it
before I let even her suspect my interest.  After
that I vacillated, not knowing what I should do.
I advanced and retreated in a way I never did
before.  But one day--it was an accident--her
ankle turned as she stepped out of her car and as
she fell forward I caught her on my arm.  She
repelled me in an instant.  But from that moment
I determined to win her for my wife."

The archbishop regarded him in silence.

"I am telling you the exact truth.  It would
profit me nothing to deceive you, nor have I ever
deceived myself or her.  She fought my persistence
with all her strength.  I tried to make her see that
I was right and she was wrong, and my best aid
came from her own husband.  I knew it would
be said I was to blame.  But this man never had
made a home in any sense for his wife.  And if it
could be urged that he ever did do so, it was he,
long before I ever saw him, who wrecked it--not
his wife--not I."

"You say she was a Catholic.  Has this poor
child lost her faith?"

Kimberly paused.  "I do not know.  I should
say that whatever her faith was, he robbed her of it."

"Do not say exactly that.  You have said we
must not deceive ourselves and you are right--this
is of first importance.  And for this reason
alone I say, no one can deprive me of my faith
without my consent; if I part with it, I do so
voluntarily."

"I understand, quite.  Whatever I myself
might profess, I feel I should have no difficulty in
practising.  But here is a delicate woman in the
power of a brute.  There is an element of coercion
which should not be lost sight of and it might
worry such a woman out of the possession of her
principles.  However, whatever the case may be,
she does not go to church.  She says she never can.
But some keen unhappiness lies underneath the
reason--if I could explain it I should not be here."

"Has she left her husband?"

"No.  He, after one of his periodical fits of
abuse, and I suspect violence, left her, and not
until he knew he had lost her did he make any
effort to claim her again.  But he had imperilled
her health--it is this that is my chief
anxiety--wrecked her happiness, and made himself
intolerable by his conduct.  She divorced him and is
free forever from his brutality.

"So I have come to you.  I am to make her
my wife--after I had thought never to make any
woman my wife--and for me it is a very great
happiness.  It is a happiness to my brother and my
sister.  Through it, the home and the family which
we believed was fated to die with this generation--my
brother is, unhappily, childless--may yet live.
Can you understand all this?"

"I understand all."

"Help me in some way to reconcile her religious
difficulties, to remove if possible, this source of
her unhappiness.  Is it asking too much?"

The archbishop clasped his hands.  His eyes
fixed slowly upon Kimberly.  "You know, do you
not, that the Catholic Church cannot countenance
the remarriage of a wife while the husband lives."

"I know this.  I have a profound respect for
the principles that restrain the abuses of divorce.
But I am a business man and I know that nothing
is impossible of arrangement when it is right that
it should be arranged.  This, I cannot say too
strongly, is the exceptional case and therefore I
believe there is a way.  If you were to come to
me with a difficult problem within the province
of my affairs as I come to you bringing one within
yours, I should find a means to arrange it--if
the case had merit."

"Unhappily, you bring before me a question in
which neither the least nor the greatest of the
church--neither bishop nor pope--has the slightest
discretionary power.  The indissolubility of
marriage is not a matter of church discipline; it is a
law of divine institution.  Christ's own words
bear no other meaning.  'What God hath joined
together let not man put asunder.'  He declared
that in restoring the indissolubility of marriage he
only reëstablished what was from the beginning,
though Moses because of Jewish hardness of heart
had tolerated a temporary departure.  No
consent that I could give, Mr. Kimberly, to a
marriage such as you purpose, would in the least
alter its status.  I am helpless to relieve either
of you in contracting it.

"It is true that the church in guarding sacredly
the marriage bond is jealous that it shall be a
marriage bond that she undertakes to guard.  If
there should have been an impediment in this first
marriage--but I hardly dare think of it, for the
chances are very slender.  A prohibited degree of
kindred would nullify a marriage.  There is
nothing of this, I take it.  If consent had clearly
been lacking--we cannot hope for that.  If her
husband never had been baptized----"

"What difference would that make?"

"A Christian could not contract marriage with
a pagan--such a union would be null."

"Would a good Catholic enter into such a union?"

"No."

Kimberly shook his head.  "Then she would
not.  If she had been a disgrace to her religion
she might have done it.  If she had been a woman
of less character, less intelligence it might be.
If she had been a worse Catholic," he concluded
with a tinge of bitterness, "she might stand better now."

"Better perhaps, as to present difficulties;
worse as to that character which you have just
paid tribute to; which makes, in part, her charm
as a woman--the charm of any good woman to
a good man.  You cannot have and not have.
When you surrender character a great deal goes with it."

The archbishop's words sounded a knell to
Kimberly's hopes, and his manner as he spoke
reflected the passing of his momentary encouragement.
"There is nothing then that you can do."

"If there be no defect--if this first marriage
was a valid marriage--I am powerless in the
circumstances.  I can do nothing to allow her to
remarry while her husband lives."

Kimberly arose.  "We cannot, of course, *kill*
him," he said quietly.  "And I am sorry," he
added, as if to close the interview, "not to be able
to relieve her mind.  I have made an effort to
lay before you the truth and the merit of the case
as far as she is concerned.  I had hoped by being
absolutely unreserved to invoke successfully
something of that generosity which you find edifying
in others; to find something of that mercy and
tolerance which are always so commendable when
your church is not called on to exercise them."

The archbishop, too, had risen.  The two men
faced each other.  If the elder felt resentment,
none was revealed in his manner or in his answer.
"You said a few moments ago that you could
not always do as you pleased," he began; "I,
too, am one under authority."  His fingers closed
over the cross on his breast.  "All generosity, all
mercy, all tolerance that lie within His law, nothing
could prevent my granting to you, and to less than
you--to the least of those that could ask it.  I
know too much of the misery, the unhappiness of a
woman's life and of the love she gives to man, to
withhold anything within my power to alleviate
her suffering.

"I have wounded you, and you rebuke me with
harsh words.  But do not carry harshness against
me in your heart.  Let us be sure that these words
mean the same thing to both of us.  If generosity
and tolerance are to override a law given by God,
of what use am I?  Why am I here to be
appealed to?  On the other hand, if by generosity or
tolerance you mean patience toward those who
do not recognize the law that binds me, if you
mean hesitancy in judging those whose views and
practices differ from my own, then I have the
right to ask you to grant these qualities to me.

"But if you appeal to the laws and principles of
Catholic truth, they *are* intolerant, because truth
cannot compromise.  My church, which you
rebuke with this intolerance, is the bearer of a
message from God to mankind.  If men already
possessed this message there would be little reason
for the existence of such a church.  The very
reason of her being is to convince men of the
truth of which they are not yet convinced.

"Either she is the divinely commissioned
messenger of God or she is not--and if not, her
pretensions are the most arrogant the world has ever
seen and her authority is the cruelest mockery.
And so you view the church, so the world views
it--this I well know.  It is painful sometimes,
it is at this moment, to insist upon a law that I
have no power to set aside--but to do less would
be simply a betrayal of my trust.  And if this
were the price of what you term 'tolerance,' I
must rest with my church under the stigmas you
put upon us."

Kimberly's anger rose rather than abated with
the archbishop's words.  "Of course," he
retorted without trying to conceal his anger, "it
makes a difference who seeks relief.  Your church
can find no relief for a helpless woman.  As I
remember, you accommodated Napoleon quickly
enough."

"Certain unworthy ecclesiastics of my church,
constituting an ecclesiastical court, pretended to
find his marriage with Josephine invalid; the church
never confirmed their verdict.  Thirteen of its
cardinals suffered Napoleon's penalties because of
their protest against his remarriage.  Let us
parallel the case.  Suppose I could offer to join with
you in a conspiracy.  Suppose we should assure
this suffering soul that she is free to remarry.
Assume that I could make myself a party to
deceiving her--would you be party with me, to it?
Do I mistake, if I believe you could not conspire
in such a baseness?"

"I do not deal in deceptions."

"Do you admire Napoleon's methods?"

"Not all of them."

"Let us, then, Mr. Kimberly, bear our burdens
without invoking his duplicity."

"We can do that, your grace," answered
Kimberly coldly.  "But we shall also be obliged to
bear them without relief from where we had the
most right to look for it.  It was not for myself
that I came to you.  I sought to restore to your
church one who has been driven from it by a
wretch.  I should have been better advised; I
was too hopeful.  Your policy is, as it always
has been, hopelessly fixed and arbitrary.  You
encourage those who heap upon you the greatest
abuse and contempt and drive from your doors
those disposed to meet you upon any reasonable
composition of a difficulty.  I should only wound
you if I attempted to answer your last rebuke."

"You are going----"

"Yes."

"And you go with bitterness.  Believe me, it is
not pleasant to be without the approbation of the
well-disposed who think and believe differently
from ourselves.  But if as Catholics we regard it
a privilege to possess the truth we must be
prepared to pay the price it exacts.  The world will
always think us wrong, a peculiar people and with
principles beyond its comprehension.  We
cannot help it.  It has always been so, it always
must be so.  Good-by."

"Good-by."

"If dividing a burden lightens it, remember you
have three now to bear yours instead of two.  I
shall not forget either of you in my prayers,
certainly not this dear soul of whom you have told
me.  This is my poor offering to you and to her
for all you have done for those that come to you
in my name."





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.. _`CHAPTER XXXIX`:

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   CHAPTER XXXIX

.. vspace:: 2

Following the visit to the archbishop,
McCrea, who had been on nettles to get hold
of Kimberly for a trip of inspection, whisked him
away for two days among the seaboard refineries.

Instead, however, of the two days planned by
McCrea, the inspection kept Kimberly, much to
his annoyance, for three days.  The date set for
Grace's fête found him still inspecting, but growing
hourly more unmanageable, and before breakfast
was over on the third morning McCrea began to
feel the violence of Kimberly's protests.

By the most ingenious activity on the part of
the alert McCrea and his powerful railroad friends
the day's programme for the party was hastened
to completion and the indignant magnate was
returned by train to Second Lake in time for dinner.

He drove home by way of Cedar Point, and Alice,
who had been constantly in touch with him on the
telephone, felt the elation of his presence when she
saw him alight from his car and walk across the
terrace to where she and Fritzie, dressed for the
evening, were feeding the goldfish.

Kimberly took her hands as she ran forward to
meet him.  "I thought you were never coming!"
she exclaimed.

"For a while I thought so myself."

"And you saw the archbishop?" she murmured
eagerly.  "He could do nothing?"

He regarded her with affection.  "I had set my
heart on bringing back good news."

"I knew there was no chance," said Alice as
if to anticipate a failure.  "But it was like you
to try.  You are always doing unpleasant things
for me."

He saw the disappointment under her cheerfulness.
"And though I did fail--you love me just
the same?"

She looked into his searching eyes simply.  "Always."

"And we marry two weeks from to-night?"

"Two weeks from to-night," she answered,
smiling still, but with a tremor in her steady voice.
Then she clasped her hands.

"What is it?" he asked.

Standing in the sunset before him--and he
always remembered her as she stood then--Kimberly
saw in her eyes the fires of the devotion he
had lighted.  "I hope," she whispered, "I can
make you happy."

"You would make a stone happy," he murmured,
breathing the fragrance of her being as
she looked up at him.

It was evening when he saw her again and he
stood with Dolly and Imogene who were receiving.

The night was warm and the guests sought the
lawns, the garden, and the groves.  When a horn
blown across the terrace announced dancing, slight
and graceful women, whose draperies revealed mere
delicate outlines of breathing creatures, came like
fairies out of the night.  The ballroom, in
candle-light, was cool, and only the ceiling frescoes,
artfully heightened by lights diffused under ropes of
roses, were brighter than the rest of the room.

As the last guests arrived from town--Cready
Hamilton and his wife with Doctor Hamilton and
the Brysons--Kimberly walked into the ballroom.
He caught Alice's eye and made his way toward her.

She smiled as he asked for a dance.  "Do you
realize," said he as she rose, "that this is your
first--and your last--dance at The Towers as a guest?
Next time you will be hostess--won't you?"

A sound of breaking glass crashing above the
music of the violins took Alice's answer from her
lips.  Every one started.  Women looked
questioningly at the men.  Alice shrank to Kimberly's
side.  "Merciful Heaven!" she whispered, "what
was that?"

He answered lightly.  "Something has smashed.
Whatever it is, it is of no consequence."

The music continuing without interruption
reassured the timid.  There was no sequence to
the alarming sound, the flow of conversation
reasserted itself and in a moment the incident
was forgotten.

But Kimberly perceived by Alice's pallor that
she was upset.  "Come out into the air," he said,
"for a moment."

"But don't you want to see what it was?"

"Some one else will do that; come."

She clung to his arm as they passed through an
open door.  "You don't seem just well, dearie,"
he said, taking her hand within his own.  "Let
us sit down."

He gave her a chair.  She sank into it, supporting
her head on her other hand.  "I haven't been quite
well for a day or two, Robert.  I feel very strange."

Kimberly with his handkerchief wiped the
dampness from her forehead.  Her distress
increased and he realized that she was ill.  "Alice,
let me take you upstairs a moment.  Perhaps you
need a restorative."

The expression on her face alarmed him.  They
rose just as Dolly hastened past.  "Oh, you are
here!" she cried, seeing Kimberly.  "Why, what
is the matter with Alice?"

Alice herself answered.  "A faintness, dear,"
she said with an effort.  "I think that awful
crash startled me.  What was it?"

Dolly leaned forward with a suppressed whisper.
"Don't mention it!  Robert, the Dutch mirror in
the dining-room has fallen.  It smashed a whole
tableful of glass.  The servants are frightened to
death."

"No one was hurt?" said Kimberly.

"Fortunately no one.  I must find Imogene."

She hurried on.  Alice asked Kimberly to take
her back to the ballroom.  He urged her to go
upstairs and lie down for a moment.

The music for the dance was still coming from
within and against Kimberly's protest Alice
insisted on going back.  He gave way and led her
out upon the floor.  For a few measures, with a
determined effort, she followed him.  Then she
glided mechanically on, supported only by
Kimberly and leaning with increasing weakness upon
his arm.

When he spoke to her, her answers were vague,
her words almost incoherent.  "Take me away,
Robert," she whispered, "I am faint."

He led her quietly from the floor and assisted
her up a flight of stairs to his mother's
apartment.  There he helped her to lie down on a
couch.  Annie was hurriedly summoned.  A
second maid was sent in haste for Doctor Hamilton
and Dolly.

Alice could no longer answer Kimberly's
questions as he knelt.  She lay still with her eyes
closed.  Her respiration was hardly perceptible
and her hands had grown cold.  It was only
when Kimberly anxiously kissed her that a faint
smile overspread her tired face.  In another
moment she was unconscious.





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.. _`CHAPTER XL`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XL

.. vspace:: 2

When Hamilton hastily entered the room,
Annie, frightened and helpless, knelt
beside her mistress, chafing her hands.  On the
opposite side of the couch Kimberly, greatly
disturbed, looked up with relief.

Taking a chair at her side, the doctor lifted
Alice's arm, took her pulse and sat for some time in
silence watching her faint and irregular respiration.

He turned after a moment to Kimberly to learn
the slight details of the attack, and listening,
retracted the lids of Alice's eyes and examined the
pupils.  Reflecting again in silence, he turned her
head gently from side to side and afterward lifted
her arms one after the other to let them fall back
beside her on the couch.

Even these slight efforts to obtain some
knowledge of Alice's condition seemed to Kimberly
disquieting and filled him with apprehension.
The doctor turned to Annie.  "Has your
mistress ever had an experience like this before,
Annie?"

"No, doctor, never.  She has never been in
this way before."

Imogene came hurrying upstairs with Dolly to
learn of Alice's condition.  They looked upon her
unconsciousness with fear and asked whispered
questions that intensified Kimberly's uneasiness.

"Do you think we could take her home, doctor?"
asked Annie, timidly.

The doctor paused.  "I don't think we will
try it to-night, Annie.  It is quite possible for her
to remain here, isn't it?" he asked, looking at
Dolly and Kimberly.

"Certainly," returned Dolly.  "I will stay.
Alice can have these rooms and I will take the
blue rooms connecting."

"Then put your mistress to bed at once," said
Hamilton to Annie.

"And telephone home, Annie," suggested Dolly,
"for whatever you need.  I will see the
housekeeper right away about the linen."

Kimberly listened to the concise directions of
the doctor for immediate measures of relief and
followed him mechanically into the hall.  Only
one thought came out of the strange confusion--Alice
was at least under his roof and in his mother's room.

When he returned with the doctor the lights
were low and Alice lay with her head pillowed
on her loosened hair.  The maid and Dolly had
hastened away to complete their arrangements
for the emergency and for a few moments the
two men were alone with their charge.

"Doctor, what do you make of this?" demanded
Kimberly.

Hamilton, without taking his eyes from the sick
woman, answered thoughtfully: "I can hardly tell
until I get at something of the underlying cause.
Bryson will be here in a moment.  We will hear
what he has to say."

Doctor Bryson appeared almost on the word.
Hamilton made way for him at Alice's side and
the two conferred in an undertone.

Bryson asked many questions of Hamilton and
calling for a candle retracted Alice's eyelids to
examine the pupils for reaction to the light.  The
two doctors lost not an unnecessary moment in
deliberation.  Consulting rapidly together,
powerful restoratives were at once prepared and
administered through the circulation.

Reduced to external efforts to strengthen the
vital functions the two medical men worked as
nurses and left nothing undone to overcome
the alarming situation.  Then for an hour they
watched together, closely, the character and
frequency of Alice's pulse and breathing.

To Kimberly the conferences of the two men
seemed unending.  Sometimes they left the room
and were gone a long time.  He walked to a
window to relieve his suspense.  Through the open
sash came the suppressed hum of motors as the
cars, parked below the stables, moved up the hill
to receive departing guests and made their way
down the long, dark avenue to the highway.

On the eastern horizon a dull gray streak crossed
a mirror that lay in the darkness below.  Kimberly
had to look twice to convince himself that
the summer night was already waning.

Annie came into the room and, he was vaguely
conscious, was aiding the doctors in a painstaking
examination of their patient.  Through delicacy
Kimberly withdrew, as they persistently
questioned the maid in the hope of obtaining the
much-needed information concerning her mistress's
previous condition; for what Annie could not supply
of this they knew they must work without.

Plunged in the gloom of his apprehensions, he
saw the doctors coming down the hall toward him
and stopped them.  "Speak before me," he said
with an appeal that was a command.  "You both
know what I have at stake."

The three retired to the library and Kimberly
listened attentively to every phase of the
discussion between the two master clinicians as they
laid their observations before him.  The coma was
undisguisedly a serious matter.  It seemed to them
already ingravescent and, taken in connection with
the other symptoms, was even ominous.  The two
men, without a satisfactory history, and without a
hope of obtaining one from the only available
source--the suffering woman herself--discussed
the case from every side, only to return unwillingly
to the conclusion to which everything pointed--that
a cerebral lesion underlay the attack.

Their words sent a chill to Kimberly's heart.
But the lines of defence were mapped out with
speed and precision; a third eminent man, an
authority on the brain, was to be sent for at once.
Nurses, equal almost in themselves to good
practitioners, were to be called in, and finally
Hamilton and Bryson arranged that either one or the
other should be at the sick-bed every instant to
catch a possible moment of consciousness.

Hamilton himself returned to his patient.
Bryson at the telephone took up the matter of
summoning aid from town, and when he had done
threw himself down for a few hours' sleep.
Kimberly followed Hamilton and returned to Alice's
side.  He saw as he bent over her how the
expression of her face had changed.  It was drawn
with a profound suffering.  Kimberly sitting
noiselessly down took her hand, waiting to be the
first to greet her when she should open her eyes.

.. vspace:: 2

All Second Lake knew within a day or two
of Alice's critical illness.  The third doctor had
come in the morning and he remained for several days.

Hamilton questioned Annie repeatedly during
the period of consultations.  "Try to think,
Annie," he said once, "has your mistress never
at any time complained of her head?"

"Indeed, sir, I cannot remember.  She never
complained about herself at all.  Stop, sir, she
did last summer, too--what am I thinking of?  I
am so confused.  She had a fall one night, sir.  I
found her in her dressing-room unconscious.  Oh,
she was very sick that night.  She told me that
she had fallen and her head had struck the
table--the back of her head.  For days she suffered
terribly.  Could it have been that, do you think?"

"Put your hand to the place on your head
where she complained the pain was."

"How did she happen," Hamilton continued,
when Annie had indicated the region, "to fall
backward in her own room, Annie?"

"She never told me, doctor.  I asked her but
I can't remember what she said.  It was the night
before Mr. MacBirney left Cedar Lodge."

The doctors spent fruitless days in their efforts
to overcome the unconsciousness.  There was no
longer any uncertainty as to the seat of the trouble.
It lay in the brain itself and defied every attempt
to relieve it.  Even a momentary interval of
reason was denied to the dumb sufferer.

Kimberly, on the evening of the third day, had
summoned his medical advisers to his own room
and asked the result of their consultation.  The
frail and eminent man whom Hamilton and
Bryson had brought from town told Kimberly the
story.  He could grasp only the salient points of
what the specialist said: That in a coma such as
they faced it was the diagnosis of the underlying
conditions that was always important.  That this
was often difficult; sometimes, as now, impossible.
That at times they encountered, as now, a case so
obscure as to defy the resources of clinical medicine.
Kimberly asked them their judgment as to the
issue; the prognosis, they could only tell him,
was doubtful, depending wholly upon the gravity
of the apoplectic injury.

The Kimberly family rose to the emergency.
Aware of the crisis that had come, through Alice,
into Robert's life, Imogene and Dolly, on hand
day and night, were mother and sister to him
and to her.  Nowhere in the situation was there
any failure or weakening of support.

Hamilton, undismayed in the face of the physical
catastrophe he had been called upon so unexpectedly
to retrieve, and painfully aware of what
the issue meant to his near and dear friend,
never for an instant relaxed his efforts.

Seconded by his nurses, reinforced by his
counsel and strengthened by Bryson's close
co-operation, Hamilton faced the discouragement
steadily, knowing only too well that the
responsibility must rest, in the end, on him alone.

Absorbed, vigilant, tireless--pouring the
reserve energy of years into the sustained struggle
of the sleepless days and nights--he strove with
every resource of his skill and watched
unremittingly for an instant's abatement of the deadly
lethargy that was crushing the vitality of the
delicate woman before him.

Kimberly, following the slightest details of the
sick-room hours, spent the day and the night at the
bedside or in pacing the long hall.  If he slept
it was for an hour and after leaving orders to
summon him instantly if Alice woke.  They who cared
for her knew what he meant by "waking."  They
knew how long and mutely, sometimes in the day,
sometimes in the silence of the night, he watched
her face for one returning instant of reason.

They knew how when hope burned low in every
other eye it shone always steadily in his.  The
rising of the sun and its setting meant to him only
another day of hope, another night of hope for her;
every concern had passed from him except that
which was centered in the fight for her life.

Considerate as he was to those about him they
feared him, and his instinctive authority made
itself felt more keenly in his silence than in his
words.  The heavy features, the stubborn brow,
the slow, steady look became intensified in the
long, taciturn vigil.  Every day Dolly walked
with him and talked with him.  She made a
bond between him and the world; but she saw
how little the world meant when danger came
between him and the woman he loved.

One evening the nurses told him that Alice was
better.  They hoped for a return of consciousness
and he sat all night waiting for the precious
instant.  The next day while he slept, wearied and
heartsick, Alice sank.  For ten minutes those about
her endured a breathless, ageing suspense that
sapped their energy and strength, until it was
known that the doctor had won the fight and the
weary heart had returned to its faint and labored
beat.  They told Kimberly nothing of it.  When
he awoke he still thought she was better.

When he came into the room he was so hopeful
that he bent over her and fondly called her name.
To his consternation and delight her eyes opened
at the sound of his voice; it seemed as if she were
about to speak.  Then her eyes closed again and
she lay still.  The incident electrified him and he
spoke hopefully of it for hours.  At midnight he
sent Hamilton away, saying he himself was fresh
and would be on duty with the nurse until daylight.

The air was sultry.  Toward morning a
thunder-storm broke violently.  Kimberly walked out
into the hall to throw the belvedere doors open to
the fresh air.  As he turned to go back, his heart
stopped beating.  In the gloom of the darkened
gallery a slender, white figure came from the open
door of the sick-room and Kimberly saw Alice,
with outstretched hands, walking uncertainly
toward him.  He stood quite still and taking her hands
gently as they touched his own he murmured her name.

"Alice!  What is it, darling?"  She opened her
eyes.  Their vacancy pierced his heart.

"Baby is crying," she faltered; "I hear my
baby.  Walter."  Her hands groped pitifully
within his own.  "Walter!  Let me go to her!"

She tried to go on but Kimberly restrained
and held her for a moment trembling in his arms.
"Come with me," he said, leading her slowly back
to her pillow.  "Let us go to her together."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLI`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XLI

.. vspace:: 2

When the sun burst upon The Towers in
the freshness of the morning, Kimberly's
eyes wore another expression.  The pleading of
her words still rang in his ears.  The tears in her
voice had cost him his courage.  Before another
night fell they told him but a slender hope
remained.  He seemed already to have realized it.

After the doctors had spoken and all knew,
Annie crept into Kimberly's room.  His head was
bowed on the table between his arms.  With her
little wet handkerchief and her worn beads crushed
in her hands, she ventured to his side.  Her sobs
aroused him.  "What is it, Annie?"

"Oh, Mr. Kimberly; she is so sick!"

"Yes, Annie."

"Don't you think you should call a priest for her?"

"A priest?"  He opened his eyes as if to collect
his thoughts.

"Oh, yes, a priest, Mr. Kimberly."

"Go yourself for him, Annie."

Tears were streaming down the maid's cheeks.
She held out an ivory crucifix.  "If her eyes should
open, dear Mr. Kimberly, won't you give this to
her?  It is her own."  Kimberly took the crucifix
in silence and as Annie hurried away he buried
his head again in his arms.

The timid young clergyman from the village
responded within half an hour.  Hamilton spoke
kindly to him and explained to him Alice's
condition; for unless consciousness should return
Hamilton knew that nothing could be done.

After trying in vain to speak to her the priest
asked leave to wait in an adjoining room.  His
youthfulness and timidity proved no detriment to
his constancy, for he sat hour after hour relieved
only by Annie's messages and declining to give up.
In the early morning finding there had been no
change he left, asking that he be sent for if
consciousness should return.

With a strength that the doctors marvelled at,
Alice rallied after the bad night.  She so held her
improvement during the day that Hamilton at
nightfall felt she still might live.

While the doctors and the family were at dinner
Kimberly was kneeling upstairs beside Alice.
She lay with her eyes closed, as she had lain
the night she was stricken, but breathing more
quietly.  The racking pain no longer drew her
face.  Kimberly softly spoke her name and bent
over her.  He kissed her parched lips tenderly and
her tired eyes opened.  A convulsion shook him.
It seemed as if she must know him, but his
pleading brought no response.

Then as he looked, the light in her eyes began to
fade.  With a sudden fear he took her in his arms
and called to Annie on the other side of the bed.
The nurse ran for Hamilton.  Annie with a sob
that seemed to pierce Alice's stupor held up the
ivory crucifix and the eyes of her dying mistress
fixed upon it.

Reason for an instant seemed to assert itself.
Alice, her eyes bent upon the crucifix, and trying
to rise, stretched out her hands.  Kimberly,
transfixed, supported her in his arms.  Annie held the
pleading symbol nearer and Alice with a heart-rending
little cry clutched it convulsively and
sank slowly back.





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.. _`CHAPTER XLII`:

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   CHAPTER XLII

.. vspace:: 2

She died in his arms.  In the stillness they
heard her name again and again softly spoken,
as if he still would summon her from the apathy
of death.  They saw him, in their sobbing, wait
undiscouraged for his answer from the lips that
never would answer again.

If he had claimed her in her life he claimed
her doubly in her death; now, at least, she was
altogether his.  He laid her tenderly upon the
pillow and covering her hands, still clasping the
crucifix, in his own hands he knelt with his face
buried in the counterpane.

Day was breaking when he kissed her and rose
to his feet.  When Dolly went to him in the
morning to learn his wishes she found him in his room.
Alice was to lie, he said, with the Kimberlys on the
hill, in the plot reserved for him.  His sister
assented tearfully.  As to the funeral, he asked
Dolly to confer with the village priest.  He directed
that only Annie and her own women should make
Alice ready for the burial and forbade that any
stranger's hand should touch his dead.

She lay in the sunshine, on her pillow, after
Annie had dressed her hair, as if breathing.
Kimberly went in when Annie came for him.  He
saw how the touch of the maid's loving hands had
made for her dead mistress a counterfeit of sleep;
how the calm of the great sleep had already come
upon her, and how death, remembering the suffering
of her womanhood, had restored to her face its
girlish beauty.  Hamilton, who was with him,
followed him into the room.  Kimberly broke the
silence.

"What *is* First Communion, Hamilton?" he asked.

Hamilton shook his head.

"I think," Kimberly said, pausing, "it must be
the expression upon her face now."

During the day he hardly spoke.  Much of the
time he walked in the hall or upon the belvedere
and his silence was respected.  Those of his
household asked one another in turn to talk with
him.  But even his kindness repelled communication.

In the early morning when the white couch had
been placed to receive her for the grave he
returned to the room with Dolly and they stood
beside Alice together.

"This is my wedding day, Dolly.  Did you
remember it?"

"Robert!"

"I tried for once to do better; to treat Alice as
a woman should be treated.  This is my reward--my
wedding day."

He lifted her in his arms like a child and as he
laid her in her coffin looked at her stonily.  "My
bride!  My Alice!"

Dolly burst into tears.  The harshness of his
despair gave way as he bent over her for the last
time and when he spoke again the tenderness of
his voice came back.  "My darling!  With you I
bury every earthly hope; for I take God to witness,
in you I have had all my earthly joy!"  He
walked away and never saw her face again.

The unintelligible service in the church did not
rouse him from his torpor and he was only after
a long time aware of a strange presence on the
altar.  Just at the last he looked up into the
sanctuary.  Little clouds of incense rising from a
swinging thurible framed for an instant the face
of a priest and Kimberly saw it was the archbishop.

The prelate stood before the tabernacle facing
the little church filled with people.  But his eyes
were fixed on the catafalque and his lips were
moving in prayer.  Kimberly watched with a
strange interest the slender, white hand rise in
a benediction over the dead.  He knew it was
the last blessing of her whom he had loved.

Dolly had dreaded the scene at the grave but
there was no scene.  Nor could Kimberly ever
recollect more than the mournful trees, the green
turf, and the slow sinking of a flowered pall into
the earth.  And at the end he heard only the
words of the archbishop, begging that they who
remained might, with her, be one day received
from the emptiness of this life into one that is both
better and lasting.





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.. _`CHAPTER XLIII`:

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   CHAPTER XLIII

.. vspace:: 2

In the evening of the day on which they had
buried Alice, and the family were all at The
Towers, Dolly, after dinner, asked Doctor
Hamilton to walk with her.  Robert Kimberly had dined
upstairs and Hamilton upon leaving Dolly went
up to Kimberly's rooms.

The library door was closed.  Hamilton,
picking up a book in an adjoining room, made a place
under the lamp and sat down to read.  It was late
when Kimberly opened the closed door.  "Do you
want to see me, doctor?" he asked abruptly.

"Not particularly.  I am not sleepy."

Kimberly sat down in the corner of a
davenport.  "Nor am I, doctor.  Nor am I
talkative--you understand, I know."

"I have been reading this pretty little French
story."  Hamilton had the book in his hand.
"Mrs. MacBirney gave it to you.  I have been
thinking how like her it seems--the story
itself--elevated, delicate, refined----"

"It happens to be the only book she ever gave me."

Hamilton looked again at the inscription on the
fly-leaf, and read in Alice's rapid, nervous hand:

"From Alice, To Robert."

"What slight chances," the doctor went on,
"contribute sometimes to our treasures.  You will
always prize this.  And to have known and loved
such a woman--to have been loved by her--so
much does not come into every man's life."

Kimberly was silent.  But Hamilton had come
to talk, and disregarding the steady eyes bent
suspectingly upon him he pursued his thought.  "To
my mind, to have known the love of one woman
is the highest possible privilege that can come
to a man.  And this is the thought I find in this
book.  It is that which pleases me.  What
surprises me in it is the light, cynical view that the
man takes of the responsibility of life itself."

"All sensualists are cynical."

"But how can a man that has loved, or treasures,
as this man professes to treasure, the memory of
a gifted woman remain a sensualist?"

Kimberly shrugged his shoulders.  "Men are
born sensualists.  No one need apologize for being
a sensualist; a man should apologize for being
anything else."

"But no matter what you and I are born, we
die something other."

"You mean, we progress.  Perhaps so.  But
that we progress to any more of respect for man or
for life, I have yet to learn.  We progress from a
moment of innocence to an hour of vanity, and
from an hour of vanity to an eternity of ashes."

"You are quoting from the book."

"It is true."

"She did not believe it true.  She died clinging
to a crucifix."

Kimberly shrank under the surgeon's blade.

"A memory is not vanity," persisted Hamilton.
"And the day some time comes when it embodies
all the claim that life has upon us; but it is none
the less a valid claim.  In this case," the surgeon
held up the book, "Italy and work proved such a claim."

"My work would be merely more money-getting.
I am sickened of all money-getting.  And my Italy
lies to-night--up there."  His eyes rolled toward
the distant hill.  "I wish I were there with her."

"But between the wishing and the reality,
Robert--you surely would not hasten the moment
yourself."

Kimberly made no answer.

"You must think of Alice--what would she
wish you to do?  Promise me," Hamilton, rising,
laid his hand on Kimberly's shoulder, "that
to-night you will not think of yourself alone.  Suicide
is the supreme selfishness--remember your own
words.  There was nothing of selfishness in her.
Tell me, that for to-night, you will think of her."

"That will not be hard to do.  You are very
kind.  Good-night."

In the morning Kimberly sent for Nelson and
later for Charles.  It was to discuss details
concerning their business, which Robert, conferring
with his brother, told him frankly he must now
prepare to take up more actively.  Charles, uneasy,
waited until they had conferred some time and
then bluntly asked the reason for it.

Kimberly gave no explanation beyond what he
had already given to Nelson, that he meant to
take a little rest.  The two worked until Charles,
though Robert was quite fresh, was used up.  He
rose and going to an open window looked out on
the lake, saying that he did not want to work
any longer.

The brothers were so nearly of an age that there
seemed no difference in years between them.
Robert had always done the work; he liked to do
it and always had done it.  To feel that he was
now putting it off, appalled Charles, and he hid
his own depression only because he saw the
mental strain reflected in Robert's drawn features.

Charles, although resolutely leaving the table
and every paper on it, looked loyally back after
a moment to his brother.  "It's mighty good of
you, Bob," he said slowly, "to explain these things
all over again to me.  I ought to know them--I'm
ashamed that I don't.  But, somehow, you always
took the load and I like a brute always let you
take it.  Then you are a lot brainier than I am."

Robert cut him off.  "That simply is not true,
Charlie.  In matter of fact, that man has the most
brains who achieves happiness.  And you have
been supremely happy."

"While you have done the work!"

"Why not?  What else have I been good for?
If I could let you live--if even one of us could
live--why shouldn't I?"

The elder brother turned impulsively.  "Why?
Because you have the right to live, too.  Because
sunshine and bright skies are as much for you as
they are for me."

They were standing at the window together.
Robert heard the feeling in the words.

"Yes," he answered, "I know the world is full
of sunshine, and flowers are always fresh and life
is always young and new hands are always
caressing.  This I well know, and I do not complain.
The bride and the future are always new.  But
Charlie," he laid his hand on his brother's
shoulder, "we can't all play the game of life with the
same counters; some play white but some must
play black.  It's the white for you, the black for
me.  The sun for you, the shadow for me.  Don't
speak; I know, I have chosen it; I know it is my
fault.  I know the opportunities wasted.  I might
have had success, I asked for failure.  But it all
comes back to the same thing--some play the
white, some the black."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLIV`:

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   CHAPTER XLIV

.. vspace:: 2

A second shock within a week at The
Towers found Kimberly still dazed.  In the
confusion of the household Uncle John failed one
morning to answer Francis's greeting.  No word
of complaint had came from him.  He lay as he
had gone to sleep.

Hamilton stood in the room a moment with
Kimberly beside his dead uncle.

"He was an extraordinary man, Robert," said
the surgeon, breaking the silence at last.  "A great
man."

"He asked no compromise with the inevitable,"
responded Kimberly, looking at the stern forehead
and the cruel mouth.  "I don't know"--he added,
turning mechanically away, "perhaps, there is
none."

After the funeral Dolly urged Robert to take
Hamilton to sea and the two men spent a week
together on the yacht.  Between them there existed a
community of mental interest and material
achievement as well as a temperamental attraction.
Hamilton was never the echo of any expression of
thought that he disagreed with.  Yet he was acute
enough to realize that Kimberly's mind worked
more deeply than his own and was by this strongly
drawn to him.

Moreover, to his attractive independence
Hamilton united a tenderness and tact developed by
long work among the suffering--and the suffering,
like children, know their friends.  Kimberly, while
his wound was still bleeding, could talk to
Hamilton more freely than to any one else.

The day after their return to The Towers the
two men were riding together in the deep woods
over toward the Sound when Kimberly spoke for
the first time freely of Alice.  "You know," he
said to Hamilton, "something of the craving of a
boy's imagination.  When we are young we dream
of angels--and we wake to clay.  The imagination
of childhood sets no bounds to its demands,
and poor reality, forced to deliver, is left bankrupt.
From my earliest consciousness my dreams were
of a little girl and I loved and hungered for her.
She was last in my sleeping and first in my
waking thoughts.

"It grew in me, and with me, this pictured
companion of my life.  It was my childish happiness.
Then the time came when she left me and I could
not call her back.  An old teacher rebuked me
once.  'You think,' said he, 'that innocence is
nothing; wait till you have lost it.'

"I believed at last, as year after year slipped
away, that I had created a being of fancy too
lovely to be real.  I never found her--in all the
women I have ever known I never found her
until one night I saw Alice MacBirney.  Dolly
asked me that night if I had seen a ghost.  She
was my dream come true.  Think of what it
means to live to a reality that can surpass the
imagination--Alice was that to me.

"To be possessed of perfect grace; that alone
means so much--and grace was but one of her
natural charms.  I thought I knew how to love
such a woman.  It was all so new to her--our
life here; she was like a child.  I thought my
love would lift me up to her.  I know, too late,
it dragged her down to me."

"You are too harsh.  You did what you believed
right."

"Right?" echoed Kimberly scornfully.  "What
*is* right?  Who knows or cares?  We do what we
please--who does *right*?"

They turned their horses into a bridle-path
toward the village and Kimberly continued to
speak.  "Sometimes I have thought, what possibilities
would lie in moulding a child to your own
ideas of womanhood.  It must be pleasing to
contemplate a girl budding into such a flower as
you have trained her to be.

"But if this be pleasing, think what it is to
find such a girl already in the flower of her
womanhood; to find in her eyes the light that
moves everything best within you; to read in
them the answer to every question that springs
from your heart.  This is to realize the most
powerful of all emotions--the love of man for woman."

The horses stopped on the divide overlooking
the lakes and the sea.  To the left, the village lay
at their feet, and beyond, the red roofs of the
Institute clustered among clumps of green trees.
The sight of the Institute brought to Kimberly's
mind Brother Francis, who, released from his
charge at The Towers, had returned to it.

He had for a time wholly forgotten him.  He
reflected now that after Hamilton's departure the
companionship of Francis might help to relieve his
insupportable loneliness.  The men rode together
past the village and parted when they reached
the lake, Hamilton returning to The Towers and
Kimberly riding south to the Institute to take, if
possible, Brother Francis home with him.  He
expected some objection, but was prepared to
overcome it as he dismounted at the door of the
infirmary and rang.  A tall, shock-haired brother
answered.

"I have come to see Brother Francis."

"You mean Brother Francis, who was at The
Towers?  He has gone, I am sorry to say."

"Where has he gone?"

"Brother Francis has gone to the leper mission
at Molokai."

Kimberly stared at the man: "Molokai!  Francis
gone to Molokai?  What do you mean?"

A wave of amazement darkening Kimberly's
features startled the red-haired brother.  "Who
sent him?" demanded Kimberly angrily.  "Why
was I not notified?  What kind of management
is this?  Where is your Superior?"

"Brother Ambrose is ill.  I, Mr. Kimberly, am
Brother Edgar.  No one sent Brother Francis.
Surely you must know, for years he has wished to
go to the Molokai Mission?  When he was once
more free he renewed his petition.  The day after
it was granted he left to catch the steamer.  He
went to The Towers to find you to say good-by.
They told him you had gone to sea."

Kimberly rode slowly home.  He was unwilling
to admit even to himself how hateful what he
had now heard was to him and how angrily and
inexplicably he resented it.

He had purposed on the day that he made Alice
his wife to give Brother Francis as a foundation for
those higher schools that were the poor Italian's
dream, a sum of money much larger than Francis
had ever conceived of.  It was to have been one of
those gifts the Kimberlys delighted in--of royal
munificence, without ceremony and without the
slightest previous intimation; one of those overwhelming
surprises that gratified the Kimberly pride.

Because it was to have been in ready money
even the securities had previously been converted,
and the tons of gold lay with those other useless
tons that were to have been Alice's on the same
day--in the bank vaults.  And of the two who
were to have been made happy by them, one lay
in her grave and the other with his own hand had
opened the door of his living tomb.

Kimberly in the weariness of living returned to
the empty Towers.  Dolly and her husband had
gone home and Hamilton now returning to town
was to dine with Charles Kimberly.  Robert,
welcoming isolation, went upstairs alone.

His dinner was brought to his room and was
sent down again untasted.  He locked his doors
and sat down to think.  The sounds about the
house which at best barely penetrated the heavy
walls of his apartment died gradually away.  A
clock within the room chiming the hour annoyed
him and he stopped it.  His thoughts ran over
his affairs and the affairs of his brother and his
sister and partners and turned to those in various
measure dependent upon his bounty.

His sense of justice, never wholly obscured,
because rooted in his exorbitant pride, was keenly
alive in this hour of silent reckoning.  No
injustice, however slight, must be left that could be
urged against his memory, and none, he believed,
could now thus be urged.  If there were a shock
on the exchanges at the news of his death, if the
stocks of his companies should be raided, no
harm could come to the companies themselves.
The antidote to all uneasiness lay in the unnecessarily
large cash balances, rooted likewise in the
Kimberly pride, that he kept always in hand for
the unexpected.

His servants, to the least, had been remembered
and he was going over his thought of them when,
with a pang, he reflected that he had completely
forgotten the maid, Annie.  It was a humiliation
to think that of all minor things this could
happen--that the faithful girl who had been closer
than all others to her who was dearest to him
could have been neglected.  However, this could
be trusted to a letter to his brother, and going to
a table he wrote a memorandum of the provisions
he wished made for Annie.

Brother Francis and his years of servitude came
to his mind.  Was there any injustice to this man
in leaving undone what he had fully intended to
do in providing for the new school?  He thought
the subject over long and loosely.  What would
Francis say when he heard?  Could he, stricken
sometime with a revolting disease, ever think of
Kimberly as unjust?

The old fancy of Francis in heaven and Dives
begging for a drop of water returned.  But the
thought of lying for an eternity in hell without a
drop of water was more tolerable than the thought
of this faithful Lazarus' accusing finger pointing to
a tortured Dives who had been in the least matter
unjust.  If there were a hereafter, pride had
something at stake in this, too.

And thus the thought he most hated obtruded
itself unbidden--was there a hereafter?

Alice rose before him.  He hid his face in his
hands.  Could this woman, the very thought of
whom he revered and loved more than life
itself--could she now be mere dissolving clay--or did
she live?  Was it but breathing clay that once had
called into life every good impulse in his nature?

He rose and found himself before his mother's
picture.  How completely he had forgotten his
mother, whose agony had given him life!  He looked
long and tenderly into her eyes.  When he turned
away, dawn was beating at the drawn shades.
The night was gone.  Without even asking what
had swayed him he put his design away.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLV`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XLV

.. vspace:: 2

Kimberly took up the matters of the new
day heavy with thought.  But he sent none
the less immovably for Nelson and the troublesome
codicil for the school was put under immediate
way.  He should feel better for it, he assured
himself, even in hell.  And whether, he reflected, it
should produce any relief there or not, it would
silence criticism.  With his accustomed reticence
he withheld from Nelson the name of the beneficiaries
until the final draught should be ready,
and in the afternoon rode out alone.

McCrea and Cready Hamilton came out later
with the treasurer.  They had brought a messenger
who carried balance sheets, reports, and estimates
to be laid before Kimberly.  He kept his partners
for dinner and talked with them afterward of the
affairs most on their minds.  He told them he
would go over the estimates that night alone and
consult with them in the morning.  The
type-written sheets were spread with some necessary
explanations on his table in the library upstairs
and after his usual directions for their comfort
for the night he excused his associates.

He closed his door when they had gone.  The
table lamp was burning and its heavy shade
shrouded the beamed ceiling and the distant
corners of the sombre room.  But the darkness suited
Kimberly's mood.  He seated himself in a lounging
chair to be alone with his thoughts and sat
motionless for an hour before he moved to the
table and the papers.  The impressive totals of
figures before him failed to evoke any possible
interest; yet the results were sufficient to justify
enthusiasm or, at least, to excite a glow of
satisfaction.  He pushed the reports back and as he
stared into the gloom Alice's deathbed rose before
him.  He heard her sharp little cry, the only cry
during that fortnight of torture.  He saw her grasp
the crucifix from Annie's hand and heard Annie's
answering cry, "Christ, Son of God, have mercy!"

Christ, Son of God!  Suppose it were true?
The thought urged itself.  He walked to a
window and threw it open.  The lake, the copses and
fields lay flooded with moonlight, but his eyes were
set far beyond them.  What if it were true?  He
forced himself back to the lamp and doggedly took
up the figures.

Mechanically he went over and over them.  One
result lost its meaning the moment he passed to
the next and the question that had come upon him
would not down.  It kept knocking disagreeably
and he knew it would not be put away until the
answer was wrung from him.

The night air swept in cool from the lake and
little chills crept over him.  He shook them off
and leaned forward on the table supporting his
head with his hands.  "It is not true," he cried
stubbornly.  There was a savage comfort in the
words.  "It is not true," he muttered.  His
hands tightened and he sat motionless.

His head sank to the table, and supporting it
on his forearm, with the huge typewritten sheets
crumpled in his hands, he gave way to the
exhaustion that overcame him.  "It is not true," he
whispered.  "I never will believe it.  He is not the
Son of God.  There is no God."

Yet he knew even as he lost consciousness that
the answer had not yet come.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLVI`:

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   CHAPTER XLVI

.. vspace:: 2

When Charles came over in the morning,
Robert made a pretence of discussing the
budget with his associates.  It was hardly more
than a pretence.  Figures had palled upon him
and he dragged himself each day to his work by
force of will.

The city offices he ceased to visit.  Every
matter in which his judgment was asked or upon
which his decision was needed was brought to
The Towers.  His horses were left to fret in the
stables and he walked, usually alone, among the
villa hills.

Hamilton, even when he felt he could not
penetrate the loneliness of Kimberly's moods, came
out regularly and Kimberly made him to know
he was welcome.  "It isn't that I want to be
alone," he said one night in apology to the surgeon.
"The only subjects that interest me condemn me
to loneliness.  Charles asked me to meet a Chicago
friend of his last night--and he talked books to
me and pictures!  How can I talk pictures and
books?  McCrea brought out one of our Western
directors the other day," as Kimberly continued
his chin went down to where it sank when matters
seemed hopeless, "and he talked railroads!"

"Go back to your books," urged Hamilton.

"Books are only the sham battles of life."

"Will you forego the recreation of the intellect?"

"Ah!  The intellect.  We train it to bring us
everything the heart can wish.  And when our
fairy responds with its gifts the appetite to enjoy
them is gone.  Hamilton, I am facing an
insupportable question--what shall I do with myself?
Shall I stop or go on?  And if I go on, how?
This is why I am always alone."

"You overlook the simplest solution.  Take up
life again; your difficulties will disappear."

"What life?  The one behind me?  I have
been over that ground.  I should start out very
well--with commendable resolutions to let a
memory guide me.  And I should end--in the old way.
I tell you I will never do it.  There is a short cut
to the end of that road--one I would rather take
at the beginning.  I loathe the thought of what
lies behind me; I know the bitterness of the
flesh."  His hands were stretched upon the table and he
clenched them slowly as he drew them up with
his words, "I never will embrace or endure it again."

"Yet, for the average man," he went on, "only
two roads lie open--Christianity or sensuality--and
I am just the average man.  I cannot calmly
turn back to what I was before I knew her.  She
changed me.  I am different.  Christians, you
know," his voice dropped as if he were musing,
"have a curious notion that baptism fixes an
indelible mark on the soul.  If that is so, Alice was
my baptism."

"Then your choice is already made, Robert."

"Why do you say that?  When I choose I shall
no longer be here.  What I resent is being forced
to choose.  I hate to bow to law.  My life has
been one long contempt for it.  I have set myself
outside every law that ever interfered with my
desires or ambitions.  I have scorned law and
ignored it--and I am punished.  What can a
man do against death?"

"Even so, there is nothing appalling in Christianity.
Merely choose the form best adapted to
your individual needs."

"What would you have me do?  Fill myself with
sounding words and echoing phrases?  I am doing
better than that where I am.  There is only one
essential form of Christianity--you know what
it is.  I tell you I never will bow to a law that is
not made for every man, rich or poor, cultured or
crude, ignorant or learned.  I never will take up
the husks of a 'law adapted to individual
needs.'  That is merely making my own law over again,
and I am leaving that.  I am sick of exploiting
myself.  I despise a law that exploits the individual.
I despise men in religious thought that
exploit themselves and their own doctrines.  I need
wholly another discipline and I shall never bring
myself to embrace it."

"You are closer to it than you think.  Yet, for
my part, I hate to see you lose your individuality--to
let some one else do your thinking for you."

"A part of my individuality I should be gainer
for losing.  A part of it I wish to God some one
had robbed me of long ago.  But I hate to see
you, Hamilton, deceive yourself with phrases.
'Let some one else do your thinking for you,'"
Kimberly echoed, looking contemptuously away.
"If empty words like that were all!"

"You are going a good way, Robert," said the
surgeon, dryly.

"I wish I might go far."

"Parting company with a good many serious
minds--not to say brilliant ones."

"What has their brilliancy ever done for me?
I am tired of this rubbish of writing and words.
Francis was worth libraries.  I esteem what he
did with his life more than I do the written words
of ten thousand.  He fought the real battle."

"Did he win?"

Kimberly's hand shot out.  "If I knew!  If I
knew," he repeated doggedly.  And then more
slowly.  "If I knew--I would follow him."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLVII`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XLVII

.. vspace:: 2

Kimberly no longer concealed from his
family the trend of his thinking nor that
which was to them its serious import.  Dolly came
to him in consternation.  "My dear brother!"
she wept, sitting down beside him.

His arm encircled her.  "Dolly, there is
absolutely nothing to cry about."

"Oh, there is; there is everything.  How can
you do it, Robert?  You are turning your back
on all modern thought."

"But 'modern thought,' Dolly, has nothing
sacred about it.  It is merely present-day thought
and, as such, no better than any other day thought.
Every preposterous thought ever expressed was
modern when it first reached expression.  The
difficulty is that all such 'modern' thought delights
in reversing itself.  It was one thing yesterday and
is wholly another to-day; all that can with
certainty be predicated of it is, that to-morrow it
will be something quite else.  Present day modern
thought holds that what a man believes is of no
moment--what he does is everything.  Four
hundred years ago 'modern' thought announced that
what a man did was of no moment, what he
believed was everything.  Which was right?"

"Well, which was right?" demanded Dolly,
petulantly.  "You seem to be doing the sermonizing."

"If you ask me, I should say neither.  I should
say that what a man believes is vital and what he
does is vital as well.  I know--if my experience
has taught me anything--that what men do will
be to a material degree modified by what they
believe.  It is not I who am sermonizing, Dolly.
Francis often expressed these thoughts.  I have
only weighed them--now they weigh me."

"I don't care what you call it.  Arthur says it
is pure mediævalism."

"Tell Arthur, 'mediævalism' is precisely what
I am leaving.  I am casting off the tatters of
mediæval 'modern' thought.  I am discarding the rags
of paganism to which the modern thought of the
sixteenth century has reduced my generation and
am returning to the most primitive of all religious
precepts--authority.  I am leaving the stony
deserts of agnosticism which 'modern' thought four
hundred years ago pointed out as the promised
land and I am returning to the path trodden by
St. Augustine.  Surely, Dolly, in this there is
nothing appalling for any one unless it is for the
man that has it to do."

Yet Kimberly deferred a step against which
every inclination in his nature fought.  It was only
a persistent impulse, one that refused to be wholly
smothered, that held him to it.  He knew that
the step must be taken or he must do worse, and
the alternative, long pondered, was a repellent one.

Indeed, the alternative of ignoring a deepening
conviction meant, he realized, that he must part
with his self-respect.  He went so far as seriously
to ask himself whether he could not face putting
this away; whether it was not, after all, a
fanciful thing that he might do better without.  He
considered that many men manage to get on very
well in this world without the scruple of self-respect.

But honesty with himself had been too long the
code of his life to allow him to evade an
unanswered question and he forced himself gradually
to the point of returning to the archbishop.
One night he stood again, by appointment, in his
presence.

"I am at fault in not having written you,"
Kimberly said simply.  "It was kind of you to
remember me in my sorrow last summer.  Through
some indecision I failed to write."

"I understand perfectly.  Indeed, you had no
need to write," returned the archbishop.
"Somehow I have felt I should see you again."

"The knot was cruelly cut."

The archbishop paused.  "I have thought of
it all very often since that day on the hill," he
said.  "'Suppose,' I have asked myself, 'he had
been taken instead.  It would have been easier
for him.  But could he really wish it?  Could he,
knowing what she once had suffered, wish that
she be left without him to the mercies of this
world?'"  The archbishop shook his head.  "I
think not.  I think if one were to be taken, you
could not wish it had been you.  That would
have been not better, but worse."

"But she would not have been responsible for
my death.  I am for hers."

"Of that you cannot be certain.  What went
before your coming into her life may have been
much more responsible."

"I am responsible for another death--my own
nephew, you know, committed suicide.  And I
would, before this, have ended my mistakes and
failures," his voice rose in spite of his
suppression "--put myself beyond the possibility of more--but
that she believed what you believe, that Christ
is the Son of God."

The words seemed wrung from him.  "It is
this that has driven me to you.  I am sickened of
strife and success--the life of the senses.  It is
Dead Sea fruit and I have tasted its bitterness.
If I can do nothing to repair what I have already
done, then I am better done with life."

"And do not you, too, believe that Christ is the
Son of God?"

"I do not know what I believe--I believe
nothing.  Convince me that He was the Son of God
and I will kneel to him in the dust."

"My dear son!  It is not I, nor is it another,
that can convince you.  God, alone, extends the
grace of faith.  Have you ever asked for it?"

Kimberly started from his apathy.  "I?"  He
relapsed again into moodiness.  "No."  The
thought moved him to a protest.  "How can I
reach a far-off thing like faith?" he demanded
with angry energy---"a shadowy, impalpable,
evasive, ghostly thing?  How can I reach, how can
I grasp, what I cannot see, what I cannot understand?"

"You can reach it and you can grasp it.  Such
questions spring from the anger of despair;
despair has no part in faith.  Faith is the death of
despair.  From faith springs hope.  It is despair
that pictures faith to you as a far-off thing."

"Whatever it may be, it is not for me.  I have
no hope."

"What brought you to-night?  Can you not see
His grace in forcing you to come against your own
inclination?  His hope has sustained you when
you least suspected it.  It has stayed your hand
from the promptings of despair.  Faith a far-off
thing?  It is at your side, trembling and invisible.
It is within your reach at every moment.  You
have but to put forth your hand to touch it."

Kimberly shook his bowed head.

"Will you stretch forth your hand--will you
touch the hem of His garment?"

Kimberly sat immovable.  "I cannot even
stretch forth a hand."

"Will you let me stretch forth mine?"  His
silence left the archbishop to continue.  "You
have come to me like another Nicodemus, and
with his question, unasked, upon your lips.  You
have done wrong--it is you who accuse yourself,
not I.  Your own words tell me this and they
can spring only from an instinct that has accused
you in your own heart.

"Christianity will teach you your atonement--nothing
else can or will.  You seem to picture
this Christianity as something distant, something
of an unreal, shadowy time and place.  It is not.
It is concrete, clear, distinct, alive, all about you
every day, answering the very questions you have
asked in your loneliness.  It is hidden in the heart
of the servant that waits at your call, locked in the
breast of the man that passes you in the street.  It
is everywhere, unseen, unapprehended about you.
I am going to put it before you.  Stay with me
to-night.  In that room, my own little chapel," the
archbishop rose as he indicated the door, "spend the
time until you are ready to sleep.  You have given
many years to the gratification of yourself.  Give one
hour to-night to the contemplation of God.  May
I tell you my simple faith?  The night before He
suffered, He took bread and blessed and broke it,
and gave it to His disciples.  And He said, in
substance, 'Take and eat of this, for this is my body,
broken for your sins.  And as often as ye shall
do this, do it in commemoration of me.'  And on
these words I ground my faith in this mystery
of His presence; this is why I believe He is here
to-night, and why I leave you with Him in this
tabernacle before you.  If you feel that you have
done wrong, that you want to atone for it, ask
Him to teach you how."

The archbishop opened the chapel door.  In
the darkness of the cool room, the red sanctuary
lamp gleamed above the altar.  The archbishop
knelt for a moment beside his questioner; then
he withdrew, closing the door behind him, and
the silence of the night remained unbroken.

An acolyte, entering in the gray of the early
morning, saw on the last of the kneeling benches
a man resting with bowed head.  In the adjoining
room the archbishop himself had slept, within
call, in his chair.  He entered the chapel and an
assistant robed him to say his mass before his
single auditor.  The service over, he made his
thanksgiving, walked to where the man knelt and,
touching him on the shoulder, the two left the
room together.

.. _`An acolyte, entering in the gray of the early morning, saw on the last of the kneeling benches a man resting with bowed head`:

.. figure:: images/img-428.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: An acolyte, entering in the gray of the early morning, saw on the last of the kneeling benches a man resting with bowed head

   An acolyte, entering in the gray of the early morning, saw on the last of the kneeling benches a man resting with bowed head





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLVIII`:

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   CHAPTER XLVIII

.. vspace:: 2

The apprehension that had long waited upon
Robert Kimberly's intentions weighed upon
his circle.  It was not enough for those about
him to assure themselves that their affairs of
business or of pleasure must move on whether Robert
should determine to move on with them or not.
His aloofness carried with it an uncertainty that
was depressing.

If he were wholly gone it would be one thing; but
to be not gone and not of them was quite another.
When Nelson brought the codicil providing for
the school, satisfactorily framed, Kimberly had
changed his intention and resolved, instead of
incorporating the foundation in his will, to make
immediate provision for an endowment.  When
the details were worked out, Nelson left to bring
his wife home from Paris.  Lottie's first visit was
to Dolly's home, and there she found Imogene
and Fritzie.  She tiptoed in on the surprised
group with a laugh.

They rose in astonishment, but Lottie looked so
trim and charming in her French rig that she
disarmed criticism.  For a moment every one spoke
at once.  Then Dolly's kind heart gave way as
she mentally pronounced Lottie faultless.

"You never looked so well in your life," she
exclaimed with sincerity.  "I declare, Lottie, you
are back to the sprightliness of girlhood.  Paris
certainly agrees with you."

Lottie smiled.  "I have had two great rejuvenators
this year--Paris and a good conscience."

Fritzie could not resist.  "Do they go together,
Lottie?" she asked.

Lottie responded with perfect ease: "Only
when one is still young, dear.  I shouldn't dare
recommend them to mature persons."

"You felt no risk in the matter yourself?"
suggested Fritzie.

"Not in the least," laughed Lottie, pushing
down her slender girdle.  But she was too happy
to quarrel and had returned resolved to have only
friends.  "You must tell me all about poor
Robert."  She turned, as she spoke to Dolly, with a
sudden sympathy in her tender eyes.  "I have
thought so much about his troubles.  And I am
just crazy to see the poor fellow.  What is he doing?"

"He is in town for a few days, just now.  But
he has been away for two months--with the yacht."

"Where?"

"No one knows.  Somewhere along the coast,
I suppose."

"With whom?"

"Alone."

Lottie threw her eyes upward.  "*What* does
he *mean*?  What do *you* all mean by letting him
get into such a rut?  Such isolation; such
loneliness!  He needs to be cheered up, poor fellow.
Dolly, I should think *you* would be frightened to
death----"

"What could I possibly do that I haven't done?"
demanded Dolly.  "No one can do a thing with
Robert when he is set.  I have simply *had* to
give up."

"You *mustn't* give up," protested Lottie
courageously.  "It is just the giving up that ruins
everything.  Personally, *I* am convinced that no
one can long remain insensible to genuine and
sincere sympathy.  And certainly no one could
accuse poor Robert of being unresponsive."

"Certainly not--if you couldn't," retorted
Fritzie.

Lottie turned with amiability.  "Now, Fritzie
dear, you are *not* going to be unkind to me.  I put
myself entirely out of the case.  It is something
we ought all to work for together.  It is our duty,
I think."

She spoke very gently but paused to give the
necessary force to her words.  "Truly, it would
be depressing to *any* one to come back to a gay
circle and find it broken up in the way ours is.
We can't help the past.  Its sorrows belong to it
alone.  We must let the dead bury the dead and
all work together to restore the old spirit when
everybody was happy--don't you feel so, Arthur?"
she asked, making that sudden kind of an appeal
to Arthur De Castro to which it is difficult to
refuse assent.

"Certainly we should.  And I hope you will be
successful, Lottie, in pulling things together."

"Robert is at home now, isn't he?"

"He has been at home a fortnight," returned
Arthur, "but shut up with the new board of
directors all the time.  MacBirney walked the
plank, you know, last fall when Nelson went on
the board."

"I think it was very nice of Robert to confer
such an honor on Nelson," observed Lottie
simply, "and I intend to tell him so.  He is always
doing something for somebody," she continued,
rising to go.  "And I want to see what the
constant kindness he extends to others will do if
extended to him."

"She also wants to see," suggested Fritzie to
Imogene, as Dolly and Arthur walked with Lottie
to the door, "what Paris and a good conscience,
and a more slender figure, will do for him."

"Now, Fritzie!"

"If Robert Kimberly," blurted Fritzie hotly,
"ever takes up again with Lottie Nelson, I'll
never speak to him as long as I live."

"Again?  When did he ever take up with her?"

"I don't care.  You never can tell what a man
will do."

Imogene, less easily moved, only smiled.  "Dolly
entertains the Nelsons to-morrow evening, and
Robert will be asked very particularly to come."

Kimberly did not return home, as was expected,
that night.  At The Towers they had no definite
word as to whether he would be out on the following
day.  Dolly called up the city office but could
only leave a message for him.  As a last resort
she sent a note to The Towers, asking Robert to
join them for the evening in welcoming Lottie.
Her failure to receive an answer before the party
sat down to dinner rather led Dolly to conclude
that they should not see him and she felt no
surprise when a note was handed her while the coffee
was being served.  She tore it open and read:

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: left

"DEAR DOLLY:

"I am just home and have your note.  I am
sorry not to be with you to-night to join in
welcoming the Nelsons.  I send all good wishes to
the little company, but what I have now to tell
you will explain my absence.

"I had already made an appointment before I
learned of your arrangements for the evening.
Father Pauly, the village clergyman, sleeps to-night
at The Towers and I am expecting him as I write.
He does not know of my intention, but before he
leaves I shall ask him to receive me into the
Roman Catholic Church.

.. class:: left

"ROBERT."

.. vspace:: 2

Dolly handed the note to Arthur.  He asked if
he should read it aloud.  She nodded assent.

Fritzie, next morning, crossing the lake with
flowers for Alice, was kneeling at her grave when
Kimberly came up.  She rose hastily but could
not control herself and burst into tears.
Kimberly took her hands as she came to him.  "Dear
Fritzie," he murmured, "*you* haven't forgotten."

"I loved you both, Robert."

They walked down the hill together.  Fritzie
asked questions and Kimberly met her difficulties
one after another.  "What great difference does it
make, Fritzie, whether I work here or elsewhere?  I
want a year, possibly longer, of seclusion--and no
one will bother me at the Islands.  Meantime, in
a year I shall be quite forgotten."

Charles Kimberly was waiting at The Towers
for a conference.  The brothers lunched together
and spent the afternoon in the library.  Dolly
came over as they were parting.  "Is it true,
Robert," she asked piteously, "that you are going
to Molokai?"

"Not for weeks yet, Dolly.  Much remains to
be arranged here."

"To the lepers?"

"Only for a year or two."  He saw the suffering
in her face and bent over her with affectionate
humor.  "I must go somewhere for a while,
Dolly.  You understand, don't you?"

She shook the tears from her long lashes.
"You need not tell me.  Robert, you will never
come back."

He laughed tenderly.  "My heart is divided,
Dolly.  Part of it is here with you who love me;
part of it, you know, is with her.  If I come back,
I shall find you here.  If I do not come back, I
shall find her THERE."

.. vspace:: 2

In a distant ocean and amid the vastness of a
solitude of waters the winter sun shines warm upon
a windward cliff.  From the face of this gigantic
shape, rising half a mile into the air, springs a
tapestry of living green, prodigal with blossoms
and overhanging at intervals a field of flowers.

On the heights of the crumbling peak the wild
goat browses in cool and leafy groves.  In its
grassy chimneys rabbits crouch with listening ears,
and on the sheer face of the precipice a squirrel
halts upon a dizzy vine.  Above its crest a
seabird poises in a majesty of flight, and in the blue
distance a ship sails into a cloudless sky.  This
is Molokai.

At the foot of the mountain the morning sun
strikes upon a lowland, thrust like a tongue of
fire into the cooling sea, and where the lava meets
the wave, breakers beat restlessly.

On one shore of this lowland spit, and under
the brow of the cliff, a handful of white cottages
cluster.  On the opposite shore lies a whitewashed
hamlet brightened by tropical gardens and shaded
with luxuriant trees; it is the leper port.  Near the
sea stands a chapel surmounted by a cross.  Beyond
it a larger and solitary cross marks a second
village--the village of the leper dead.

An island steamer whistled one summer evening
for the port, and a landing boat put out from
the pier.  It was the thirtieth of June.  Three
passengers made ready to disembark, two of them
women, Sisters of St. Francis, who had offered
themselves for the leper mission, and the third
a man, a stranger, who followed them over the
steamer's side and, rearranging their luggage, made
a place for the two women in the stern of the
weather-beaten craft.

It was the close of the day and the sun flowed
in a glory of gold over the sea.  On one edge of the
far horizon a rain cloud drifted.  In the east the
moon was rising full and into a clear sky.  A heavy
swell lifted the boat from the steamer's side.  The
three passengers steadied themselves as they rose
on its crest, and the brown oarsmen, catching the
sweep of the sea, headed for the long line of foam
that crawled upon the blackened rocks.

On the distant beach a black-robed figure
outlined against the evening sky watched with
straining eyes the sweep of the dripping oars and with
arm uplifted seemed to wait with beating heart
upon their stroke for him who was coming.
Along the shore, cripples hastening from the
village crowded the sandy paths toward the pier.
In the west, the steamer was putting out again
upon its course, and between the two the little
boat, a speck upon the waves, made its way
stoutly through the heaving sea.

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center medium

   THE END

.. vspace:: 4

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   TITLES SELECTED FROM
   GROSSET & DUNLAP'S LIST

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center small

   May be had wherever books are sold.  Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list

.. vspace:: 2

THE SIEGE OF THE SEVEN SUITORS.  By Meredith Nicholson.
Illustrated by C. Coles Phillips and Reginald Birch.

Seven suitors vie with each other for the love of a beautiful
girl, and she subjects them to a test that is full of mystery, magic
and sheer amusement.

.. vspace:: 2

THE MAGNET.  By Henry C. Rowland.  Illustrated by Clarence
F. Underwood.

The story of a remarkable courtship involving three pretty
girls on a yacht, a poet-lover in pursuit, and a mix-up in the names
of the girls.

.. vspace:: 2

THE TURN OF THE ROAD.  By Eugenia Brooks Frothingham.

A beautiful young opera singer chooses professional success
instead of love, but comes to a place in life where the call of the
heart is stronger than worldly success.

.. vspace:: 2

SCOTTIE AND HIS LADY.  By Margaret Morse.  Illustrated
by Harold M. Brett.

A young girl whose affections have been blighted is presented
with a Scotch Collie to divert her mind, and the roving adventures
of her pet lead the young mistress into another romance.

.. vspace:: 2

SHEILA VEDDER, By Amelia E. Barr.  Frontispiece by
Harrison Fisher.

A very beautiful romance of the Shetland Islands, with a
handsome, strong willed hero and a lovely girl of Gaelic blood as
heroine.  A sequel to "Jan Vedder's Wife,"

.. vspace:: 2

JOHN WARD, PREACHER.  By Margaret Deland.

The first big success of this much loved American novelist.
It is a powerful portrayal of a young clergyman's attempt to win his
beautiful wife to his own narrow creed.

.. vspace:: 2

THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT.  By Robert W. Service.
Illustrated by Maynard Dixon.

One of the best stories of "Vagabondia" ever written, and
one of the most accurate and picturesque of the stampede of gold
seekers to the Yukon.  The love story embedded in the narrative
is strikingly original.

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center x-large

   The Master's Violin

.. class:: center medium

   By MYRTLE REED

A Love Story with a musical
atmosphere.  A picturesque, old
German virtuoso is the
reverent possessor of a genuine
Cremona.  He consents to take as
his pupil a handsome youth who
proves to have an aptitude for
technique, but not the soul of
the artist.  The youth has led the
happy, careless life of a modern,
well-to-do young American, and
he cannot, with his meagre past,
express the love, the longing, the passion and the
tragedies of life and its happy phases as can the master who
has lived life in all its fulness.  But a girl comes into
his existence, a beautiful bit of human driftwood that
his aunt had taken into her heart and home; and through
his passionate love for her, he learns the lessons that life
has to give--and his soul awakens.

Founded on a fact well known among artists, but not
often recognized or discussed.

.. vspace:: 2

If you have not read "LAVENDER AND OLD LACE" by the
same author, you have a double pleasure in store--for
these two books show Myrtle Reed in her most delightful,
fascinating vein--indeed they may be considered as
masterpieces of compelling interest.

.. vspace:: 4

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   The Prodigal Judge

.. class:: center medium

   By VAUGHAN KESTER

This great novel--probably the most popular book in
this country to-day--is as human as a story from the pen
of that great master of "immortal laughter and immortal
tears," Charles Dickens.

The Prodigal Judge is a shabby outcast, a tavern
hanger-on, a genial wayfarer who tarries longest where the inn
is most hospitable, yet with that suavity, that distinctive
politeness and that saving grace of humor peculiar to the
American man.  He has his own code of morals--very
exalted ones--but honors them in the breach rather than
in the observance.

Clinging to the Judge closer than a brother, is Solomon
Mahaffy--fallible and failing like the rest of us, but with
a sublime capacity for friendship; and closer still, perhaps,
clings little Hannibal, a boy about whose parentage
nothing is known until the end of the story.  Hannibal
is charmed into tolerance of the Judge's picturesque
vices, while Miss Betty, lovely and capricious, is charmed
into placing all her affairs, both material and sentimental,
in the hands of this delightful old vagabond.

The Judge will be a fixed star in the firmament of
fictional characters as surely as David Harum or Col. Sellers.
He is a source of infinite delight, while this story
of Mr. Kester's is one of the finest examples of
American literary craftmanship.

.. vspace:: 4

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   TITLES SELECTED FROM
   GROSSET & DUNLAP'S LIST

.. class:: center small

May be had wherever books are sold.  Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.

.. vspace:: 2

HIS HOUR.  By Elinor Glyn.  Illustrated.

A beautiful blonde Englishwoman visits Russia, and is violently
made love to by a young Russian aristocrat.  A most unique
situation complicates the romance.

.. vspace:: 2

THE GAMBLERS.  By Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow.
Illustrated by C. E. Chambers.

A big, vital treatment of a present day situation wherein men
play for big financial stakes and women flourish on the profits--or
repudiate the methods.

.. vspace:: 2

CHEERFUL AMERICANS.  By Charles Battell Loomis.
Illustrated by Florence Scovel Shinn and others.

A good, wholesome, laughable presentation of some Americans
at home and abroad, on their vacations, and during their hours of
relaxation.

.. vspace:: 2

THE WOMAN OF THE WORLD.  By Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

Clever, original presentations of present day social problems
and the best solutions of them.  A book every girl and woman
should possess.

.. vspace:: 2

THE LIGHT THAT LURES.  By Percy Brebner.
Illustrated.  Handsomely colored wrapper.

A young Southerner who loved Lafayette, goes to France to
aid him during the days of terror, and is lured in a certain direction
by the lovely eyes of a Frenchwoman.

.. vspace:: 2

THE RAMRODDERS.  By Holman Day.  Frontispiece by
Harold Matthews Brett.

A clever, timely story that will make politicians think and will
make women realize the part that politics play--even in their
romances.

.. vspace:: 3

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   *Ask for compete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction*

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