CHAPTER XXXVIII"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 authorityisfinal, 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,killhim," 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, theyareintolerant, 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."CHAPTER XXXIXFollowing 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.CHAPTER XLWhen 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.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."CHAPTER XLIWhen 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.CHAPTER XLIIShe 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."WhatisFirst 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.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
"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 authorityisfinal, 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,killhim," 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, theyareintolerant, 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."
CHAPTER XXXIX
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.
CHAPTER XL
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.
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."
CHAPTER XLI
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.
CHAPTER XLII
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.
"WhatisFirst 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.