CHAPTER XOne morning shortly after the MacBirneys had been entertained at The Towers John Kimberly was wheeled into his library where Charles and Robert were waiting for him. Charles leaned against the mantel and his brother stood at a window looking across the lake toward Cedar Point. As Francis left the room Uncle John's eyes followed him. Presently they wandered back with cheerful suspicion toward his nephews, and he laid his good arm on the table as they took chairs near him."Well?" he said lifting his eyebrows and looking blandly from one to the other."Well?" echoed Charles good-naturedly, looking from Uncle John to Robert."Well?" repeated Robert with mildly assumed idiocy, looking from Charles back again to Uncle John.But Uncle John was not to be committed by any resort to his own tactics, and he came back at Charles on the flank. "Get any fish?" he asked, as if assured that Charles would make an effort to deceive him in answering."We sat around for a while without doing a thing, Uncle John. Then they began to strike and I had eight days of the best sport I ever saw on the river,"Uncle John buried his disappointment under a smile. "Good fishing, eh?""Excellent."There was evidently no opening on this subject, and Uncle John tried another tender spot. "Yacht go any better?""McAdams has done wonders with it, Uncle John. She never steamed so well since she was launched.""Cost a pretty penny, eh, Charlie?""That is what pretty pennies are for, isn't it?"Unable to disturb his nephew's peace of mind, Uncle John launched straight into business. "What are you going to do with those fellows?""You mean the MacBirney syndicate? Robert tells me he has concluded to be liberal with them.""He is giving too much, Charlie.""He knows better what the stuff is worth than we do."Uncle John smiled sceptically. "He will give them more than they are worth, I am afraid."Robert said nothing."Perhaps there is a reason for that," suggested Charles.They waited for Robert to speak. He shifted in his chair presently and spoke with some decision. His intonation might have been unpleasant but that the depth and fulness of his voice redeemed it. The best note in his utterance was its open frankness."Uncle John understands this matter just as well as I do," he began, somewhat in protest."We have been over the ground often. These people have been an annoyance to us; this is undeniable. McCrea has complained of them for two years. Through a shift in the cards--this money squeeze--we have them to-day in our hands----"Uncle John's eyes shone and he clasped the fingers of one hand tightly in the other. "That is what I say; trim them!" he whispered eagerly.Robert went on, unmoved: "Let us look at that, too. He wants me to trim them. I have steadily opposed buying them at all. But the rest of you have overruled me. Very good. They know now that they are in our power. They are, one and all, bushwhackers and guerillas. To my mind there isn't a trustworthy man in the crowd--not even MacBirney."They have made selling agreements with McCrea again and again and left him to hold the sack. We can't do business in that way. When we give our word it must be good. They give their word to break it. Whenever we make a selling agreement with such people we get beaten, invariably. They have cut into us on the Missouri River, at St. Paul, even at Chicago--from their Kansas plants. They make poor sugar, but it sells, and even when it won't sell, it demoralizes the trade. Now they are on their knees. They want us to buy to save what they've got invested. At a receiver's sale they would get nothing. But on the other hand Lambert might get the plants. If we tried to bid them in there would be a howl from the Legislature, perhaps."Uncle John was growing moody, for the prey was slipping through his fingers. "It might be better to stand pat," he muttered.Robert paid no attention. "What I propose, and God knows I have explained it before, is this: These people can be trimmed, or they can be satisfied. I say give them eleven millions--six millions cash--three millions preferred and two millions in our common for fifty per cent of their stock instead of sixteen millions for all of their stock."Uncle John looked horror stricken. "It is nothing to us," exclaimed Robert, impatiently. "I can make the whole capital back in twelve months with McCrea to help MacBirney reorganize and run the plants. It is a fortune for them, and we keep MacBirney and the rest of them, for ten years at least, from scheming to start new plants. Nelson says there are legal difficulties about buying more than half their stock. But the voting control of all of it can be safely trusteed."Uncle John could barely articulate: "Too much, it is too much.""Bosh. This is a case where generosity is 'plainly indicated,' as Hamilton says.""Too much.""Robert is right," asserted Charles curtly.Uncle John threw his hand up as if to say: "If you are resolved to ruin us, go on!""You will be surprised at the success of it," concluded Robert. "MacBirney wants to come here to live, though Chicago would be the better place for him. Let him be responsible for the Western territory. With such an arrangement we ought to have peace out there for ten years. If we can, it means just one hundred millions more in our pockets than we can make in the face of this continual price cutting."Charles rose. "Then it is settled."Uncle John ventured a last appeal. "Make the cash five and a half millions.""Very good," assented Robert, who to meet precisely this objection had raised the figure well above what he intended to pay. "As you like, Uncle John," he said graciously. "Charles, make the cash five and a half millions."And Uncle John went back to his loneliness, treasuring in his heart the half million he had saved, and encouraged by his frail triumph in the conference over his never-quite-wholly-understood nephew.At a luncheon next day, the decision was laid by Charles and Robert before the Kimberly partners, by whom it was discussed and approved.In the evening Charles, with Robert listening, laid the proposal before MacBirney, who had been sent for and whose astonishment at the unexpected liberality overwhelmed him.He was promptly whirled away from The Towers in a De Castro car. And from a simple after-dinner conference, in which he had sat down at ten o'clock a promoter, he had risen at midnight with his brain reeling, a millionaire.Alice excused herself when her husband appeared at Black Rock, and followed him upstairs. She saw how he was wrought up. In their room, with eyes burning with the fires of success, he told her of the stupendous change in their fortunes. With an affection that surprised and moved Alice, who had long believed that never again could anything from him move her, he caught her closely in his arms.Tears filled her eyes. He wiped them away and forced a laugh. "Too good to be true, dearie, isn't it?"She faltered an instant. "If it will only bring us happiness, Walter.""Alice, I'm afraid I have been harsh, at times." Her memory swept over bitter months and wasted years, but her heart was touched. "It is all because I worry too much over business. There will be no more worries now--they are past and gone. And I want you to forget everything, Allie." He embraced her fervently. "I have had a good deal of anxiety first and last. It is over now. Great God! This is so easy here. Everything is so easy for these people."The telephone bell tinkled. Through a mist of tears Alice felt her husband's kiss. She rose to answer the bell. Dolly was calling from downstairs. "Come down both of you," she said. "Charles and Imogene are here with Fritzie and Robert."With Charles and Imogene had come a famous doctor from the city, Hamilton's friend, Doctor Bryson. Alice protested she could not come down. Dolly told her she "simply must." The controversy upset Alice but she had at last to give way. She bathed her face in cold water and her husband deceived her with assurances that her eyes showed no traces of tears.Very uncertain about them, she followed MacBirney down, taking refuge at once in a corner with Imogene.While the two were talking, Grace De Castro and Larrie Morgan came in, bringing some young friends. "Aren't they the nicest couple?" exclaimed Alice as they crossed the room."It is a blessing they are," said Imogene. "You see, Grace will probably succeed to the De Castro fortune, and Larrie is likely sometime to have the Kimberly burdens. It crushes me to think that Charles and I have no children.""Are you so fond of children?" Alice asked wistfully."Why, of course, dear; aren't you?""Indeed I am, too fond of them. I lost my only child, a baby girl----""And you never have had another?""No.""If Robert would marry, we should have a family hope there," continued Imogene. "But I am afraid he never will. How did you enjoy your evening at The Towers?""We had a delightful time.""Isn't Robert a good host? I love to see him preside. And he hasn't given a dinner before for years.""Why is that?"Imogene laid her hand gently on Alice's. "It is a long story, dear, a tragedy came into his life--into all our lives, in fact. It changed him greatly."Soon after the MacBirneys came down, the Nelsons arrived on the scene and the company moved to a south room to get the breeze. Imogene talked with Alice and MacBirney, but Kimberly joined them and listened, taking part at intervals in the conversation.When Imogene's attention was taken by MacBirney, Robert, asking Alice if she got the air from the cooling windows, moved her chair to where the breeze could be felt more perceptibly. "I hope you haven't had bad news to-night," he said, taking a seat on a divan near her.She understood instantly that her eyes had not escaped his scrutiny, but concealed her annoyance as best she could. "No, indeed. But I had some exciting news to-night.""What was it?""Oh, I mayn't tell, may I? I am not supposed to know anything, am I?"Her little uncertainty and appeal made her charmingly pretty, he thought, as he watched her. The traces in her eyes of tears attracted him more than anything he had seen before. Her first little air of annoyed defiance and her effort to throw him off the track, all interested him, and her appeal now, made in a manner that plainly said she was aware the secret of the news was his own, pleased him.He was in the mood of one who had made his plans, put them through generously, and was ready for the enjoyment that might follow. "Certainly, you are supposed to know," said he graciously. "Why not? And you may tell if you like. At any rate, I absolve you as far asI'mconcerned. I couldn't conceive you guilty of a very serious indiscretion.""Then I suppose you know that we are very happy, and why--don't you?""Perhaps; but that should be mere excitement. How about the tears?"She frowned an impatient protest and rose. "Oh, I haven't said anything about tears. They are going out on the porch--shall we join them?" He got up reluctantly and followed her.Arthur De Castro and Charles Kimberly offered chairs to Alice. They were under a cluster of electric lamps, where she did not wish to sit for inspection. As she hesitated Robert Kimberly spoke behind her. "Possibly it will be pleasanter over here, Mrs. MacBirney."He was in the shadow and had drawn a chair for her near Nelson outside the circle of light, from which she was glad to escape. He took the seat under the light himself. When an ice was served, the small tables were drawn together. Alice, occupied with Nelson, who inspired by his vis-à-vis had summoned something of his grand air, lost the conversation of the circle until she heard Doctor Bryson, and turned with Nelson to listen. He was thanking Mrs. De Castro for a compliment."I am always glad to hear anything kind of my profession." He spoke simply and his manner Alice thought engaging. "Itisa high calling--and I know of but one higher. We hear the complaint that nowadays medicine is a savagely mercenary profession. If a measure of truth lies in the charge I think it is due to the fact that doctors are victims of the mercenary spirit about them. It's a part of the very air they breathe. They can't escape it. The doctor, to begin with, must spend one small fortune to get his degree. He must spend another to equip himself for his work. Ten of the best years of his life go practically to getting ready. His expense for instruments, appliances, and new and increasingly elaborate appointments is continuous.""But doctor," Fritzie Venable leaned forward with a grave and lengthened face, "think of the fees!"The doctor enjoyed the laugh. "Quite true. When you find an ambitious doctor, unless his energy is restrained by a sense of his high responsibility, he may be possessed of greed. If a surgeon be set too fast on fame he will affect the spectacular and cut too much and too freely. I admit all of this. My plea is for the conscientious doctor, and believe me, there are many such. Nor must you forget that, at the best, half our lives we are too young to please and half our lives too old.""Hamilton said the other night," observed Robert Kimberly, filling in the pause, "that a good doctor must spend his time in killing, not his own patients, but his own business.""No other professional man is called on to do that," observed Bryson. "Indeed, the saddest of all possible proofs of the difficulties of our calling is found in the fact that the suicide rate among doctors is the highest in the learned professions."MacBirney expressed surprise. "I had no idea of such a thing. Had you, Mr. Kimberly?" he asked with his sudden energy."I have known it, but perhaps only because I have been interested in questions of that kind."Dolly's attention was arrested at once by the mention of suicide. "Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "Don't let us talk about suicide."But Robert Kimberly could not always be shut off and this subject he pursued with a certain firmness. Some of the family were disturbed but no one presumed to interfere. "Suicide," he went on, "has a painful interest for many people. Has your study of it, doctor, ever led you to believe that it presupposes insanity?" he asked of Bryson."By no means.""You conclude then that sane men and women do commit suicide?""Frequently, Mr. Kimberly."Kimberly drew back in his chair. "I am glad to be supported in my own conviction. The fact is," he went on in a humorous tone, "I am forced either to hold in this way or conclude that I am sprung from a race of lunatics.""Robert," protested Dolly, "can't we talk about something else?"Kimberly, however, persisted, and he now had, for some reason not clear to Alice, a circle of painfully acute listeners. "The insanity theory is in many cases a comfortable one. But I don't find it so, and I must stick to the other and regard suicide as the worst possible solution of any possible difficulty."Doctor Bryson nodded assent. Kimberly spoke on with a certain intensity. "If every act of a man's life had been a brave one," he continued, "his suicide would be all the more the act of a coward. I don't believe that kind of a man can commit suicide. Understand, I am considering the act of a man--not that of a youth or of one immature.""Well, I don't care what you areconsidering, Robert," declared Dolly with unmistakable emphasis, "we willtalkabout something else."CHAPTER XIThe conversation split up. Kimberly, unruffled, turned to Alice and went on in an undertone: "I am going to tell you Francis's views on the subject anyway. He has the most intense way of expressing himself and the pantomime is so contributing. 'Suicide, Mr. Kimberly,' he said to me one day, 'is no good. What would a man look like going back to God, carrying his head in his hand? "Well, I am back, and here are the brains you gave me." "What did you do with them?" "I blew them out with a bullet!" That is a poor showing I think, Mr. Kimberly, for business. Suicide isnogood.'""But who is this Brother Francis," asked Alice, "whom I hear so much of? Tell me about him.""He is one of the fixtures at The Towers. A religious phenomenon whom I personally think a great deal of; an attendant and a nurse. He is an Italian with the courtesy of a gentleman worn under a black gown so shabby that it would be absurd to offer it to a second-hand man.""Does the combination seem so odd?""To me heisan extraordinary combination.""How did you happen to get him?""That also is curious. The Kimberlys are cantankerous enough when well; when ill they are likely to be insupportable. Not only that, but kindness and faithfulness are some of the things that money cannot buy; they give themselves but never sell themselves. When my uncle fell ill, after a great mental strain, we hired nurses for him until we were distracted--men and women, one worse than another. We tried all colors and conditions of human kind without finding one that would suit Uncle John. I began to think of throwing him into the lake--and told him so. He cried like a child the day I had the set-to with him. To say the truth, the old gentleman hasn't many friends left anywhere, but early impressions are a great deal to us, you know, and I remember him when he was a figure in the councils of the sugar world."I recall," continued Kimberly, "a certain Black Friday in our own little affairs when the wolves got after us. The banks were throwing over our securities by the wagon-load, and this old man who sits and swears and shakes there, alone, upstairs, was all that remained between us and destruction. He stood in our down-town office with fifty men fighting to get at him--struggling, yelling, screaming, and cursing, and some who couldn't even scream or curse, livid and pawing the air."He stood behind his desk all day like a field-marshal, counselling, advising, ordering, buying, steadying, reassuring, juggling millions in his two hands like conjuror's balls. I could never forget that. I am not answering your question----""But do go on!" There were no longer tears in Alice's eyes. They were alive with interest. "That," she exclaimed, "was splendid!""He won out, and then he set himself on vengeance. That was the end of our dependence on other people's banks. Most people learn sooner or later that a banking connection is an expensive luxury. He finally drove off the street the two institutions that tried to save themselves at our expense. The father of Cready and Frank Hamilton, Richard Hamilton, a rank outsider, helped Uncle John in that crisis and Uncle John made Richard Hamilton to pillow his head on tens of millions. Since that day we have been our own bankers; that is, we own our own banks. And I this is curious, never from that day to this has Uncle John completely trusted any man--not even me--except this very man we are talking about.""Brother Francis?""Brother Francis. You asked how I got him; it is not uninteresting; a sort of sermon on good deeds. Just before this big school in the valley was started, the order to which he belongs had been expelled from France--it was years ago; the reformers over there needed their property. Half a dozen of the Brothers landed down here in the village with hardly a coat to their backs. But they went to work and in a few years had a little school. The industry of these people is astonishing.""One day they came to The Towers for aid. Old Brother Adrian, the head Brother, came himself--as he long afterward told me--with a heavy heart, indeed, with fear and trembling. The iron gates and the Krupp eagles frightened him, he said, when he entered the grounds. And when he asked for the mistress of the house, he could hardly find voice to speak. My mother was away, so Aunt Lydia appeared--you have seen her portrait, haven't you?""No.""You must; it is not unlike you. Aunt Lydia and my mother were two of the loveliest women I have ever known. When she came down that day, Brother Adrian supposing it was my mother begged a slight aid for the work they had undertaken in the valley. Aunt Lydia heard him in silence, and without saying a word went upstairs, wrote out a cheque and brought it down. He glanced at the figures on it--fifty--thanked her, gave it to the young Brother with him, and with some little compliment to the beauty of The Towers, rose to go."While they were moving toward the door the young Brother, studying the cheque grew pale, halted, looked at it again and handed it to his superior. Brother Adrian looked at the paper and at the young Brother and stood speechless. The two stared a moment at each other. Aunt Lydia enjoyed the situation. Brother Adrian had thought the gift had been fifty dollars--it was fifty thousand."He fainted. Servants were hurried in. Even when he recovered, he was dazed--he really for a year had not had enough to eat. Aunt Lydia always delighted in telling how the young Brother helped him down the avenue after he could walk. This is a tediously long story.""Do go on.""When he again reached the big iron gates he turned toward the house and with many strange words and gestures called down the mercies of Heaven on that roof and all that should ever sleep under it----""How beautiful!""He blessed us right and left, up and down, fore and aft--he was a fine old fellow, Adrian. When my mother heard the story she was naturally embarrassed. It looked something like obtaining blessings under false pretences. The only thing she could do to ease her conscience was to send over a second cheque.""Princely!""It came near killing Brother Adrian. It seems odd, too, compared with the cut-and-dried way in which we solemnly endow institutions nowadays, doesn't it? They all three are dead, but we have always stood, in a way, with Adrian's people."The young man that made the exciting call with him is now the superior over there, Brother Edmund. After the trouble we had with Uncle John, in finding some one he could stand and who could stand him, I went one day in despair to Brother Edmund. I allowed him to commit himself properly on what they owed to Aunt Lydia's goodness and the rest, and then began to abuse him and told him he ought to supply a nurse for my uncle. He told me theirs was a teaching order and not a nursing order. I redoubled my harshness. 'It is all very well whenyouneed anything,' I said, 'whenweneed anything it is different. Did those women,' I thundered, 'ask what you were, when you were starving here?'"It wasn't precisely logical, but abuse should be vigorous rather than logical, anyway, and I tried to be vigorous. They got very busy, I can tell you. They held a conclave of some sort and decided that Uncle John must be taken care of. If he were a common pauper, they argued, they would not refuse to take care of him; should they refuse because he was a pauper of means? They concluded that it was a debt they owed to Aunt Lydia and by Heaven, next morning over came this sallow-faced, dark-eyed Brother Francis, and there he is still with Uncle John."CHAPTER XIIMacBirney's personal efforts in effecting the combination with the Kimberly interests were adjudged worthy of a substantial recognition at the hands of the company and he was given charge of the Western territory together with a place on the big directorate of all the companies and made one of the three voting trustees of the syndicate stock. The two other trustees were, as a "matter of form," Kimberly men--McCrea and Cready Hamilton. This meant for MacBirney a settled Eastern residence and one befitting a gentleman called to an honor so unusual. He was made to feel that his new circumstances entailed new backgrounds socially as well as those that had been accorded him in a monetary way, and through the Kimberlys, negotiations were speedily concluded for his acquiring of the Cedar Lodge villa some miles across the lake from The Towers.At the end of a trying two months, the MacBirneys were in their new home and Alice had begun receiving from her intimates congratulations over the telephone. Another month, and a busy one, went to finishing touches. At the end of that period there was apparently more than ever to be done. It seemed that a beginning had hardly been made, but the new servants were at home in their duties, and Alice thought she could set a date for an evening. Her head, night and day, was in more or less of a whirl.The excitement of new fortunes had come very suddenly upon her and with her husband she walked every day as if borne on the air of waking dreams. Dolly declared that Alice was working too hard, and that her weary conferences with decorators and furnishers were too continual. Occasionally, Dolly took matters into her own hands and was frequently in consultation on domestic perplexities; sometimes she dragged Alice abruptly from them.Even before it had been generally seen, the new home, once thrown open, secured Alice's reputation among her friends. What was within it reflected her taste and discrimination. And her appointments were not only good, they were distinctive. To be able to drape the vestments of a house so as to make of it almost at once a home was not a feat to pass unnoticed among people who studied effects though they did not invariably secure them.Robert Kimberly declared that Alice, under many disadvantages, had achieved an air of stability and permanence in her home. Dolly told Lottie Nelson that nothing around the lake among the newer homes compared with it. Lottie Nelson naturally hated Alice more cordially than ever for her success. She ventured, when the new house was being discussed at a dinner, to say that Mr. MacBirney seemed to have excellent taste; whereupon Charles Kimberly over a salad bluntly replied that the time MacBirney had shown his taste was when he chose a wife. "But," added Charles, reflectively, "perhaps a man doesn't prove his taste so much in getting a wife as in keeping one."Any man," he continued, "may be lucky enough to get a wife; we see that every day. But who, save a man of feeling, could keep, well, say Imogene or Dolly, for instance?"Robert agreed that if the MacBirney home showed anything it showed the touch of an agreeable woman. "Any one," he declared, paraphrasing his brother, "can buy pretty things, but it takes a clever woman to combine them."One result of the situation was a new cordiality from Lottie Nelson to the MacBirneys. And since it had become necessary to pay court to them, Lottie resolved to pay hers to Mr. MacBirney. She was resourceful rather than deep, and hoped by this to annoy Alice and possibly to stir Robert Kimberly out of his exasperating indifference. The indifference of a Kimberly could assume in its proportions the repose of a monument.Lottie, too, was a mover in many of the diversions arranged to keep the lake set amused. But as her efforts did not always tend to make things easy for Alice, Dolly became active herself in suggesting things.One Saturday morning a message came from her, directing Alice to forbid her husband's going to town, drop everything, provide a lunch and join a motoring party for the seashore. MacBirney following the lines of Robert Kimberly's experience with cars had secured at his suggestion, among others, a foreign car from which things might reasonably be expected.Imogene Kimberly and Charles took Alice with them and Dolly rode with MacBirney, who had Robert Kimberly with him in the new car to see how it behaved. Kimberly's own chauffeur drove for them. Doane took Arthur De Castro and Fritzie Venable. The servants and the lunch followed with a De Castro chauffeur.As the party climbed toward Sea Ridge a shower drove them into the grounds of a country club. While it rained, the women, their long veils thrown back, walked through the club house, and the men paced about, smoking.Alice, seated at a table on the veranda, was looking at an illustrated paper when Robert Kimberly joined her. He told her what extravagant stories he had heard from Dolly about the success of her new home. She laughed over his sister's enthusiasm, admitted her own, and confessed at length how the effort to get satisfactory effects had tired her. He in turn described to her what he had once been through in starting a new refinery and how during the strain of six weeks the hair upon his temples had perceptibly whitened, turning brown again when the mental pressure was relieved."I never heard of such a thing," exclaimed Alice."I don't know how unusual it is, but it has happened more than once in our family. I remember my mother's hair once turned in that way. But my mother had much sadness in her life.""Mrs. De Castro often speaks of your mother.""She was a brave woman. You have never seen her portrait? Sometime at The Towers you must. And you can see on her temples just what I speak of. But your home-making will have just the opposite effect on you. If care makes the hair white, happiness ought to make it browner than ever.""I suppose happiness is wholly a matter of illusion.""I don't see that it makes much difference how we define it; the thing is to be happy. However, if what you say is so, you should cling to your illusions. Get all you can--I should--and keep all you can get.""You don't mean to say you practise that?""Of course I do. And I think for a man I've kept my illusions very well.""For aman!" Alice threw her head back. "That is very comfortable assurance."He looked at her with composure. "What is it you object to in it?""To begin with," demanded Alice, "how can a man have any illusions? He knows everything from the very beginning.""Oh, by no means. Far from it, I assure you.""He has every chance to. It is only the poor women who are constantly disillusionized in life.""You mustn't be disillusionized, Mrs. MacBirney. Hope unceasingly."She resented the personal application. "I am not speaking of myself.""Nor am I speaking of you, only speaking through you to womankind. You 'poor women' should not be discouraged." He raised his head as if he were very confident. "If we can hope, you can hope. I hope every day. I hope in a woman."She bore his gaze as she had already borne it once or twice before, steadily, but as one might bear the gaze of a dangerous creature, if strengthened by the certainty of iron bars before its impassive eyes. Kimberly was both too considerate and possessed too much sense of fitness to overdo the moment. With his hand he indicated a woman walking along a covered way in front of them. "There, for instance, goes a woman," he continued, following up his point. "Look at her. Isn't she pretty? I like her walk. And a woman's walk! It is impossible to say how much depends on the walk. And all women that walk well have good feet; their heels set right and there is a pleasure in watching each sure foot-fall. Notice, for instance, that woman's feet; her walk is perfect.""How closely observant!""She is well gowned--but everybody is well gowned. And her figure is good. Let us say, I hope in her, hope she will be all she looks. I follow the dream. In a breath, an instant, a twinkling, the illusion has vanished! She has spoken, or she has looked my way and I have seen her face. But even then the face is only the dial of the watch; it may be very fair. Sometime I see her mind--and everything is gone!""Would it be impertinent to ask who has put women up in this way to be inspected and criticised?" retorted Alice."Not in the least. I am speaking only in illustration and if you are annoyed with me I shall miss making my point. Do I give up merely because I have lost an illusion? Not at all. Another springs up at once, and I welcome it. Let us live in our illusions; every time we part with one and find none to take its place we are poorer, Mrs. MacBirney, believe me.""Just the same, I think you are horridly critical of women.""Then you should advise me to cultivate my illusions in their direction.""I should if I thought it were necessary. As I have a very high opinion of women, I don't think any illusions concerning them are necessary.""Loftily said. And I sha'n't allow you to think my own opinion any less high. When I was a boy, women were all angels to me; they are not quite that, we know.""In spite of illusions.""But I don't want to put them very much lower than the angels--and I don't. I keep them up because I like to."Her comment was still keen. "Not because they deserve it.""I won't quarrel with you--because, then, they do deserve it. It is pleasant to be set right."The shower had passed and the party was making ready to start. Alice rose. "You haven't said what you think of your own kind, as you call them--menkind."Kimberly held her coat for her to slip into. "Of course, I try not to think of them."When they reached the summit dividing the lake country from the sea the sun was shining. To the east, the sound lay at their feet. In the west stretched the heavy forests and the long chain of lakes. They followed the road to the sea and after their shore luncheon relaxed for an hour at the yacht club. Driving back by the river road they put the new car through some paces, and halting at intervals to interchange passengers, they proceeded homeward.Going through Sunbury at five o'clock the cars separated. MacBirney, with whom Robert Kimberly was again riding, had taken in Fritzie Venable and Alice. Leaving the village they chose the hill road around the lake. Brice, Kimberly's chauffeur, took advantage of the long, straight highway leading to it to let the car out a little. They were running very fast when he noticed the sparker was binding and stopped for a moment. It was just below the Roger Morgan place and Kimberly, who could never for a moment abide idleness, suggested that they alight while Brice worked. He stood at the door of the tonneau and gave his hand to Alice as she stepped from the car. In getting out, her foot slipped and she turned her ankle. She would have fallen but that Kimberly caught her. Alice recovered herself immediately, yet not without an instant's dependence on him that she would rather have escaped.Brice was slow in correcting the mechanical difficulty, and finding it at last in the magneto announced it would make a delay of twenty minutes. Fritzie suggested that they walk through her park and meet the car at the lower end. MacBirney started up one of the hill paths with Alice, Kimberly and Fritzie following. They passed Morgan house and higher in the hills they reached the chapel. Alice took her husband in to see the beauty of the interior. She told him Dolly's story of the building and when Fritzie and Kimberly joined them, Alice was regretting that Dolly had failed to recollect the name of the church in Rome it was modelled after. Kimberly came to her aid. "Santa Maria in Cosmedin, I think.""Oh, do you remember? Thank you," exclaimed Alice. "Isn't it all beautiful, Walter? And those old pulpits--I'm in love with them!"MacBirney pronounced everything admirable and prepared to move on. He walked toward the door with Fritzie.Alice, with Kimberly, stood before the chancel looking at the balustrade. She stopped near the north ambone, and turning saw in the soft light of the aisle the face of the boy dreaming in the silence of the bronze.Below it, measured words of Keats were dimly visible. Alice repeated them half aloud. "What a strange inscription," she murmured almost to herself.Kimberly stood at her elbow. "It is strange."She was silent for a moment. "I think it is the most beautiful head of a boy I have ever seen.""Have you seen it before?""I was here once with Mrs. De Castro.""She told you the story?""No, we remained only a moment." Alice read aloud the words raised in the bronze: "'Robert Ten Broeck Morgan: ætat: 20.'""Should you like to hear it?""Very much.""His father married my half-sister--Bertha; Charles and I are sons of my father's second marriage. 'Tennie' was Bertha's son--strangely shy and sensitive from his childhood, even morbidly sensitive. I do not mean unbalanced in any way----""I understand.""A sister of his, Marie, became engaged to a young man of a Southern family who came here after the war. They were married and their wedding was made the occasion of a great family affair for the Morgans, and Alices and Legares and Kimberlys. Tennie was chosen for groomsman. The house that you have seen below was filled with wedding guests. The hour came.""And such a place for a wedding!" exclaimed Alice."But instead of the bridal procession that the guests were looking for, a clergyman came down the stairs with a white face. When he could speak, he announced as well as he could that the wedding would not take place that night; that a terrible accident had occurred, and that Tennie Morgan was lying upstairs dead."Alice could not recall, even afterward, that Kimberly appeared under a strain; but she noticed as she listened that he spoke with a care not quite natural."You may imagine the scene," he continued. "But the worst was to come----""Oh, you were there?""When you hear the rest you will think, if there is a God, I should have been, for I might have saved him. I was in Honolulu. I did not even hear of it for ten days. They found him in his bathroom where he had dressed, thrown himself on a couch, and shot himself.""How terrible!""In his bedroom they found a letter. It had been sent to him within the hour by a party of blackmailers, pressing a charge--of which he was quite innocent--on the part of a designing woman, and threatening that unless he complied with some impossible demands, his exposure and news of an action for damages should follow in the papers containing the account of his sister's wedding. They found with this his own letter to his mother. He assured her the charge was utterly false, but being a Kimberly he knew he should not be believed because of the reputation of his uncles, one of whom he named, and after whom he himself was named, and to whom he had always been closest. This, he feared, would condemn him no matter how innocent he might be; he felt he should be unable to lift from his name a disgrace that would always be recalled with his sister's wedding; and that if he gave up his life he knew the charges would be dropped because he was absolutely innocent. And so he died."For a moment Alice stood in silence. "Poor, poor boy!" she said softly. "How I pity him!""Do you so? Then well may I. For I am the uncle whom he named in his letter."Unable or unwilling to speak she pointed to the tablet as if to say: "You said the uncle he was named after."He understood. "Yes," he answered slowly, "my name is Robert Ten Broeck Kimberly."Her eyes fell to the tessellated pavement. "It is frightfully sad," she said haltingly. Then as if she must add something: "I am very sorry you felt compelled to recall so painful a story.""It isn't exactly that I felt compelled; yet perhaps that expresses it, too. I have expected sometime to tell it to you."
CHAPTER X
One morning shortly after the MacBirneys had been entertained at The Towers John Kimberly was wheeled into his library where Charles and Robert were waiting for him. Charles leaned against the mantel and his brother stood at a window looking across the lake toward Cedar Point. As Francis left the room Uncle John's eyes followed him. Presently they wandered back with cheerful suspicion toward his nephews, and he laid his good arm on the table as they took chairs near him.
"Well?" he said lifting his eyebrows and looking blandly from one to the other.
"Well?" echoed Charles good-naturedly, looking from Uncle John to Robert.
"Well?" repeated Robert with mildly assumed idiocy, looking from Charles back again to Uncle John.
But Uncle John was not to be committed by any resort to his own tactics, and he came back at Charles on the flank. "Get any fish?" he asked, as if assured that Charles would make an effort to deceive him in answering.
"We sat around for a while without doing a thing, Uncle John. Then they began to strike and I had eight days of the best sport I ever saw on the river,"
Uncle John buried his disappointment under a smile. "Good fishing, eh?"
"Excellent."
There was evidently no opening on this subject, and Uncle John tried another tender spot. "Yacht go any better?"
"McAdams has done wonders with it, Uncle John. She never steamed so well since she was launched."
"Cost a pretty penny, eh, Charlie?"
"That is what pretty pennies are for, isn't it?"
Unable to disturb his nephew's peace of mind, Uncle John launched straight into business. "What are you going to do with those fellows?"
"You mean the MacBirney syndicate? Robert tells me he has concluded to be liberal with them."
"He is giving too much, Charlie."
"He knows better what the stuff is worth than we do."
Uncle John smiled sceptically. "He will give them more than they are worth, I am afraid."
Robert said nothing.
"Perhaps there is a reason for that," suggested Charles.
They waited for Robert to speak. He shifted in his chair presently and spoke with some decision. His intonation might have been unpleasant but that the depth and fulness of his voice redeemed it. The best note in his utterance was its open frankness.
"Uncle John understands this matter just as well as I do," he began, somewhat in protest.
"We have been over the ground often. These people have been an annoyance to us; this is undeniable. McCrea has complained of them for two years. Through a shift in the cards--this money squeeze--we have them to-day in our hands----"
Uncle John's eyes shone and he clasped the fingers of one hand tightly in the other. "That is what I say; trim them!" he whispered eagerly.
Robert went on, unmoved: "Let us look at that, too. He wants me to trim them. I have steadily opposed buying them at all. But the rest of you have overruled me. Very good. They know now that they are in our power. They are, one and all, bushwhackers and guerillas. To my mind there isn't a trustworthy man in the crowd--not even MacBirney.
"They have made selling agreements with McCrea again and again and left him to hold the sack. We can't do business in that way. When we give our word it must be good. They give their word to break it. Whenever we make a selling agreement with such people we get beaten, invariably. They have cut into us on the Missouri River, at St. Paul, even at Chicago--from their Kansas plants. They make poor sugar, but it sells, and even when it won't sell, it demoralizes the trade. Now they are on their knees. They want us to buy to save what they've got invested. At a receiver's sale they would get nothing. But on the other hand Lambert might get the plants. If we tried to bid them in there would be a howl from the Legislature, perhaps."
Uncle John was growing moody, for the prey was slipping through his fingers. "It might be better to stand pat," he muttered.
Robert paid no attention. "What I propose, and God knows I have explained it before, is this: These people can be trimmed, or they can be satisfied. I say give them eleven millions--six millions cash--three millions preferred and two millions in our common for fifty per cent of their stock instead of sixteen millions for all of their stock."
Uncle John looked horror stricken. "It is nothing to us," exclaimed Robert, impatiently. "I can make the whole capital back in twelve months with McCrea to help MacBirney reorganize and run the plants. It is a fortune for them, and we keep MacBirney and the rest of them, for ten years at least, from scheming to start new plants. Nelson says there are legal difficulties about buying more than half their stock. But the voting control of all of it can be safely trusteed."
Uncle John could barely articulate: "Too much, it is too much."
"Bosh. This is a case where generosity is 'plainly indicated,' as Hamilton says."
"Too much."
"Robert is right," asserted Charles curtly.
Uncle John threw his hand up as if to say: "If you are resolved to ruin us, go on!"
"You will be surprised at the success of it," concluded Robert. "MacBirney wants to come here to live, though Chicago would be the better place for him. Let him be responsible for the Western territory. With such an arrangement we ought to have peace out there for ten years. If we can, it means just one hundred millions more in our pockets than we can make in the face of this continual price cutting."
Charles rose. "Then it is settled."
Uncle John ventured a last appeal. "Make the cash five and a half millions."
"Very good," assented Robert, who to meet precisely this objection had raised the figure well above what he intended to pay. "As you like, Uncle John," he said graciously. "Charles, make the cash five and a half millions."
And Uncle John went back to his loneliness, treasuring in his heart the half million he had saved, and encouraged by his frail triumph in the conference over his never-quite-wholly-understood nephew.
At a luncheon next day, the decision was laid by Charles and Robert before the Kimberly partners, by whom it was discussed and approved.
In the evening Charles, with Robert listening, laid the proposal before MacBirney, who had been sent for and whose astonishment at the unexpected liberality overwhelmed him.
He was promptly whirled away from The Towers in a De Castro car. And from a simple after-dinner conference, in which he had sat down at ten o'clock a promoter, he had risen at midnight with his brain reeling, a millionaire.
Alice excused herself when her husband appeared at Black Rock, and followed him upstairs. She saw how he was wrought up. In their room, with eyes burning with the fires of success, he told her of the stupendous change in their fortunes. With an affection that surprised and moved Alice, who had long believed that never again could anything from him move her, he caught her closely in his arms.
Tears filled her eyes. He wiped them away and forced a laugh. "Too good to be true, dearie, isn't it?"
She faltered an instant. "If it will only bring us happiness, Walter."
"Alice, I'm afraid I have been harsh, at times." Her memory swept over bitter months and wasted years, but her heart was touched. "It is all because I worry too much over business. There will be no more worries now--they are past and gone. And I want you to forget everything, Allie." He embraced her fervently. "I have had a good deal of anxiety first and last. It is over now. Great God! This is so easy here. Everything is so easy for these people."
The telephone bell tinkled. Through a mist of tears Alice felt her husband's kiss. She rose to answer the bell. Dolly was calling from downstairs. "Come down both of you," she said. "Charles and Imogene are here with Fritzie and Robert."
With Charles and Imogene had come a famous doctor from the city, Hamilton's friend, Doctor Bryson. Alice protested she could not come down. Dolly told her she "simply must." The controversy upset Alice but she had at last to give way. She bathed her face in cold water and her husband deceived her with assurances that her eyes showed no traces of tears.
Very uncertain about them, she followed MacBirney down, taking refuge at once in a corner with Imogene.
While the two were talking, Grace De Castro and Larrie Morgan came in, bringing some young friends. "Aren't they the nicest couple?" exclaimed Alice as they crossed the room.
"It is a blessing they are," said Imogene. "You see, Grace will probably succeed to the De Castro fortune, and Larrie is likely sometime to have the Kimberly burdens. It crushes me to think that Charles and I have no children."
"Are you so fond of children?" Alice asked wistfully.
"Why, of course, dear; aren't you?"
"Indeed I am, too fond of them. I lost my only child, a baby girl----"
"And you never have had another?"
"No."
"If Robert would marry, we should have a family hope there," continued Imogene. "But I am afraid he never will. How did you enjoy your evening at The Towers?"
"We had a delightful time."
"Isn't Robert a good host? I love to see him preside. And he hasn't given a dinner before for years."
"Why is that?"
Imogene laid her hand gently on Alice's. "It is a long story, dear, a tragedy came into his life--into all our lives, in fact. It changed him greatly."
Soon after the MacBirneys came down, the Nelsons arrived on the scene and the company moved to a south room to get the breeze. Imogene talked with Alice and MacBirney, but Kimberly joined them and listened, taking part at intervals in the conversation.
When Imogene's attention was taken by MacBirney, Robert, asking Alice if she got the air from the cooling windows, moved her chair to where the breeze could be felt more perceptibly. "I hope you haven't had bad news to-night," he said, taking a seat on a divan near her.
She understood instantly that her eyes had not escaped his scrutiny, but concealed her annoyance as best she could. "No, indeed. But I had some exciting news to-night."
"What was it?"
"Oh, I mayn't tell, may I? I am not supposed to know anything, am I?"
Her little uncertainty and appeal made her charmingly pretty, he thought, as he watched her. The traces in her eyes of tears attracted him more than anything he had seen before. Her first little air of annoyed defiance and her effort to throw him off the track, all interested him, and her appeal now, made in a manner that plainly said she was aware the secret of the news was his own, pleased him.
He was in the mood of one who had made his plans, put them through generously, and was ready for the enjoyment that might follow. "Certainly, you are supposed to know," said he graciously. "Why not? And you may tell if you like. At any rate, I absolve you as far asI'mconcerned. I couldn't conceive you guilty of a very serious indiscretion."
"Then I suppose you know that we are very happy, and why--don't you?"
"Perhaps; but that should be mere excitement. How about the tears?"
She frowned an impatient protest and rose. "Oh, I haven't said anything about tears. They are going out on the porch--shall we join them?" He got up reluctantly and followed her.
Arthur De Castro and Charles Kimberly offered chairs to Alice. They were under a cluster of electric lamps, where she did not wish to sit for inspection. As she hesitated Robert Kimberly spoke behind her. "Possibly it will be pleasanter over here, Mrs. MacBirney."
He was in the shadow and had drawn a chair for her near Nelson outside the circle of light, from which she was glad to escape. He took the seat under the light himself. When an ice was served, the small tables were drawn together. Alice, occupied with Nelson, who inspired by his vis-à-vis had summoned something of his grand air, lost the conversation of the circle until she heard Doctor Bryson, and turned with Nelson to listen. He was thanking Mrs. De Castro for a compliment.
"I am always glad to hear anything kind of my profession." He spoke simply and his manner Alice thought engaging. "Itisa high calling--and I know of but one higher. We hear the complaint that nowadays medicine is a savagely mercenary profession. If a measure of truth lies in the charge I think it is due to the fact that doctors are victims of the mercenary spirit about them. It's a part of the very air they breathe. They can't escape it. The doctor, to begin with, must spend one small fortune to get his degree. He must spend another to equip himself for his work. Ten of the best years of his life go practically to getting ready. His expense for instruments, appliances, and new and increasingly elaborate appointments is continuous."
"But doctor," Fritzie Venable leaned forward with a grave and lengthened face, "think of the fees!"
The doctor enjoyed the laugh. "Quite true. When you find an ambitious doctor, unless his energy is restrained by a sense of his high responsibility, he may be possessed of greed. If a surgeon be set too fast on fame he will affect the spectacular and cut too much and too freely. I admit all of this. My plea is for the conscientious doctor, and believe me, there are many such. Nor must you forget that, at the best, half our lives we are too young to please and half our lives too old."
"Hamilton said the other night," observed Robert Kimberly, filling in the pause, "that a good doctor must spend his time in killing, not his own patients, but his own business."
"No other professional man is called on to do that," observed Bryson. "Indeed, the saddest of all possible proofs of the difficulties of our calling is found in the fact that the suicide rate among doctors is the highest in the learned professions."
MacBirney expressed surprise. "I had no idea of such a thing. Had you, Mr. Kimberly?" he asked with his sudden energy.
"I have known it, but perhaps only because I have been interested in questions of that kind."
Dolly's attention was arrested at once by the mention of suicide. "Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "Don't let us talk about suicide."
But Robert Kimberly could not always be shut off and this subject he pursued with a certain firmness. Some of the family were disturbed but no one presumed to interfere. "Suicide," he went on, "has a painful interest for many people. Has your study of it, doctor, ever led you to believe that it presupposes insanity?" he asked of Bryson.
"By no means."
"You conclude then that sane men and women do commit suicide?"
"Frequently, Mr. Kimberly."
Kimberly drew back in his chair. "I am glad to be supported in my own conviction. The fact is," he went on in a humorous tone, "I am forced either to hold in this way or conclude that I am sprung from a race of lunatics."
"Robert," protested Dolly, "can't we talk about something else?"
Kimberly, however, persisted, and he now had, for some reason not clear to Alice, a circle of painfully acute listeners. "The insanity theory is in many cases a comfortable one. But I don't find it so, and I must stick to the other and regard suicide as the worst possible solution of any possible difficulty."
Doctor Bryson nodded assent. Kimberly spoke on with a certain intensity. "If every act of a man's life had been a brave one," he continued, "his suicide would be all the more the act of a coward. I don't believe that kind of a man can commit suicide. Understand, I am considering the act of a man--not that of a youth or of one immature."
"Well, I don't care what you areconsidering, Robert," declared Dolly with unmistakable emphasis, "we willtalkabout something else."
CHAPTER XI
The conversation split up. Kimberly, unruffled, turned to Alice and went on in an undertone: "I am going to tell you Francis's views on the subject anyway. He has the most intense way of expressing himself and the pantomime is so contributing. 'Suicide, Mr. Kimberly,' he said to me one day, 'is no good. What would a man look like going back to God, carrying his head in his hand? "Well, I am back, and here are the brains you gave me." "What did you do with them?" "I blew them out with a bullet!" That is a poor showing I think, Mr. Kimberly, for business. Suicide isnogood.'"
"But who is this Brother Francis," asked Alice, "whom I hear so much of? Tell me about him."
"He is one of the fixtures at The Towers. A religious phenomenon whom I personally think a great deal of; an attendant and a nurse. He is an Italian with the courtesy of a gentleman worn under a black gown so shabby that it would be absurd to offer it to a second-hand man."
"Does the combination seem so odd?"
"To me heisan extraordinary combination."
"How did you happen to get him?"
"That also is curious. The Kimberlys are cantankerous enough when well; when ill they are likely to be insupportable. Not only that, but kindness and faithfulness are some of the things that money cannot buy; they give themselves but never sell themselves. When my uncle fell ill, after a great mental strain, we hired nurses for him until we were distracted--men and women, one worse than another. We tried all colors and conditions of human kind without finding one that would suit Uncle John. I began to think of throwing him into the lake--and told him so. He cried like a child the day I had the set-to with him. To say the truth, the old gentleman hasn't many friends left anywhere, but early impressions are a great deal to us, you know, and I remember him when he was a figure in the councils of the sugar world.
"I recall," continued Kimberly, "a certain Black Friday in our own little affairs when the wolves got after us. The banks were throwing over our securities by the wagon-load, and this old man who sits and swears and shakes there, alone, upstairs, was all that remained between us and destruction. He stood in our down-town office with fifty men fighting to get at him--struggling, yelling, screaming, and cursing, and some who couldn't even scream or curse, livid and pawing the air.
"He stood behind his desk all day like a field-marshal, counselling, advising, ordering, buying, steadying, reassuring, juggling millions in his two hands like conjuror's balls. I could never forget that. I am not answering your question----"
"But do go on!" There were no longer tears in Alice's eyes. They were alive with interest. "That," she exclaimed, "was splendid!"
"He won out, and then he set himself on vengeance. That was the end of our dependence on other people's banks. Most people learn sooner or later that a banking connection is an expensive luxury. He finally drove off the street the two institutions that tried to save themselves at our expense. The father of Cready and Frank Hamilton, Richard Hamilton, a rank outsider, helped Uncle John in that crisis and Uncle John made Richard Hamilton to pillow his head on tens of millions. Since that day we have been our own bankers; that is, we own our own banks. And I this is curious, never from that day to this has Uncle John completely trusted any man--not even me--except this very man we are talking about."
"Brother Francis?"
"Brother Francis. You asked how I got him; it is not uninteresting; a sort of sermon on good deeds. Just before this big school in the valley was started, the order to which he belongs had been expelled from France--it was years ago; the reformers over there needed their property. Half a dozen of the Brothers landed down here in the village with hardly a coat to their backs. But they went to work and in a few years had a little school. The industry of these people is astonishing."
"One day they came to The Towers for aid. Old Brother Adrian, the head Brother, came himself--as he long afterward told me--with a heavy heart, indeed, with fear and trembling. The iron gates and the Krupp eagles frightened him, he said, when he entered the grounds. And when he asked for the mistress of the house, he could hardly find voice to speak. My mother was away, so Aunt Lydia appeared--you have seen her portrait, haven't you?"
"No."
"You must; it is not unlike you. Aunt Lydia and my mother were two of the loveliest women I have ever known. When she came down that day, Brother Adrian supposing it was my mother begged a slight aid for the work they had undertaken in the valley. Aunt Lydia heard him in silence, and without saying a word went upstairs, wrote out a cheque and brought it down. He glanced at the figures on it--fifty--thanked her, gave it to the young Brother with him, and with some little compliment to the beauty of The Towers, rose to go.
"While they were moving toward the door the young Brother, studying the cheque grew pale, halted, looked at it again and handed it to his superior. Brother Adrian looked at the paper and at the young Brother and stood speechless. The two stared a moment at each other. Aunt Lydia enjoyed the situation. Brother Adrian had thought the gift had been fifty dollars--it was fifty thousand.
"He fainted. Servants were hurried in. Even when he recovered, he was dazed--he really for a year had not had enough to eat. Aunt Lydia always delighted in telling how the young Brother helped him down the avenue after he could walk. This is a tediously long story."
"Do go on."
"When he again reached the big iron gates he turned toward the house and with many strange words and gestures called down the mercies of Heaven on that roof and all that should ever sleep under it----"
"How beautiful!"
"He blessed us right and left, up and down, fore and aft--he was a fine old fellow, Adrian. When my mother heard the story she was naturally embarrassed. It looked something like obtaining blessings under false pretences. The only thing she could do to ease her conscience was to send over a second cheque."
"Princely!"
"It came near killing Brother Adrian. It seems odd, too, compared with the cut-and-dried way in which we solemnly endow institutions nowadays, doesn't it? They all three are dead, but we have always stood, in a way, with Adrian's people.
"The young man that made the exciting call with him is now the superior over there, Brother Edmund. After the trouble we had with Uncle John, in finding some one he could stand and who could stand him, I went one day in despair to Brother Edmund. I allowed him to commit himself properly on what they owed to Aunt Lydia's goodness and the rest, and then began to abuse him and told him he ought to supply a nurse for my uncle. He told me theirs was a teaching order and not a nursing order. I redoubled my harshness. 'It is all very well whenyouneed anything,' I said, 'whenweneed anything it is different. Did those women,' I thundered, 'ask what you were, when you were starving here?'
"It wasn't precisely logical, but abuse should be vigorous rather than logical, anyway, and I tried to be vigorous. They got very busy, I can tell you. They held a conclave of some sort and decided that Uncle John must be taken care of. If he were a common pauper, they argued, they would not refuse to take care of him; should they refuse because he was a pauper of means? They concluded that it was a debt they owed to Aunt Lydia and by Heaven, next morning over came this sallow-faced, dark-eyed Brother Francis, and there he is still with Uncle John."
CHAPTER XII
MacBirney's personal efforts in effecting the combination with the Kimberly interests were adjudged worthy of a substantial recognition at the hands of the company and he was given charge of the Western territory together with a place on the big directorate of all the companies and made one of the three voting trustees of the syndicate stock. The two other trustees were, as a "matter of form," Kimberly men--McCrea and Cready Hamilton. This meant for MacBirney a settled Eastern residence and one befitting a gentleman called to an honor so unusual. He was made to feel that his new circumstances entailed new backgrounds socially as well as those that had been accorded him in a monetary way, and through the Kimberlys, negotiations were speedily concluded for his acquiring of the Cedar Lodge villa some miles across the lake from The Towers.
At the end of a trying two months, the MacBirneys were in their new home and Alice had begun receiving from her intimates congratulations over the telephone. Another month, and a busy one, went to finishing touches. At the end of that period there was apparently more than ever to be done. It seemed that a beginning had hardly been made, but the new servants were at home in their duties, and Alice thought she could set a date for an evening. Her head, night and day, was in more or less of a whirl.
The excitement of new fortunes had come very suddenly upon her and with her husband she walked every day as if borne on the air of waking dreams. Dolly declared that Alice was working too hard, and that her weary conferences with decorators and furnishers were too continual. Occasionally, Dolly took matters into her own hands and was frequently in consultation on domestic perplexities; sometimes she dragged Alice abruptly from them.
Even before it had been generally seen, the new home, once thrown open, secured Alice's reputation among her friends. What was within it reflected her taste and discrimination. And her appointments were not only good, they were distinctive. To be able to drape the vestments of a house so as to make of it almost at once a home was not a feat to pass unnoticed among people who studied effects though they did not invariably secure them.
Robert Kimberly declared that Alice, under many disadvantages, had achieved an air of stability and permanence in her home. Dolly told Lottie Nelson that nothing around the lake among the newer homes compared with it. Lottie Nelson naturally hated Alice more cordially than ever for her success. She ventured, when the new house was being discussed at a dinner, to say that Mr. MacBirney seemed to have excellent taste; whereupon Charles Kimberly over a salad bluntly replied that the time MacBirney had shown his taste was when he chose a wife. "But," added Charles, reflectively, "perhaps a man doesn't prove his taste so much in getting a wife as in keeping one.
"Any man," he continued, "may be lucky enough to get a wife; we see that every day. But who, save a man of feeling, could keep, well, say Imogene or Dolly, for instance?"
Robert agreed that if the MacBirney home showed anything it showed the touch of an agreeable woman. "Any one," he declared, paraphrasing his brother, "can buy pretty things, but it takes a clever woman to combine them."
One result of the situation was a new cordiality from Lottie Nelson to the MacBirneys. And since it had become necessary to pay court to them, Lottie resolved to pay hers to Mr. MacBirney. She was resourceful rather than deep, and hoped by this to annoy Alice and possibly to stir Robert Kimberly out of his exasperating indifference. The indifference of a Kimberly could assume in its proportions the repose of a monument.
Lottie, too, was a mover in many of the diversions arranged to keep the lake set amused. But as her efforts did not always tend to make things easy for Alice, Dolly became active herself in suggesting things.
One Saturday morning a message came from her, directing Alice to forbid her husband's going to town, drop everything, provide a lunch and join a motoring party for the seashore. MacBirney following the lines of Robert Kimberly's experience with cars had secured at his suggestion, among others, a foreign car from which things might reasonably be expected.
Imogene Kimberly and Charles took Alice with them and Dolly rode with MacBirney, who had Robert Kimberly with him in the new car to see how it behaved. Kimberly's own chauffeur drove for them. Doane took Arthur De Castro and Fritzie Venable. The servants and the lunch followed with a De Castro chauffeur.
As the party climbed toward Sea Ridge a shower drove them into the grounds of a country club. While it rained, the women, their long veils thrown back, walked through the club house, and the men paced about, smoking.
Alice, seated at a table on the veranda, was looking at an illustrated paper when Robert Kimberly joined her. He told her what extravagant stories he had heard from Dolly about the success of her new home. She laughed over his sister's enthusiasm, admitted her own, and confessed at length how the effort to get satisfactory effects had tired her. He in turn described to her what he had once been through in starting a new refinery and how during the strain of six weeks the hair upon his temples had perceptibly whitened, turning brown again when the mental pressure was relieved.
"I never heard of such a thing," exclaimed Alice.
"I don't know how unusual it is, but it has happened more than once in our family. I remember my mother's hair once turned in that way. But my mother had much sadness in her life."
"Mrs. De Castro often speaks of your mother."
"She was a brave woman. You have never seen her portrait? Sometime at The Towers you must. And you can see on her temples just what I speak of. But your home-making will have just the opposite effect on you. If care makes the hair white, happiness ought to make it browner than ever."
"I suppose happiness is wholly a matter of illusion."
"I don't see that it makes much difference how we define it; the thing is to be happy. However, if what you say is so, you should cling to your illusions. Get all you can--I should--and keep all you can get."
"You don't mean to say you practise that?"
"Of course I do. And I think for a man I've kept my illusions very well."
"For aman!" Alice threw her head back. "That is very comfortable assurance."
He looked at her with composure. "What is it you object to in it?"
"To begin with," demanded Alice, "how can a man have any illusions? He knows everything from the very beginning."
"Oh, by no means. Far from it, I assure you."
"He has every chance to. It is only the poor women who are constantly disillusionized in life."
"You mustn't be disillusionized, Mrs. MacBirney. Hope unceasingly."
She resented the personal application. "I am not speaking of myself."
"Nor am I speaking of you, only speaking through you to womankind. You 'poor women' should not be discouraged." He raised his head as if he were very confident. "If we can hope, you can hope. I hope every day. I hope in a woman."
She bore his gaze as she had already borne it once or twice before, steadily, but as one might bear the gaze of a dangerous creature, if strengthened by the certainty of iron bars before its impassive eyes. Kimberly was both too considerate and possessed too much sense of fitness to overdo the moment. With his hand he indicated a woman walking along a covered way in front of them. "There, for instance, goes a woman," he continued, following up his point. "Look at her. Isn't she pretty? I like her walk. And a woman's walk! It is impossible to say how much depends on the walk. And all women that walk well have good feet; their heels set right and there is a pleasure in watching each sure foot-fall. Notice, for instance, that woman's feet; her walk is perfect."
"How closely observant!"
"She is well gowned--but everybody is well gowned. And her figure is good. Let us say, I hope in her, hope she will be all she looks. I follow the dream. In a breath, an instant, a twinkling, the illusion has vanished! She has spoken, or she has looked my way and I have seen her face. But even then the face is only the dial of the watch; it may be very fair. Sometime I see her mind--and everything is gone!"
"Would it be impertinent to ask who has put women up in this way to be inspected and criticised?" retorted Alice.
"Not in the least. I am speaking only in illustration and if you are annoyed with me I shall miss making my point. Do I give up merely because I have lost an illusion? Not at all. Another springs up at once, and I welcome it. Let us live in our illusions; every time we part with one and find none to take its place we are poorer, Mrs. MacBirney, believe me."
"Just the same, I think you are horridly critical of women."
"Then you should advise me to cultivate my illusions in their direction."
"I should if I thought it were necessary. As I have a very high opinion of women, I don't think any illusions concerning them are necessary."
"Loftily said. And I sha'n't allow you to think my own opinion any less high. When I was a boy, women were all angels to me; they are not quite that, we know."
"In spite of illusions."
"But I don't want to put them very much lower than the angels--and I don't. I keep them up because I like to."
Her comment was still keen. "Not because they deserve it."
"I won't quarrel with you--because, then, they do deserve it. It is pleasant to be set right."
The shower had passed and the party was making ready to start. Alice rose. "You haven't said what you think of your own kind, as you call them--menkind."
Kimberly held her coat for her to slip into. "Of course, I try not to think of them."
When they reached the summit dividing the lake country from the sea the sun was shining. To the east, the sound lay at their feet. In the west stretched the heavy forests and the long chain of lakes. They followed the road to the sea and after their shore luncheon relaxed for an hour at the yacht club. Driving back by the river road they put the new car through some paces, and halting at intervals to interchange passengers, they proceeded homeward.
Going through Sunbury at five o'clock the cars separated. MacBirney, with whom Robert Kimberly was again riding, had taken in Fritzie Venable and Alice. Leaving the village they chose the hill road around the lake. Brice, Kimberly's chauffeur, took advantage of the long, straight highway leading to it to let the car out a little. They were running very fast when he noticed the sparker was binding and stopped for a moment. It was just below the Roger Morgan place and Kimberly, who could never for a moment abide idleness, suggested that they alight while Brice worked. He stood at the door of the tonneau and gave his hand to Alice as she stepped from the car. In getting out, her foot slipped and she turned her ankle. She would have fallen but that Kimberly caught her. Alice recovered herself immediately, yet not without an instant's dependence on him that she would rather have escaped.
Brice was slow in correcting the mechanical difficulty, and finding it at last in the magneto announced it would make a delay of twenty minutes. Fritzie suggested that they walk through her park and meet the car at the lower end. MacBirney started up one of the hill paths with Alice, Kimberly and Fritzie following. They passed Morgan house and higher in the hills they reached the chapel. Alice took her husband in to see the beauty of the interior. She told him Dolly's story of the building and when Fritzie and Kimberly joined them, Alice was regretting that Dolly had failed to recollect the name of the church in Rome it was modelled after. Kimberly came to her aid. "Santa Maria in Cosmedin, I think."
"Oh, do you remember? Thank you," exclaimed Alice. "Isn't it all beautiful, Walter? And those old pulpits--I'm in love with them!"
MacBirney pronounced everything admirable and prepared to move on. He walked toward the door with Fritzie.
Alice, with Kimberly, stood before the chancel looking at the balustrade. She stopped near the north ambone, and turning saw in the soft light of the aisle the face of the boy dreaming in the silence of the bronze.
Below it, measured words of Keats were dimly visible. Alice repeated them half aloud. "What a strange inscription," she murmured almost to herself.
Kimberly stood at her elbow. "It is strange."
She was silent for a moment. "I think it is the most beautiful head of a boy I have ever seen."
"Have you seen it before?"
"I was here once with Mrs. De Castro."
"She told you the story?"
"No, we remained only a moment." Alice read aloud the words raised in the bronze: "'Robert Ten Broeck Morgan: ætat: 20.'"
"Should you like to hear it?"
"Very much."
"His father married my half-sister--Bertha; Charles and I are sons of my father's second marriage. 'Tennie' was Bertha's son--strangely shy and sensitive from his childhood, even morbidly sensitive. I do not mean unbalanced in any way----"
"I understand."
"A sister of his, Marie, became engaged to a young man of a Southern family who came here after the war. They were married and their wedding was made the occasion of a great family affair for the Morgans, and Alices and Legares and Kimberlys. Tennie was chosen for groomsman. The house that you have seen below was filled with wedding guests. The hour came."
"And such a place for a wedding!" exclaimed Alice.
"But instead of the bridal procession that the guests were looking for, a clergyman came down the stairs with a white face. When he could speak, he announced as well as he could that the wedding would not take place that night; that a terrible accident had occurred, and that Tennie Morgan was lying upstairs dead."
Alice could not recall, even afterward, that Kimberly appeared under a strain; but she noticed as she listened that he spoke with a care not quite natural.
"You may imagine the scene," he continued. "But the worst was to come----"
"Oh, you were there?"
"When you hear the rest you will think, if there is a God, I should have been, for I might have saved him. I was in Honolulu. I did not even hear of it for ten days. They found him in his bathroom where he had dressed, thrown himself on a couch, and shot himself."
"How terrible!"
"In his bedroom they found a letter. It had been sent to him within the hour by a party of blackmailers, pressing a charge--of which he was quite innocent--on the part of a designing woman, and threatening that unless he complied with some impossible demands, his exposure and news of an action for damages should follow in the papers containing the account of his sister's wedding. They found with this his own letter to his mother. He assured her the charge was utterly false, but being a Kimberly he knew he should not be believed because of the reputation of his uncles, one of whom he named, and after whom he himself was named, and to whom he had always been closest. This, he feared, would condemn him no matter how innocent he might be; he felt he should be unable to lift from his name a disgrace that would always be recalled with his sister's wedding; and that if he gave up his life he knew the charges would be dropped because he was absolutely innocent. And so he died."
For a moment Alice stood in silence. "Poor, poor boy!" she said softly. "How I pity him!"
"Do you so? Then well may I. For I am the uncle whom he named in his letter."
Unable or unwilling to speak she pointed to the tablet as if to say: "You said the uncle he was named after."
He understood. "Yes," he answered slowly, "my name is Robert Ten Broeck Kimberly."
Her eyes fell to the tessellated pavement. "It is frightfully sad," she said haltingly. Then as if she must add something: "I am very sorry you felt compelled to recall so painful a story."
"It isn't exactly that I felt compelled; yet perhaps that expresses it, too. I have expected sometime to tell it to you."