CHAPTER XXVIII"I never can catch Brother Francis, thinking of anything but Italy," remarked Kimberly."Who can blame him?" exclaimed Imogene."Or the hereafter," added Kimberly.Nelson grunted. "I'm afraid he doesn't find much sympathy here on that subject," he observed, looking from one to another."Don't be mistaken, Nelson," said Kimberly, "Ithink about it, and Francis will tell you so. I have already made tentative arrangements with him on that score. Francis is to play Lazarus to my Dives. When I am in hell I am to have my cup of cold water from him. And remember, Francis, if you love me, the conditions. Don't forget the conditions; they are the essence of the contract. I am to have the water one drop at a time. Don't forget that; one drop at a time. Eternity is a long, long while."Francis, ill at ease, took a pinch of snuff to compose himself."Your rôle doesn't seem altogether to your liking, Francis," suggested Imogene."His rôle! Why, it's paradise itself compared to mine," urged Kimberly.Brother Francis drew his handkerchief and wiped his nose very simply. "I pray, Robert," he said, "that you may never be in hell.""But keep me in your eye, Francis. Don't relax your efforts. A sugar man is liable to stumble and fall in while your back is turned.""We must get started for the lake," announced Imogene. "Brother Francis, we are all going down to see The Towers from the water. Will you come?"Francis excused himself, and his companions joined the other guests who were gathering at the water. Oarsmen were waiting with barges and fires burned from the pillars of the esplanade. As the boats left the shore, music came across the water. Alice, with Kimberly, caught a glimpse of her husband in a passing boat. "Having a good time?" he cried. For answer she waved her hand."Are you really having a good time?" Kimberly asked. "I mean, do you care at all for this kind of thing?""Of course, I care for it. Who could help it? It is lovely. Where are we going?""Down the lake a mile or two; then the boats will return for the fireworks.""You don't seem very lively yourself to-night. Are you bored?""No; only wondering whether you will go driving with me to-morrow.""I said I would not.""I hoped, of course, you might reconsider."He did not again press the subject of the drive, but when they were walking up the hill after the rockets and showers of gold falling down the dark sky, she told him he might come for her the next day. "I don't know how it is," she murmured, "but you always have your own way. You wind me right around your finger."He laughed. "If I do, it is only because I don't try to.""I realize it; that is what puzzles me.""The real secret is, not that I wind you around my finger, but that you don't want to hurt my feelings. I find something to wonder at, too. When I am with you--even when you are anywhere near me, I am totally different. Alone, I am capable of withdrawing wholly within myself. I am self-absorbed and concentrated. With you I am never wholly within myself. I am, seemingly, partly in your consciousness."Alice shook her head. "It is true," he persisted. "It is one of the consequences of love; to be drawn out of one's self. I have it." He turned to her, questioningly, "Can you understand it?""I think so.""But do you ever feel it?""Sometimes.""Never, of course, for me?""Sometimes."CHAPTER XXIX"This is a courtship without any spring," said Dolly one night to her husband. They were discussing her brother and Alice. "At first it was all winter, now it is all summer."She thought they showed themselves together too much in public, and their careless intimacy was, in fact, outwardly unrestrained.Not that Dolly was censorious. Her philosophy found refuge in fatalism. And since what is to be must be--especially where the Kimberlys were concerned--why worry over the complications? Seemliness, however, Dolly held, was to be regarded, and concerning this she felt she ought to be consulted. The way to be consulted she had long ago learned was to find fault.But if she herself reproved Kimberly and Alice, Dolly allowed no one else to make their affairs a subject of comment. Lottie Nelson, who could never be wholly suppressed, was silenced when occasion offered. One afternoon at The Hickories, Alice's name being mentioned, Lottie asked whether Robert was still chasing her."Chasing her?" echoed Dolly contemptuously and ringing the changes on the objectionable word, "Of course; why shouldn't he chase her? Who else is there to chase? He loves the excitement of the hunt; and who else around here is there to hunt? The other women hunt him. No man wants anything that comes tumbling after him. What we want is what we can't get; or at least what we're not sure of getting."Kimberly and Alice if not quite unconscious of comment were at least oblivious of it. They motored a great deal, always at their own will, and they accounted to no one for their excursions."They are just a pair of bad children," said Imogene to Dolly. "And they act like children."One of their diversions in their rambling drives was to stop children and talk with them or ask questions of them. One day near Sunbury they encountered a puny, skeleton-faced boy, a highway acquaintance, wheeling himself along in an invalid chair.They had never hitherto talked with this boy and they now stopped their car and backed up. Alice usually asked the questions. "I thought you lived away at the other end of the village, laddie?""Yes'm, I do.""You haven't wheeled yourself all this way?""Yes'm.""What's the matter with you that you can't walk, Tommie?" demanded Kimberly."My back is broken."Alice made a sympathetic exclamation. "My dear little fellow--I'm very sorry for you!"The boy smiled. "Oh, don't be sorry for me.""Not sorry for you?""I have a pretty good time; it's my mother--I'm sorry for her.""Ah, indeed, your mother!" echoed Alice, struck by his words. "I am sorry for both of you then. And how did you break your back?""In our yard--climbing, ma'am.""Poor devil, he's not the first one that has broken his back climbing," muttered Kimberly, taking a note from his waistcoat. "Give him something, Alice.""As much as this?" cried Alice under her breath, looking at the note and at Kimberly."Why not? It's of no possible use to us, and it will be a nine-months' wonder in that little household."Alice folded the note up and stretched her white-gloved hand toward the boy. "Take this home to your mother.""Thank you. I can make little baskets," he added shyly."Can you?" echoed Alice, pleased. "Would you make one for me?""I will bring one up to your house if you want me to.""That would be too far! And you don't know where I live."The boy looked at the green and black car as if he could not be mistaken. "Up at The Towers, ma'am."Brice, who took more than a mild interest in the situation, grinned inwardly.Kimberly and Alice laughed together. "Very well; bring it to The Towers," directed Kimberly, "I'll see that she gets it.""Yes, sir.""And see here; don't lose that note, Tommie. By Heavens, he handles money more carelessly than I do. No matter, wait till his mother sees it."While they were talking to the boy, Dolly drove up in her car and stopped a moment to chat and scold. They laughed at her and she drove away as if they were hopeless."Your sister is the dearest woman," remarked Alice as Dolly's car disappeared. "I am so fond of her, I believe I am growing like her.""Don't grow too like her.""Why not?""Dolly has too much heart. It gets her into trouble.""She says you have too much, yourself.""I've paid for it, too; I've been in trouble.""And I shall be, if you don't take me home pretty soon.""Don't let us go home as long as we can go anywhere else," pleaded Kimberly. "When we go home we are separated."He often attempted to talk with Alice of her husband. "Does he persecute you in any way?" demanded Kimberly, trying vainly to get to details.Alice's answer was always the same. "Not now.""But he used to?" Kimberly would persist."Don't ask me about that.""If he ever should lay a hand on you, Alice----""Pray, pray," she cried, "don't look like that. And don't get excited; he is not going to lay a hand on me."They did not reach Cedar Lodge until sundown and when they drove up to the house MacBirney, out from town, was seated on the big porch alone. They called a greeting to him as they slowed up and he answered in kind. Kimberly, without any embarrassment, got out to assist Alice from the car. The courtesy of his manner toward her seemed emphasized in MacBirney's presence.On this night, it was, perhaps, the picture of Kimberly standing at the door of his own car giving his hand to MacBirney's wife to alight, that angered the husband more than anything that had gone before. Kimberly's consideration for Alice was so pronounced as completely to ignore MacBirney himself.The small talk between the two when Alice alighted, the laughing exchanges, the amiable familiarity, all seemed to leave no place in the situation for MacBirney, and were undoubtedly meant so to be understood. Kimberly good-humoredly proffered his attentions to that end and Alice could now accept them with the utmost composure.Fritzie had already come over to Cedar Lodge from Imogene's for dinner and Kimberly returned afterward from The Towers, talking till late in the evening with MacBirney on business affairs. He then drove Fritzie back to The Cliffs.MacBirney, smarting with the stings of jealousy, found no outlet for his feeling until he was left alone with his wife. It was after eleven o'clock when Alice, reading in her sitting-room, heard her husband try the door connecting from his apartments. Finding it bolted, as usual, MacBirney walked out on the loggia and came into her room through the east door which she had left open for the sea-breeze. He was smoking and he sat down on a divan. Alice laid her book on her knee.It was a moment before he spoke. "You seem to be making Kimberly a pretty intimate member of the family," he began."Oh, do you think so? Charles or Robert?""You know very well who I mean.""If you mean Robert, he is a familiar in every family circle around the lake. It is his way, isn't it? I don't suppose he is more intimate here than at Lottie's, is he? Or at Dolly's or Imogene's?""They are his sisters," returned MacBirney, curtly."Lottie isn't. And I thought you wanted me rather to cultivate Robert, didn't you, Walter?" asked Alice indifferently.He was annoyed to be reminded of the fact but made no reply."Robert is a delightfully interesting man," continued Alice recklessly, "don't you think so?"MacBirney returned to the quarrel from another quarter. "Do you know how much money you have spent here at Cedar Lodge in the last four months?"Alice maintained her composure. "I haven't an idea."He paused. "I will tell you how much, since you're so very superior to the subject. Just twice as much as we spent the first five years we were married.""Quite a difference, isn't it?""It is--quite a difference. And the difference is reckless extravagance. You seem to have lost your head.""Suppose it is reckless extravagance! What do you mean to say--that I spent all the money? This establishment is of your choosing, isn't it? And have you spent nothing? How do you expect to move in a circle of people such as live around this lake without reckless extravagance?""By using a little common-sense in your expenditures."For some moments they wrangled over various details of the ménage. Alice at length cut the purposeless recrimination short. "You spoke of the first five years we were married. You know I spent literally nothing the first five years of our married life. You continually said you were trying 'to build up.' That was your cry from morning till night, and like a dutiful wife, I wore my own old clothes for the first two years. Then the next three years I wore made-over hats and hunted up ready-made suits to enable you to 'build up.'""Yes," he muttered, "and we were a good deal happier then than we are now."She made an impatient gesture. "Do speak for yourself, Walter. You were happier, no doubt. I can't remember that you ever gave me any chance to be happy.""Too bad about you. You look like a poor, unhappy thing--half-fed and half-clothed.""Now that you have 'built up,'" continued Alice, "and brought me into a circle not in the least of my choosing, and instructed me again and again to 'keep our end up,' you complain of 'reckless extravagance.'""Well, for a woman that I took with a travelling suit from a bankrupt father, and put at the head of this establishment, you certainly can hold your 'end up,'" laughed MacBirney harshly."Just a moment," returned Alice, with angry eyes. "You need not taunt me about my father. When you were measuring every day the sugar and coffee we were to use during the first five years of our married life, you should have foreseen you couldn't move as a millionaire among multimillionaires without spending a lot of money."MacBirney turned white. "Thank you for reminding me," he retorted, with shining teeth, "of the thrift of which you have since had the advantages.""Oh dear, no, Walter. The advantages of that kind of thrift are purely imaginary. The least spark of loving-kindness during those years would have been more to me than all the petty meannesses necessary to build up a fortune. But it is too late to discuss all this."MacBirney could hardly believe his ears. He rose hastily and threw himself into another chair. "You've changed your tune mightily since 'the first five years of our married life,'" he said.Alice tossed her head."But I want you to understand,Ihaven't.""I believe that!""And I've brought you to time before now, with all of your high airs, and I'll do it again.""Oh, no; not again.""I'll teach you who is master under this roof.""How like the sweet first five years that sounds!"He threw his cigar angrily away. "I know exactly what's the matter with you. You have run around with this lordly Kimberly till he has turned your head. Now you are going to stop it, now and here!""Am I?""You are.""Hadn't you better tell Mr. Kimberly that?""I will tellyou, you are getting yourself talked about, and it is going to stop. Everybody is talking about you."Alice threw back her head. "So? Where did you hear that?""Lambert told me yesterday.""I hope you were manly enough to defend your wife. Where did you see Lambert?""I saw him in town.""I shouldn't listen to silly gossip from Lambert, and I shouldn't see Lambert again.""How long have you been adviser as to whom I had better or better not see?" asked MacBirney contemptuously."You will find me a good adviser on some points in your affairs, and that is one.""If you value your advice highly, you should part with it sparingly.""I know whatyouvalue highly; and if Robert Kimberly finds out you are consorting with Lambert it will end your usefulness inhiscombinations very suddenly."The thrust, severe in any event, was made keener by the fact that it frightened him into rage. "Since you come from a family that has made such a brilliant financial showing--" he began."Oh, I know," she returned wearily, "but you had better take care." He looked at his wife astounded. "You have insulted me enough," she added calmly, "about the troubles of my father. The 'first five years' are at an end. I have spoiled you, Walter, by taking your abuse so long without striking back and I won't do it any more.""What do you mean?" he cried, springing from his chair. "Do you think you are to keep your doors bolted against me for six months at a time and then browbeat and abuse me when I come into your room to talk to you? Who paid for these clothes you wear?" he demanded, pointing in a fury."I try never to think of that, Walter," replied Alice, rising to her feet but controlling herself more than she could have believed possible. "I try never to think of the price I have paid for anything I have; if I did, I should go mad and strip these rags from my shoulders."She stood her ground with flashing eyes. "I, not you," she cried, "have paid for what I have and the clothes I wear.Ipaid for them--not you--with my youth and health and hopes and happiness. I paid for them with the life of my little girl; with all that a wretched woman can sacrifice to a brute. Paid for them! God help me! How haven't I paid for them?"She stopped for sheer breath, but before he could find words she spoke again. "Now, I am done with you forever. I am out of your power forever. Thank God, some one will protect me from your brutality for the rest of my life----"MacBirney clutched the back of a chair. "So you have picked up a lover, have you? This sounds very edifying from my dear, dutiful, religious wife." Hardly able to form the words between his trembling lips, he smiled horribly.She turned on him like a tigress. "No," she panted, "no! I am no longer your religious wife. It wasn't enough that I should go shabby and hungry to make you rich. Because I still had something left in my miserable life to help me bear your cruelty and meanness you must take that away too. What harm did my religion do you that you should ridicule it and sneer at it and threaten and abuse me for it? You grudged the few hours I took from your household drudgery to get to church. You promised before you married me that our children should be baptized in my faith, and then refused baptism to my dying baby."Her words rained on him in a torrent. "You robbed me of my religion. You made me live in continual sin. When I pleaded for children, you swore you would have no children. When I told you I was a mother you cursed and villified me.""Stop!" he screamed, running at her with an oath.The hatred and suffering of years were compressed into her moment of revolt. They flamed in her cheeks and burned in her eyes as she cried out her choking words. "Stop me if you dare!" she sobbed, watching him clench his fist. "If you raise your hand I will disgrace you publicly, now, to-night!"He struck her. She disdained even to protect herself and crying loudly for Annie fell backward. Her head caught the edge of the table from which she had risen.Annie ran from the bedroom at the sound of her mistress's voice. But when she opened the boudoir door, Alice was lying alone and unconscious on the floor.CHAPTER XXXShe revived only after long and anxious ministrations on Annie's part. But with the return of her senses the blood surged again in her veins in defiance of her husband. Her first thought was one of passionate hatred of him, and the throbbing pain in her head from her fall against the table served to sharpen her resentment.MacBirney, possessed of enough craft to slip away from an unpleasant situation, returned early to town, only hoping the affair would blow over, and still somewhat dazed by the amazing rebellion of an enduring wife.He realized that a storm might break now at any moment over his head. Always heavily committed in the speculative markets, he well understood that if Kimberly should be roused to vengeance by any word from Alice the consequences to his own fortune might be appalling.It chanced that Kimberly was away the following day and Alice had twenty-four hours to let her wrath cool. Two days of reflection were enough. The sense of her shame and her degradation as a woman at the hands of a man so base as her husband were alone enough to suggest moderation in speaking to Kimberly of the quarrel.But more than this was to be considered. What would Kimberly do if she told him everything? A scandalous encounter, even a more serious issue between the two men was too much to think of. She felt that Kimberly was capable in anger of doing anything immoderate and it was better by far, her calmer judgment told her, to bury her humiliation in her own heart than to risk something worse. She was now, she well knew, with this secret, a terror to her cowardly husband, just as he had been, through a nightmare of wretched years, her own terror.For the first time, on the afternoon of the second day, she found herself awaiting with burning impatience some word from The Towers. She had resolved what to say to Kimberly and wanted now to say it quickly. When the telephone bell rang promptly at four o'clock her heart dilated with happiness; she knew the call came from one who never would fail her. Alice answered the bell herself and her tones were never so maddening in Kimberly's ears as when she told him, not only that he might come, but that she was weary with waiting. She stood at the window when his car drove up and tripped rapidly downstairs. When she greeted him he bent down to kiss her hand.She did not resist his eagerness. She even drew a deep breath as she returned his look, and having made ready for him with a woman's lovely cunning, enjoyed its reward."I've been crazy to see you," he cried. "It is two days, Alice. How can I tell you how lovely you are?"Her eyes, cast down, were lifted to his when she made her confession. "Do you really like this rig? It is the first toilet I ever made with the thought of nobody but you in my head. So I told Annie" she murmured, letting her hand rest on his coat sleeve, "to be sure I was exactly right."He caught her hands."Let's go into the garden," she said as he held them. "I have something to say to you."They sat down together. "Something has happened since I saw you," she began."Has the break come?" demanded Kimberly instantly."We had a very painful scene night before last," said Alice. "The break has come. He has gone to town--he went yesterday morning. I have asked myself many questions since then. My father and mother are dead. I have no home to go to, and I will not live even under the same roof with him any longer. I feel so strange. I feel turned out, though there was nothing of that in what he said--indeed, I am afraid I did most of the talking.""I wish to God I had heard you!""It is better not. Every heart knoweth its own bitterness----""Let me help bear yours.""I feel homeless, I feel so alone, so ashamed--I don't know what I don't feel. You will never know what humiliation, what pain I have been through for two days. Robert--" her voice faltered for an instant. Then she spoke on, "I never can tell you of the sickness and shame I have long felt of even pretending to live with some one I could not respect.""Close the book of its recollection. I came into your life for just such a moment, to be everything you need. I am home, husband, and protection--everything.""If I could only make my senses believe my ears." She paused. "It seems as if I am in a dream and shall wake with a horror.""No, this is a dream come true. I foresaw this time and I have provided for it. Only delicacy has kept me from asking you before about your very personal affairs and your private purse, Alice. Understand at once," he took her hands vehemently, "everything I have is yours without the least reserve. Do you understand? Money is the last thing to make any one happy, I well know that, but in addition to the word of my heart to your heart--the transfers to you, Alice, have long been made and at this moment you have, merely waiting for you to draw upon them, more funds than you could make use of in ten lifetimes. Everything is provided for. There are tears in your eyes. Sit still for a moment and let me speak.""No, I must speak. I am in a horrible position. I cannot at such a juncture receive anything from you. But there are matters to be faced. Shall I stay here? If I do, he must go. Shall I go? And if I do go, where?""Let me answer with a suggestion. My family are all devoted to us. Dolly and Imogene are good counsellors. I will lay the matter before them. After a family council we shall know just what to do and how. I have my own idea; we shall see what the others say. Dolly, you know, has taken you under her wing from the first, and Dolly you will find is a powerful protector. If I tell you what I did to-day you will gasp with astonishment. I cabled for a whole new set of photographs of the Maggiore villa. I want our first year together, Alice, to be in Italy."CHAPTER XXXIAccompanied by Imogene, Dolly hastened over to Cedar Lodge in the morning. Alice met them in the hall. "My dear," cried Dolly, folding her impulsively in her arms, "you are charged with fate!"Then she drew back, laid her hands on Alice's shoulders and, bringing her face tenderly forward, kissed her. "How can I blame Robert for falling in love with you? And yet!" She turned to Imogene. "If we had been told that first night thatthiswas the woman of our destiny! How do you bear your new honors, dearie? What! Tears! Nonsense, my child. You are freighted with the Kimberly hopes now. You are one of us. Tears are at an end. I, too, cried when I first knew of it. Come, sit down. Imogene will tell you everything." And having announced this much, Dolly proceeded with the telling herself."When you first knew of it?" echoed Alice. "Pray, when was that?""Oh, long, long ago--before ever you did, my dear. But no matter now. We talked last night, Arthur, Charles, Imogene, and Robert and I until midnight. And this is what we said: 'The dignity of your personal position is, before everything else, to be rigidly maintained.' Mr. MacBirney will be required to do this. He will be counselled on this point--made to understand that the obligation to maintain the dignity of his wife's position is primary. Robert, of course, objected to this. He was for allowing no one but himself to do anything----""I hope you clearly understand, Dolly, I should allow Mr. Kimberly to do nothing whatever at this juncture," interposed Alice quickly."I understand perfectly, dear. But there are others of us, you know, friends of your own dear mother, remember. Only, aside from all of that, we considered that the situation admitted of but one arrangement. Charles will tell Nelson exactly what MacBirney is to do, and Nelson will see that it is done. The proper bankers will advise you of your credits from your husband, for the present--and they are to be very generous ones, my dear," added Dolly significantly. "So all that is taken care of and Mr. MacBirney will further be counselled not to come near Cedar Lodge or Second Lake until further orders. Do you understand?""Why, yes, Dolly," assented Alice perplexed, "but Mr. MacBirney's acquiescence in all this is very necessary it seems to me. And he may agree to none of it.""My dear, it isn't at all a question ofhisagreeing. He will do as he is advised to do. Do you imagine he can afford breaking with the Kimberlys? A man that pursues money, dear heart, is no longer a free agent. His interests confront him at every turn. Fledgling millionaires are in no way new to us. Mercy, they pass in and out of our lives every day! A millionaire, dear, is nothing but a million meannesses and they all do exactly as they are told. Really, I am sorry for some of them. Of all unfortunates they are nowadays the worst. They are simply ground to powder between the multi-millionaires and the laboring classes. In this case, happily, it is only a matter of making one do what he ought to do, so give it no thought."Dolly proved a good prophet concerning MacBirney's course in the circumstances. MacBirney, desirous of playing at once to the lake public in the affair of his domestic difficulties, made unexceptional allowances for his wife's maintenance. Yet at every dollar that came to her from his abundance she felt humiliated. She knew now why she had endured so much at his hands for so long; it was because she had realized her utter dependence on him and that her dreams of self-support were likely, if she had ever acted on them, to end in very bitter realities.At the first sign of hot weather, Charles and Imogene put to sea with a party for a coasting cruise; Dolly sailed for the continent to bring Grace back with her. Robert Kimberly unwilling to leave for any extended period would not let Alice desert him; accordingly, Fritzie was sent for and came over to stay with her. The lake country made a delightful roaming place and Alice was shown by Kimberly's confidences how close she was to him.He confided to her the journal of the day, whatever it might be. Nothing was held back. His successes, failures, and worries all came to her at night. He often asked her for advice upon his affairs and her wonder grew as the inwardness of the monetary world in which he moved stood revealed to her. She spoke of it one day."To be sought after as you are--to have so many men running out here to find you; to be consulted by so many----"Kimberly interrupted her. "Do you know why they seek me? Because I make money for them, Alice. They would run after anybody that could make them money. But they are wolves and if I lost for them they would try to tear me to pieces. No man is so alone as the man the public follows for a day even while it hates or fears him. And the man the bankers like is the man that can make money for them; their friendship is as cold and thin as autumn ice.""But even then, to have the ability for making money and doing magnificent things; to be able to succeed where so many men fail--it seems so wonderful to me.""Don't cherish any illusions about it. Everyone that makes money must be guilty of a thousand cold-blooded things, a thousand sharp turns, a thousand cruelties; it's a game of cruelties. Fortunately, I'm not a brilliant success in that line, anyway; people merely think I am. The ideal money-maker always is and always will be a man without a temper, without a heart, and with an infusion, in our day, of hypocrisy. He takes refuge in hypocrisy because the public hates him and he is forced to do it to keep from hating himself. When public opinion gets too strong for him he plays to it. When it isn't too strong, he plays to himself. I can't do that; I have too much vanity to play to anybody. And the recollection of a single defeat rankles above the memory of a thousand victories. This is all wrong--far, far from the ideal of money getting; in fact, I'm not a professional in the game at all--merely an amateur. A very successful man should never be trusted anyway.""Why not?""Because success comes first with him. It comes before friendship and he will sacrifice you to success without a pang."She looked at him with laughing interest. "What is it?" he asked changing his tone."I was thinking of how I am impressed sometimes by the most unexpected things. You could never imagine what most put me in awe of you before I met you.""There must have been a severe revulsion of feeling when you did meet me," suggested Kimberly."We were going up the river in your yacht and Mr. McCrea was showing us the refineries. All that I then knew of you was what I had read in newspapers about calculating and cold-blooded trust magnates. Mr. McCrea was pointing out the different plants as we went along.""The river is very pretty at the Narrows.""First, we passed the independent houses. They kept getting bigger and bigger until I couldn't imagine anything to overshadow them and I began to get frightened and wonder what your refineries would be like. Then, just as we turned at the island, Mr. McCrea pointed out a perfectly huge cluster of buildings and said those were the Kimberly plants. Really, they took my breath away. And in the midst of them rose that enormous oblong chimney-stack. A soft, lazy column of smoke hovered over it--such as hovers over Vesuvius." She smiled at the remembrance. "But the repose and size of that chimney seemed to me like the strength of the pyramids. When we steamed nearer I could read, near the top, the great terra-cotta plaque: KIMBERLYS AND COMPANY. Then I thought: Oh, what a tremendous personage Mr. Robert Kimberly must be!""The chimney is yours.""Oh, no, keep it, pray--but it really did put me wondering just what you were like.""It must have been an inspiration that made me build that chimney. The directors thought I would embarrass the company before we got the foundations in. I didn't know then whom I was building it for, but I know now; and if you got a single thrill out of it the expenditure is justified. And I think mention of the thrill should go into the directors' minutes on the page where they objected to the bill--we will see about that. But you never expected at that moment to own the chimney, did you? You shall. I will have the trustees release it from the general mortgage and convey it to you.""And speaking of Vesuvius, you never dreamed of a volcano lying in wait for you beneath the lazy smoke of that chimney, did you? And that before very long you would not alone own the chimney but would be carrying the volcano around in your vanity bag?"CHAPTER XXXIIOne afternoon in the early autumn Kimberly came to Cedar Lodge a little later than usual and asked Alice, as he often did, to walk to the lake. He started down the path with something more than his ordinary decision and inclined for a time to reticence. They stopped at a bench near an elm overlooking the water. "You have been in town to-day," said Alice."Yes; a conference this morning on the market. Something extraordinary happened.""In the market?""Market conditions are bad enough, but this was something personal.""Tell me about it.""MacBirney was present at the conference. After the meeting he came to the head of the table where I was talking with McCrea--and sat down. When McCrea joined the others in the lunchroom, MacBirney said he wanted to speak to me a moment. I told him to go ahead."He began at once about his differences with you. His talk puzzled me. I was on the defensive, naturally. But as far as I could see, he designed no attack on me; and of you he could utter nothing but praise--it was rather trying to listen to. I could not fathom his purpose in bringing the matter before me in this singular way, but he ended with an appeal----""An appeal!""He asked me to bring a message to you. I told him I would deliver any message entrusted to me. He wants you to know that he is very sorry for what has taken place. He admits that he has been in the wrong----""It is too late!" Alice in her emotion rose to her feet."And he asks you, through me," Kimberly spoke under a strain he did not wholly conceal, "if he may come back and let the past bury itself.""It is too late.""He said," Kimberly rose and faced Alice, "there had been differences about religion----""Ask him," she returned evenly, "whether I ever sought to interfere with his religious views or practices.""These, he promises, shall not come between you again.""Wretched man! His words are not the slightest guarantee of his conduct."Kimberly took his hat from his head and wiped his forehead. "This was the message, Alice; is he to come back to you?""Whatever becomes of me, I never will live again with him.""That is irrevocable?""Yes.""I have kept my word--that you should have his message as straight as I could carry it.""I believe you have. He certainly could not, whatever his intentions, have paid you a higher tribute than to entrust you with one for me.""Then he does not and never can stand between you and me, Alice?""He never can."The expression of his eyes would have frightened her at a moment less intense. Slightly paler than she had been a year earlier and showing in her manner rather than in her face only indefinable traces of the trouble she had been through, Alice brought each day to Kimberly an attraction that renewed itself unfailingly.He looked now upon her eyes--he was always asking whether they were blue or gray--and upon her brown hair, as it framed her white forehead. He looked with tender fondness on the delicate cheeks that made not alone a setting for her frank eyes but for him added to the appeal of her lips. He sat down again, catching her hand to bring her close."Come," he urged, relaxing from his intensity, "sit down. By Heaven, I have suffered to-day! But who wouldn't suffer for you? Who but for the love of woman would bear the cares and burdens of this world?"Alice smiled oddly. "We have to bear them, you know, for the love of man." She sat down on the bench beside him. "Tell me, how have you suffered to-day?""Do you want to know?""Of course, I want to know. Don't you always want to know how I have suffered? Though I used to think," she added, as if moved by unpleasant recollections, "that nobody cares when a woman suffers.""The man that loves her cares. It is one of love's attributes. It makes a woman's sorrow and pain his, just as her joy and happiness are his. Pleasure and pain are twins, anyway, and you cannot separate them. Alice!" He looked suddenly at her. "You love me, don't you?"Her face crimsoned, for she realized he was bent on making her answer."Let us talk about something else, Robert."He repeated his question."Don't make me put it into words yet, Robert," she said at last. "You have so long known the answer--and know that I still speak as his wife. Do I love you?" She covered her face with her hands."Alice!" His appeal drew her eyes back to his. They looked speechless at each other. The moment was too much. Instinctively she sprang in fear to her feet, but only to find herself caught within his arm and to feel his burning lips on her lips. She fought his embrace in half-delirious reproach. Then her eyes submitted to his pleading and their lips met with her soft, plunging pulse beating swiftly upon his heart.It was only for an instant. She pushed him away. "I have answered you. You must spare me now or I shall sink with shame.""But you are mine," he persisted, "all mine."She led him up the path toward the house."Sometimes I am afraid I shall swallow you up, as the sea swallows up the ship, in a storm of passion.""Oh no, you will not.""Why not?""Because I am helpless. Was there more to your story?""You know then I haven't told it all.""Tell me the rest.""When he had finished, I told him I, too, had something to say. 'I shall deliver your message to Alice,' I said. 'But it is only fair to say to you I mean to make her my wife if she will accept me, and her choice will lie between you and me, MacBirney.'"You should have seen his amazement. Then he collected himself for a stab--and I tried not to let him see that it went deep. 'Whatever the outcome,' he said, 'she will never marry you.'"'You must recollect you have not been in her confidence for some time,' I retorted. He seemed in no way disconcerted and ended by disconcerting me. 'Remember what I tell you, Mr. Kimberly,' he repeated, 'you will find me a good prophet. She is a Catholic and will never marry you or any other man while I live.'"'You may be right,' I replied. 'But if Alice marries me she will never live to regret it for one moment on account of her religion. I have no religion myself, except her. She is my religion, she alone and her happiness. You seem to invoke her religion against me. What right have you to do this? Have you helped her in its practice? Have you kept the promises you made when you married a Catholic wife? Or have you made her life a hell on earth because she tried to practise her religion, as you promised she should be free to do? Is she a better Catholic because she believed in you, or a worse because to live in peace with you she was forced to abandon the practice of her religion? These are questions for you to think over, MacBirney. I will give her your message----'"'Give her my message,' he sneered. 'You would be likely to!'"'Stop!' I said. 'My word, MacBirney, is good. Friend and foe of mine will tell you that. Even my enemies accept my word. But if I could bring myself to deceive those that trust me I would choose enemies to prey upon before I chose friends. I could deceive my own partners. I could play false to my own brother--all this I could do and more. But if I could practise deceits a thousand times viler than these, I could not, so help me God, lie to a trusting girl that I had asked to be my wife and the mother of my children! Whatever else of baseness I stooped to,thatword should be forever good!'"Alice, I struck the table a blow that made the inkstands jump. My eye-glasses went with a crash. Nelson and McCrea came running in; MacBirney turned white. He tried to stretch his lips in a smile; it was ghastly. Everybody was looking at me. I got up without a word to any one and left the room."Alice caught his sleeve. "Robert, I am proud of you! How much better you struck than you knew! Oh," she cried, "how could I help loving you?""Do you love me?""I would give my life for you.""Don't give it for me; keep it for me. You will marry me; won't you? What did the cur mean by saying what he did, Alice?""He meant to taunt me; to remind me of how long I tried to live in some measure up to the religion that he used every means to drive me from--and did drive me from.""We will restore all that.""He meant I must come to you without its blessing."He looked suddenly and keenly at her. "Should you be happier with its blessing?""Ah, Robert.""But should you?"She gazed away. "It is a happiness I have lost.""Then you shall have it again.""I will trust to God forsomeescape from my difficulties. What else can I do? My husband!" she exclaimed bitterly--"generous man to remind me of religion!"Kimberly spoke with a quick resolve. "I am going to look into this matter of where you stand as a wife. I am going to know why you can't have a chance to live your life with me. If I give you back what he has robbed you of, our happiness will be doubled."
CHAPTER XXVIII
"I never can catch Brother Francis, thinking of anything but Italy," remarked Kimberly.
"Who can blame him?" exclaimed Imogene.
"Or the hereafter," added Kimberly.
Nelson grunted. "I'm afraid he doesn't find much sympathy here on that subject," he observed, looking from one to another.
"Don't be mistaken, Nelson," said Kimberly, "Ithink about it, and Francis will tell you so. I have already made tentative arrangements with him on that score. Francis is to play Lazarus to my Dives. When I am in hell I am to have my cup of cold water from him. And remember, Francis, if you love me, the conditions. Don't forget the conditions; they are the essence of the contract. I am to have the water one drop at a time. Don't forget that; one drop at a time. Eternity is a long, long while."
Francis, ill at ease, took a pinch of snuff to compose himself.
"Your rôle doesn't seem altogether to your liking, Francis," suggested Imogene.
"His rôle! Why, it's paradise itself compared to mine," urged Kimberly.
Brother Francis drew his handkerchief and wiped his nose very simply. "I pray, Robert," he said, "that you may never be in hell."
"But keep me in your eye, Francis. Don't relax your efforts. A sugar man is liable to stumble and fall in while your back is turned."
"We must get started for the lake," announced Imogene. "Brother Francis, we are all going down to see The Towers from the water. Will you come?"
Francis excused himself, and his companions joined the other guests who were gathering at the water. Oarsmen were waiting with barges and fires burned from the pillars of the esplanade. As the boats left the shore, music came across the water. Alice, with Kimberly, caught a glimpse of her husband in a passing boat. "Having a good time?" he cried. For answer she waved her hand.
"Are you really having a good time?" Kimberly asked. "I mean, do you care at all for this kind of thing?"
"Of course, I care for it. Who could help it? It is lovely. Where are we going?"
"Down the lake a mile or two; then the boats will return for the fireworks."
"You don't seem very lively yourself to-night. Are you bored?"
"No; only wondering whether you will go driving with me to-morrow."
"I said I would not."
"I hoped, of course, you might reconsider."
He did not again press the subject of the drive, but when they were walking up the hill after the rockets and showers of gold falling down the dark sky, she told him he might come for her the next day. "I don't know how it is," she murmured, "but you always have your own way. You wind me right around your finger."
He laughed. "If I do, it is only because I don't try to."
"I realize it; that is what puzzles me."
"The real secret is, not that I wind you around my finger, but that you don't want to hurt my feelings. I find something to wonder at, too. When I am with you--even when you are anywhere near me, I am totally different. Alone, I am capable of withdrawing wholly within myself. I am self-absorbed and concentrated. With you I am never wholly within myself. I am, seemingly, partly in your consciousness."
Alice shook her head. "It is true," he persisted. "It is one of the consequences of love; to be drawn out of one's self. I have it." He turned to her, questioningly, "Can you understand it?"
"I think so."
"But do you ever feel it?"
"Sometimes."
"Never, of course, for me?"
"Sometimes."
CHAPTER XXIX
"This is a courtship without any spring," said Dolly one night to her husband. They were discussing her brother and Alice. "At first it was all winter, now it is all summer."
She thought they showed themselves together too much in public, and their careless intimacy was, in fact, outwardly unrestrained.
Not that Dolly was censorious. Her philosophy found refuge in fatalism. And since what is to be must be--especially where the Kimberlys were concerned--why worry over the complications? Seemliness, however, Dolly held, was to be regarded, and concerning this she felt she ought to be consulted. The way to be consulted she had long ago learned was to find fault.
But if she herself reproved Kimberly and Alice, Dolly allowed no one else to make their affairs a subject of comment. Lottie Nelson, who could never be wholly suppressed, was silenced when occasion offered. One afternoon at The Hickories, Alice's name being mentioned, Lottie asked whether Robert was still chasing her.
"Chasing her?" echoed Dolly contemptuously and ringing the changes on the objectionable word, "Of course; why shouldn't he chase her? Who else is there to chase? He loves the excitement of the hunt; and who else around here is there to hunt? The other women hunt him. No man wants anything that comes tumbling after him. What we want is what we can't get; or at least what we're not sure of getting."
Kimberly and Alice if not quite unconscious of comment were at least oblivious of it. They motored a great deal, always at their own will, and they accounted to no one for their excursions.
"They are just a pair of bad children," said Imogene to Dolly. "And they act like children."
One of their diversions in their rambling drives was to stop children and talk with them or ask questions of them. One day near Sunbury they encountered a puny, skeleton-faced boy, a highway acquaintance, wheeling himself along in an invalid chair.
They had never hitherto talked with this boy and they now stopped their car and backed up. Alice usually asked the questions. "I thought you lived away at the other end of the village, laddie?"
"Yes'm, I do."
"You haven't wheeled yourself all this way?"
"Yes'm."
"What's the matter with you that you can't walk, Tommie?" demanded Kimberly.
"My back is broken."
Alice made a sympathetic exclamation. "My dear little fellow--I'm very sorry for you!"
The boy smiled. "Oh, don't be sorry for me."
"Not sorry for you?"
"I have a pretty good time; it's my mother--I'm sorry for her."
"Ah, indeed, your mother!" echoed Alice, struck by his words. "I am sorry for both of you then. And how did you break your back?"
"In our yard--climbing, ma'am."
"Poor devil, he's not the first one that has broken his back climbing," muttered Kimberly, taking a note from his waistcoat. "Give him something, Alice."
"As much as this?" cried Alice under her breath, looking at the note and at Kimberly.
"Why not? It's of no possible use to us, and it will be a nine-months' wonder in that little household."
Alice folded the note up and stretched her white-gloved hand toward the boy. "Take this home to your mother."
"Thank you. I can make little baskets," he added shyly.
"Can you?" echoed Alice, pleased. "Would you make one for me?"
"I will bring one up to your house if you want me to."
"That would be too far! And you don't know where I live."
The boy looked at the green and black car as if he could not be mistaken. "Up at The Towers, ma'am."
Brice, who took more than a mild interest in the situation, grinned inwardly.
Kimberly and Alice laughed together. "Very well; bring it to The Towers," directed Kimberly, "I'll see that she gets it."
"Yes, sir."
"And see here; don't lose that note, Tommie. By Heavens, he handles money more carelessly than I do. No matter, wait till his mother sees it."
While they were talking to the boy, Dolly drove up in her car and stopped a moment to chat and scold. They laughed at her and she drove away as if they were hopeless.
"Your sister is the dearest woman," remarked Alice as Dolly's car disappeared. "I am so fond of her, I believe I am growing like her."
"Don't grow too like her."
"Why not?"
"Dolly has too much heart. It gets her into trouble."
"She says you have too much, yourself."
"I've paid for it, too; I've been in trouble."
"And I shall be, if you don't take me home pretty soon."
"Don't let us go home as long as we can go anywhere else," pleaded Kimberly. "When we go home we are separated."
He often attempted to talk with Alice of her husband. "Does he persecute you in any way?" demanded Kimberly, trying vainly to get to details.
Alice's answer was always the same. "Not now."
"But he used to?" Kimberly would persist.
"Don't ask me about that."
"If he ever should lay a hand on you, Alice----"
"Pray, pray," she cried, "don't look like that. And don't get excited; he is not going to lay a hand on me."
They did not reach Cedar Lodge until sundown and when they drove up to the house MacBirney, out from town, was seated on the big porch alone. They called a greeting to him as they slowed up and he answered in kind. Kimberly, without any embarrassment, got out to assist Alice from the car. The courtesy of his manner toward her seemed emphasized in MacBirney's presence.
On this night, it was, perhaps, the picture of Kimberly standing at the door of his own car giving his hand to MacBirney's wife to alight, that angered the husband more than anything that had gone before. Kimberly's consideration for Alice was so pronounced as completely to ignore MacBirney himself.
The small talk between the two when Alice alighted, the laughing exchanges, the amiable familiarity, all seemed to leave no place in the situation for MacBirney, and were undoubtedly meant so to be understood. Kimberly good-humoredly proffered his attentions to that end and Alice could now accept them with the utmost composure.
Fritzie had already come over to Cedar Lodge from Imogene's for dinner and Kimberly returned afterward from The Towers, talking till late in the evening with MacBirney on business affairs. He then drove Fritzie back to The Cliffs.
MacBirney, smarting with the stings of jealousy, found no outlet for his feeling until he was left alone with his wife. It was after eleven o'clock when Alice, reading in her sitting-room, heard her husband try the door connecting from his apartments. Finding it bolted, as usual, MacBirney walked out on the loggia and came into her room through the east door which she had left open for the sea-breeze. He was smoking and he sat down on a divan. Alice laid her book on her knee.
It was a moment before he spoke. "You seem to be making Kimberly a pretty intimate member of the family," he began.
"Oh, do you think so? Charles or Robert?"
"You know very well who I mean."
"If you mean Robert, he is a familiar in every family circle around the lake. It is his way, isn't it? I don't suppose he is more intimate here than at Lottie's, is he? Or at Dolly's or Imogene's?"
"They are his sisters," returned MacBirney, curtly.
"Lottie isn't. And I thought you wanted me rather to cultivate Robert, didn't you, Walter?" asked Alice indifferently.
He was annoyed to be reminded of the fact but made no reply.
"Robert is a delightfully interesting man," continued Alice recklessly, "don't you think so?"
MacBirney returned to the quarrel from another quarter. "Do you know how much money you have spent here at Cedar Lodge in the last four months?"
Alice maintained her composure. "I haven't an idea."
He paused. "I will tell you how much, since you're so very superior to the subject. Just twice as much as we spent the first five years we were married."
"Quite a difference, isn't it?"
"It is--quite a difference. And the difference is reckless extravagance. You seem to have lost your head."
"Suppose it is reckless extravagance! What do you mean to say--that I spent all the money? This establishment is of your choosing, isn't it? And have you spent nothing? How do you expect to move in a circle of people such as live around this lake without reckless extravagance?"
"By using a little common-sense in your expenditures."
For some moments they wrangled over various details of the ménage. Alice at length cut the purposeless recrimination short. "You spoke of the first five years we were married. You know I spent literally nothing the first five years of our married life. You continually said you were trying 'to build up.' That was your cry from morning till night, and like a dutiful wife, I wore my own old clothes for the first two years. Then the next three years I wore made-over hats and hunted up ready-made suits to enable you to 'build up.'"
"Yes," he muttered, "and we were a good deal happier then than we are now."
She made an impatient gesture. "Do speak for yourself, Walter. You were happier, no doubt. I can't remember that you ever gave me any chance to be happy."
"Too bad about you. You look like a poor, unhappy thing--half-fed and half-clothed."
"Now that you have 'built up,'" continued Alice, "and brought me into a circle not in the least of my choosing, and instructed me again and again to 'keep our end up,' you complain of 'reckless extravagance.'"
"Well, for a woman that I took with a travelling suit from a bankrupt father, and put at the head of this establishment, you certainly can hold your 'end up,'" laughed MacBirney harshly.
"Just a moment," returned Alice, with angry eyes. "You need not taunt me about my father. When you were measuring every day the sugar and coffee we were to use during the first five years of our married life, you should have foreseen you couldn't move as a millionaire among multimillionaires without spending a lot of money."
MacBirney turned white. "Thank you for reminding me," he retorted, with shining teeth, "of the thrift of which you have since had the advantages."
"Oh dear, no, Walter. The advantages of that kind of thrift are purely imaginary. The least spark of loving-kindness during those years would have been more to me than all the petty meannesses necessary to build up a fortune. But it is too late to discuss all this."
MacBirney could hardly believe his ears. He rose hastily and threw himself into another chair. "You've changed your tune mightily since 'the first five years of our married life,'" he said.
Alice tossed her head.
"But I want you to understand,Ihaven't."
"I believe that!"
"And I've brought you to time before now, with all of your high airs, and I'll do it again."
"Oh, no; not again."
"I'll teach you who is master under this roof."
"How like the sweet first five years that sounds!"
He threw his cigar angrily away. "I know exactly what's the matter with you. You have run around with this lordly Kimberly till he has turned your head. Now you are going to stop it, now and here!"
"Am I?"
"You are."
"Hadn't you better tell Mr. Kimberly that?"
"I will tellyou, you are getting yourself talked about, and it is going to stop. Everybody is talking about you."
Alice threw back her head. "So? Where did you hear that?"
"Lambert told me yesterday."
"I hope you were manly enough to defend your wife. Where did you see Lambert?"
"I saw him in town."
"I shouldn't listen to silly gossip from Lambert, and I shouldn't see Lambert again."
"How long have you been adviser as to whom I had better or better not see?" asked MacBirney contemptuously.
"You will find me a good adviser on some points in your affairs, and that is one."
"If you value your advice highly, you should part with it sparingly."
"I know whatyouvalue highly; and if Robert Kimberly finds out you are consorting with Lambert it will end your usefulness inhiscombinations very suddenly."
The thrust, severe in any event, was made keener by the fact that it frightened him into rage. "Since you come from a family that has made such a brilliant financial showing--" he began.
"Oh, I know," she returned wearily, "but you had better take care." He looked at his wife astounded. "You have insulted me enough," she added calmly, "about the troubles of my father. The 'first five years' are at an end. I have spoiled you, Walter, by taking your abuse so long without striking back and I won't do it any more."
"What do you mean?" he cried, springing from his chair. "Do you think you are to keep your doors bolted against me for six months at a time and then browbeat and abuse me when I come into your room to talk to you? Who paid for these clothes you wear?" he demanded, pointing in a fury.
"I try never to think of that, Walter," replied Alice, rising to her feet but controlling herself more than she could have believed possible. "I try never to think of the price I have paid for anything I have; if I did, I should go mad and strip these rags from my shoulders."
She stood her ground with flashing eyes. "I, not you," she cried, "have paid for what I have and the clothes I wear.Ipaid for them--not you--with my youth and health and hopes and happiness. I paid for them with the life of my little girl; with all that a wretched woman can sacrifice to a brute. Paid for them! God help me! How haven't I paid for them?"
She stopped for sheer breath, but before he could find words she spoke again. "Now, I am done with you forever. I am out of your power forever. Thank God, some one will protect me from your brutality for the rest of my life----"
MacBirney clutched the back of a chair. "So you have picked up a lover, have you? This sounds very edifying from my dear, dutiful, religious wife." Hardly able to form the words between his trembling lips, he smiled horribly.
She turned on him like a tigress. "No," she panted, "no! I am no longer your religious wife. It wasn't enough that I should go shabby and hungry to make you rich. Because I still had something left in my miserable life to help me bear your cruelty and meanness you must take that away too. What harm did my religion do you that you should ridicule it and sneer at it and threaten and abuse me for it? You grudged the few hours I took from your household drudgery to get to church. You promised before you married me that our children should be baptized in my faith, and then refused baptism to my dying baby."
Her words rained on him in a torrent. "You robbed me of my religion. You made me live in continual sin. When I pleaded for children, you swore you would have no children. When I told you I was a mother you cursed and villified me."
"Stop!" he screamed, running at her with an oath.
The hatred and suffering of years were compressed into her moment of revolt. They flamed in her cheeks and burned in her eyes as she cried out her choking words. "Stop me if you dare!" she sobbed, watching him clench his fist. "If you raise your hand I will disgrace you publicly, now, to-night!"
He struck her. She disdained even to protect herself and crying loudly for Annie fell backward. Her head caught the edge of the table from which she had risen.
Annie ran from the bedroom at the sound of her mistress's voice. But when she opened the boudoir door, Alice was lying alone and unconscious on the floor.
CHAPTER XXX
She revived only after long and anxious ministrations on Annie's part. But with the return of her senses the blood surged again in her veins in defiance of her husband. Her first thought was one of passionate hatred of him, and the throbbing pain in her head from her fall against the table served to sharpen her resentment.
MacBirney, possessed of enough craft to slip away from an unpleasant situation, returned early to town, only hoping the affair would blow over, and still somewhat dazed by the amazing rebellion of an enduring wife.
He realized that a storm might break now at any moment over his head. Always heavily committed in the speculative markets, he well understood that if Kimberly should be roused to vengeance by any word from Alice the consequences to his own fortune might be appalling.
It chanced that Kimberly was away the following day and Alice had twenty-four hours to let her wrath cool. Two days of reflection were enough. The sense of her shame and her degradation as a woman at the hands of a man so base as her husband were alone enough to suggest moderation in speaking to Kimberly of the quarrel.
But more than this was to be considered. What would Kimberly do if she told him everything? A scandalous encounter, even a more serious issue between the two men was too much to think of. She felt that Kimberly was capable in anger of doing anything immoderate and it was better by far, her calmer judgment told her, to bury her humiliation in her own heart than to risk something worse. She was now, she well knew, with this secret, a terror to her cowardly husband, just as he had been, through a nightmare of wretched years, her own terror.
For the first time, on the afternoon of the second day, she found herself awaiting with burning impatience some word from The Towers. She had resolved what to say to Kimberly and wanted now to say it quickly. When the telephone bell rang promptly at four o'clock her heart dilated with happiness; she knew the call came from one who never would fail her. Alice answered the bell herself and her tones were never so maddening in Kimberly's ears as when she told him, not only that he might come, but that she was weary with waiting. She stood at the window when his car drove up and tripped rapidly downstairs. When she greeted him he bent down to kiss her hand.
She did not resist his eagerness. She even drew a deep breath as she returned his look, and having made ready for him with a woman's lovely cunning, enjoyed its reward.
"I've been crazy to see you," he cried. "It is two days, Alice. How can I tell you how lovely you are?"
Her eyes, cast down, were lifted to his when she made her confession. "Do you really like this rig? It is the first toilet I ever made with the thought of nobody but you in my head. So I told Annie" she murmured, letting her hand rest on his coat sleeve, "to be sure I was exactly right."
He caught her hands.
"Let's go into the garden," she said as he held them. "I have something to say to you."
They sat down together. "Something has happened since I saw you," she began.
"Has the break come?" demanded Kimberly instantly.
"We had a very painful scene night before last," said Alice. "The break has come. He has gone to town--he went yesterday morning. I have asked myself many questions since then. My father and mother are dead. I have no home to go to, and I will not live even under the same roof with him any longer. I feel so strange. I feel turned out, though there was nothing of that in what he said--indeed, I am afraid I did most of the talking."
"I wish to God I had heard you!"
"It is better not. Every heart knoweth its own bitterness----"
"Let me help bear yours."
"I feel homeless, I feel so alone, so ashamed--I don't know what I don't feel. You will never know what humiliation, what pain I have been through for two days. Robert--" her voice faltered for an instant. Then she spoke on, "I never can tell you of the sickness and shame I have long felt of even pretending to live with some one I could not respect."
"Close the book of its recollection. I came into your life for just such a moment, to be everything you need. I am home, husband, and protection--everything."
"If I could only make my senses believe my ears." She paused. "It seems as if I am in a dream and shall wake with a horror."
"No, this is a dream come true. I foresaw this time and I have provided for it. Only delicacy has kept me from asking you before about your very personal affairs and your private purse, Alice. Understand at once," he took her hands vehemently, "everything I have is yours without the least reserve. Do you understand? Money is the last thing to make any one happy, I well know that, but in addition to the word of my heart to your heart--the transfers to you, Alice, have long been made and at this moment you have, merely waiting for you to draw upon them, more funds than you could make use of in ten lifetimes. Everything is provided for. There are tears in your eyes. Sit still for a moment and let me speak."
"No, I must speak. I am in a horrible position. I cannot at such a juncture receive anything from you. But there are matters to be faced. Shall I stay here? If I do, he must go. Shall I go? And if I do go, where?"
"Let me answer with a suggestion. My family are all devoted to us. Dolly and Imogene are good counsellors. I will lay the matter before them. After a family council we shall know just what to do and how. I have my own idea; we shall see what the others say. Dolly, you know, has taken you under her wing from the first, and Dolly you will find is a powerful protector. If I tell you what I did to-day you will gasp with astonishment. I cabled for a whole new set of photographs of the Maggiore villa. I want our first year together, Alice, to be in Italy."
CHAPTER XXXI
Accompanied by Imogene, Dolly hastened over to Cedar Lodge in the morning. Alice met them in the hall. "My dear," cried Dolly, folding her impulsively in her arms, "you are charged with fate!"
Then she drew back, laid her hands on Alice's shoulders and, bringing her face tenderly forward, kissed her. "How can I blame Robert for falling in love with you? And yet!" She turned to Imogene. "If we had been told that first night thatthiswas the woman of our destiny! How do you bear your new honors, dearie? What! Tears! Nonsense, my child. You are freighted with the Kimberly hopes now. You are one of us. Tears are at an end. I, too, cried when I first knew of it. Come, sit down. Imogene will tell you everything." And having announced this much, Dolly proceeded with the telling herself.
"When you first knew of it?" echoed Alice. "Pray, when was that?"
"Oh, long, long ago--before ever you did, my dear. But no matter now. We talked last night, Arthur, Charles, Imogene, and Robert and I until midnight. And this is what we said: 'The dignity of your personal position is, before everything else, to be rigidly maintained.' Mr. MacBirney will be required to do this. He will be counselled on this point--made to understand that the obligation to maintain the dignity of his wife's position is primary. Robert, of course, objected to this. He was for allowing no one but himself to do anything----"
"I hope you clearly understand, Dolly, I should allow Mr. Kimberly to do nothing whatever at this juncture," interposed Alice quickly.
"I understand perfectly, dear. But there are others of us, you know, friends of your own dear mother, remember. Only, aside from all of that, we considered that the situation admitted of but one arrangement. Charles will tell Nelson exactly what MacBirney is to do, and Nelson will see that it is done. The proper bankers will advise you of your credits from your husband, for the present--and they are to be very generous ones, my dear," added Dolly significantly. "So all that is taken care of and Mr. MacBirney will further be counselled not to come near Cedar Lodge or Second Lake until further orders. Do you understand?"
"Why, yes, Dolly," assented Alice perplexed, "but Mr. MacBirney's acquiescence in all this is very necessary it seems to me. And he may agree to none of it."
"My dear, it isn't at all a question ofhisagreeing. He will do as he is advised to do. Do you imagine he can afford breaking with the Kimberlys? A man that pursues money, dear heart, is no longer a free agent. His interests confront him at every turn. Fledgling millionaires are in no way new to us. Mercy, they pass in and out of our lives every day! A millionaire, dear, is nothing but a million meannesses and they all do exactly as they are told. Really, I am sorry for some of them. Of all unfortunates they are nowadays the worst. They are simply ground to powder between the multi-millionaires and the laboring classes. In this case, happily, it is only a matter of making one do what he ought to do, so give it no thought."
Dolly proved a good prophet concerning MacBirney's course in the circumstances. MacBirney, desirous of playing at once to the lake public in the affair of his domestic difficulties, made unexceptional allowances for his wife's maintenance. Yet at every dollar that came to her from his abundance she felt humiliated. She knew now why she had endured so much at his hands for so long; it was because she had realized her utter dependence on him and that her dreams of self-support were likely, if she had ever acted on them, to end in very bitter realities.
At the first sign of hot weather, Charles and Imogene put to sea with a party for a coasting cruise; Dolly sailed for the continent to bring Grace back with her. Robert Kimberly unwilling to leave for any extended period would not let Alice desert him; accordingly, Fritzie was sent for and came over to stay with her. The lake country made a delightful roaming place and Alice was shown by Kimberly's confidences how close she was to him.
He confided to her the journal of the day, whatever it might be. Nothing was held back. His successes, failures, and worries all came to her at night. He often asked her for advice upon his affairs and her wonder grew as the inwardness of the monetary world in which he moved stood revealed to her. She spoke of it one day.
"To be sought after as you are--to have so many men running out here to find you; to be consulted by so many----"
Kimberly interrupted her. "Do you know why they seek me? Because I make money for them, Alice. They would run after anybody that could make them money. But they are wolves and if I lost for them they would try to tear me to pieces. No man is so alone as the man the public follows for a day even while it hates or fears him. And the man the bankers like is the man that can make money for them; their friendship is as cold and thin as autumn ice."
"But even then, to have the ability for making money and doing magnificent things; to be able to succeed where so many men fail--it seems so wonderful to me."
"Don't cherish any illusions about it. Everyone that makes money must be guilty of a thousand cold-blooded things, a thousand sharp turns, a thousand cruelties; it's a game of cruelties. Fortunately, I'm not a brilliant success in that line, anyway; people merely think I am. The ideal money-maker always is and always will be a man without a temper, without a heart, and with an infusion, in our day, of hypocrisy. He takes refuge in hypocrisy because the public hates him and he is forced to do it to keep from hating himself. When public opinion gets too strong for him he plays to it. When it isn't too strong, he plays to himself. I can't do that; I have too much vanity to play to anybody. And the recollection of a single defeat rankles above the memory of a thousand victories. This is all wrong--far, far from the ideal of money getting; in fact, I'm not a professional in the game at all--merely an amateur. A very successful man should never be trusted anyway."
"Why not?"
"Because success comes first with him. It comes before friendship and he will sacrifice you to success without a pang."
She looked at him with laughing interest. "What is it?" he asked changing his tone.
"I was thinking of how I am impressed sometimes by the most unexpected things. You could never imagine what most put me in awe of you before I met you."
"There must have been a severe revulsion of feeling when you did meet me," suggested Kimberly.
"We were going up the river in your yacht and Mr. McCrea was showing us the refineries. All that I then knew of you was what I had read in newspapers about calculating and cold-blooded trust magnates. Mr. McCrea was pointing out the different plants as we went along."
"The river is very pretty at the Narrows."
"First, we passed the independent houses. They kept getting bigger and bigger until I couldn't imagine anything to overshadow them and I began to get frightened and wonder what your refineries would be like. Then, just as we turned at the island, Mr. McCrea pointed out a perfectly huge cluster of buildings and said those were the Kimberly plants. Really, they took my breath away. And in the midst of them rose that enormous oblong chimney-stack. A soft, lazy column of smoke hovered over it--such as hovers over Vesuvius." She smiled at the remembrance. "But the repose and size of that chimney seemed to me like the strength of the pyramids. When we steamed nearer I could read, near the top, the great terra-cotta plaque: KIMBERLYS AND COMPANY. Then I thought: Oh, what a tremendous personage Mr. Robert Kimberly must be!"
"The chimney is yours."
"Oh, no, keep it, pray--but it really did put me wondering just what you were like."
"It must have been an inspiration that made me build that chimney. The directors thought I would embarrass the company before we got the foundations in. I didn't know then whom I was building it for, but I know now; and if you got a single thrill out of it the expenditure is justified. And I think mention of the thrill should go into the directors' minutes on the page where they objected to the bill--we will see about that. But you never expected at that moment to own the chimney, did you? You shall. I will have the trustees release it from the general mortgage and convey it to you."
"And speaking of Vesuvius, you never dreamed of a volcano lying in wait for you beneath the lazy smoke of that chimney, did you? And that before very long you would not alone own the chimney but would be carrying the volcano around in your vanity bag?"
CHAPTER XXXII
One afternoon in the early autumn Kimberly came to Cedar Lodge a little later than usual and asked Alice, as he often did, to walk to the lake. He started down the path with something more than his ordinary decision and inclined for a time to reticence. They stopped at a bench near an elm overlooking the water. "You have been in town to-day," said Alice.
"Yes; a conference this morning on the market. Something extraordinary happened."
"In the market?"
"Market conditions are bad enough, but this was something personal."
"Tell me about it."
"MacBirney was present at the conference. After the meeting he came to the head of the table where I was talking with McCrea--and sat down. When McCrea joined the others in the lunchroom, MacBirney said he wanted to speak to me a moment. I told him to go ahead.
"He began at once about his differences with you. His talk puzzled me. I was on the defensive, naturally. But as far as I could see, he designed no attack on me; and of you he could utter nothing but praise--it was rather trying to listen to. I could not fathom his purpose in bringing the matter before me in this singular way, but he ended with an appeal----"
"An appeal!"
"He asked me to bring a message to you. I told him I would deliver any message entrusted to me. He wants you to know that he is very sorry for what has taken place. He admits that he has been in the wrong----"
"It is too late!" Alice in her emotion rose to her feet.
"And he asks you, through me," Kimberly spoke under a strain he did not wholly conceal, "if he may come back and let the past bury itself."
"It is too late."
"He said," Kimberly rose and faced Alice, "there had been differences about religion----"
"Ask him," she returned evenly, "whether I ever sought to interfere with his religious views or practices."
"These, he promises, shall not come between you again."
"Wretched man! His words are not the slightest guarantee of his conduct."
Kimberly took his hat from his head and wiped his forehead. "This was the message, Alice; is he to come back to you?"
"Whatever becomes of me, I never will live again with him."
"That is irrevocable?"
"Yes."
"I have kept my word--that you should have his message as straight as I could carry it."
"I believe you have. He certainly could not, whatever his intentions, have paid you a higher tribute than to entrust you with one for me."
"Then he does not and never can stand between you and me, Alice?"
"He never can."
The expression of his eyes would have frightened her at a moment less intense. Slightly paler than she had been a year earlier and showing in her manner rather than in her face only indefinable traces of the trouble she had been through, Alice brought each day to Kimberly an attraction that renewed itself unfailingly.
He looked now upon her eyes--he was always asking whether they were blue or gray--and upon her brown hair, as it framed her white forehead. He looked with tender fondness on the delicate cheeks that made not alone a setting for her frank eyes but for him added to the appeal of her lips. He sat down again, catching her hand to bring her close.
"Come," he urged, relaxing from his intensity, "sit down. By Heaven, I have suffered to-day! But who wouldn't suffer for you? Who but for the love of woman would bear the cares and burdens of this world?"
Alice smiled oddly. "We have to bear them, you know, for the love of man." She sat down on the bench beside him. "Tell me, how have you suffered to-day?"
"Do you want to know?"
"Of course, I want to know. Don't you always want to know how I have suffered? Though I used to think," she added, as if moved by unpleasant recollections, "that nobody cares when a woman suffers."
"The man that loves her cares. It is one of love's attributes. It makes a woman's sorrow and pain his, just as her joy and happiness are his. Pleasure and pain are twins, anyway, and you cannot separate them. Alice!" He looked suddenly at her. "You love me, don't you?"
Her face crimsoned, for she realized he was bent on making her answer.
"Let us talk about something else, Robert."
He repeated his question.
"Don't make me put it into words yet, Robert," she said at last. "You have so long known the answer--and know that I still speak as his wife. Do I love you?" She covered her face with her hands.
"Alice!" His appeal drew her eyes back to his. They looked speechless at each other. The moment was too much. Instinctively she sprang in fear to her feet, but only to find herself caught within his arm and to feel his burning lips on her lips. She fought his embrace in half-delirious reproach. Then her eyes submitted to his pleading and their lips met with her soft, plunging pulse beating swiftly upon his heart.
It was only for an instant. She pushed him away. "I have answered you. You must spare me now or I shall sink with shame."
"But you are mine," he persisted, "all mine."
She led him up the path toward the house.
"Sometimes I am afraid I shall swallow you up, as the sea swallows up the ship, in a storm of passion."
"Oh no, you will not."
"Why not?"
"Because I am helpless. Was there more to your story?"
"You know then I haven't told it all."
"Tell me the rest."
"When he had finished, I told him I, too, had something to say. 'I shall deliver your message to Alice,' I said. 'But it is only fair to say to you I mean to make her my wife if she will accept me, and her choice will lie between you and me, MacBirney.'
"You should have seen his amazement. Then he collected himself for a stab--and I tried not to let him see that it went deep. 'Whatever the outcome,' he said, 'she will never marry you.'
"'You must recollect you have not been in her confidence for some time,' I retorted. He seemed in no way disconcerted and ended by disconcerting me. 'Remember what I tell you, Mr. Kimberly,' he repeated, 'you will find me a good prophet. She is a Catholic and will never marry you or any other man while I live.'
"'You may be right,' I replied. 'But if Alice marries me she will never live to regret it for one moment on account of her religion. I have no religion myself, except her. She is my religion, she alone and her happiness. You seem to invoke her religion against me. What right have you to do this? Have you helped her in its practice? Have you kept the promises you made when you married a Catholic wife? Or have you made her life a hell on earth because she tried to practise her religion, as you promised she should be free to do? Is she a better Catholic because she believed in you, or a worse because to live in peace with you she was forced to abandon the practice of her religion? These are questions for you to think over, MacBirney. I will give her your message----'
"'Give her my message,' he sneered. 'You would be likely to!'
"'Stop!' I said. 'My word, MacBirney, is good. Friend and foe of mine will tell you that. Even my enemies accept my word. But if I could bring myself to deceive those that trust me I would choose enemies to prey upon before I chose friends. I could deceive my own partners. I could play false to my own brother--all this I could do and more. But if I could practise deceits a thousand times viler than these, I could not, so help me God, lie to a trusting girl that I had asked to be my wife and the mother of my children! Whatever else of baseness I stooped to,thatword should be forever good!'
"Alice, I struck the table a blow that made the inkstands jump. My eye-glasses went with a crash. Nelson and McCrea came running in; MacBirney turned white. He tried to stretch his lips in a smile; it was ghastly. Everybody was looking at me. I got up without a word to any one and left the room."
Alice caught his sleeve. "Robert, I am proud of you! How much better you struck than you knew! Oh," she cried, "how could I help loving you?"
"Do you love me?"
"I would give my life for you."
"Don't give it for me; keep it for me. You will marry me; won't you? What did the cur mean by saying what he did, Alice?"
"He meant to taunt me; to remind me of how long I tried to live in some measure up to the religion that he used every means to drive me from--and did drive me from."
"We will restore all that."
"He meant I must come to you without its blessing."
He looked suddenly and keenly at her. "Should you be happier with its blessing?"
"Ah, Robert."
"But should you?"
She gazed away. "It is a happiness I have lost."
"Then you shall have it again."
"I will trust to God forsomeescape from my difficulties. What else can I do? My husband!" she exclaimed bitterly--"generous man to remind me of religion!"
Kimberly spoke with a quick resolve. "I am going to look into this matter of where you stand as a wife. I am going to know why you can't have a chance to live your life with me. If I give you back what he has robbed you of, our happiness will be doubled."