CHAPTER XXIV"By the way, Nelson," said De Castro, "what is there in this story in the afternoon papers about Doane and Dora Morgan?""It is substantially true, I fancy. They have eloped.""From whom could they possibly be eloping?" asked Lottie."Why, you must know Doane has a wife and two little girls," exclaimed Dolly indignantly."I supposed his wife was divorced," returned Lottie helplessly. "Why wasn't she?""Perhaps," suggested Fritzie, "there wasn't time.""I don't care; Dora's life has been a very unhappy one," persisted Lottie, "and frankly I am sorry for her.""Even though she has run away with another woman's husband," said Imogene."Don'tyouthink she deserves a great deal of sympathy, Robert?" asked Lottie, appealing to Kimberly."I can't say that I do," he answered slowly. "What moves one in any consideration of a situation of that kind is, in the first place, the standards of those that fall into it. Who, for instance, can scrape up any interest in the affairs of the abandoned? Or of those who look on irregular relations pretty much as they do on regular? People to enlist sympathy in their troubles must respect themselves."The conversation drifted and Alice, within range of both tables, caught snatches of the talk at each. She presently heard Lottie Nelson speaking petulantly, and as if repeating a question to Kimberly. "Whatdomen most like, Robert?" Alice could not see Kimberly's face, but she understood its expression so well that she could imagine the brows either luminously raised if Kimberly were interested, or patiently flat if he were not."You ought to know," she heard Kimberly answer. "You have been very successful in pleasing them.""And failed where I have most wanted to succeed. Oh, no. I am asking you. Whatdothey like?"The answer halted. "I can't tell you. To me, of course, few men seem worth pleasing.""What should you do to please a man, if you were a woman?""Nonsense.""I'm asking purely out of curiosity," persisted Lottie. "I have failed. I realize it and I shall never try again. But at the end--I'd like to know.""You probably would not agree with me," answered Kimberly after a silence, "most women would not. Perhaps it would fail with most men--but as I say, most men wouldn't interest me, anyway. If I had it to try, I would appeal to a man's highest nature.""What is his highest nature?""Whatever his best instincts are,""And then?""That's all.""Oh, nonsense!""No, it isn't nonsense. Only I am not good at analyzing. If I once caught a man in that way I should know I had him fast forever. There is absolutely no use in flinging your mere temptations at him. Keep those quietly in the background. He will go after them fast enough when you have made sure of him on the higher plane. If you are compelled to display your temptations at the start, the case is hopeless. You have surrendered your advantage of the high appeal. Trust him to think about the other side of it, Lottie. You can't suggest to him anything he doesn't know, and perhaps--I'm not sure--he prefers to turn to that side when he thinks you are not looking. The difficulty is," he concluded, speaking slowly, "even if you get him from the lower side, he won't stay hooked. You know how a salmon strikes at a fly? All human experience shows that a man hooked from the side of his lower instincts, will sooner or later shake the bait.""It must be something even to have him on the hook for a while, Robert.""But you don't agree with me.""No.""No doubt, I'm wrong. And it isn't, I suppose, of much consequence whether the men stay caught or not. I look at it, probably, with a business instinct. When I do anything, I want it to stay done forever. When I make a deal or fasten a point I want it to stay fastened for all time. That is my nature. Now, that may not be a woman's nature. You shouldn't have asked me, don't you see, because we 'begin' differently.""I fancy that's it, Robert. We 'begin' differently.""Try another seer--there is De Castro. Here is Mrs. MacBirney. Mrs. MacBirney," Kimberly moved so he could command Alice's attention, "Mrs. Nelson is trying to find out what a man likes in a woman. I haven't been able to tell her----""It isn't that at all," smiled Lottie, wearily. "Mr. Kimberly can tell. He won't."Kimberly appealed to Alice. "It is a great mistake not to trust your oracle when he is doing his best--don't you think so, Mrs. MacBirney?""I suppose an oracle is consulted on his reputation--and it is on his reputation that his clients should rely," suggested Alice."Anyway," declared Lottie, rising, "I am going to try another."Kimberly turned his chair as she walked away so that he could speak to Alice. "Giving advice is not my forte. Whenever I attempt it I disappoint somebody; and this time I had a difficult subject. Mrs. Nelson wants to know what men like in women. A much more interesting subject would be, what women like in men. I should suppose, in my blundering way, that sincerity would come before everything else, Mrs. MacBirney. What do you think?""Sincerity ought to be of value.""But there is a great deal else, you imply.""Necessarily, I should think.""As, for instance?""Unselfishness among other things," said Alice.He objected frankly to her suggestion. "I don't know about unselfishness. I have my doubts about unselfishness. Are you sure?""Most ideals include it, I believe.""I don't know that I have any ideals--abstract ideals, that is. Though I once took quite an interest in the Catholic Church.""An academic interest.""No, no; a real and concrete interest. I admire it greatly. I tried once to look into its claims. What in part discouraged me was the unpleasant things Catholics themselves told me about their church.""They must have been bad Catholics.""I don't know enough about them to discriminate between the good and the bad. What, by the way," he asked bluntly, "are you--a good Catholic or a bad one?"She was taken for an instant aback; then she regarded him with an expression he did not often see in her eyes. "I am a bad one, I am ashamed to say.""Then these I speak of must have been good ones," he remarked at once, "because they were not in the least like you."If he thought he had perplexed her he was soon undeceived. "There are varying degrees even of badness," she returned steadily. "I hope I shall never fall low enough to speak slightingly of my faith.""I don't understand," he persisted, musing, "why you should fall at all. Now, if I were a Catholic I should be a good one.""Suppose you become one."He disregarded her irony. "I may sometime. To be perfectly frank, what I found most lacking when I looked into the question was some sufficient inducement. Of what use? I asked myself. If by following Christianity and its precepts a man could make himself anything more than he is--prolong his years, or recall his youth. If he could achieve the Titanic, raise himself to the power of a demigod!" Kimberly's eyes shone wide at the thought, then they closed to a contrasting torpor. "Will religion do this for any one? I think not. But fancy what that would mean; never to grow old, never to fall ill, never to long for without possessing!" A disdainful pride was manifest in every word of his utterance, but he spoke with the easy-mannered good-nature that was his characteristic."A man that follows the dreams of religion," he resumed but with lessening assurance, for Alice maintained a silence almost contemptuous and he began to feel it, "is he not subject to the same failures, the same pains, the same misfortunes that we are subject to? Even as the rest of us, he must grow old and fail and die.""Some men, of course," she suggested with scant patience, "should have a different dispensation from the average mortal."Kimberly squirmed dissentingly. "I don't like that phrase, 'the average mortal.' It has a villainously hackneyed sound, don't you think? No, for my part I should be willing to let everybody in on the greater, the splendid dispensation.""You might be sorry if you did.""You mean, there are men that should die--some that should die early?""There are many reasons why it might not work."He stopped. "That is true--it might not work, if universally applied. It would do better restricted to a few of us. But no matter; since we can't have it at all, we must do the best we can. And the way to beat the game as it must be played in this world at present," he continued with contained energy, "is to fight for what we want and defend it when won, against all comers. Won't you wish me success in such an effort, Alice?""I have asked you not to call me Alice.""But wish me the success, won't you? It's awfully up-hill work fighting alone. Two together can do so much better. With two the power is raised almost to the infinite. Together we could be gods--or at least make the gods envy us."She looked at him an instant without a word, and rising, walked to an anteroom whither MacBirney, Lottie Nelson, De Castro, and Fritzie had gone to play at cards.CHAPTER XXVWhen the season was fairly open the Kimberlys made Alice the recipient of every attention. A solidarity had always seemed, in an unusual degree, to animate the family. They were happy in their common interests and their efforts united happily now to make Alice a favored one in their activities.In everything proposed by Dolly or Imogene, Alice was consulted. When functions were arranged, guests lists were submitted to her. Entertainment was decided upon after Alice had been called in. The result was a gay season even for Second Lake. And Dolly said it was the influx of Alice's new blood into the attenuated strain at the lake that accounted for the successful summer. Alice herself grew light-hearted. In social affairs the battalions inclined to her side. Even Lottie Nelson could not stand out and was fain to make such peace as she could.In all of this Alice found consolation for the neglect of her husband. She had begun to realize that this neglect was not so much a slight, personal to her, as a subordination of everything to the passion for money-getting. It is impossible to remain always angry and Alice's anger subsided in the end into indifference as to what her husband said or did.She had, moreover--if it were a stimulus--the continual stimulus of Kimberly's attitude. Without insincerity or indifference he accommodated his interest in her to satisfactory restraint. This gave Alice the pleasure of realizing that her firmness had in nowise estranged him and that without being turbulent he was always very fond of her. She knew he could look to many other women for whatever he chose to ask of favor, yet apparently he looked to her alone for his pleasure in womankind; and in a hundred delicate ways he allowed her to feel this.A handsome young Harvard man came to her at the lake seeking an opening in the refineries. His people were former Colorado acquaintances whom Alice was extremely desirous of obliging. She entertained her visitor and tried vainly to interest her husband in him. MacBirney promised but did nothing, and one day Dolly calling at Cedar Lodge found Alice writing a note to the college boy, still waiting in town on MacBirney's empty promises, telling him of the failure of her efforts and advising him not to wait longer."But why worry?" asked Dolly, when Alice told her. "Speak to Robert about it. He will place him within twenty-four hours.""I can't very well ask a favor of that kind from Mr. Kimberly, Dolly.""What nonsense! Why not?"Alice could not say precisely why. "After my own husband hasn't found a way to place him!" she exclaimed.Dolly did not hesitate. "I will attend to it. Give me his address. Football, did you say? Very good."Within a week the young man wrote Alice--from the Orange River refineries, where he was, he picturesquely said, knee-deep in sugar--that he had actually been before the sugar magnate, Robert Kimberly himself, adding with the impetuous spelling of a football man, that the interview had been so gracious and lasted so long he had grown nervous about the time Mr. Kimberly was giving him.Kimberly never referred to the matter nor did Alice ever mention it to him. It was merely pleasant to think of. And in such evidences as the frequent letters from her protégé she read her influence over the man who, even the chronicle of the day could have told her, had she needed the confirmation, extorted the interest of the world in which he moved; and over whom, apparently, no woman other than herself could claim influence.She came tacitly to accept this position toward Kimberly. Its nature did not compromise her conscience and it seemed in this way possible both to have and not have. She grew to lean upon the thought of him as one of the consoling supports in her whirling life--the life in which reflection never reached conclusion, action never looked forward to result, and denial had neither time nor place.The pursuit of pleasure, sweetened by that philanthropy and the munificent almsgiving which was so esteemed by those about her, made up her life. Alice concluded that those of her circle severely criticised by many who did not know them, did much good. Their failings, naturally, would not condemn them with critics who, like herself, came in contact with them at their best.Some time after the placing of the young college man, Alice, running in one morning on Dolly found her in tears. She had never before seen Dolly even worried and was at once all solicitude. For one of the very few times in her life, it appeared, Dolly had clashed with her brother Robert. Nor could Alice get clearly from her what the difference had been about. All that was evident to Alice was that Dolly was very much grieved and mortified over something Kimberly had said or done, or refused to say or do, concerning a distinguished actress who upon finishing an American tour was to be entertained by Dolly.Alice in the afternoon was over at Imogene's. Robert Kimberly was there with his brother. Afterward he joined Imogene and Alice under the elms and asked them to drive. While Imogene went in to make ready Alice poured a cup of tea for Kimberly. "I suppose you know you have made Dolly feel very bad," she said with a color of reproach.Kimberly responded with the family prudence. "Have I?" Alice handed him the tea and he asked another question. "What, pray, do you know about it?""Nothing at all except that she is hurt, and that I am sorry.""She didn't tell you what the difference was?""Except that it concerned her coming guest.""I offered Dolly my yacht for her week. She wanted me to go with the party. Because I declined, she became greatly incensed.""She thought, naturally, you ought to have obliged her.""I pleaded I could not spare the time. She has the Nelsons and enough others, anyway.""Her answer, of course, is that your time is your own.""But the fact is, her guest made the request. Dolly without consulting me promised I would go, and now that I will not she is angry.""I should think a week at sea would be a diversion for you.""To tag around a week in heavy seas with wraps after a person of distinction? And pace the deck with her on damp nights?""That is unamiable. She is a very great actress."Kimberly continued to object. "Suppose she should be seasick. I once went out with her and she professed to be ill every morning. I had to sit in her cabin--it was a stuffy yacht of De Castro's--and hold her hand.""But you are so patient. You would not mind that.""Oh, no; I am not in the least patient. The Kimberlys are described as patient when they are merely persistent. If I am even amiable, amiability is something quite other than patience. Patience is almost mysterious to me. Francis is the only patient man I ever have known.""In this case you are not even amiable. We all have to do things we don't want to do, to oblige others. And Dolly ought to be obliged.""Very well. If you will go, I will. What do you say?""You need not drag me in. I shall have guests of my own next week. If Dolly made a mistake about your inclination in the affair it would be only generous to help her out.""Very well, I will go.""Now you are amiable.""They can put in at Bar Point and I will join them for the last two days. I will urge McEntee, the captain, to see that they are all sick, if possible, before I come aboard. Then they will not need very much entertaining.""How malicious!""Not a bit. Dolly is a good sailor. Her guest cares nothing for me. It is only to have an American at her heels.""They say that no one can resist her charm. You may not escape it this time."A fortnight passed before any news came to Alice from the yachting party. Then Fritzie came home from Nelsons' one day with an interesting account of the trip. Until the story was all told, Alice felt gratified at having smoothed over Dolly's difficulty."They were gone longer than they expected," said Fritzie. "Robert was having such a good time. Lottie Nelson tells me Dolly's guest made the greatest sort of a hit with Robert. He didn't like her at first. Then she sang a song that attracted him, and he kept her singing that song all the time. He sat in a big chair near the piano and wouldn't move. The funny thing was, she was awfully bored the way he acted. By the way, you must not miss the golf to-morrow. Everybody will be out."Alice hardly heard the last words. She was thinking about Kimberly's entertaining the celebrity. Every other incident of the voyage had been lost upon her. When she found herself alone her disappointment and resentment were keen. Some unaccountable dread annoyed her. He was then, she reflected, like all other men, filled with mere professions of devotion.Something more disturbed her. The incident revealed to her that he had grown to be more in her thoughts than she realized. Racks and thumb-screws could not have dragged from her the admission that she was interested in him. It was enough that he professed to be devoted to her and had been led away by the first nod of another woman.CHAPTER XXVIThe golf course and the casino were crowded next day when Alice arrived. Yet among the throng of men and women, her interest lay only in the meeting of one, as in turn his interest in all the summer company lay only in seeking Alice. She had hardly joined Imogene and the lake coterie when Kimberly appeared.The players had driven off and the favorites, of whom there were many, could already be trailed across the hills by their following. When the "out" score had been posted, De Castro suggested that the party go down to the tenth hole to follow the leaders in.A sea-breeze tempered the sunshine and the long, low lines of the club-house were gayly decorated. Pavilions, spread here and there among the trees, gave the landscape a festival air.On the course, the bright coloring of groups of men and women moving across the fields made a spectacle changing every moment in brilliancy.Kimberly greeted Alice with a gracious expectancy. He was met with a lack of response nothing less than chilling. Surprised, though fairly seasoned to rebuffs, and accepting the unexpected merely as a difficulty, Kimberly set out to be entertaining.His resource in this regard was not scanty but to-day Alice succeeded in taxing his reserves. In his half-mile tramp with her in the "gallery," punctuated by occasional halts, he managed but once to separate her from the others. The sun annoyed him. Alice was aware of his lifting his straw hat frequently to press his handkerchief to beads of perspiration that gathered on his swarthy forehead, but she extended no sympathy.In spite of his discomfort, however, his eyes flashed with their accustomed spirit and his dogged perseverance in the face of her coldness began to plead for itself. When the moving "gallery" had at last left them for an instant behind, Kimberly dropped on a bench under the friendly shade of a thorn apple tree."Sit down a moment, do," he begged, "until I get a breath.""Do you find it warm?""Not at all," he responded with negligible irony. "It is in some respects uncommonly chilly." He spoke without the slightest petulance. "For Heaven's sake, tell me what I have done!""I don't know what you mean.""I mean, you are not kind in your manner toward me. I left you--I hoped you would remember--to do a favor for you----""For me?" Her tone was not in the least reassuring."At least, I conceived it to be for you," he replied."That is a mistake.""Very good. Let us call it mistake number one. I spent five days with Dolly and her guests----""Guests," repeated Alice, lingering slightly on the word, as she poked the turf slowly with her sunshade, "or guest?""Guest!" he echoed, "Ah!" He paused. "Who has put me wrong in so simple a matter? What I did was no more than to be agreeable to Dolly's guests. I spent much time with the guest of honor at Dolly's repeated requests. She happened to sing a song that pleased me very much, for one particular reason; it was your lovely little Italian air; I am not ashamed to say it brought back pleasant moments. Since she could do nothing else that was so pleasing," he continued, "I kept her singing the song. She became bored and naturally ceased to be good-natured. Then, Dolly asked me to run around by Nantucket, which we could have done in two days. Not to be churlish, I consented. Then the coal gave out, which took another day.""What a mishap! Well, I am glad to hear the trip went pleasantly.""If you are, something has gone wrong with you----""Nothing whatever, I can assure you.""You are offended with me.""I assure you I am not.""I assure you, you are." He took the sunshade from her hand. "You remember the fable about the man that tried to oblige everybody? He wasn't a refiner--he was a mere miller. At the start I really did my best for three days to entertain Dolly's lovely vampire and at the end of that time she made a face at me--and wound up by telling Dolly my head was full of another woman. Then--to be quite shamefully frank--I had to dodge Lottie Nelson's apologies for her unpleasant temper on an evening that you remember; altogether my lot was not a happy one. My head was full of another woman. You remember you said nobody could resist her charm? I thought of it. What is charm? I often asked myself. I saw nothing of charm in that charming woman. Who can define it? But penetration! She could read you like a printed book. We talked one night of American women. I dared to say they were the loveliest in the world. She grew incensed. 'They know absolutely nothing!' she exclaimed. 'That is why we like them' I answered. 'They are innocent; you are as corrupt as I am.' Then she would call me a hypocrite." He stopped suddenly and Alice felt his eyes keenly upon her. "Is it possible you do not believe what I am saying?""Innocent women believe whatever they are told.""I don't deserve sarcasm. I am telling the simple truth. For once I am wholly at fault, Alice. I don't know what the matter is.Whathas happened?""Nothing has happened; only to-day I seem especially stupid.""Are you as frank with me as I am with you?"She made no answer. He drew back as if momentarily discouraged. "If you no longer believe me--what can I do?""It isn't at all that I do not believe you--what difference should it make whether or no I believe you? Suppose I were frank enough to admit that something I heard of you had disappointed me a little. What credit should I have for commenting on what in no way concerns me?""Anything heard to my discredit should be carefully received. Believe the best of me as long as you can. It will never be necessary, Alice, for any one to tell you I am unworthy; when that day comes you will know it first from me. And if I ever am unworthy, it will not be because I willed to be--only because through my baseness I never could know what it means to be worthy of a woman far above me."She reached out her hand for her sunshade but he refused to give it back. She tried to rise; he laid his hand on her arm. "A moment! It was about me, was it?" he continued. "Did you receive it cautiously? Put me in your position. How do you think one would fare who came to me with anything to your discredit? Think of it, Alice--how do you think one would fare--look at me."She looked up only for an instant and as if in protest. But in spite of herself something in her own eyes of confidence in him, some tribute to his honesty, stood revealed, and inspired him with a new courage."You say what you hear of me does not concern you. Anything you hear of me does concern you vitally." His intensity frightened her, and thinking to escape him, she still sat motionless."Everything I do, important or trivial, has its relation to you. Do you believe me? Alice, you must believe me. You do believe me. How can you say that anything you hear of me does not concern you? It concerns you above every living person. It concerns your happiness----""Such wildness--such extravagance!" she exclaimed trying to control her fear."I tell you I am neither wild nor extravagant. Our happiness, our very lives are bound up together. It isn't that I say to you, you are mine--I am yours."The furious beating of her heart would not be stilled. "How can you say such things!""I say them because I can't escape your influence in my life. I only want to come up to where you are--not to drag you down to where I am--to where I have been condemned to be from the cradle. If what you hear of me conflicts with what I say to you, believe nothing of what you hear." His words fell like blows. "If I could show you my very heart I could not be more open. It is you who are everything to me--you alone."Breathless and rigid she looked away. Hardly breathing himself, Kimberly watched her. Her lip quivered. "Oh, my heart!" he murmured. But in the words she heard an incredible tenderness. It moved her where intensity had failed. It stilled the final pangs of revolt at his words. She drifted for an instant in a dream. New and trembling thoughts woke in a reluctant dawn and glowed in her heart like faint, far streamers of a new day."Oh, my heart!" The words came again, as if out of another world. She felt her hand taken by a strong, warm hand. "Do you tremble for me? Is my touch so heavy? How shall I ever safeguard the flower of your delicacy to my clumsiness?"She neither breathed nor moved. "No matter. You will teach me how, Alice. Learning how you can be happiest, I shall be happiest. I feel beggared when I lay my plea before you. What are all my words unless you breathe life upon them? A few things--not many--I have succeeded in. And I succeeded," the energy of success echoed in his confession, "only because I let nothing of effort stand between me and the goal. You have never been happy. Let me try to succeed with your happiness."A silence followed, golden as the moment. Neither felt burdened. About them was quiet and the stillness seemed to flow from the hush of their thoughts."It is easy for you to speak," she faltered at last, "too easy for me to listen. I am unhappy--so are many women; many would be strong enough never to listen to what you have said. I myself should be if I were what you picture me. And that is where all the trouble lies. You mistake me; you picture to yourself an Alice that doesn't exist. If I could return your interest I should disappoint you. I am not depreciating myself to extort compliments--you would supply them easily, I know. Only--I know myself better than you know me.""What you say," he responded, "might have point if I were a boy--it would have keen point. While to me your beauty--do not shake your head despairingly--your beauty is the delicacy of girlhood, you yourself are a woman. You have known life, and sorrow. I cannot lead you as a fairy once led you from girlhood into womanhood--would that I could have done it! He should be a very tender guide who does that for a woman."But I can lead you, I think, Alice, to everything in this world that consoles a woman for what she gives to it. Do not say I do not know you--that is saying I do not know myself, men, women, life--it is saying I know nothing. Modest as I am," he smiled lightly, "I am not yet ready to confess to that. I do know; as men that have lived and tasted and turned away and longed and waited, know--so I know you. And I knew from the moment I saw you that all my happiness in this world must come from you.""Oh, I am ashamed to hear you say that. I am ashamed to hear you say anything. What base creature am I, that I have invited you to speak!" She turned and looked quickly at him, but with fear and resolve in her eyes. "This you must know, here and now, that I can never be, not if you kill me, another Dora Morgan."He met her look with simple frankness. "The world is filled with Dora Morgans. If you could be, Alice, how could I say to you what I never have said, or thought of saying, to any Dora Morgan?""To be a creature would kill me. Do not be deceived--I know.""Or do worse than kill you. No, you are like me. There is no half-way for you and me. Everything--or nothing!"She rose to her feet. He saw that she supported herself for a moment with one hand still on the bench rail. He took her other hand within his own and drew her arm through his arm.It was the close of the day. The sun, setting, touched the hills with evening, and below the distant Towers great copses of oak lay like islands on the mirrored landscape. They walked from the bench slowly together. "Just a little help for the start," he murmured playfully as he kept her at his side. "The path is a new one. I shall make it very easy for your feet."CHAPTER XXVII"I hope you rested well after your excitement," said Kimberly to Alice, laughing reassuringly as he asked. It was the day following their parting at the golf grounds. He had driven over to Cedar Lodge and found Alice in the garden waiting for Dolly. The two crossed the terrace to a sheltered corner of the garden overlooking the bay where they could be alone. After Alice had seated herself Kimberly repeated his question.She regarded him long and thoughtfully as she answered, and with a sadness that was unexpected: "I did not rest at all. I do not even yet understand--perhaps I never shall--why I let you talk to me in that wild, wild way. But if I did not rest last night, I thought. I am to blame--I know that--as much as you are. Don't tell me. I am as much to blame as you are. But this cannot go on."His eyes were upon her hands as they lay across flowers in her lap. He took a spray from her while she spoke and bent his look upon it. She was all in white and he loved to see her in white. In it she fulfilled to him a dream of womanhood. "I ought to ask you what you mean when you say and think these fearful things," she went on, waiting for him to lift his eyes. "I ought to ask you; but you do not care what it means, at least as far as you are concerned. And you never ask yourself what it means as far as I am concerned."He replied with no hesitation. "I began asking myself that question almost the first time I ever saw you. I have asked myself nothing else ever since. It means for both of us exactly the same thing; for you, everything you can ask that I can give you; for me, everything I can give you that you can ask.""If there were no gulf between us--but there is. And even if what you say were true, you can see how impossible it would be for me to say those words back to you."He looked at the spray. "Quite true; you cannot. But I shall ask so little--less of you than of any woman in the world. And you will give only what you can, and when you can. And you alone are to be the judge of what you can give and when, until our difficulties are worked out."I shall only show you now that Icanbe patient. I never have been--I have confessed to that. Now I am going to the test. Meantime, you don't realize, Alice, quite, how young you are, do you? Nor how much in earnest I am. Let us turn to that for a while."From a shrub at his side he plucked sprigs of rosemary and crushed them with the spray. "Even love never begins but once. So, for every hour that passes, a memory; for every hour that tarries, a happiness; for every hour that comes, a hope. Do you remember?""I read it on your sun-dial.""Every one may read it there. Where I want you to read it is in my heart.""I wonder whether it is most what you say, or the way in which you say it, that gets people into trouble?""On the contrary; my life has been spent in getting people out of trouble, and in waiting to say things to you.""You are improving your opportunity in that respect. And you are losing a still more delightful opportunity, for you don't know how much relief you can give me by leaving most of them unsaid.""It is impossible, of course, to embrace all of our opportunities--often impossible to embrace the cause of them.""Don't pick me up in that way, please."He held his hands over hers and dropped the crushed rosemary on them. "Would that I could in any way. Since I cannot, let me annoy you."Dolly appeared at a distance, and they walked down the terrace to meet her. She kissed Alice. "What makes you look so girlish to-day? And what is all this color around your eyes? Never wear anything but white. I never should myself," sighed Dolly. "You know Alice and I are off for the seashore," she added, turning to her brother."So I hear.""Come along.""Who is going?""Everybody, I suppose. They all know about the trip.""Where do you dine?""On the shore near the light-house. Arthur is bringing some English friends out from town; we are going to dance."That night by the sea Kimberly and Alice danced together. He held her like a child, and his strength, which for a moment startled her, was a new charm when she glided across the long, half-lighted floor within his arm. Her grace responded perfectly to the ease with which he led, and they, stopped only when both were breathing fast, to stroll out on the dark pier and drink in the refreshment of the night wind from the ocean.They remained out of doors a long time, talking sometimes, laughing sometimes, walking sometimes, sometimes sitting down for a moment or kneeling upon the stone parapet benches to listen to the surf pounding below them. When they went in, he begged her again to dance. Not answering in words she only lifted her arm with a smile. Making their way among those about them they glided, he in long, undulating steps, she retreating in swift, answering rhythm, touching the floor as lightly as if she trod on air."This plume in your hat," he said as they moved on and on to the low, sensuous strains of the music, "it nods so lightly. Where do you carry your wings?"The very effort of speaking was exhilarating. "It is you," she answered, "who are supplying the wings."The gayety of the others drew them more closely together. Little confidences of thought and feeling--in themselves nothing, in their unforbidden exchange everything--mutual confessions of early impressions each of the other, compliments more eagerly ventured and ignored now rather than resented. Surprise read in each other's eyes, dissent not ungracious and denial that only laughingly denied--all went to feed a secret happiness growing fearfully by leaps and bounds into ties that never could be broken.The dance with its exhilaration, the plunging of her pulse and her quick, deep breathing, shone in Alice's cheeks and in her eyes. The two laughed at everything; everything colored their happiness because everything was colored by it.The party drove home after a very late supper, Alice heavily wrapped and beside Dolly in Kimberly's car. Entertainments for the English party followed for a week and were wound up by Kimberly with an elaborate evening for them at The Towers. For the first time in years the big house was dresseden fêteand the illuminations made a picture that could be seen as far as the village.Twenty-four sat at The Towers round table that night. Alice herself helped Dolly to pair the guests and philosophically assigned her husband to Lottie Nelson. Kimberly complimented her upon her arrangement."Why not?" she asked simply, though not without a certain bitterness with which she always spoke of her husband. "People with tastes in common seem to drift together whether you pair them or not."They were standing in an arbor and Kimberly was plucking grapes for her."He is less than nothing to me," she continued, "as you too well know--or I should not be here now eating your grapes.""Your grapes, Alice. Everything here is yours. I haven't spoken much about our difficulties--'our' difficulties! The sweetness of the one word blots out the annoyance of the other. But you must know I shall never rest until you are installed here with all due splendor as mistress, not alone of the grapes, but of all you survey, for this is to be wholly and simply yours. And if I dare ask you now and here, Alice--you whose every breath is more to me than the thought of all other women--I want you to be my wife."Her lips tightened. "And I am the wife of another man--it is horrible."He heard the tremor in her tone. "Look at me.""I cannot look at you.""When you are free----""Free!" Her voice rising in despair, fell again into despair. "I shall never be free.""You shall, and that speedily, Alice!" She could imagine the blood surging into Kimberly's neck and face as he spoke. "I am growing fearful that I cannot longer stand the thought of his being under the same roof with you.""He cannot even speak to me except before Annie."Kimberly paused. "I do not like it. I want it changed.""How can I change it?""We shall find a way, and that very soon, to arrange your divorce from him.""It is the one word, the one thought that crushes me." She turned toward him as if with a hard and quick resolve. "You know I am a Catholic, and you know I am ashamed to say it.""Ashamed?""I have disgraced my faith.""Nonsense, you are an ornament to any faith.""Do not say that!" She spoke with despairing vehemence. "You don't realize how grotesque it sounds. If what you say were true I should not be here."He drew himself up. There was a resentful note in his tone. "I did not suppose myself such a moral leper that it would be unsafe for any one to talk to me. Other Catholics--and good ones--talk to me, and apparently without contamination.""It is only thatIhave no right to. Now you are going to be angry with me."He saw her eyes quiver. "God forbid! I misunderstood. And you are sensitive, dearest.""I am sensitive," she said reluctantly. "More than ever, perhaps, since I have ceased practising my religion.""But why have you ceased?"Her words came unwillingly. "I could not help it.""Why could you not help it?""You ask terribly hard questions.""You must have wanted to give it up.""I did not want to. I was forced to.""Who could force you?"He saw what an effort it cost her to answer. The words were dragged from her. "I could not live with my husband and practise it.""So much the more reason for quitting him, isn't it?""Oh, I want to. I want to be free. If I only could.""Alice, you speak like one in despair. There is nothing to be so stirred about. You want to be free, I want you to be, you shall be. Don't get excited over the matter of a divorce. Your eyes are like saucers at the thought. Why?""Only because for me it is the final disgrace--not to be separated from him--but to marry again with him alive! It means the last step for me. And the public scandal! What will they say of me, who knew me at home?""Alice, this is the wildest supersensitiveness. The whole world lives in divorced marriages. Public scandal? No one will ever hear of your divorce. The courts that grant your plea will attend to suppressing everything.""Not everything!""Why not? We abase them every day to so many worse things that their delicate gorges will not rise at a little favor like that."She looked at him gravely. "What does the world say of you for doing such things?""I never ask. You know, of course, I never pay any attention to what the world says of anything I do. Why should I? It would be difficult for the world to despise me as much as I despise it. You don't understand the world. All you need is my strength. I felt that from the very first--that if I could give you my strength the combination would be perfect. That is why I am so helplessly in love with you--my strength must be yours. I want to put you on a throne. Then I stand by, see?--and guard your majesty with a great club. And I can do it."They laughed together, for he spoke guardedly, as to being heard of others, but with ominous energy. "I believe you could," murmured Alice."Don't worry over your religion. I will make you practise it. I will make a devotee of you.""Robert! Robert!"He stooped for her hand and in spite of a little struggle would not release it until he had kissed it. "Do you know it is the first time my name has ever passed your lips?" he murmured.She was silent and he went on with another thought. "Alice, I don't believe you are as bad a Catholic as you think. I'll tell you why. I have known Catholic women, and men, too, that have given up their religion. Understand, I know nothing about your religion, but I do know something about men and women. And when they begin elaborate explanations they think they deceive me. In matter of fact, they deceive only themselves. When they begin to talk about progress, freedom of thought, decay of dogmas, individual liberty and all that twaddle, and assume a distinctly high, intellectual attitude, even though I don't know what they have given up, I know what they are assuming; I get their measure instantly. I've sometimes thought that when God calls us up to speak on judgment day He will say in the most amiable manner: 'Just tell your own story in your own way.' And that our own stories, told in our own way, will be all the data He will need to go ahead on. Indeed, He would not always need divine prescience to see through them; in most cases mere human insight would be enough. Just listen to the ordinary story of the ordinary man and notice how out of his own mouth he condemns himself. I see that sort of posturing every day in weak-kneed men and women who want to enlist large sums of money to float magnificent schemes. Now you are honest with yourself and honest with me, and I see in this a vital difference."They walked back through the garden and encountered Brother Francis who was taking the air. Kimberly stopped him. Nelson and Imogene joined the group. "Ah, Francis!" exclaimed Imogene, "have they caught you saying your beads?""Not this time, Mrs. Kimberly.""Come now, confess. What were you doing?"Brother Francis demurred and protested but there was no escape. He pointed to The Towers. "I came out to see the beautiful illumination. It is very beautiful, is it not?""But that isn't all, for when we came along you were looking at the sky.""Ah, the night is so clear--the stars are so strong to-night----""Go on.""I was thinking of Italy."
CHAPTER XXIV
"By the way, Nelson," said De Castro, "what is there in this story in the afternoon papers about Doane and Dora Morgan?"
"It is substantially true, I fancy. They have eloped."
"From whom could they possibly be eloping?" asked Lottie.
"Why, you must know Doane has a wife and two little girls," exclaimed Dolly indignantly.
"I supposed his wife was divorced," returned Lottie helplessly. "Why wasn't she?"
"Perhaps," suggested Fritzie, "there wasn't time."
"I don't care; Dora's life has been a very unhappy one," persisted Lottie, "and frankly I am sorry for her."
"Even though she has run away with another woman's husband," said Imogene.
"Don'tyouthink she deserves a great deal of sympathy, Robert?" asked Lottie, appealing to Kimberly.
"I can't say that I do," he answered slowly. "What moves one in any consideration of a situation of that kind is, in the first place, the standards of those that fall into it. Who, for instance, can scrape up any interest in the affairs of the abandoned? Or of those who look on irregular relations pretty much as they do on regular? People to enlist sympathy in their troubles must respect themselves."
The conversation drifted and Alice, within range of both tables, caught snatches of the talk at each. She presently heard Lottie Nelson speaking petulantly, and as if repeating a question to Kimberly. "Whatdomen most like, Robert?" Alice could not see Kimberly's face, but she understood its expression so well that she could imagine the brows either luminously raised if Kimberly were interested, or patiently flat if he were not.
"You ought to know," she heard Kimberly answer. "You have been very successful in pleasing them."
"And failed where I have most wanted to succeed. Oh, no. I am asking you. Whatdothey like?"
The answer halted. "I can't tell you. To me, of course, few men seem worth pleasing."
"What should you do to please a man, if you were a woman?"
"Nonsense."
"I'm asking purely out of curiosity," persisted Lottie. "I have failed. I realize it and I shall never try again. But at the end--I'd like to know."
"You probably would not agree with me," answered Kimberly after a silence, "most women would not. Perhaps it would fail with most men--but as I say, most men wouldn't interest me, anyway. If I had it to try, I would appeal to a man's highest nature."
"What is his highest nature?"
"Whatever his best instincts are,"
"And then?"
"That's all."
"Oh, nonsense!"
"No, it isn't nonsense. Only I am not good at analyzing. If I once caught a man in that way I should know I had him fast forever. There is absolutely no use in flinging your mere temptations at him. Keep those quietly in the background. He will go after them fast enough when you have made sure of him on the higher plane. If you are compelled to display your temptations at the start, the case is hopeless. You have surrendered your advantage of the high appeal. Trust him to think about the other side of it, Lottie. You can't suggest to him anything he doesn't know, and perhaps--I'm not sure--he prefers to turn to that side when he thinks you are not looking. The difficulty is," he concluded, speaking slowly, "even if you get him from the lower side, he won't stay hooked. You know how a salmon strikes at a fly? All human experience shows that a man hooked from the side of his lower instincts, will sooner or later shake the bait."
"It must be something even to have him on the hook for a while, Robert."
"But you don't agree with me."
"No."
"No doubt, I'm wrong. And it isn't, I suppose, of much consequence whether the men stay caught or not. I look at it, probably, with a business instinct. When I do anything, I want it to stay done forever. When I make a deal or fasten a point I want it to stay fastened for all time. That is my nature. Now, that may not be a woman's nature. You shouldn't have asked me, don't you see, because we 'begin' differently."
"I fancy that's it, Robert. We 'begin' differently."
"Try another seer--there is De Castro. Here is Mrs. MacBirney. Mrs. MacBirney," Kimberly moved so he could command Alice's attention, "Mrs. Nelson is trying to find out what a man likes in a woman. I haven't been able to tell her----"
"It isn't that at all," smiled Lottie, wearily. "Mr. Kimberly can tell. He won't."
Kimberly appealed to Alice. "It is a great mistake not to trust your oracle when he is doing his best--don't you think so, Mrs. MacBirney?"
"I suppose an oracle is consulted on his reputation--and it is on his reputation that his clients should rely," suggested Alice.
"Anyway," declared Lottie, rising, "I am going to try another."
Kimberly turned his chair as she walked away so that he could speak to Alice. "Giving advice is not my forte. Whenever I attempt it I disappoint somebody; and this time I had a difficult subject. Mrs. Nelson wants to know what men like in women. A much more interesting subject would be, what women like in men. I should suppose, in my blundering way, that sincerity would come before everything else, Mrs. MacBirney. What do you think?"
"Sincerity ought to be of value."
"But there is a great deal else, you imply."
"Necessarily, I should think."
"As, for instance?"
"Unselfishness among other things," said Alice.
He objected frankly to her suggestion. "I don't know about unselfishness. I have my doubts about unselfishness. Are you sure?"
"Most ideals include it, I believe."
"I don't know that I have any ideals--abstract ideals, that is. Though I once took quite an interest in the Catholic Church."
"An academic interest."
"No, no; a real and concrete interest. I admire it greatly. I tried once to look into its claims. What in part discouraged me was the unpleasant things Catholics themselves told me about their church."
"They must have been bad Catholics."
"I don't know enough about them to discriminate between the good and the bad. What, by the way," he asked bluntly, "are you--a good Catholic or a bad one?"
She was taken for an instant aback; then she regarded him with an expression he did not often see in her eyes. "I am a bad one, I am ashamed to say."
"Then these I speak of must have been good ones," he remarked at once, "because they were not in the least like you."
If he thought he had perplexed her he was soon undeceived. "There are varying degrees even of badness," she returned steadily. "I hope I shall never fall low enough to speak slightingly of my faith."
"I don't understand," he persisted, musing, "why you should fall at all. Now, if I were a Catholic I should be a good one."
"Suppose you become one."
He disregarded her irony. "I may sometime. To be perfectly frank, what I found most lacking when I looked into the question was some sufficient inducement. Of what use? I asked myself. If by following Christianity and its precepts a man could make himself anything more than he is--prolong his years, or recall his youth. If he could achieve the Titanic, raise himself to the power of a demigod!" Kimberly's eyes shone wide at the thought, then they closed to a contrasting torpor. "Will religion do this for any one? I think not. But fancy what that would mean; never to grow old, never to fall ill, never to long for without possessing!" A disdainful pride was manifest in every word of his utterance, but he spoke with the easy-mannered good-nature that was his characteristic.
"A man that follows the dreams of religion," he resumed but with lessening assurance, for Alice maintained a silence almost contemptuous and he began to feel it, "is he not subject to the same failures, the same pains, the same misfortunes that we are subject to? Even as the rest of us, he must grow old and fail and die."
"Some men, of course," she suggested with scant patience, "should have a different dispensation from the average mortal."
Kimberly squirmed dissentingly. "I don't like that phrase, 'the average mortal.' It has a villainously hackneyed sound, don't you think? No, for my part I should be willing to let everybody in on the greater, the splendid dispensation."
"You might be sorry if you did."
"You mean, there are men that should die--some that should die early?"
"There are many reasons why it might not work."
He stopped. "That is true--it might not work, if universally applied. It would do better restricted to a few of us. But no matter; since we can't have it at all, we must do the best we can. And the way to beat the game as it must be played in this world at present," he continued with contained energy, "is to fight for what we want and defend it when won, against all comers. Won't you wish me success in such an effort, Alice?"
"I have asked you not to call me Alice."
"But wish me the success, won't you? It's awfully up-hill work fighting alone. Two together can do so much better. With two the power is raised almost to the infinite. Together we could be gods--or at least make the gods envy us."
She looked at him an instant without a word, and rising, walked to an anteroom whither MacBirney, Lottie Nelson, De Castro, and Fritzie had gone to play at cards.
CHAPTER XXV
When the season was fairly open the Kimberlys made Alice the recipient of every attention. A solidarity had always seemed, in an unusual degree, to animate the family. They were happy in their common interests and their efforts united happily now to make Alice a favored one in their activities.
In everything proposed by Dolly or Imogene, Alice was consulted. When functions were arranged, guests lists were submitted to her. Entertainment was decided upon after Alice had been called in. The result was a gay season even for Second Lake. And Dolly said it was the influx of Alice's new blood into the attenuated strain at the lake that accounted for the successful summer. Alice herself grew light-hearted. In social affairs the battalions inclined to her side. Even Lottie Nelson could not stand out and was fain to make such peace as she could.
In all of this Alice found consolation for the neglect of her husband. She had begun to realize that this neglect was not so much a slight, personal to her, as a subordination of everything to the passion for money-getting. It is impossible to remain always angry and Alice's anger subsided in the end into indifference as to what her husband said or did.
She had, moreover--if it were a stimulus--the continual stimulus of Kimberly's attitude. Without insincerity or indifference he accommodated his interest in her to satisfactory restraint. This gave Alice the pleasure of realizing that her firmness had in nowise estranged him and that without being turbulent he was always very fond of her. She knew he could look to many other women for whatever he chose to ask of favor, yet apparently he looked to her alone for his pleasure in womankind; and in a hundred delicate ways he allowed her to feel this.
A handsome young Harvard man came to her at the lake seeking an opening in the refineries. His people were former Colorado acquaintances whom Alice was extremely desirous of obliging. She entertained her visitor and tried vainly to interest her husband in him. MacBirney promised but did nothing, and one day Dolly calling at Cedar Lodge found Alice writing a note to the college boy, still waiting in town on MacBirney's empty promises, telling him of the failure of her efforts and advising him not to wait longer.
"But why worry?" asked Dolly, when Alice told her. "Speak to Robert about it. He will place him within twenty-four hours."
"I can't very well ask a favor of that kind from Mr. Kimberly, Dolly."
"What nonsense! Why not?"
Alice could not say precisely why. "After my own husband hasn't found a way to place him!" she exclaimed.
Dolly did not hesitate. "I will attend to it. Give me his address. Football, did you say? Very good."
Within a week the young man wrote Alice--from the Orange River refineries, where he was, he picturesquely said, knee-deep in sugar--that he had actually been before the sugar magnate, Robert Kimberly himself, adding with the impetuous spelling of a football man, that the interview had been so gracious and lasted so long he had grown nervous about the time Mr. Kimberly was giving him.
Kimberly never referred to the matter nor did Alice ever mention it to him. It was merely pleasant to think of. And in such evidences as the frequent letters from her protégé she read her influence over the man who, even the chronicle of the day could have told her, had she needed the confirmation, extorted the interest of the world in which he moved; and over whom, apparently, no woman other than herself could claim influence.
She came tacitly to accept this position toward Kimberly. Its nature did not compromise her conscience and it seemed in this way possible both to have and not have. She grew to lean upon the thought of him as one of the consoling supports in her whirling life--the life in which reflection never reached conclusion, action never looked forward to result, and denial had neither time nor place.
The pursuit of pleasure, sweetened by that philanthropy and the munificent almsgiving which was so esteemed by those about her, made up her life. Alice concluded that those of her circle severely criticised by many who did not know them, did much good. Their failings, naturally, would not condemn them with critics who, like herself, came in contact with them at their best.
Some time after the placing of the young college man, Alice, running in one morning on Dolly found her in tears. She had never before seen Dolly even worried and was at once all solicitude. For one of the very few times in her life, it appeared, Dolly had clashed with her brother Robert. Nor could Alice get clearly from her what the difference had been about. All that was evident to Alice was that Dolly was very much grieved and mortified over something Kimberly had said or done, or refused to say or do, concerning a distinguished actress who upon finishing an American tour was to be entertained by Dolly.
Alice in the afternoon was over at Imogene's. Robert Kimberly was there with his brother. Afterward he joined Imogene and Alice under the elms and asked them to drive. While Imogene went in to make ready Alice poured a cup of tea for Kimberly. "I suppose you know you have made Dolly feel very bad," she said with a color of reproach.
Kimberly responded with the family prudence. "Have I?" Alice handed him the tea and he asked another question. "What, pray, do you know about it?"
"Nothing at all except that she is hurt, and that I am sorry."
"She didn't tell you what the difference was?"
"Except that it concerned her coming guest."
"I offered Dolly my yacht for her week. She wanted me to go with the party. Because I declined, she became greatly incensed."
"She thought, naturally, you ought to have obliged her."
"I pleaded I could not spare the time. She has the Nelsons and enough others, anyway."
"Her answer, of course, is that your time is your own."
"But the fact is, her guest made the request. Dolly without consulting me promised I would go, and now that I will not she is angry."
"I should think a week at sea would be a diversion for you."
"To tag around a week in heavy seas with wraps after a person of distinction? And pace the deck with her on damp nights?"
"That is unamiable. She is a very great actress."
Kimberly continued to object. "Suppose she should be seasick. I once went out with her and she professed to be ill every morning. I had to sit in her cabin--it was a stuffy yacht of De Castro's--and hold her hand."
"But you are so patient. You would not mind that."
"Oh, no; I am not in the least patient. The Kimberlys are described as patient when they are merely persistent. If I am even amiable, amiability is something quite other than patience. Patience is almost mysterious to me. Francis is the only patient man I ever have known."
"In this case you are not even amiable. We all have to do things we don't want to do, to oblige others. And Dolly ought to be obliged."
"Very well. If you will go, I will. What do you say?"
"You need not drag me in. I shall have guests of my own next week. If Dolly made a mistake about your inclination in the affair it would be only generous to help her out."
"Very well, I will go."
"Now you are amiable."
"They can put in at Bar Point and I will join them for the last two days. I will urge McEntee, the captain, to see that they are all sick, if possible, before I come aboard. Then they will not need very much entertaining."
"How malicious!"
"Not a bit. Dolly is a good sailor. Her guest cares nothing for me. It is only to have an American at her heels."
"They say that no one can resist her charm. You may not escape it this time."
A fortnight passed before any news came to Alice from the yachting party. Then Fritzie came home from Nelsons' one day with an interesting account of the trip. Until the story was all told, Alice felt gratified at having smoothed over Dolly's difficulty.
"They were gone longer than they expected," said Fritzie. "Robert was having such a good time. Lottie Nelson tells me Dolly's guest made the greatest sort of a hit with Robert. He didn't like her at first. Then she sang a song that attracted him, and he kept her singing that song all the time. He sat in a big chair near the piano and wouldn't move. The funny thing was, she was awfully bored the way he acted. By the way, you must not miss the golf to-morrow. Everybody will be out."
Alice hardly heard the last words. She was thinking about Kimberly's entertaining the celebrity. Every other incident of the voyage had been lost upon her. When she found herself alone her disappointment and resentment were keen. Some unaccountable dread annoyed her. He was then, she reflected, like all other men, filled with mere professions of devotion.
Something more disturbed her. The incident revealed to her that he had grown to be more in her thoughts than she realized. Racks and thumb-screws could not have dragged from her the admission that she was interested in him. It was enough that he professed to be devoted to her and had been led away by the first nod of another woman.
CHAPTER XXVI
The golf course and the casino were crowded next day when Alice arrived. Yet among the throng of men and women, her interest lay only in the meeting of one, as in turn his interest in all the summer company lay only in seeking Alice. She had hardly joined Imogene and the lake coterie when Kimberly appeared.
The players had driven off and the favorites, of whom there were many, could already be trailed across the hills by their following. When the "out" score had been posted, De Castro suggested that the party go down to the tenth hole to follow the leaders in.
A sea-breeze tempered the sunshine and the long, low lines of the club-house were gayly decorated. Pavilions, spread here and there among the trees, gave the landscape a festival air.
On the course, the bright coloring of groups of men and women moving across the fields made a spectacle changing every moment in brilliancy.
Kimberly greeted Alice with a gracious expectancy. He was met with a lack of response nothing less than chilling. Surprised, though fairly seasoned to rebuffs, and accepting the unexpected merely as a difficulty, Kimberly set out to be entertaining.
His resource in this regard was not scanty but to-day Alice succeeded in taxing his reserves. In his half-mile tramp with her in the "gallery," punctuated by occasional halts, he managed but once to separate her from the others. The sun annoyed him. Alice was aware of his lifting his straw hat frequently to press his handkerchief to beads of perspiration that gathered on his swarthy forehead, but she extended no sympathy.
In spite of his discomfort, however, his eyes flashed with their accustomed spirit and his dogged perseverance in the face of her coldness began to plead for itself. When the moving "gallery" had at last left them for an instant behind, Kimberly dropped on a bench under the friendly shade of a thorn apple tree.
"Sit down a moment, do," he begged, "until I get a breath."
"Do you find it warm?"
"Not at all," he responded with negligible irony. "It is in some respects uncommonly chilly." He spoke without the slightest petulance. "For Heaven's sake, tell me what I have done!"
"I don't know what you mean."
"I mean, you are not kind in your manner toward me. I left you--I hoped you would remember--to do a favor for you----"
"For me?" Her tone was not in the least reassuring.
"At least, I conceived it to be for you," he replied.
"That is a mistake."
"Very good. Let us call it mistake number one. I spent five days with Dolly and her guests----"
"Guests," repeated Alice, lingering slightly on the word, as she poked the turf slowly with her sunshade, "or guest?"
"Guest!" he echoed, "Ah!" He paused. "Who has put me wrong in so simple a matter? What I did was no more than to be agreeable to Dolly's guests. I spent much time with the guest of honor at Dolly's repeated requests. She happened to sing a song that pleased me very much, for one particular reason; it was your lovely little Italian air; I am not ashamed to say it brought back pleasant moments. Since she could do nothing else that was so pleasing," he continued, "I kept her singing the song. She became bored and naturally ceased to be good-natured. Then, Dolly asked me to run around by Nantucket, which we could have done in two days. Not to be churlish, I consented. Then the coal gave out, which took another day."
"What a mishap! Well, I am glad to hear the trip went pleasantly."
"If you are, something has gone wrong with you----"
"Nothing whatever, I can assure you."
"You are offended with me."
"I assure you I am not."
"I assure you, you are." He took the sunshade from her hand. "You remember the fable about the man that tried to oblige everybody? He wasn't a refiner--he was a mere miller. At the start I really did my best for three days to entertain Dolly's lovely vampire and at the end of that time she made a face at me--and wound up by telling Dolly my head was full of another woman. Then--to be quite shamefully frank--I had to dodge Lottie Nelson's apologies for her unpleasant temper on an evening that you remember; altogether my lot was not a happy one. My head was full of another woman. You remember you said nobody could resist her charm? I thought of it. What is charm? I often asked myself. I saw nothing of charm in that charming woman. Who can define it? But penetration! She could read you like a printed book. We talked one night of American women. I dared to say they were the loveliest in the world. She grew incensed. 'They know absolutely nothing!' she exclaimed. 'That is why we like them' I answered. 'They are innocent; you are as corrupt as I am.' Then she would call me a hypocrite." He stopped suddenly and Alice felt his eyes keenly upon her. "Is it possible you do not believe what I am saying?"
"Innocent women believe whatever they are told."
"I don't deserve sarcasm. I am telling the simple truth. For once I am wholly at fault, Alice. I don't know what the matter is.Whathas happened?"
"Nothing has happened; only to-day I seem especially stupid."
"Are you as frank with me as I am with you?"
She made no answer. He drew back as if momentarily discouraged. "If you no longer believe me--what can I do?"
"It isn't at all that I do not believe you--what difference should it make whether or no I believe you? Suppose I were frank enough to admit that something I heard of you had disappointed me a little. What credit should I have for commenting on what in no way concerns me?"
"Anything heard to my discredit should be carefully received. Believe the best of me as long as you can. It will never be necessary, Alice, for any one to tell you I am unworthy; when that day comes you will know it first from me. And if I ever am unworthy, it will not be because I willed to be--only because through my baseness I never could know what it means to be worthy of a woman far above me."
She reached out her hand for her sunshade but he refused to give it back. She tried to rise; he laid his hand on her arm. "A moment! It was about me, was it?" he continued. "Did you receive it cautiously? Put me in your position. How do you think one would fare who came to me with anything to your discredit? Think of it, Alice--how do you think one would fare--look at me."
She looked up only for an instant and as if in protest. But in spite of herself something in her own eyes of confidence in him, some tribute to his honesty, stood revealed, and inspired him with a new courage.
"You say what you hear of me does not concern you. Anything you hear of me does concern you vitally." His intensity frightened her, and thinking to escape him, she still sat motionless.
"Everything I do, important or trivial, has its relation to you. Do you believe me? Alice, you must believe me. You do believe me. How can you say that anything you hear of me does not concern you? It concerns you above every living person. It concerns your happiness----"
"Such wildness--such extravagance!" she exclaimed trying to control her fear.
"I tell you I am neither wild nor extravagant. Our happiness, our very lives are bound up together. It isn't that I say to you, you are mine--I am yours."
The furious beating of her heart would not be stilled. "How can you say such things!"
"I say them because I can't escape your influence in my life. I only want to come up to where you are--not to drag you down to where I am--to where I have been condemned to be from the cradle. If what you hear of me conflicts with what I say to you, believe nothing of what you hear." His words fell like blows. "If I could show you my very heart I could not be more open. It is you who are everything to me--you alone."
Breathless and rigid she looked away. Hardly breathing himself, Kimberly watched her. Her lip quivered. "Oh, my heart!" he murmured. But in the words she heard an incredible tenderness. It moved her where intensity had failed. It stilled the final pangs of revolt at his words. She drifted for an instant in a dream. New and trembling thoughts woke in a reluctant dawn and glowed in her heart like faint, far streamers of a new day.
"Oh, my heart!" The words came again, as if out of another world. She felt her hand taken by a strong, warm hand. "Do you tremble for me? Is my touch so heavy? How shall I ever safeguard the flower of your delicacy to my clumsiness?"
She neither breathed nor moved. "No matter. You will teach me how, Alice. Learning how you can be happiest, I shall be happiest. I feel beggared when I lay my plea before you. What are all my words unless you breathe life upon them? A few things--not many--I have succeeded in. And I succeeded," the energy of success echoed in his confession, "only because I let nothing of effort stand between me and the goal. You have never been happy. Let me try to succeed with your happiness."
A silence followed, golden as the moment. Neither felt burdened. About them was quiet and the stillness seemed to flow from the hush of their thoughts.
"It is easy for you to speak," she faltered at last, "too easy for me to listen. I am unhappy--so are many women; many would be strong enough never to listen to what you have said. I myself should be if I were what you picture me. And that is where all the trouble lies. You mistake me; you picture to yourself an Alice that doesn't exist. If I could return your interest I should disappoint you. I am not depreciating myself to extort compliments--you would supply them easily, I know. Only--I know myself better than you know me."
"What you say," he responded, "might have point if I were a boy--it would have keen point. While to me your beauty--do not shake your head despairingly--your beauty is the delicacy of girlhood, you yourself are a woman. You have known life, and sorrow. I cannot lead you as a fairy once led you from girlhood into womanhood--would that I could have done it! He should be a very tender guide who does that for a woman.
"But I can lead you, I think, Alice, to everything in this world that consoles a woman for what she gives to it. Do not say I do not know you--that is saying I do not know myself, men, women, life--it is saying I know nothing. Modest as I am," he smiled lightly, "I am not yet ready to confess to that. I do know; as men that have lived and tasted and turned away and longed and waited, know--so I know you. And I knew from the moment I saw you that all my happiness in this world must come from you."
"Oh, I am ashamed to hear you say that. I am ashamed to hear you say anything. What base creature am I, that I have invited you to speak!" She turned and looked quickly at him, but with fear and resolve in her eyes. "This you must know, here and now, that I can never be, not if you kill me, another Dora Morgan."
He met her look with simple frankness. "The world is filled with Dora Morgans. If you could be, Alice, how could I say to you what I never have said, or thought of saying, to any Dora Morgan?"
"To be a creature would kill me. Do not be deceived--I know."
"Or do worse than kill you. No, you are like me. There is no half-way for you and me. Everything--or nothing!"
She rose to her feet. He saw that she supported herself for a moment with one hand still on the bench rail. He took her other hand within his own and drew her arm through his arm.
It was the close of the day. The sun, setting, touched the hills with evening, and below the distant Towers great copses of oak lay like islands on the mirrored landscape. They walked from the bench slowly together. "Just a little help for the start," he murmured playfully as he kept her at his side. "The path is a new one. I shall make it very easy for your feet."
CHAPTER XXVII
"I hope you rested well after your excitement," said Kimberly to Alice, laughing reassuringly as he asked. It was the day following their parting at the golf grounds. He had driven over to Cedar Lodge and found Alice in the garden waiting for Dolly. The two crossed the terrace to a sheltered corner of the garden overlooking the bay where they could be alone. After Alice had seated herself Kimberly repeated his question.
She regarded him long and thoughtfully as she answered, and with a sadness that was unexpected: "I did not rest at all. I do not even yet understand--perhaps I never shall--why I let you talk to me in that wild, wild way. But if I did not rest last night, I thought. I am to blame--I know that--as much as you are. Don't tell me. I am as much to blame as you are. But this cannot go on."
His eyes were upon her hands as they lay across flowers in her lap. He took a spray from her while she spoke and bent his look upon it. She was all in white and he loved to see her in white. In it she fulfilled to him a dream of womanhood. "I ought to ask you what you mean when you say and think these fearful things," she went on, waiting for him to lift his eyes. "I ought to ask you; but you do not care what it means, at least as far as you are concerned. And you never ask yourself what it means as far as I am concerned."
He replied with no hesitation. "I began asking myself that question almost the first time I ever saw you. I have asked myself nothing else ever since. It means for both of us exactly the same thing; for you, everything you can ask that I can give you; for me, everything I can give you that you can ask."
"If there were no gulf between us--but there is. And even if what you say were true, you can see how impossible it would be for me to say those words back to you."
He looked at the spray. "Quite true; you cannot. But I shall ask so little--less of you than of any woman in the world. And you will give only what you can, and when you can. And you alone are to be the judge of what you can give and when, until our difficulties are worked out.
"I shall only show you now that Icanbe patient. I never have been--I have confessed to that. Now I am going to the test. Meantime, you don't realize, Alice, quite, how young you are, do you? Nor how much in earnest I am. Let us turn to that for a while."
From a shrub at his side he plucked sprigs of rosemary and crushed them with the spray. "Even love never begins but once. So, for every hour that passes, a memory; for every hour that tarries, a happiness; for every hour that comes, a hope. Do you remember?"
"I read it on your sun-dial."
"Every one may read it there. Where I want you to read it is in my heart."
"I wonder whether it is most what you say, or the way in which you say it, that gets people into trouble?"
"On the contrary; my life has been spent in getting people out of trouble, and in waiting to say things to you."
"You are improving your opportunity in that respect. And you are losing a still more delightful opportunity, for you don't know how much relief you can give me by leaving most of them unsaid."
"It is impossible, of course, to embrace all of our opportunities--often impossible to embrace the cause of them."
"Don't pick me up in that way, please."
He held his hands over hers and dropped the crushed rosemary on them. "Would that I could in any way. Since I cannot, let me annoy you."
Dolly appeared at a distance, and they walked down the terrace to meet her. She kissed Alice. "What makes you look so girlish to-day? And what is all this color around your eyes? Never wear anything but white. I never should myself," sighed Dolly. "You know Alice and I are off for the seashore," she added, turning to her brother.
"So I hear."
"Come along."
"Who is going?"
"Everybody, I suppose. They all know about the trip."
"Where do you dine?"
"On the shore near the light-house. Arthur is bringing some English friends out from town; we are going to dance."
That night by the sea Kimberly and Alice danced together. He held her like a child, and his strength, which for a moment startled her, was a new charm when she glided across the long, half-lighted floor within his arm. Her grace responded perfectly to the ease with which he led, and they, stopped only when both were breathing fast, to stroll out on the dark pier and drink in the refreshment of the night wind from the ocean.
They remained out of doors a long time, talking sometimes, laughing sometimes, walking sometimes, sometimes sitting down for a moment or kneeling upon the stone parapet benches to listen to the surf pounding below them. When they went in, he begged her again to dance. Not answering in words she only lifted her arm with a smile. Making their way among those about them they glided, he in long, undulating steps, she retreating in swift, answering rhythm, touching the floor as lightly as if she trod on air.
"This plume in your hat," he said as they moved on and on to the low, sensuous strains of the music, "it nods so lightly. Where do you carry your wings?"
The very effort of speaking was exhilarating. "It is you," she answered, "who are supplying the wings."
The gayety of the others drew them more closely together. Little confidences of thought and feeling--in themselves nothing, in their unforbidden exchange everything--mutual confessions of early impressions each of the other, compliments more eagerly ventured and ignored now rather than resented. Surprise read in each other's eyes, dissent not ungracious and denial that only laughingly denied--all went to feed a secret happiness growing fearfully by leaps and bounds into ties that never could be broken.
The dance with its exhilaration, the plunging of her pulse and her quick, deep breathing, shone in Alice's cheeks and in her eyes. The two laughed at everything; everything colored their happiness because everything was colored by it.
The party drove home after a very late supper, Alice heavily wrapped and beside Dolly in Kimberly's car. Entertainments for the English party followed for a week and were wound up by Kimberly with an elaborate evening for them at The Towers. For the first time in years the big house was dresseden fêteand the illuminations made a picture that could be seen as far as the village.
Twenty-four sat at The Towers round table that night. Alice herself helped Dolly to pair the guests and philosophically assigned her husband to Lottie Nelson. Kimberly complimented her upon her arrangement.
"Why not?" she asked simply, though not without a certain bitterness with which she always spoke of her husband. "People with tastes in common seem to drift together whether you pair them or not."
They were standing in an arbor and Kimberly was plucking grapes for her.
"He is less than nothing to me," she continued, "as you too well know--or I should not be here now eating your grapes."
"Your grapes, Alice. Everything here is yours. I haven't spoken much about our difficulties--'our' difficulties! The sweetness of the one word blots out the annoyance of the other. But you must know I shall never rest until you are installed here with all due splendor as mistress, not alone of the grapes, but of all you survey, for this is to be wholly and simply yours. And if I dare ask you now and here, Alice--you whose every breath is more to me than the thought of all other women--I want you to be my wife."
Her lips tightened. "And I am the wife of another man--it is horrible."
He heard the tremor in her tone. "Look at me."
"I cannot look at you."
"When you are free----"
"Free!" Her voice rising in despair, fell again into despair. "I shall never be free."
"You shall, and that speedily, Alice!" She could imagine the blood surging into Kimberly's neck and face as he spoke. "I am growing fearful that I cannot longer stand the thought of his being under the same roof with you."
"He cannot even speak to me except before Annie."
Kimberly paused. "I do not like it. I want it changed."
"How can I change it?"
"We shall find a way, and that very soon, to arrange your divorce from him."
"It is the one word, the one thought that crushes me." She turned toward him as if with a hard and quick resolve. "You know I am a Catholic, and you know I am ashamed to say it."
"Ashamed?"
"I have disgraced my faith."
"Nonsense, you are an ornament to any faith."
"Do not say that!" She spoke with despairing vehemence. "You don't realize how grotesque it sounds. If what you say were true I should not be here."
He drew himself up. There was a resentful note in his tone. "I did not suppose myself such a moral leper that it would be unsafe for any one to talk to me. Other Catholics--and good ones--talk to me, and apparently without contamination."
"It is only thatIhave no right to. Now you are going to be angry with me."
He saw her eyes quiver. "God forbid! I misunderstood. And you are sensitive, dearest."
"I am sensitive," she said reluctantly. "More than ever, perhaps, since I have ceased practising my religion."
"But why have you ceased?"
Her words came unwillingly. "I could not help it."
"Why could you not help it?"
"You ask terribly hard questions."
"You must have wanted to give it up."
"I did not want to. I was forced to."
"Who could force you?"
He saw what an effort it cost her to answer. The words were dragged from her. "I could not live with my husband and practise it."
"So much the more reason for quitting him, isn't it?"
"Oh, I want to. I want to be free. If I only could."
"Alice, you speak like one in despair. There is nothing to be so stirred about. You want to be free, I want you to be, you shall be. Don't get excited over the matter of a divorce. Your eyes are like saucers at the thought. Why?"
"Only because for me it is the final disgrace--not to be separated from him--but to marry again with him alive! It means the last step for me. And the public scandal! What will they say of me, who knew me at home?"
"Alice, this is the wildest supersensitiveness. The whole world lives in divorced marriages. Public scandal? No one will ever hear of your divorce. The courts that grant your plea will attend to suppressing everything."
"Not everything!"
"Why not? We abase them every day to so many worse things that their delicate gorges will not rise at a little favor like that."
She looked at him gravely. "What does the world say of you for doing such things?"
"I never ask. You know, of course, I never pay any attention to what the world says of anything I do. Why should I? It would be difficult for the world to despise me as much as I despise it. You don't understand the world. All you need is my strength. I felt that from the very first--that if I could give you my strength the combination would be perfect. That is why I am so helplessly in love with you--my strength must be yours. I want to put you on a throne. Then I stand by, see?--and guard your majesty with a great club. And I can do it."
They laughed together, for he spoke guardedly, as to being heard of others, but with ominous energy. "I believe you could," murmured Alice.
"Don't worry over your religion. I will make you practise it. I will make a devotee of you."
"Robert! Robert!"
He stooped for her hand and in spite of a little struggle would not release it until he had kissed it. "Do you know it is the first time my name has ever passed your lips?" he murmured.
She was silent and he went on with another thought. "Alice, I don't believe you are as bad a Catholic as you think. I'll tell you why. I have known Catholic women, and men, too, that have given up their religion. Understand, I know nothing about your religion, but I do know something about men and women. And when they begin elaborate explanations they think they deceive me. In matter of fact, they deceive only themselves. When they begin to talk about progress, freedom of thought, decay of dogmas, individual liberty and all that twaddle, and assume a distinctly high, intellectual attitude, even though I don't know what they have given up, I know what they are assuming; I get their measure instantly. I've sometimes thought that when God calls us up to speak on judgment day He will say in the most amiable manner: 'Just tell your own story in your own way.' And that our own stories, told in our own way, will be all the data He will need to go ahead on. Indeed, He would not always need divine prescience to see through them; in most cases mere human insight would be enough. Just listen to the ordinary story of the ordinary man and notice how out of his own mouth he condemns himself. I see that sort of posturing every day in weak-kneed men and women who want to enlist large sums of money to float magnificent schemes. Now you are honest with yourself and honest with me, and I see in this a vital difference."
They walked back through the garden and encountered Brother Francis who was taking the air. Kimberly stopped him. Nelson and Imogene joined the group. "Ah, Francis!" exclaimed Imogene, "have they caught you saying your beads?"
"Not this time, Mrs. Kimberly."
"Come now, confess. What were you doing?"
Brother Francis demurred and protested but there was no escape. He pointed to The Towers. "I came out to see the beautiful illumination. It is very beautiful, is it not?"
"But that isn't all, for when we came along you were looking at the sky."
"Ah, the night is so clear--the stars are so strong to-night----"
"Go on."
"I was thinking of Italy."