CHAPTER XLIIIIn the evening of the day on which they had buried Alice, and the family were all at The Towers, Dolly, after dinner, asked Doctor Hamilton to walk with her. Robert Kimberly had dined upstairs and Hamilton upon leaving Dolly went up to Kimberly's rooms.The library door was closed. Hamilton, picking up a book in an adjoining room, made a place under the lamp and sat down to read. It was late when Kimberly opened the closed door. "Do you want to see me, doctor?" he asked abruptly."Not particularly. I am not sleepy."Kimberly sat down in the corner of a davenport. "Nor am I, doctor. Nor am I talkative--you understand, I know.""I have been reading this pretty little French story." Hamilton had the book in his hand. "Mrs. MacBirney gave it to you. I have been thinking how like her it seems--the story itself--elevated, delicate, refined----""It happens to be the only book she ever gave me."Hamilton looked again at the inscription on the fly-leaf, and read in Alice's rapid, nervous hand:"From Alice, To Robert.""What slight chances," the doctor went on, "contribute sometimes to our treasures. You will always prize this. And to have known and loved such a woman--to have been loved by her--so much does not come into every man's life."Kimberly was silent. But Hamilton had come to talk, and disregarding the steady eyes bent suspectingly upon him he pursued his thought. "To my mind, to have known the love of one woman is the highest possible privilege that can come to a man. And this is the thought I find in this book. It is that which pleases me. What surprises me in it is the light, cynical view that the man takes of the responsibility of life itself.""All sensualists are cynical.""But how can a man that has loved, or treasures, as this man professes to treasure, the memory of a gifted woman remain a sensualist?"Kimberly shrugged his shoulders. "Men are born sensualists. No one need apologize for being a sensualist; a man should apologize for being anything else.""But no matter what you and I are born, we die something other.""You mean, we progress. Perhaps so. But that we progress to any more of respect for man or for life, I have yet to learn. We progress from a moment of innocence to an hour of vanity, and from an hour of vanity to an eternity of ashes.""You are quoting from the book.""It is true.""She did not believe it true. She died clinging to a crucifix."Kimberly shrank under the surgeon's blade."A memory is not vanity," persisted Hamilton. "And the day some time comes when it embodies all the claim that life has upon us; but it is none the less a valid claim. In this case," the surgeon held up the book, "Italy and work proved such a claim.""My work would be merely more money-getting. I am sickened of all money-getting. And my Italy lies to-night--up there." His eyes rolled toward the distant hill. "I wish I were there with her.""But between the wishing and the reality, Robert--you surely would not hasten the moment yourself."Kimberly made no answer."You must think of Alice--what would she wish you to do? Promise me," Hamilton, rising, laid his hand on Kimberly's shoulder, "that to-night you will not think of yourself alone. Suicide is the supreme selfishness--remember your own words. There was nothing of selfishness in her. Tell me, that for to-night, you will think of her.""That will not be hard to do. You are very kind. Good-night."In the morning Kimberly sent for Nelson and later for Charles. It was to discuss details concerning their business, which Robert, conferring with his brother, told him frankly he must now prepare to take up more actively. Charles, uneasy, waited until they had conferred some time and then bluntly asked the reason for it.Kimberly gave no explanation beyond what he had already given to Nelson, that he meant to take a little rest. The two worked until Charles, though Robert was quite fresh, was used up. He rose and going to an open window looked out on the lake, saying that he did not want to work any longer.The brothers were so nearly of an age that there seemed no difference in years between them. Robert had always done the work; he liked to do it and always had done it. To feel that he was now putting it off, appalled Charles, and he hid his own depression only because he saw the mental strain reflected in Robert's drawn features.Charles, although resolutely leaving the table and every paper on it, looked loyally back after a moment to his brother. "It's mighty good of you, Bob," he said slowly, "to explain these things all over again to me. I ought to know them--I'm ashamed that I don't. But, somehow, you always took the load and I like a brute always let you take it. Then you are a lot brainier than I am."Robert cut him off. "That simply is not true, Charlie. In matter of fact, that man has the most brains who achieves happiness. And you have been supremely happy.""While you have done the work!""Why not? What else have I been good for? If I could let you live--if even one of us could live--why shouldn't I?"The elder brother turned impulsively. "Why? Because you have the right to live, too. Because sunshine and bright skies are as much for you as they are for me."They were standing at the window together. Robert heard the feeling in the words."Yes," he answered, "I know the world is full of sunshine, and flowers are always fresh and life is always young and new hands are always caressing. This I well know, and I do not complain. The bride and the future are always new. But Charlie," he laid his hand on his brother's shoulder, "we can't all play the game of life with the same counters; some play white but some must play black. It's the white for you, the black for me. The sun for you, the shadow for me. Don't speak; I know, I have chosen it; I know it is my fault. I know the opportunities wasted. I might have had success, I asked for failure. But it all comes back to the same thing--some play the white, some the black."CHAPTER XLIVA second shock within a week at The Towers found Kimberly still dazed. In the confusion of the household Uncle John failed one morning to answer Francis's greeting. No word of complaint had came from him. He lay as he had gone to sleep.Hamilton stood in the room a moment with Kimberly beside his dead uncle."He was an extraordinary man, Robert," said the surgeon, breaking the silence at last. "A great man.""He asked no compromise with the inevitable," responded Kimberly, looking at the stern forehead and the cruel mouth. "I don't know"--he added, turning mechanically away, "perhaps, there is none."After the funeral Dolly urged Robert to take Hamilton to sea and the two men spent a week together on the yacht. Between them there existed a community of mental interest and material achievement as well as a temperamental attraction. Hamilton was never the echo of any expression of thought that he disagreed with. Yet he was acute enough to realize that Kimberly's mind worked more deeply than his own and was by this strongly drawn to him.Moreover, to his attractive independence Hamilton united a tenderness and tact developed by long work among the suffering--and the suffering, like children, know their friends. Kimberly, while his wound was still bleeding, could talk to Hamilton more freely than to any one else.The day after their return to The Towers the two men were riding together in the deep woods over toward the Sound when Kimberly spoke for the first time freely of Alice. "You know," he said to Hamilton, "something of the craving of a boy's imagination. When we are young we dream of angels--and we wake to clay. The imagination of childhood sets no bounds to its demands, and poor reality, forced to deliver, is left bankrupt. From my earliest consciousness my dreams were of a little girl and I loved and hungered for her. She was last in my sleeping and first in my waking thoughts."It grew in me, and with me, this pictured companion of my life. It was my childish happiness. Then the time came when she left me and I could not call her back. An old teacher rebuked me once. 'You think,' said he, 'that innocence is nothing; wait till you have lost it.'"I believed at last, as year after year slipped away, that I had created a being of fancy too lovely to be real. I never found her--in all the women I have ever known I never found her until one night I saw Alice MacBirney. Dolly asked me that night if I had seen a ghost. She was my dream come true. Think of what it means to live to a reality that can surpass the imagination--Alice was that to me."To be possessed of perfect grace; that alone means so much--and grace was but one of her natural charms. I thought I knew how to love such a woman. It was all so new to her--our life here; she was like a child. I thought my love would lift me up to her. I know, too late, it dragged her down to me.""You are too harsh. You did what you believed right.""Right?" echoed Kimberly scornfully. "Whatisright? Who knows or cares? We do what we please--who doesright?"They turned their horses into a bridle-path toward the village and Kimberly continued to speak. "Sometimes I have thought, what possibilities would lie in moulding a child to your own ideas of womanhood. It must be pleasing to contemplate a girl budding into such a flower as you have trained her to be."But if this be pleasing, think what it is to find such a girl already in the flower of her womanhood; to find in her eyes the light that moves everything best within you; to read in them the answer to every question that springs from your heart. This is to realize the most powerful of all emotions--the love of man for woman."The horses stopped on the divide overlooking the lakes and the sea. To the left, the village lay at their feet, and beyond, the red roofs of the Institute clustered among clumps of green trees. The sight of the Institute brought to Kimberly's mind Brother Francis, who, released from his charge at The Towers, had returned to it.He had for a time wholly forgotten him. He reflected now that after Hamilton's departure the companionship of Francis might help to relieve his insupportable loneliness. The men rode together past the village and parted when they reached the lake, Hamilton returning to The Towers and Kimberly riding south to the Institute to take, if possible, Brother Francis home with him. He expected some objection, but was prepared to overcome it as he dismounted at the door of the infirmary and rang. A tall, shock-haired brother answered."I have come to see Brother Francis.""You mean Brother Francis, who was at The Towers? He has gone, I am sorry to say.""Where has he gone?""Brother Francis has gone to the leper mission at Molokai."Kimberly stared at the man: "Molokai! Francis gone to Molokai? What do you mean?"A wave of amazement darkening Kimberly's features startled the red-haired brother. "Who sent him?" demanded Kimberly angrily. "Why was I not notified? What kind of management is this? Where is your Superior?""Brother Ambrose is ill. I, Mr. Kimberly, am Brother Edgar. No one sent Brother Francis. Surely you must know, for years he has wished to go to the Molokai Mission? When he was once more free he renewed his petition. The day after it was granted he left to catch the steamer. He went to The Towers to find you to say good-by. They told him you had gone to sea."Kimberly rode slowly home. He was unwilling to admit even to himself how hateful what he had now heard was to him and how angrily and inexplicably he resented it.He had purposed on the day that he made Alice his wife to give Brother Francis as a foundation for those higher schools that were the poor Italian's dream, a sum of money much larger than Francis had ever conceived of. It was to have been one of those gifts the Kimberlys delighted in--of royal munificence, without ceremony and without the slightest previous intimation; one of those overwhelming surprises that gratified the Kimberly pride.Because it was to have been in ready money even the securities had previously been converted, and the tons of gold lay with those other useless tons that were to have been Alice's on the same day--in the bank vaults. And of the two who were to have been made happy by them, one lay in her grave and the other with his own hand had opened the door of his living tomb.Kimberly in the weariness of living returned to the empty Towers. Dolly and her husband had gone home and Hamilton now returning to town was to dine with Charles Kimberly. Robert, welcoming isolation, went upstairs alone.His dinner was brought to his room and was sent down again untasted. He locked his doors and sat down to think. The sounds about the house which at best barely penetrated the heavy walls of his apartment died gradually away. A clock within the room chiming the hour annoyed him and he stopped it. His thoughts ran over his affairs and the affairs of his brother and his sister and partners and turned to those in various measure dependent upon his bounty.His sense of justice, never wholly obscured, because rooted in his exorbitant pride, was keenly alive in this hour of silent reckoning. No injustice, however slight, must be left that could be urged against his memory, and none, he believed, could now thus be urged. If there were a shock on the exchanges at the news of his death, if the stocks of his companies should be raided, no harm could come to the companies themselves. The antidote to all uneasiness lay in the unnecessarily large cash balances, rooted likewise in the Kimberly pride, that he kept always in hand for the unexpected.His servants, to the least, had been remembered and he was going over his thought of them when, with a pang, he reflected that he had completely forgotten the maid, Annie. It was a humiliation to think that of all minor things this could happen--that the faithful girl who had been closer than all others to her who was dearest to him could have been neglected. However, this could be trusted to a letter to his brother, and going to a table he wrote a memorandum of the provisions he wished made for Annie.Brother Francis and his years of servitude came to his mind. Was there any injustice to this man in leaving undone what he had fully intended to do in providing for the new school? He thought the subject over long and loosely. What would Francis say when he heard? Could he, stricken sometime with a revolting disease, ever think of Kimberly as unjust?The old fancy of Francis in heaven and Dives begging for a drop of water returned. But the thought of lying for an eternity in hell without a drop of water was more tolerable than the thought of this faithful Lazarus' accusing finger pointing to a tortured Dives who had been in the least matter unjust. If there were a hereafter, pride had something at stake in this, too.And thus the thought he most hated obtruded itself unbidden--was there a hereafter?Alice rose before him. He hid his face in his hands. Could this woman, the very thought of whom he revered and loved more than life itself--could she now be mere dissolving clay--or did she live? Was it but breathing clay that once had called into life every good impulse in his nature?He rose and found himself before his mother's picture. How completely he had forgotten his mother, whose agony had given him life! He looked long and tenderly into her eyes. When he turned away, dawn was beating at the drawn shades. The night was gone. Without even asking what had swayed him he put his design away.CHAPTER XLVKimberly took up the matters of the new day heavy with thought. But he sent none the less immovably for Nelson and the troublesome codicil for the school was put under immediate way. He should feel better for it, he assured himself, even in hell. And whether, he reflected, it should produce any relief there or not, it would silence criticism. With his accustomed reticence he withheld from Nelson the name of the beneficiaries until the final draught should be ready, and in the afternoon rode out alone.McCrea and Cready Hamilton came out later with the treasurer. They had brought a messenger who carried balance sheets, reports, and estimates to be laid before Kimberly. He kept his partners for dinner and talked with them afterward of the affairs most on their minds. He told them he would go over the estimates that night alone and consult with them in the morning. The type-written sheets were spread with some necessary explanations on his table in the library upstairs and after his usual directions for their comfort for the night he excused his associates.He closed his door when they had gone. The table lamp was burning and its heavy shade shrouded the beamed ceiling and the distant corners of the sombre room. But the darkness suited Kimberly's mood. He seated himself in a lounging chair to be alone with his thoughts and sat motionless for an hour before he moved to the table and the papers. The impressive totals of figures before him failed to evoke any possible interest; yet the results were sufficient to justify enthusiasm or, at least, to excite a glow of satisfaction. He pushed the reports back and as he stared into the gloom Alice's deathbed rose before him. He heard her sharp little cry, the only cry during that fortnight of torture. He saw her grasp the crucifix from Annie's hand and heard Annie's answering cry, "Christ, Son of God, have mercy!"Christ, Son of God! Suppose it were true? The thought urged itself. He walked to a window and threw it open. The lake, the copses and fields lay flooded with moonlight, but his eyes were set far beyond them. What if it were true? He forced himself back to the lamp and doggedly took up the figures.Mechanically he went over and over them. One result lost its meaning the moment he passed to the next and the question that had come upon him would not down. It kept knocking disagreeably and he knew it would not be put away until the answer was wrung from him.The night air swept in cool from the lake and little chills crept over him. He shook them off and leaned forward on the table supporting his head with his hands. "It is not true," he cried stubbornly. There was a savage comfort in the words. "It is not true," he muttered. His hands tightened and he sat motionless.His head sank to the table, and supporting it on his forearm, with the huge typewritten sheets crumpled in his hands, he gave way to the exhaustion that overcame him. "It is not true," he whispered. "I never will believe it. He is not the Son of God. There is no God."Yet he knew even as he lost consciousness that the answer had not yet come.CHAPTER XLVIWhen Charles came over in the morning, Robert made a pretence of discussing the budget with his associates. It was hardly more than a pretence. Figures had palled upon him and he dragged himself each day to his work by force of will.The city offices he ceased to visit. Every matter in which his judgment was asked or upon which his decision was needed was brought to The Towers. His horses were left to fret in the stables and he walked, usually alone, among the villa hills.Hamilton, even when he felt he could not penetrate the loneliness of Kimberly's moods, came out regularly and Kimberly made him to know he was welcome. "It isn't that I want to be alone," he said one night in apology to the surgeon. "The only subjects that interest me condemn me to loneliness. Charles asked me to meet a Chicago friend of his last night--and he talked books to me and pictures! How can I talk pictures and books? McCrea brought out one of our Western directors the other day," as Kimberly continued his chin went down to where it sank when matters seemed hopeless, "and he talked railroads!""Go back to your books," urged Hamilton."Books are only the sham battles of life.""Will you forego the recreation of the intellect?""Ah! The intellect. We train it to bring us everything the heart can wish. And when our fairy responds with its gifts the appetite to enjoy them is gone. Hamilton, I am facing an insupportable question--what shall I do with myself? Shall I stop or go on? And if I go on, how? This is why I am always alone.""You overlook the simplest solution. Take up life again; your difficulties will disappear.""What life? The one behind me? I have been over that ground. I should start out very well--with commendable resolutions to let a memory guide me. And I should end--in the old way. I tell you I will never do it. There is a short cut to the end of that road--one I would rather take at the beginning. I loathe the thought of what lies behind me; I know the bitterness of the flesh." His hands were stretched upon the table and he clenched them slowly as he drew them up with his words, "I never will embrace or endure it again.""Yet, for the average man," he went on, "only two roads lie open--Christianity or sensuality--and I am just the average man. I cannot calmly turn back to what I was before I knew her. She changed me. I am different. Christians, you know," his voice dropped as if he were musing, "have a curious notion that baptism fixes an indelible mark on the soul. If that is so, Alice was my baptism.""Then your choice is already made, Robert.""Why do you say that? When I choose I shall no longer be here. What I resent is being forced to choose. I hate to bow to law. My life has been one long contempt for it. I have set myself outside every law that ever interfered with my desires or ambitions. I have scorned law and ignored it--and I am punished. What can a man do against death?""Even so, there is nothing appalling in Christianity. Merely choose the form best adapted to your individual needs.""What would you have me do? Fill myself with sounding words and echoing phrases? I am doing better than that where I am. There is only one essential form of Christianity--you know what it is. I tell you I never will bow to a law that is not made for every man, rich or poor, cultured or crude, ignorant or learned. I never will take up the husks of a 'law adapted to individual needs.' That is merely making my own law over again, and I am leaving that. I am sick of exploiting myself. I despise a law that exploits the individual. I despise men in religious thought that exploit themselves and their own doctrines. I need wholly another discipline and I shall never bring myself to embrace it.""You are closer to it than you think. Yet, for my part, I hate to see you lose your individuality--to let some one else do your thinking for you.""A part of my individuality I should be gainer for losing. A part of it I wish to God some one had robbed me of long ago. But I hate to see you, Hamilton, deceive yourself with phrases. 'Let some one else do your thinking for you,'" Kimberly echoed, looking contemptuously away. "If empty words like that were all!""You are going a good way, Robert," said the surgeon, dryly."I wish I might go far.""Parting company with a good many serious minds--not to say brilliant ones.""What has their brilliancy ever done for me? I am tired of this rubbish of writing and words. Francis was worth libraries. I esteem what he did with his life more than I do the written words of ten thousand. He fought the real battle.""Did he win?"Kimberly's hand shot out. "If I knew! If I knew," he repeated doggedly. And then more slowly. "If I knew--I would follow him."CHAPTER XLVIIKimberly no longer concealed from his family the trend of his thinking nor that which was to them its serious import. Dolly came to him in consternation. "My dear brother!" she wept, sitting down beside him.His arm encircled her. "Dolly, there is absolutely nothing to cry about.""Oh, there is; there is everything. How can you do it, Robert? You are turning your back on all modern thought.""But 'modern thought,' Dolly, has nothing sacred about it. It is merely present-day thought and, as such, no better than any other day thought. Every preposterous thought ever expressed was modern when it first reached expression. The difficulty is that all such 'modern' thought delights in reversing itself. It was one thing yesterday and is wholly another to-day; all that can with certainty be predicated of it is, that to-morrow it will be something quite else. Present day modern thought holds that what a man believes is of no moment--what he does is everything. Four hundred years ago 'modern' thought announced that what a man did was of no moment, what he believed was everything. Which was right?""Well, which was right?" demanded Dolly, petulantly. "You seem to be doing the sermonizing.""If you ask me, I should say neither. I should say that what a man believes is vital and what he does is vital as well. I know--if my experience has taught me anything--that what men do will be to a material degree modified by what they believe. It is not I who am sermonizing, Dolly. Francis often expressed these thoughts. I have only weighed them--now they weigh me.""I don't care what you call it. Arthur says it is pure mediævalism.""Tell Arthur, 'mediævalism' is precisely what I am leaving. I am casting off the tatters of mediæval 'modern' thought. I am discarding the rags of paganism to which the modern thought of the sixteenth century has reduced my generation and am returning to the most primitive of all religious precepts--authority. I am leaving the stony deserts of agnosticism which 'modern' thought four hundred years ago pointed out as the promised land and I am returning to the path trodden by St. Augustine. Surely, Dolly, in this there is nothing appalling for any one unless it is for the man that has it to do."Yet Kimberly deferred a step against which every inclination in his nature fought. It was only a persistent impulse, one that refused to be wholly smothered, that held him to it. He knew that the step must be taken or he must do worse, and the alternative, long pondered, was a repellent one.Indeed, the alternative of ignoring a deepening conviction meant, he realized, that he must part with his self-respect. He went so far as seriously to ask himself whether he could not face putting this away; whether it was not, after all, a fanciful thing that he might do better without. He considered that many men manage to get on very well in this world without the scruple of self-respect.But honesty with himself had been too long the code of his life to allow him to evade an unanswered question and he forced himself gradually to the point of returning to the archbishop. One night he stood again, by appointment, in his presence."I am at fault in not having written you," Kimberly said simply. "It was kind of you to remember me in my sorrow last summer. Through some indecision I failed to write.""I understand perfectly. Indeed, you had no need to write," returned the archbishop. "Somehow I have felt I should see you again.""The knot was cruelly cut."The archbishop paused. "I have thought of it all very often since that day on the hill," he said. "'Suppose,' I have asked myself, 'he had been taken instead. It would have been easier for him. But could he really wish it? Could he, knowing what she once had suffered, wish that she be left without him to the mercies of this world?'" The archbishop shook his head. "I think not. I think if one were to be taken, you could not wish it had been you. That would have been not better, but worse.""But she would not have been responsible for my death. I am for hers.""Of that you cannot be certain. What went before your coming into her life may have been much more responsible.""I am responsible for another death--my own nephew, you know, committed suicide. And I would, before this, have ended my mistakes and failures," his voice rose in spite of his suppression "--put myself beyond the possibility of more--but that she believed what you believe, that Christ is the Son of God."The words seemed wrung from him. "It is this that has driven me to you. I am sickened of strife and success--the life of the senses. It is Dead Sea fruit and I have tasted its bitterness. If I can do nothing to repair what I have already done, then I am better done with life.""And do not you, too, believe that Christ is the Son of God?""I do not know what I believe--I believe nothing. Convince me that He was the Son of God and I will kneel to him in the dust.""My dear son! It is not I, nor is it another, that can convince you. God, alone, extends the grace of faith. Have you ever asked for it?"Kimberly started from his apathy. "I?" He relapsed again into moodiness. "No." The thought moved him to a protest. "How can I reach a far-off thing like faith?" he demanded with angry energy---"a shadowy, impalpable, evasive, ghostly thing? How can I reach, how can I grasp, what I cannot see, what I cannot understand?""You can reach it and you can grasp it. Such questions spring from the anger of despair; despair has no part in faith. Faith is the death of despair. From faith springs hope. It is despair that pictures faith to you as a far-off thing.""Whatever it may be, it is not for me. I have no hope.""What brought you to-night? Can you not see His grace in forcing you to come against your own inclination? His hope has sustained you when you least suspected it. It has stayed your hand from the promptings of despair. Faith a far-off thing? It is at your side, trembling and invisible. It is within your reach at every moment. You have but to put forth your hand to touch it."Kimberly shook his bowed head."Will you stretch forth your hand--will you touch the hem of His garment?"Kimberly sat immovable. "I cannot even stretch forth a hand.""Will you let me stretch forth mine?" His silence left the archbishop to continue. "You have come to me like another Nicodemus, and with his question, unasked, upon your lips. You have done wrong--it is you who accuse yourself, not I. Your own words tell me this and they can spring only from an instinct that has accused you in your own heart."Christianity will teach you your atonement--nothing else can or will. You seem to picture this Christianity as something distant, something of an unreal, shadowy time and place. It is not. It is concrete, clear, distinct, alive, all about you every day, answering the very questions you have asked in your loneliness. It is hidden in the heart of the servant that waits at your call, locked in the breast of the man that passes you in the street. It is everywhere, unseen, unapprehended about you. I am going to put it before you. Stay with me to-night. In that room, my own little chapel," the archbishop rose as he indicated the door, "spend the time until you are ready to sleep. You have given many years to the gratification of yourself. Give one hour to-night to the contemplation of God. May I tell you my simple faith? The night before He suffered, He took bread and blessed and broke it, and gave it to His disciples. And He said, in substance, 'Take and eat of this, for this is my body, broken for your sins. And as often as ye shall do this, do it in commemoration of me.' And on these words I ground my faith in this mystery of His presence; this is why I believe He is here to-night, and why I leave you with Him in this tabernacle before you. If you feel that you have done wrong, that you want to atone for it, ask Him to teach you how."The archbishop opened the chapel door. In the darkness of the cool room, the red sanctuary lamp gleamed above the altar. The archbishop knelt for a moment beside his questioner; then he withdrew, closing the door behind him, and the silence of the night remained unbroken.An acolyte, entering in the gray of the early morning, saw on the last of the kneeling benches a man resting with bowed head. In the adjoining room the archbishop himself had slept, within call, in his chair. He entered the chapel and an assistant robed him to say his mass before his single auditor. The service over, he made his thanksgiving, walked to where the man knelt and, touching him on the shoulder, the two left the room together.[image]An acolyte, entering in the gray of the early morning, saw on the last of the kneeling benches a man resting with bowed headCHAPTER XLVIIIThe apprehension that had long waited upon Robert Kimberly's intentions weighed upon his circle. It was not enough for those about him to assure themselves that their affairs of business or of pleasure must move on whether Robert should determine to move on with them or not. His aloofness carried with it an uncertainty that was depressing.If he were wholly gone it would be one thing; but to be not gone and not of them was quite another. When Nelson brought the codicil providing for the school, satisfactorily framed, Kimberly had changed his intention and resolved, instead of incorporating the foundation in his will, to make immediate provision for an endowment. When the details were worked out, Nelson left to bring his wife home from Paris. Lottie's first visit was to Dolly's home, and there she found Imogene and Fritzie. She tiptoed in on the surprised group with a laugh.They rose in astonishment, but Lottie looked so trim and charming in her French rig that she disarmed criticism. For a moment every one spoke at once. Then Dolly's kind heart gave way as she mentally pronounced Lottie faultless."You never looked so well in your life," she exclaimed with sincerity. "I declare, Lottie, you are back to the sprightliness of girlhood. Paris certainly agrees with you."Lottie smiled. "I have had two great rejuvenators this year--Paris and a good conscience."Fritzie could not resist. "Do they go together, Lottie?" she asked.Lottie responded with perfect ease: "Only when one is still young, dear. I shouldn't dare recommend them to mature persons.""You felt no risk in the matter yourself?" suggested Fritzie."Not in the least," laughed Lottie, pushing down her slender girdle. But she was too happy to quarrel and had returned resolved to have only friends. "You must tell me all about poor Robert." She turned, as she spoke to Dolly, with a sudden sympathy in her tender eyes. "I have thought so much about his troubles. And I am just crazy to see the poor fellow. What is he doing?""He is in town for a few days, just now. But he has been away for two months--with the yacht.""Where?""No one knows. Somewhere along the coast, I suppose.""With whom?""Alone."Lottie threw her eyes upward. "Whatdoes hemean? What doyouall mean by letting him get into such a rut? Such isolation; such loneliness! He needs to be cheered up, poor fellow. Dolly, I should thinkyouwould be frightened to death----""What could I possibly do that I haven't done?" demanded Dolly. "No one can do a thing with Robert when he is set. I have simplyhadto give up.""Youmustn'tgive up," protested Lottie courageously. "It is just the giving up that ruins everything. Personally,Iam convinced that no one can long remain insensible to genuine and sincere sympathy. And certainly no one could accuse poor Robert of being unresponsive.""Certainly not--if you couldn't," retorted Fritzie.Lottie turned with amiability. "Now, Fritzie dear, you arenotgoing to be unkind to me. I put myself entirely out of the case. It is something we ought all to work for together. It is our duty, I think."She spoke very gently but paused to give the necessary force to her words. "Truly, it would be depressing toanyone to come back to a gay circle and find it broken up in the way ours is. We can't help the past. Its sorrows belong to it alone. We must let the dead bury the dead and all work together to restore the old spirit when everybody was happy--don't you feel so, Arthur?" she asked, making that sudden kind of an appeal to Arthur De Castro to which it is difficult to refuse assent."Certainly we should. And I hope you will be successful, Lottie, in pulling things together.""Robert is at home now, isn't he?""He has been at home a fortnight," returned Arthur, "but shut up with the new board of directors all the time. MacBirney walked the plank, you know, last fall when Nelson went on the board.""I think it was very nice of Robert to confer such an honor on Nelson," observed Lottie simply, "and I intend to tell him so. He is always doing something for somebody," she continued, rising to go. "And I want to see what the constant kindness he extends to others will do if extended to him.""She also wants to see," suggested Fritzie to Imogene, as Dolly and Arthur walked with Lottie to the door, "what Paris and a good conscience, and a more slender figure, will do for him.""Now, Fritzie!""If Robert Kimberly," blurted Fritzie hotly, "ever takes up again with Lottie Nelson, I'll never speak to him as long as I live.""Again? When did he ever take up with her?""I don't care. You never can tell what a man will do."Imogene, less easily moved, only smiled. "Dolly entertains the Nelsons to-morrow evening, and Robert will be asked very particularly to come."Kimberly did not return home, as was expected, that night. At The Towers they had no definite word as to whether he would be out on the following day. Dolly called up the city office but could only leave a message for him. As a last resort she sent a note to The Towers, asking Robert to join them for the evening in welcoming Lottie. Her failure to receive an answer before the party sat down to dinner rather led Dolly to conclude that they should not see him and she felt no surprise when a note was handed her while the coffee was being served. She tore it open and read:
CHAPTER XLIII
In the evening of the day on which they had buried Alice, and the family were all at The Towers, Dolly, after dinner, asked Doctor Hamilton to walk with her. Robert Kimberly had dined upstairs and Hamilton upon leaving Dolly went up to Kimberly's rooms.
The library door was closed. Hamilton, picking up a book in an adjoining room, made a place under the lamp and sat down to read. It was late when Kimberly opened the closed door. "Do you want to see me, doctor?" he asked abruptly.
"Not particularly. I am not sleepy."
Kimberly sat down in the corner of a davenport. "Nor am I, doctor. Nor am I talkative--you understand, I know."
"I have been reading this pretty little French story." Hamilton had the book in his hand. "Mrs. MacBirney gave it to you. I have been thinking how like her it seems--the story itself--elevated, delicate, refined----"
"It happens to be the only book she ever gave me."
Hamilton looked again at the inscription on the fly-leaf, and read in Alice's rapid, nervous hand:
"From Alice, To Robert."
"What slight chances," the doctor went on, "contribute sometimes to our treasures. You will always prize this. And to have known and loved such a woman--to have been loved by her--so much does not come into every man's life."
Kimberly was silent. But Hamilton had come to talk, and disregarding the steady eyes bent suspectingly upon him he pursued his thought. "To my mind, to have known the love of one woman is the highest possible privilege that can come to a man. And this is the thought I find in this book. It is that which pleases me. What surprises me in it is the light, cynical view that the man takes of the responsibility of life itself."
"All sensualists are cynical."
"But how can a man that has loved, or treasures, as this man professes to treasure, the memory of a gifted woman remain a sensualist?"
Kimberly shrugged his shoulders. "Men are born sensualists. No one need apologize for being a sensualist; a man should apologize for being anything else."
"But no matter what you and I are born, we die something other."
"You mean, we progress. Perhaps so. But that we progress to any more of respect for man or for life, I have yet to learn. We progress from a moment of innocence to an hour of vanity, and from an hour of vanity to an eternity of ashes."
"You are quoting from the book."
"It is true."
"She did not believe it true. She died clinging to a crucifix."
Kimberly shrank under the surgeon's blade.
"A memory is not vanity," persisted Hamilton. "And the day some time comes when it embodies all the claim that life has upon us; but it is none the less a valid claim. In this case," the surgeon held up the book, "Italy and work proved such a claim."
"My work would be merely more money-getting. I am sickened of all money-getting. And my Italy lies to-night--up there." His eyes rolled toward the distant hill. "I wish I were there with her."
"But between the wishing and the reality, Robert--you surely would not hasten the moment yourself."
Kimberly made no answer.
"You must think of Alice--what would she wish you to do? Promise me," Hamilton, rising, laid his hand on Kimberly's shoulder, "that to-night you will not think of yourself alone. Suicide is the supreme selfishness--remember your own words. There was nothing of selfishness in her. Tell me, that for to-night, you will think of her."
"That will not be hard to do. You are very kind. Good-night."
In the morning Kimberly sent for Nelson and later for Charles. It was to discuss details concerning their business, which Robert, conferring with his brother, told him frankly he must now prepare to take up more actively. Charles, uneasy, waited until they had conferred some time and then bluntly asked the reason for it.
Kimberly gave no explanation beyond what he had already given to Nelson, that he meant to take a little rest. The two worked until Charles, though Robert was quite fresh, was used up. He rose and going to an open window looked out on the lake, saying that he did not want to work any longer.
The brothers were so nearly of an age that there seemed no difference in years between them. Robert had always done the work; he liked to do it and always had done it. To feel that he was now putting it off, appalled Charles, and he hid his own depression only because he saw the mental strain reflected in Robert's drawn features.
Charles, although resolutely leaving the table and every paper on it, looked loyally back after a moment to his brother. "It's mighty good of you, Bob," he said slowly, "to explain these things all over again to me. I ought to know them--I'm ashamed that I don't. But, somehow, you always took the load and I like a brute always let you take it. Then you are a lot brainier than I am."
Robert cut him off. "That simply is not true, Charlie. In matter of fact, that man has the most brains who achieves happiness. And you have been supremely happy."
"While you have done the work!"
"Why not? What else have I been good for? If I could let you live--if even one of us could live--why shouldn't I?"
The elder brother turned impulsively. "Why? Because you have the right to live, too. Because sunshine and bright skies are as much for you as they are for me."
They were standing at the window together. Robert heard the feeling in the words.
"Yes," he answered, "I know the world is full of sunshine, and flowers are always fresh and life is always young and new hands are always caressing. This I well know, and I do not complain. The bride and the future are always new. But Charlie," he laid his hand on his brother's shoulder, "we can't all play the game of life with the same counters; some play white but some must play black. It's the white for you, the black for me. The sun for you, the shadow for me. Don't speak; I know, I have chosen it; I know it is my fault. I know the opportunities wasted. I might have had success, I asked for failure. But it all comes back to the same thing--some play the white, some the black."
CHAPTER XLIV
A second shock within a week at The Towers found Kimberly still dazed. In the confusion of the household Uncle John failed one morning to answer Francis's greeting. No word of complaint had came from him. He lay as he had gone to sleep.
Hamilton stood in the room a moment with Kimberly beside his dead uncle.
"He was an extraordinary man, Robert," said the surgeon, breaking the silence at last. "A great man."
"He asked no compromise with the inevitable," responded Kimberly, looking at the stern forehead and the cruel mouth. "I don't know"--he added, turning mechanically away, "perhaps, there is none."
After the funeral Dolly urged Robert to take Hamilton to sea and the two men spent a week together on the yacht. Between them there existed a community of mental interest and material achievement as well as a temperamental attraction. Hamilton was never the echo of any expression of thought that he disagreed with. Yet he was acute enough to realize that Kimberly's mind worked more deeply than his own and was by this strongly drawn to him.
Moreover, to his attractive independence Hamilton united a tenderness and tact developed by long work among the suffering--and the suffering, like children, know their friends. Kimberly, while his wound was still bleeding, could talk to Hamilton more freely than to any one else.
The day after their return to The Towers the two men were riding together in the deep woods over toward the Sound when Kimberly spoke for the first time freely of Alice. "You know," he said to Hamilton, "something of the craving of a boy's imagination. When we are young we dream of angels--and we wake to clay. The imagination of childhood sets no bounds to its demands, and poor reality, forced to deliver, is left bankrupt. From my earliest consciousness my dreams were of a little girl and I loved and hungered for her. She was last in my sleeping and first in my waking thoughts.
"It grew in me, and with me, this pictured companion of my life. It was my childish happiness. Then the time came when she left me and I could not call her back. An old teacher rebuked me once. 'You think,' said he, 'that innocence is nothing; wait till you have lost it.'
"I believed at last, as year after year slipped away, that I had created a being of fancy too lovely to be real. I never found her--in all the women I have ever known I never found her until one night I saw Alice MacBirney. Dolly asked me that night if I had seen a ghost. She was my dream come true. Think of what it means to live to a reality that can surpass the imagination--Alice was that to me.
"To be possessed of perfect grace; that alone means so much--and grace was but one of her natural charms. I thought I knew how to love such a woman. It was all so new to her--our life here; she was like a child. I thought my love would lift me up to her. I know, too late, it dragged her down to me."
"You are too harsh. You did what you believed right."
"Right?" echoed Kimberly scornfully. "Whatisright? Who knows or cares? We do what we please--who doesright?"
They turned their horses into a bridle-path toward the village and Kimberly continued to speak. "Sometimes I have thought, what possibilities would lie in moulding a child to your own ideas of womanhood. It must be pleasing to contemplate a girl budding into such a flower as you have trained her to be.
"But if this be pleasing, think what it is to find such a girl already in the flower of her womanhood; to find in her eyes the light that moves everything best within you; to read in them the answer to every question that springs from your heart. This is to realize the most powerful of all emotions--the love of man for woman."
The horses stopped on the divide overlooking the lakes and the sea. To the left, the village lay at their feet, and beyond, the red roofs of the Institute clustered among clumps of green trees. The sight of the Institute brought to Kimberly's mind Brother Francis, who, released from his charge at The Towers, had returned to it.
He had for a time wholly forgotten him. He reflected now that after Hamilton's departure the companionship of Francis might help to relieve his insupportable loneliness. The men rode together past the village and parted when they reached the lake, Hamilton returning to The Towers and Kimberly riding south to the Institute to take, if possible, Brother Francis home with him. He expected some objection, but was prepared to overcome it as he dismounted at the door of the infirmary and rang. A tall, shock-haired brother answered.
"I have come to see Brother Francis."
"You mean Brother Francis, who was at The Towers? He has gone, I am sorry to say."
"Where has he gone?"
"Brother Francis has gone to the leper mission at Molokai."
Kimberly stared at the man: "Molokai! Francis gone to Molokai? What do you mean?"
A wave of amazement darkening Kimberly's features startled the red-haired brother. "Who sent him?" demanded Kimberly angrily. "Why was I not notified? What kind of management is this? Where is your Superior?"
"Brother Ambrose is ill. I, Mr. Kimberly, am Brother Edgar. No one sent Brother Francis. Surely you must know, for years he has wished to go to the Molokai Mission? When he was once more free he renewed his petition. The day after it was granted he left to catch the steamer. He went to The Towers to find you to say good-by. They told him you had gone to sea."
Kimberly rode slowly home. He was unwilling to admit even to himself how hateful what he had now heard was to him and how angrily and inexplicably he resented it.
He had purposed on the day that he made Alice his wife to give Brother Francis as a foundation for those higher schools that were the poor Italian's dream, a sum of money much larger than Francis had ever conceived of. It was to have been one of those gifts the Kimberlys delighted in--of royal munificence, without ceremony and without the slightest previous intimation; one of those overwhelming surprises that gratified the Kimberly pride.
Because it was to have been in ready money even the securities had previously been converted, and the tons of gold lay with those other useless tons that were to have been Alice's on the same day--in the bank vaults. And of the two who were to have been made happy by them, one lay in her grave and the other with his own hand had opened the door of his living tomb.
Kimberly in the weariness of living returned to the empty Towers. Dolly and her husband had gone home and Hamilton now returning to town was to dine with Charles Kimberly. Robert, welcoming isolation, went upstairs alone.
His dinner was brought to his room and was sent down again untasted. He locked his doors and sat down to think. The sounds about the house which at best barely penetrated the heavy walls of his apartment died gradually away. A clock within the room chiming the hour annoyed him and he stopped it. His thoughts ran over his affairs and the affairs of his brother and his sister and partners and turned to those in various measure dependent upon his bounty.
His sense of justice, never wholly obscured, because rooted in his exorbitant pride, was keenly alive in this hour of silent reckoning. No injustice, however slight, must be left that could be urged against his memory, and none, he believed, could now thus be urged. If there were a shock on the exchanges at the news of his death, if the stocks of his companies should be raided, no harm could come to the companies themselves. The antidote to all uneasiness lay in the unnecessarily large cash balances, rooted likewise in the Kimberly pride, that he kept always in hand for the unexpected.
His servants, to the least, had been remembered and he was going over his thought of them when, with a pang, he reflected that he had completely forgotten the maid, Annie. It was a humiliation to think that of all minor things this could happen--that the faithful girl who had been closer than all others to her who was dearest to him could have been neglected. However, this could be trusted to a letter to his brother, and going to a table he wrote a memorandum of the provisions he wished made for Annie.
Brother Francis and his years of servitude came to his mind. Was there any injustice to this man in leaving undone what he had fully intended to do in providing for the new school? He thought the subject over long and loosely. What would Francis say when he heard? Could he, stricken sometime with a revolting disease, ever think of Kimberly as unjust?
The old fancy of Francis in heaven and Dives begging for a drop of water returned. But the thought of lying for an eternity in hell without a drop of water was more tolerable than the thought of this faithful Lazarus' accusing finger pointing to a tortured Dives who had been in the least matter unjust. If there were a hereafter, pride had something at stake in this, too.
And thus the thought he most hated obtruded itself unbidden--was there a hereafter?
Alice rose before him. He hid his face in his hands. Could this woman, the very thought of whom he revered and loved more than life itself--could she now be mere dissolving clay--or did she live? Was it but breathing clay that once had called into life every good impulse in his nature?
He rose and found himself before his mother's picture. How completely he had forgotten his mother, whose agony had given him life! He looked long and tenderly into her eyes. When he turned away, dawn was beating at the drawn shades. The night was gone. Without even asking what had swayed him he put his design away.
CHAPTER XLV
Kimberly took up the matters of the new day heavy with thought. But he sent none the less immovably for Nelson and the troublesome codicil for the school was put under immediate way. He should feel better for it, he assured himself, even in hell. And whether, he reflected, it should produce any relief there or not, it would silence criticism. With his accustomed reticence he withheld from Nelson the name of the beneficiaries until the final draught should be ready, and in the afternoon rode out alone.
McCrea and Cready Hamilton came out later with the treasurer. They had brought a messenger who carried balance sheets, reports, and estimates to be laid before Kimberly. He kept his partners for dinner and talked with them afterward of the affairs most on their minds. He told them he would go over the estimates that night alone and consult with them in the morning. The type-written sheets were spread with some necessary explanations on his table in the library upstairs and after his usual directions for their comfort for the night he excused his associates.
He closed his door when they had gone. The table lamp was burning and its heavy shade shrouded the beamed ceiling and the distant corners of the sombre room. But the darkness suited Kimberly's mood. He seated himself in a lounging chair to be alone with his thoughts and sat motionless for an hour before he moved to the table and the papers. The impressive totals of figures before him failed to evoke any possible interest; yet the results were sufficient to justify enthusiasm or, at least, to excite a glow of satisfaction. He pushed the reports back and as he stared into the gloom Alice's deathbed rose before him. He heard her sharp little cry, the only cry during that fortnight of torture. He saw her grasp the crucifix from Annie's hand and heard Annie's answering cry, "Christ, Son of God, have mercy!"
Christ, Son of God! Suppose it were true? The thought urged itself. He walked to a window and threw it open. The lake, the copses and fields lay flooded with moonlight, but his eyes were set far beyond them. What if it were true? He forced himself back to the lamp and doggedly took up the figures.
Mechanically he went over and over them. One result lost its meaning the moment he passed to the next and the question that had come upon him would not down. It kept knocking disagreeably and he knew it would not be put away until the answer was wrung from him.
The night air swept in cool from the lake and little chills crept over him. He shook them off and leaned forward on the table supporting his head with his hands. "It is not true," he cried stubbornly. There was a savage comfort in the words. "It is not true," he muttered. His hands tightened and he sat motionless.
His head sank to the table, and supporting it on his forearm, with the huge typewritten sheets crumpled in his hands, he gave way to the exhaustion that overcame him. "It is not true," he whispered. "I never will believe it. He is not the Son of God. There is no God."
Yet he knew even as he lost consciousness that the answer had not yet come.
CHAPTER XLVI
When Charles came over in the morning, Robert made a pretence of discussing the budget with his associates. It was hardly more than a pretence. Figures had palled upon him and he dragged himself each day to his work by force of will.
The city offices he ceased to visit. Every matter in which his judgment was asked or upon which his decision was needed was brought to The Towers. His horses were left to fret in the stables and he walked, usually alone, among the villa hills.
Hamilton, even when he felt he could not penetrate the loneliness of Kimberly's moods, came out regularly and Kimberly made him to know he was welcome. "It isn't that I want to be alone," he said one night in apology to the surgeon. "The only subjects that interest me condemn me to loneliness. Charles asked me to meet a Chicago friend of his last night--and he talked books to me and pictures! How can I talk pictures and books? McCrea brought out one of our Western directors the other day," as Kimberly continued his chin went down to where it sank when matters seemed hopeless, "and he talked railroads!"
"Go back to your books," urged Hamilton.
"Books are only the sham battles of life."
"Will you forego the recreation of the intellect?"
"Ah! The intellect. We train it to bring us everything the heart can wish. And when our fairy responds with its gifts the appetite to enjoy them is gone. Hamilton, I am facing an insupportable question--what shall I do with myself? Shall I stop or go on? And if I go on, how? This is why I am always alone."
"You overlook the simplest solution. Take up life again; your difficulties will disappear."
"What life? The one behind me? I have been over that ground. I should start out very well--with commendable resolutions to let a memory guide me. And I should end--in the old way. I tell you I will never do it. There is a short cut to the end of that road--one I would rather take at the beginning. I loathe the thought of what lies behind me; I know the bitterness of the flesh." His hands were stretched upon the table and he clenched them slowly as he drew them up with his words, "I never will embrace or endure it again."
"Yet, for the average man," he went on, "only two roads lie open--Christianity or sensuality--and I am just the average man. I cannot calmly turn back to what I was before I knew her. She changed me. I am different. Christians, you know," his voice dropped as if he were musing, "have a curious notion that baptism fixes an indelible mark on the soul. If that is so, Alice was my baptism."
"Then your choice is already made, Robert."
"Why do you say that? When I choose I shall no longer be here. What I resent is being forced to choose. I hate to bow to law. My life has been one long contempt for it. I have set myself outside every law that ever interfered with my desires or ambitions. I have scorned law and ignored it--and I am punished. What can a man do against death?"
"Even so, there is nothing appalling in Christianity. Merely choose the form best adapted to your individual needs."
"What would you have me do? Fill myself with sounding words and echoing phrases? I am doing better than that where I am. There is only one essential form of Christianity--you know what it is. I tell you I never will bow to a law that is not made for every man, rich or poor, cultured or crude, ignorant or learned. I never will take up the husks of a 'law adapted to individual needs.' That is merely making my own law over again, and I am leaving that. I am sick of exploiting myself. I despise a law that exploits the individual. I despise men in religious thought that exploit themselves and their own doctrines. I need wholly another discipline and I shall never bring myself to embrace it."
"You are closer to it than you think. Yet, for my part, I hate to see you lose your individuality--to let some one else do your thinking for you."
"A part of my individuality I should be gainer for losing. A part of it I wish to God some one had robbed me of long ago. But I hate to see you, Hamilton, deceive yourself with phrases. 'Let some one else do your thinking for you,'" Kimberly echoed, looking contemptuously away. "If empty words like that were all!"
"You are going a good way, Robert," said the surgeon, dryly.
"I wish I might go far."
"Parting company with a good many serious minds--not to say brilliant ones."
"What has their brilliancy ever done for me? I am tired of this rubbish of writing and words. Francis was worth libraries. I esteem what he did with his life more than I do the written words of ten thousand. He fought the real battle."
"Did he win?"
Kimberly's hand shot out. "If I knew! If I knew," he repeated doggedly. And then more slowly. "If I knew--I would follow him."
CHAPTER XLVII
Kimberly no longer concealed from his family the trend of his thinking nor that which was to them its serious import. Dolly came to him in consternation. "My dear brother!" she wept, sitting down beside him.
His arm encircled her. "Dolly, there is absolutely nothing to cry about."
"Oh, there is; there is everything. How can you do it, Robert? You are turning your back on all modern thought."
"But 'modern thought,' Dolly, has nothing sacred about it. It is merely present-day thought and, as such, no better than any other day thought. Every preposterous thought ever expressed was modern when it first reached expression. The difficulty is that all such 'modern' thought delights in reversing itself. It was one thing yesterday and is wholly another to-day; all that can with certainty be predicated of it is, that to-morrow it will be something quite else. Present day modern thought holds that what a man believes is of no moment--what he does is everything. Four hundred years ago 'modern' thought announced that what a man did was of no moment, what he believed was everything. Which was right?"
"Well, which was right?" demanded Dolly, petulantly. "You seem to be doing the sermonizing."
"If you ask me, I should say neither. I should say that what a man believes is vital and what he does is vital as well. I know--if my experience has taught me anything--that what men do will be to a material degree modified by what they believe. It is not I who am sermonizing, Dolly. Francis often expressed these thoughts. I have only weighed them--now they weigh me."
"I don't care what you call it. Arthur says it is pure mediævalism."
"Tell Arthur, 'mediævalism' is precisely what I am leaving. I am casting off the tatters of mediæval 'modern' thought. I am discarding the rags of paganism to which the modern thought of the sixteenth century has reduced my generation and am returning to the most primitive of all religious precepts--authority. I am leaving the stony deserts of agnosticism which 'modern' thought four hundred years ago pointed out as the promised land and I am returning to the path trodden by St. Augustine. Surely, Dolly, in this there is nothing appalling for any one unless it is for the man that has it to do."
Yet Kimberly deferred a step against which every inclination in his nature fought. It was only a persistent impulse, one that refused to be wholly smothered, that held him to it. He knew that the step must be taken or he must do worse, and the alternative, long pondered, was a repellent one.
Indeed, the alternative of ignoring a deepening conviction meant, he realized, that he must part with his self-respect. He went so far as seriously to ask himself whether he could not face putting this away; whether it was not, after all, a fanciful thing that he might do better without. He considered that many men manage to get on very well in this world without the scruple of self-respect.
But honesty with himself had been too long the code of his life to allow him to evade an unanswered question and he forced himself gradually to the point of returning to the archbishop. One night he stood again, by appointment, in his presence.
"I am at fault in not having written you," Kimberly said simply. "It was kind of you to remember me in my sorrow last summer. Through some indecision I failed to write."
"I understand perfectly. Indeed, you had no need to write," returned the archbishop. "Somehow I have felt I should see you again."
"The knot was cruelly cut."
The archbishop paused. "I have thought of it all very often since that day on the hill," he said. "'Suppose,' I have asked myself, 'he had been taken instead. It would have been easier for him. But could he really wish it? Could he, knowing what she once had suffered, wish that she be left without him to the mercies of this world?'" The archbishop shook his head. "I think not. I think if one were to be taken, you could not wish it had been you. That would have been not better, but worse."
"But she would not have been responsible for my death. I am for hers."
"Of that you cannot be certain. What went before your coming into her life may have been much more responsible."
"I am responsible for another death--my own nephew, you know, committed suicide. And I would, before this, have ended my mistakes and failures," his voice rose in spite of his suppression "--put myself beyond the possibility of more--but that she believed what you believe, that Christ is the Son of God."
The words seemed wrung from him. "It is this that has driven me to you. I am sickened of strife and success--the life of the senses. It is Dead Sea fruit and I have tasted its bitterness. If I can do nothing to repair what I have already done, then I am better done with life."
"And do not you, too, believe that Christ is the Son of God?"
"I do not know what I believe--I believe nothing. Convince me that He was the Son of God and I will kneel to him in the dust."
"My dear son! It is not I, nor is it another, that can convince you. God, alone, extends the grace of faith. Have you ever asked for it?"
Kimberly started from his apathy. "I?" He relapsed again into moodiness. "No." The thought moved him to a protest. "How can I reach a far-off thing like faith?" he demanded with angry energy---"a shadowy, impalpable, evasive, ghostly thing? How can I reach, how can I grasp, what I cannot see, what I cannot understand?"
"You can reach it and you can grasp it. Such questions spring from the anger of despair; despair has no part in faith. Faith is the death of despair. From faith springs hope. It is despair that pictures faith to you as a far-off thing."
"Whatever it may be, it is not for me. I have no hope."
"What brought you to-night? Can you not see His grace in forcing you to come against your own inclination? His hope has sustained you when you least suspected it. It has stayed your hand from the promptings of despair. Faith a far-off thing? It is at your side, trembling and invisible. It is within your reach at every moment. You have but to put forth your hand to touch it."
Kimberly shook his bowed head.
"Will you stretch forth your hand--will you touch the hem of His garment?"
Kimberly sat immovable. "I cannot even stretch forth a hand."
"Will you let me stretch forth mine?" His silence left the archbishop to continue. "You have come to me like another Nicodemus, and with his question, unasked, upon your lips. You have done wrong--it is you who accuse yourself, not I. Your own words tell me this and they can spring only from an instinct that has accused you in your own heart.
"Christianity will teach you your atonement--nothing else can or will. You seem to picture this Christianity as something distant, something of an unreal, shadowy time and place. It is not. It is concrete, clear, distinct, alive, all about you every day, answering the very questions you have asked in your loneliness. It is hidden in the heart of the servant that waits at your call, locked in the breast of the man that passes you in the street. It is everywhere, unseen, unapprehended about you. I am going to put it before you. Stay with me to-night. In that room, my own little chapel," the archbishop rose as he indicated the door, "spend the time until you are ready to sleep. You have given many years to the gratification of yourself. Give one hour to-night to the contemplation of God. May I tell you my simple faith? The night before He suffered, He took bread and blessed and broke it, and gave it to His disciples. And He said, in substance, 'Take and eat of this, for this is my body, broken for your sins. And as often as ye shall do this, do it in commemoration of me.' And on these words I ground my faith in this mystery of His presence; this is why I believe He is here to-night, and why I leave you with Him in this tabernacle before you. If you feel that you have done wrong, that you want to atone for it, ask Him to teach you how."
The archbishop opened the chapel door. In the darkness of the cool room, the red sanctuary lamp gleamed above the altar. The archbishop knelt for a moment beside his questioner; then he withdrew, closing the door behind him, and the silence of the night remained unbroken.
An acolyte, entering in the gray of the early morning, saw on the last of the kneeling benches a man resting with bowed head. In the adjoining room the archbishop himself had slept, within call, in his chair. He entered the chapel and an assistant robed him to say his mass before his single auditor. The service over, he made his thanksgiving, walked to where the man knelt and, touching him on the shoulder, the two left the room together.
[image]An acolyte, entering in the gray of the early morning, saw on the last of the kneeling benches a man resting with bowed head
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An acolyte, entering in the gray of the early morning, saw on the last of the kneeling benches a man resting with bowed head
CHAPTER XLVIII
The apprehension that had long waited upon Robert Kimberly's intentions weighed upon his circle. It was not enough for those about him to assure themselves that their affairs of business or of pleasure must move on whether Robert should determine to move on with them or not. His aloofness carried with it an uncertainty that was depressing.
If he were wholly gone it would be one thing; but to be not gone and not of them was quite another. When Nelson brought the codicil providing for the school, satisfactorily framed, Kimberly had changed his intention and resolved, instead of incorporating the foundation in his will, to make immediate provision for an endowment. When the details were worked out, Nelson left to bring his wife home from Paris. Lottie's first visit was to Dolly's home, and there she found Imogene and Fritzie. She tiptoed in on the surprised group with a laugh.
They rose in astonishment, but Lottie looked so trim and charming in her French rig that she disarmed criticism. For a moment every one spoke at once. Then Dolly's kind heart gave way as she mentally pronounced Lottie faultless.
"You never looked so well in your life," she exclaimed with sincerity. "I declare, Lottie, you are back to the sprightliness of girlhood. Paris certainly agrees with you."
Lottie smiled. "I have had two great rejuvenators this year--Paris and a good conscience."
Fritzie could not resist. "Do they go together, Lottie?" she asked.
Lottie responded with perfect ease: "Only when one is still young, dear. I shouldn't dare recommend them to mature persons."
"You felt no risk in the matter yourself?" suggested Fritzie.
"Not in the least," laughed Lottie, pushing down her slender girdle. But she was too happy to quarrel and had returned resolved to have only friends. "You must tell me all about poor Robert." She turned, as she spoke to Dolly, with a sudden sympathy in her tender eyes. "I have thought so much about his troubles. And I am just crazy to see the poor fellow. What is he doing?"
"He is in town for a few days, just now. But he has been away for two months--with the yacht."
"Where?"
"No one knows. Somewhere along the coast, I suppose."
"With whom?"
"Alone."
Lottie threw her eyes upward. "Whatdoes hemean? What doyouall mean by letting him get into such a rut? Such isolation; such loneliness! He needs to be cheered up, poor fellow. Dolly, I should thinkyouwould be frightened to death----"
"What could I possibly do that I haven't done?" demanded Dolly. "No one can do a thing with Robert when he is set. I have simplyhadto give up."
"Youmustn'tgive up," protested Lottie courageously. "It is just the giving up that ruins everything. Personally,Iam convinced that no one can long remain insensible to genuine and sincere sympathy. And certainly no one could accuse poor Robert of being unresponsive."
"Certainly not--if you couldn't," retorted Fritzie.
Lottie turned with amiability. "Now, Fritzie dear, you arenotgoing to be unkind to me. I put myself entirely out of the case. It is something we ought all to work for together. It is our duty, I think."
She spoke very gently but paused to give the necessary force to her words. "Truly, it would be depressing toanyone to come back to a gay circle and find it broken up in the way ours is. We can't help the past. Its sorrows belong to it alone. We must let the dead bury the dead and all work together to restore the old spirit when everybody was happy--don't you feel so, Arthur?" she asked, making that sudden kind of an appeal to Arthur De Castro to which it is difficult to refuse assent.
"Certainly we should. And I hope you will be successful, Lottie, in pulling things together."
"Robert is at home now, isn't he?"
"He has been at home a fortnight," returned Arthur, "but shut up with the new board of directors all the time. MacBirney walked the plank, you know, last fall when Nelson went on the board."
"I think it was very nice of Robert to confer such an honor on Nelson," observed Lottie simply, "and I intend to tell him so. He is always doing something for somebody," she continued, rising to go. "And I want to see what the constant kindness he extends to others will do if extended to him."
"She also wants to see," suggested Fritzie to Imogene, as Dolly and Arthur walked with Lottie to the door, "what Paris and a good conscience, and a more slender figure, will do for him."
"Now, Fritzie!"
"If Robert Kimberly," blurted Fritzie hotly, "ever takes up again with Lottie Nelson, I'll never speak to him as long as I live."
"Again? When did he ever take up with her?"
"I don't care. You never can tell what a man will do."
Imogene, less easily moved, only smiled. "Dolly entertains the Nelsons to-morrow evening, and Robert will be asked very particularly to come."
Kimberly did not return home, as was expected, that night. At The Towers they had no definite word as to whether he would be out on the following day. Dolly called up the city office but could only leave a message for him. As a last resort she sent a note to The Towers, asking Robert to join them for the evening in welcoming Lottie. Her failure to receive an answer before the party sat down to dinner rather led Dolly to conclude that they should not see him and she felt no surprise when a note was handed her while the coffee was being served. She tore it open and read: