CHAPTER XXXIIIWhen 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. Whenwecut, 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."CHAPTER XXXIV."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. "Thatnightmare! 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 lovelypineto. 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."[image]She sang for him "Caro Mio Ben"CHAPTER XXXVNot 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 wasen 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 isyouwho 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."CHAPTER XXXVIIn 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."MOST REVEREND AND DEAR ARCHBISHOP:CHAPTER XXXVIIKimberly 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."
CHAPTER XXXIII
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. Whenwecut, 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."
CHAPTER XXXIV.
"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. "Thatnightmare! 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 lovelypineto. 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."
[image]She sang for him "Caro Mio Ben"
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She sang for him "Caro Mio Ben"
CHAPTER XXXV
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 wasen 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 isyouwho 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."
CHAPTER XXXVI
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.
"MOST REVEREND AND DEAR ARCHBISHOP:
CHAPTER XXXVII
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."