Front matter (continued 2)

"You get the snuff!" Francis laid the box on the table beside Kimberly's bank-note.

"Sugar! Guarda!" The Skye terrier sat upright on his haunches and lifted his paws. Francis gave him a preliminary admonition, took from a mysterious pocket a lump of sugar, laid it on the tip of the dog's nose, and holding up his finger, began in a slow and clearly measured tone:

"Buon soldato

Va alia guerra,

Mangia male,

Dorme in terra.

Uno, due--

Buon soldato

Va--"

But here Sugar, to Francis's horror, snapped the lump into his mouth and swallowed it.

"You lose," announced Kimberly.

Francis threw up his hands. "My poor boys!"

"This is the time, Francis, your poor boys don't get my money. I get your snuff."

"Ah, Sugar, Sugar! You ruin us." The little Skye sitting fast, looked innocently and affectionately up at his distressed master. "Why," demanded the crestfallen Francis, "could you not wait for the lump one little instant?"

"Sugar is like me," suggested Kimberly lazily, "he wants what he wants when he wants it."

Alice, this morning, had been deeply in his thoughts. From the moment he woke he had been toying indolently with her image--setting it up before his imagination as a picture, then putting it away, then tempting his lethargy again with the pleasure of recalling it.

He drew a cigar-case from his pocket and carefully emptied the snuff out of the box into it. "When do you get more snuff, Francis?"

"On Saturday."

"This is Tuesday. The box is nearly full. It looks like good stuff." He paused between each sentence. "But you would bet."

Francis without looking busied himself with his little pupil.

"I have emptied the box," announced Kimberly. There was no answer. "Do you want any of it back?"

Francis waved the offer aside.

"A few pinches, Francis?"

"Nothing."

"That dog," continued Kimberly, rapping the box to get every grain out and perceiving the impossibility of harrying Francis in any other way, "is good for nothing anyway. He wasn't worth saving."

"That dog," returned Francis earnestly, "is a marvel of intelligence and patience. He has so sweet a temper, and he is so quick, Robert, to comprehend."

"I fail to see it."

"You will see it. The fault is in me."

"I don't see that either."

Francis looked at Kimberly appealingly and pointed benevolently at Sugar. "I ask too much of that little dog. He will learn. 'Patience, Francis,' he says to me, 'patience; I will learn.'"

Summoning his philosophy to bridge over the disappointment, Francis, as he stood up, absent-mindedly felt in his deep pocket for his snuff-box. It was in difficulties such as this that recourse to a frugal pinch steadied him. He recollected instantly that the snuff was gone, and with some haste and stepping about, he drew out his handkerchief instead--glancing toward Kimberly as he rubbed his nose vigorously to see if his slip had been detected.

Needless to say it had been--less than that would not have escaped Kimberly, and he was already enjoying the momentary discomfiture. Sugar at that moment saw a squirrel running down the walk and tore after him.

Francis with simple dignity took the empty snuff-box from the table and put it back in his pocket. His composure was restored and the incident to him was closed.

Kimberly understood him so well that it was not hard to turn the talk to a congenial subject. "I drove past the college the other day. I see your people are doing some building."

Francis shrugged his shoulders. "A laundry, Robert."

"Not a big building, is it?"

"We must go slow."

"It is over toward where you said the academy ought to go."

"My poor academy! They do not think it will ever come."

"You have more buildings now than you have students. What do you want with more buildings?"

"No, no. We have three hundred students--three hundred now." Francis looked at his questioner with eyes fiercely eager. "That is the college, Robert. The academy is something else--for what I told you."

"What did you tell me?" Kimberly lighted a cigar and Francis began again to explain.

"This is it: Our Sisters in the city take now sixteen hundred boys from seven to eight years old. These boys they pick up from the orphan courts, from the streets, from the poor parents. When these boys are twelve the Sisters cannot keep them longer, they must let them go and take in others.

"Here we have our college and these boys are ready for it when they are sixteen. But, between are four fatal years--from twelve to sixteen. If we had a school for such boys, think what we could do. They would be always in hand; now, they drift away. They must go to work in the city filth and wickedness. Ah, they need the protection we could give them in those terrible four years, Robert. They need the training in those years to make of them mechanics and artisans--to give them a chance, to help them to do more than drift without compass or rudder--do you not see?

"Those boys that are bright, that we find ready to go further, they are ready at sixteen for our college; we keep and educate them. But the others--the greater part--at sixteen would leave us, but trained to earn. And strengthened during those four critical years against evil. Ah!"

Francis paused. He spoke fast and with an intensity that absorbed him.

Kimberly, leaning comfortably back, sat with one foot resting on his knee. He knocked the ash of his cigar upon the heel of his shoe as he listened--sometimes hearing Francis's words, sometimes not. He had heard all of them before at one time or another; the plea was not new to him, but he liked the fervor of it.

"Ah! It is not for myself that I beg." Brother Francis's hands fell resignedly on his knees. "It is for those poor boys, to keep them, Robert, from going to hell--from hell in this world and in the next. To think of it makes me always sorrowful--it makes a beggar of me--a willing beggar."

Kimberly moved his cigar between his lips.

"But where shall I get so much money?" exclaimed Francis, helplessly. "It will take a million dollars to do what we ought to do. You are a great man, Robert; tell me, how shall I find it?"

"I can't tell you how to find it; I can tell you how to make it."

"How?"

"Go into the sugar business."

"Then I must leave God's business."

"Francis, if you will pardon me, I think for a clever man you are in some respects a great fool. I am not joking. What I have often said about your going into the sugar business, I repeat. You would be worth ten thousand dollars a year to me, and I will pay you that much any day."

Francis looked at Kimberly as if he were a madman, but contented himself with moving his head slowly from side to side in protest. "I cannot leave God's business, Robert. I must work for him and pray to him for the money. Sometime it will come."

"Then tell Uncle John to raise your wages," suggested Kimberly, relapsing into indifference.

"Robert, will you not sometime give me a letter to introduce me to the great banker who comes here, Hamilton?"

"He will not give you anything."

"He has so much money; how can he possibly need it all?"

"You forget, Francis, that nobody needs money so much as those that have it."

"Ah!"

"Hamilton may have no more money than I have, and you don't ask me for a million dollars."

"It is not necessary to ask you. You know I need it. If you could give it to me, you would."

"If I gave you a million dollars how should I ever get it back?"

Francis spoke with all seriousness. "God will pay you back."

"Yes, but when? That is a good deal of money to lend to God."

"It is a good deal."

"When do I get it back, and how?"

"He will surely pay you, Robert; God pays over there."

"That won't do--over there. It isn't honest."

Francis started. "Not honest?"

"You are offering deferred dividends, Francis. What would my stockholders say if I tried that kind of business? Gad, they would drag me into court."

"Ah, yes! But, Robert; you pay for to-day: he pays for eternity."

Kimberly smoked a moment. "In a proposition of that kind, Francis, it seems to me the question of guarantees is exceedingly important. You good men are safe enough; but where would the bad men come in on your eternal dividends?"

"You are not with the bad men, Robert. Your heart is not bad. You are, perhaps, cruel----"

"What?"

"But generous. Sometime God will give you a chance."

"You mean, sometime I will give God a chance."

"No, Robert, what I say I mean--sometime, God will give you a chance."

Charles Kimberly's impatient voice was heard from the pergola.

"Robert! We've been waiting thirty minutes," he stormed.

"I am just coming."

CHAPTER IX

That afternoon MacBirney played golf with Charles Kimberly. Toward five o'clock, Alice in one of the De Castro cars drove around to The Hickories after him. When he came in, she was sitting on the porch with a group of women, among them Fritzie Venable and Lottie Nelson.

"I must be very displeasing to Mrs. Nelson," Alice said to her husband as they drove away. "It upsets me completely to meet that woman."

"Why, what's the matter with her?" asked MacBirney, in a tone which professing friendly surprise really implied that the grievance might after all be one of imagination.

"I haven't an idea," declared Alice a little resentfully. "I am not conscious of having done a thing to offend her."

"You are oversensitive."

"But, Walter, I can tell when people mean to be rude."

"What did Mrs. Nelson do that was rude?" asked her husband in his customary vein of scepticism.

"She never does anything beyond ignoring me," returned Alice. "It must be, I think, that she and I instinctively detest each other. They were talking about a dinner and musicale Thursday night that Mr. Robert Kimberly is giving at The Towers. Miss Venable said she supposed we were going, and I had to say I really didn't know. We haven't been asked, have we?"

"Not that I know of."

"Mrs. Nelson looked at me when Fritzie spoke; I think it is the first time that she ever has looked at me, except when she had to say 'good-morning' or 'good-evening.' I was confused a little when I answered, I suppose; at any rate, she enjoyed it. Mr. Kimberly would not leave us out, would he?"

"I don't think so. He was playing golf this afternoon with Cready Hamilton, and he stopped to offer me his yacht for the week of the cup races."

"Why, how delightful! How came he ever to do that?"

"And I think he has made up his mind what he is going to do about placing me on the board," continued MacBirney, resuming his hard, thin manner and his eager tone of business. "I wish I knew just what is coming."

Alice had scarcely reached her room when she found the dinner invitation. She felt a little thrill of triumph as she read it. Her maid explained that the note had been laid in the morning with Mrs. De Castro's letters.

Late in the evening Kimberly came over with his sister-in-law, Imogene. The De Castros were at the seashore overnight and the visitors' cards were sent up to the MacBirneys. It was warm and the party sat on the south veranda. Kimberly talked with Alice and she told him they hoped to be present at his dinner.

"You are sure to be, aren't you?" he asked. "The evening is given for you."

"For us?"

"No, not for 'us,' but for you," he said distinctly. "Mr. MacBirney has said he is fond of the water--you like music; and I am trying something for each of you. I should have asked you about your engagements before the cards went out. If there is any conflict the date can easily be recalled."

"Oh, no. That would be a pity."

"Not at all. I change my arrangements when necessary every ten minutes."

"But there isn't any conflict, and I shall be delighted to come. Pray, how do you know I like music?"

"I heard you say so once to Arthur De Castro. Tell me what you are amused about?"

"Have I betrayed any amusement?"

"For just about the hundredth part of a second, in your eyes."

They were looking at each other and his gaze though within restraint was undeniably alive. Alice knew not whether she could quite ignore it or whether her eyes would drop in an annoying admission of self-consciousness. She avoided the latter by confessing. "I am sure I don't know at all what you are talking about----"

"I am sure you do, but you are privileged not to tell if you don't want to."

"Then--our dinner card was mislaid and until to-night we didn't know whether----"

"There was going to be any dinner."

"Oh, I knew that. I was at the Casino this afternoon----"

"I saw you."

"And when I was asked whether I was going to the dinner at The Towers I couldn't, of course, say."

"Who asked you, Mrs. Nelson?"

"No, indeed. What made you think it was she?"

"Because she asked me if you were to be there. When I said you were, she laughed in such a way I grew suspicious. I thought, perhaps, for some reason you could not come, and now I am confessing--I ran over to-night expressly to find out."

"How ridiculous!"

"Rather ridiculous of me not to know before-hand."

"I don't mean that--just queer little complications."

"A mislaid dinner-card might be answerable for more than that."

"It was Miss Venable who asked, quite innocently. And had I known all I know now, I could have taken a chance, perhaps, and said yes."

"You would have been taking no chance where my hospitality is concerned."

"Thank you, Mr. Kimberly, for my husband and myself."

"And you might have added in this instance that if you did not go there would be no dinner."

Alice concealed an embarrassment under a little laugh. "My husband told me of your kindness in placing your yacht at our disposal for the races."

"At his disposal."

"Oh, wasn't I included in that?"

"Certainly, if you would like to be. But tastes differ, and you and Mr. MacBirney being two----"

"Oh, no, Mr. Kimberly; my husband and I are one."

"--and possibly of different tastes," continued Kimberly, "I thought only of him. I hope it wasn't ungracious, but some women, you know, hate the water. And I had no means of knowing whether you liked it. If you do----"

"And you are not going to the races, yourself?"

"If you do, I shall know better the next time how to arrange."

"And you are not going to the races?"

"Probably not. Do you like the water?"

"To be quite frank, I don't know."

"How so?"

"I like the ocean immensely, but I don't know how good a sailor I should be on a yacht."

Imogene was ready to go home. Kimberly rose. "I understand," he said, in the frank and reassuring manner that was convincing because quite natural. "We will try you some time, up the coast," he suggested, extending his hand. "Good-night, Mrs. MacBirney."

"I believe Kimberly is coming to our side," declared MacBirney after he had gone upstairs with Alice.

Annie had been dismissed and Alice was braiding her hair. "I hope so; I begin to feel like a conspirator."

MacBirney was in high spirits. "You don't look like one. You look just now like Marguerite." He put his hands around her shoulders, and bending over her chair, kissed her. The caress left her cold.

"Poor Marguerite," she said softly.

"When is the dinner to be?"

"A week from Thursday. Mr. Kimberly says the yacht is for you, but the dinner is for me," continued Alice as she lifted her eyes toward her husband.

"Good for you."

"He is the oddest combination," she mused with a smile, and lingering for an instant on the adjective. "Blunt, and seemingly kind-hearted----"

"Not kind-hearted," MacBirney echoed, incredulously. "Why, even Nelson, and he's supposed to think the world and all of him, calls him as cold as the grave when he wants anything."

Alice stuck to her verdict. "I can't help what Nelson says; and I don't pretend to know how Mr. Kimberly would act when he wants anything. A kind-hearted man is kind to those he likes, and a cold-blooded man is just the same to those he likes and those he doesn't like. There is always something that stands between a cold-blooded man and real consideration for those he likes--and that something is himself."

Alice was quite willing her husband should apply her words as he pleased. She thought he had given her ample reason for her reflection on the subject.

But MacBirney was too self-satisfied to perceive what her words meant and too pleased with the situation to argue. "Whatever he is," he responded, "he is the wheel-horse in this combination--everybody agrees on that--and the friendship of these people is an asset the world over. If we can get it and keep it, we are the gainers."

"Whatever we do," returned Alice, "don't let us trade on it. I shrink from the very thought of being a gainer by his or any other friendship. If we are to be friends, do let us be so through mutual likes and interests. Mr. Kimberly would know instantly if we designed it in any other way, I am sure. I never saw such penetrating eyes. Really, he takes thoughts right out of my head."

MacBirney laughed in a hard way. "He might take them out of a woman's head. I don't think he would take many out of a man's."

"He wouldn't need to, dear. A man's thought's, you know, are clearly written on the end of his nose. I wish I knew what to wear to Mr. Kimberly's dinner."

CHAPTER X

One morning shortly after the MacBirneys had been entertained at The Towers John Kimberly was wheeled into his library where Charles and Robert were waiting for him. Charles leaned against the mantel and his brother stood at a window looking across the lake toward Cedar Point. As Francis left the room Uncle John's eyes followed him. Presently they wandered back with cheerful suspicion toward his nephews, and he laid his good arm on the table as they took chairs near him.

"Well?" he said lifting his eyebrows and looking blandly from one to the other.

"Well?" echoed Charles good-naturedly, looking from Uncle John to Robert.

"Well?" repeated Robert with mildly assumed idiocy, looking from Charles back again to Uncle John.

But Uncle John was not to be committed by any resort to his own tactics, and he came back at Charles on the flank. "Get any fish?" he asked, as if assured that Charles would make an effort to deceive him in answering.

"We sat around for a while without doing a thing, Uncle John. Then they began to strike and I had eight days of the best sport I ever saw on the river,"

Uncle John buried his disappointment under a smile. "Good fishing, eh?"

"Excellent."

There was evidently no opening on this subject, and Uncle John tried another tender spot. "Yacht go any better?"

"McAdams has done wonders with it, Uncle John. She never steamed so well since she was launched."

"Cost a pretty penny, eh, Charlie?"

"That is what pretty pennies are for, isn't it?"

Unable to disturb his nephew's peace of mind, Uncle John launched straight into business. "What are you going to do with those fellows?"

"You mean the MacBirney syndicate? Robert tells me he has concluded to be liberal with them."

"He is giving too much, Charlie."

"He knows better what the stuff is worth than we do."

Uncle John smiled sceptically. "He will give them more than they are worth, I am afraid."

Robert said nothing.

"Perhaps there is a reason for that," suggested Charles.

They waited for Robert to speak. He shifted in his chair presently and spoke with some decision. His intonation might have been unpleasant but that the depth and fulness of his voice redeemed it. The best note in his utterance was its open frankness.

"Uncle John understands this matter just as well as I do," he began, somewhat in protest.

"We have been over the ground often. These people have been an annoyance to us; this is undeniable. McCrea has complained of them for two years. Through a shift in the cards--this money squeeze--we have them to-day in our hands----"

Uncle John's eyes shone and he clasped the fingers of one hand tightly in the other. "That is what I say; trim them!" he whispered eagerly.

Robert went on, unmoved: "Let us look at that, too. He wants me to trim them. I have steadily opposed buying them at all. But the rest of you have overruled me. Very good. They know now that they are in our power. They are, one and all, bushwhackers and guerillas. To my mind there isn't a trustworthy man in the crowd--not even MacBirney.

"They have made selling agreements with McCrea again and again and left him to hold the sack. We can't do business in that way. When we give our word it must be good. They give their word to break it. Whenever we make a selling agreement with such people we get beaten, invariably. They have cut into us on the Missouri River, at St. Paul, even at Chicago--from their Kansas plants. They make poor sugar, but it sells, and even when it won't sell, it demoralizes the trade. Now they are on their knees. They want us to buy to save what they've got invested. At a receiver's sale they would get nothing. But on the other hand Lambert might get the plants. If we tried to bid them in there would be a howl from the Legislature, perhaps."

Uncle John was growing moody, for the prey was slipping through his fingers. "It might be better to stand pat," he muttered.

Robert paid no attention. "What I propose, and God knows I have explained it before, is this: These people can be trimmed, or they can be satisfied. I say give them eleven millions--six millions cash--three millions preferred and two millions in our common for fifty per cent of their stock instead of sixteen millions for all of their stock."

Uncle John looked horror stricken. "It is nothing to us," exclaimed Robert, impatiently. "I can make the whole capital back in twelve months with McCrea to help MacBirney reorganize and run the plants. It is a fortune for them, and we keep MacBirney and the rest of them, for ten years at least, from scheming to start new plants. Nelson says there are legal difficulties about buying more than half their stock. But the voting control of all of it can be safely trusteed."

Uncle John could barely articulate: "Too much, it is too much."

"Bosh. This is a case where generosity is 'plainly indicated,' as Hamilton says."

"Too much."

"Robert is right," asserted Charles curtly.

Uncle John threw his hand up as if to say: "If you are resolved to ruin us, go on!"

"You will be surprised at the success of it," concluded Robert. "MacBirney wants to come here to live, though Chicago would be the better place for him. Let him be responsible for the Western territory. With such an arrangement we ought to have peace out there for ten years. If we can, it means just one hundred millions more in our pockets than we can make in the face of this continual price cutting."

Charles rose. "Then it is settled."

Uncle John ventured a last appeal. "Make the cash five and a half millions."

"Very good," assented Robert, who to meet precisely this objection had raised the figure well above what he intended to pay. "As you like, Uncle John," he said graciously. "Charles, make the cash five and a half millions."

And Uncle John went back to his loneliness, treasuring in his heart the half million he had saved, and encouraged by his frail triumph in the conference over his never-quite-wholly-understood nephew.

At a luncheon next day, the decision was laid by Charles and Robert before the Kimberly partners, by whom it was discussed and approved.

In the evening Charles, with Robert listening, laid the proposal before MacBirney, who had been sent for and whose astonishment at the unexpected liberality overwhelmed him.

He was promptly whirled away from The Towers in a De Castro car. And from a simple after-dinner conference, in which he had sat down at ten o'clock a promoter, he had risen at midnight with his brain reeling, a millionaire.

Alice excused herself when her husband appeared at Black Rock, and followed him upstairs. She saw how he was wrought up. In their room, with eyes burning with the fires of success, he told her of the stupendous change in their fortunes. With an affection that surprised and moved Alice, who had long believed that never again could anything from him move her, he caught her closely in his arms.

Tears filled her eyes. He wiped them away and forced a laugh. "Too good to be true, dearie, isn't it?"

She faltered an instant. "If it will only bring us happiness, Walter."

"Alice, I'm afraid I have been harsh, at times." Her memory swept over bitter months and wasted years, but her heart was touched. "It is all because I worry too much over business. There will be no more worries now--they are past and gone. And I want you to forget everything, Allie." He embraced her fervently. "I have had a good deal of anxiety first and last. It is over now. Great God! This is so easy here. Everything is so easy for these people."

The telephone bell tinkled. Through a mist of tears Alice felt her husband's kiss. She rose to answer the bell. Dolly was calling from downstairs. "Come down both of you," she said. "Charles and Imogene are here with Fritzie and Robert."

With Charles and Imogene had come a famous doctor from the city, Hamilton's friend, Doctor Bryson. Alice protested she could not come down. Dolly told her she "simply must." The controversy upset Alice but she had at last to give way. She bathed her face in cold water and her husband deceived her with assurances that her eyes showed no traces of tears.

Very uncertain about them, she followed MacBirney down, taking refuge at once in a corner with Imogene.

While the two were talking, Grace De Castro and Larrie Morgan came in, bringing some young friends. "Aren't they the nicest couple?" exclaimed Alice as they crossed the room.

"It is a blessing they are," said Imogene. "You see, Grace will probably succeed to the De Castro fortune, and Larrie is likely sometime to have the Kimberly burdens. It crushes me to think that Charles and I have no children."

"Are you so fond of children?" Alice asked wistfully.

"Why, of course, dear; aren't you?"

"Indeed I am, too fond of them. I lost my only child, a baby girl----"

"And you never have had another?"

"No."

"If Robert would marry, we should have a family hope there," continued Imogene. "But I am afraid he never will. How did you enjoy your evening at The Towers?"

"We had a delightful time."

"Isn't Robert a good host? I love to see him preside. And he hasn't given a dinner before for years."

"Why is that?"

Imogene laid her hand gently on Alice's. "It is a long story, dear, a tragedy came into his life--into all our lives, in fact. It changed him greatly."

Soon after the MacBirneys came down, the Nelsons arrived on the scene and the company moved to a south room to get the breeze. Imogene talked with Alice and MacBirney, but Kimberly joined them and listened, taking part at intervals in the conversation.

When Imogene's attention was taken by MacBirney, Robert, asking Alice if she got the air from the cooling windows, moved her chair to where the breeze could be felt more perceptibly. "I hope you haven't had bad news to-night," he said, taking a seat on a divan near her.

She understood instantly that her eyes had not escaped his scrutiny, but concealed her annoyance as best she could. "No, indeed. But I had some exciting news to-night."

"What was it?"

"Oh, I mayn't tell, may I? I am not supposed to know anything, am I?"

Her little uncertainty and appeal made her charmingly pretty, he thought, as he watched her. The traces in her eyes of tears attracted him more than anything he had seen before. Her first little air of annoyed defiance and her effort to throw him off the track, all interested him, and her appeal now, made in a manner that plainly said she was aware the secret of the news was his own, pleased him.

He was in the mood of one who had made his plans, put them through generously, and was ready for the enjoyment that might follow. "Certainly, you are supposed to know," said he graciously. "Why not? And you may tell if you like. At any rate, I absolve you as far as I'm concerned. I couldn't conceive you guilty of a very serious indiscretion."

"Then I suppose you know that we are very happy, and why--don't you?"

"Perhaps; but that should be mere excitement. How about the tears?"

She frowned an impatient protest and rose. "Oh, I haven't said anything about tears. They are going out on the porch--shall we join them?" He got up reluctantly and followed her.

Arthur De Castro and Charles Kimberly offered chairs to Alice. They were under a cluster of electric lamps, where she did not wish to sit for inspection. As she hesitated Robert Kimberly spoke behind her. "Possibly it will be pleasanter over here, Mrs. MacBirney."

He was in the shadow and had drawn a chair for her near Nelson outside the circle of light, from which she was glad to escape. He took the seat under the light himself. When an ice was served, the small tables were drawn together. Alice, occupied with Nelson, who inspired by his vis-à-vis had summoned something of his grand air, lost the conversation of the circle until she heard Doctor Bryson, and turned with Nelson to listen. He was thanking Mrs. De Castro for a compliment.

"I am always glad to hear anything kind of my profession." He spoke simply and his manner Alice thought engaging. "It is a high calling--and I know of but one higher. We hear the complaint that nowadays medicine is a savagely mercenary profession. If a measure of truth lies in the charge I think it is due to the fact that doctors are victims of the mercenary spirit about them. It's a part of the very air they breathe. They can't escape it. The doctor, to begin with, must spend one small fortune to get his degree. He must spend another to equip himself for his work. Ten of the best years of his life go practically to getting ready. His expense for instruments, appliances, and new and increasingly elaborate appointments is continuous."

"But doctor," Fritzie Venable leaned forward with a grave and lengthened face, "think of the fees!"

The doctor enjoyed the laugh. "Quite true. When you find an ambitious doctor, unless his energy is restrained by a sense of his high responsibility, he may be possessed of greed. If a surgeon be set too fast on fame he will affect the spectacular and cut too much and too freely. I admit all of this. My plea is for the conscientious doctor, and believe me, there are many such. Nor must you forget that, at the best, half our lives we are too young to please and half our lives too old."

"Hamilton said the other night," observed Robert Kimberly, filling in the pause, "that a good doctor must spend his time in killing, not his own patients, but his own business."

"No other professional man is called on to do that," observed Bryson. "Indeed, the saddest of all possible proofs of the difficulties of our calling is found in the fact that the suicide rate among doctors is the highest in the learned professions."

MacBirney expressed surprise. "I had no idea of such a thing. Had you, Mr. Kimberly?" he asked with his sudden energy.

"I have known it, but perhaps only because I have been interested in questions of that kind."

Dolly's attention was arrested at once by the mention of suicide. "Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "Don't let us talk about suicide."

But Robert Kimberly could not always be shut off and this subject he pursued with a certain firmness. Some of the family were disturbed but no one presumed to interfere. "Suicide," he went on, "has a painful interest for many people. Has your study of it, doctor, ever led you to believe that it presupposes insanity?" he asked of Bryson.

"By no means."

"You conclude then that sane men and women do commit suicide?"

"Frequently, Mr. Kimberly."

Kimberly drew back in his chair. "I am glad to be supported in my own conviction. The fact is," he went on in a humorous tone, "I am forced either to hold in this way or conclude that I am sprung from a race of lunatics."

"Robert," protested Dolly, "can't we talk about something else?"

Kimberly, however, persisted, and he now had, for some reason not clear to Alice, a circle of painfully acute listeners. "The insanity theory is in many cases a comfortable one. But I don't find it so, and I must stick to the other and regard suicide as the worst possible solution of any possible difficulty."

Doctor Bryson nodded assent. Kimberly spoke on with a certain intensity. "If every act of a man's life had been a brave one," he continued, "his suicide would be all the more the act of a coward. I don't believe that kind of a man can commit suicide. Understand, I am considering the act of a man--not that of a youth or of one immature."

"Well, I don't care what you are considering, Robert," declared Dolly with unmistakable emphasis, "we will talk about something else."

CHAPTER XI

The conversation split up. Kimberly, unruffled, turned to Alice and went on in an undertone: "I am going to tell you Francis's views on the subject anyway. He has the most intense way of expressing himself and the pantomime is so contributing. 'Suicide, Mr. Kimberly,' he said to me one day, 'is no good. What would a man look like going back to God, carrying his head in his hand? "Well, I am back, and here are the brains you gave me." "What did you do with them?" "I blew them out with a bullet!" That is a poor showing I think, Mr. Kimberly, for business. Suicide is no good.'"

"But who is this Brother Francis," asked Alice, "whom I hear so much of? Tell me about him."

"He is one of the fixtures at The Towers. A religious phenomenon whom I personally think a great deal of; an attendant and a nurse. He is an Italian with the courtesy of a gentleman worn under a black gown so shabby that it would be absurd to offer it to a second-hand man."

"Does the combination seem so odd?"

"To me he is an extraordinary combination."

"How did you happen to get him?"

"That also is curious. The Kimberlys are cantankerous enough when well; when ill they are likely to be insupportable. Not only that, but kindness and faithfulness are some of the things that money cannot buy; they give themselves but never sell themselves. When my uncle fell ill, after a great mental strain, we hired nurses for him until we were distracted--men and women, one worse than another. We tried all colors and conditions of human kind without finding one that would suit Uncle John. I began to think of throwing him into the lake--and told him so. He cried like a child the day I had the set-to with him. To say the truth, the old gentleman hasn't many friends left anywhere, but early impressions are a great deal to us, you know, and I remember him when he was a figure in the councils of the sugar world.

"I recall," continued Kimberly, "a certain Black Friday in our own little affairs when the wolves got after us. The banks were throwing over our securities by the wagon-load, and this old man who sits and swears and shakes there, alone, upstairs, was all that remained between us and destruction. He stood in our down-town office with fifty men fighting to get at him--struggling, yelling, screaming, and cursing, and some who couldn't even scream or curse, livid and pawing the air.

"He stood behind his desk all day like a field-marshal, counselling, advising, ordering, buying, steadying, reassuring, juggling millions in his two hands like conjuror's balls. I could never forget that. I am not answering your question----"

"But do go on!" There were no longer tears in Alice's eyes. They were alive with interest. "That," she exclaimed, "was splendid!"

"He won out, and then he set himself on vengeance. That was the end of our dependence on other people's banks. Most people learn sooner or later that a banking connection is an expensive luxury. He finally drove off the street the two institutions that tried to save themselves at our expense. The father of Cready and Frank Hamilton, Richard Hamilton, a rank outsider, helped Uncle John in that crisis and Uncle John made Richard Hamilton to pillow his head on tens of millions. Since that day we have been our own bankers; that is, we own our own banks. And I this is curious, never from that day to this has Uncle John completely trusted any man--not even me--except this very man we are talking about."

"Brother Francis?"

"Brother Francis. You asked how I got him; it is not uninteresting; a sort of sermon on good deeds. Just before this big school in the valley was started, the order to which he belongs had been expelled from France--it was years ago; the reformers over there needed their property. Half a dozen of the Brothers landed down here in the village with hardly a coat to their backs. But they went to work and in a few years had a little school. The industry of these people is astonishing."

"One day they came to The Towers for aid. Old Brother Adrian, the head Brother, came himself--as he long afterward told me--with a heavy heart, indeed, with fear and trembling. The iron gates and the Krupp eagles frightened him, he said, when he entered the grounds. And when he asked for the mistress of the house, he could hardly find voice to speak. My mother was away, so Aunt Lydia appeared--you have seen her portrait, haven't you?"

"No."

"You must; it is not unlike you. Aunt Lydia and my mother were two of the loveliest women I have ever known. When she came down that day, Brother Adrian supposing it was my mother begged a slight aid for the work they had undertaken in the valley. Aunt Lydia heard him in silence, and without saying a word went upstairs, wrote out a cheque and brought it down. He glanced at the figures on it--fifty--thanked her, gave it to the young Brother with him, and with some little compliment to the beauty of The Towers, rose to go.

"While they were moving toward the door the young Brother, studying the cheque grew pale, halted, looked at it again and handed it to his superior. Brother Adrian looked at the paper and at the young Brother and stood speechless. The two stared a moment at each other. Aunt Lydia enjoyed the situation. Brother Adrian had thought the gift had been fifty dollars--it was fifty thousand.

"He fainted. Servants were hurried in. Even when he recovered, he was dazed--he really for a year had not had enough to eat. Aunt Lydia always delighted in telling how the young Brother helped him down the avenue after he could walk. This is a tediously long story."

"Do go on."

"When he again reached the big iron gates he turned toward the house and with many strange words and gestures called down the mercies of Heaven on that roof and all that should ever sleep under it----"

"How beautiful!"

"He blessed us right and left, up and down, fore and aft--he was a fine old fellow, Adrian. When my mother heard the story she was naturally embarrassed. It looked something like obtaining blessings under false pretences. The only thing she could do to ease her conscience was to send over a second cheque."

"Princely!"

"It came near killing Brother Adrian. It seems odd, too, compared with the cut-and-dried way in which we solemnly endow institutions nowadays, doesn't it? They all three are dead, but we have always stood, in a way, with Adrian's people.

"The young man that made the exciting call with him is now the superior over there, Brother Edmund. After the trouble we had with Uncle John, in finding some one he could stand and who could stand him, I went one day in despair to Brother Edmund. I allowed him to commit himself properly on what they owed to Aunt Lydia's goodness and the rest, and then began to abuse him and told him he ought to supply a nurse for my uncle. He told me theirs was a teaching order and not a nursing order. I redoubled my harshness. 'It is all very well when you need anything,' I said, 'when we need anything it is different. Did those women,' I thundered, 'ask what you were, when you were starving here?'

"It wasn't precisely logical, but abuse should be vigorous rather than logical, anyway, and I tried to be vigorous. They got very busy, I can tell you. They held a conclave of some sort and decided that Uncle John must be taken care of. If he were a common pauper, they argued, they would not refuse to take care of him; should they refuse because he was a pauper of means? They concluded that it was a debt they owed to Aunt Lydia and by Heaven, next morning over came this sallow-faced, dark-eyed Brother Francis, and there he is still with Uncle John."

CHAPTER XII

MacBirney's personal efforts in effecting the combination with the Kimberly interests were adjudged worthy of a substantial recognition at the hands of the company and he was given charge of the Western territory together with a place on the big directorate of all the companies and made one of the three voting trustees of the syndicate stock. The two other trustees were, as a "matter of form," Kimberly men--McCrea and Cready Hamilton. This meant for MacBirney a settled Eastern residence and one befitting a gentleman called to an honor so unusual. He was made to feel that his new circumstances entailed new backgrounds socially as well as those that had been accorded him in a monetary way, and through the Kimberlys, negotiations were speedily concluded for his acquiring of the Cedar Lodge villa some miles across the lake from The Towers.

At the end of a trying two months, the MacBirneys were in their new home and Alice had begun receiving from her intimates congratulations over the telephone. Another month, and a busy one, went to finishing touches. At the end of that period there was apparently more than ever to be done. It seemed that a beginning had hardly been made, but the new servants were at home in their duties, and Alice thought she could set a date for an evening. Her head, night and day, was in more or less of a whirl.

The excitement of new fortunes had come very suddenly upon her and with her husband she walked every day as if borne on the air of waking dreams. Dolly declared that Alice was working too hard, and that her weary conferences with decorators and furnishers were too continual. Occasionally, Dolly took matters into her own hands and was frequently in consultation on domestic perplexities; sometimes she dragged Alice abruptly from them.

Even before it had been generally seen, the new home, once thrown open, secured Alice's reputation among her friends. What was within it reflected her taste and discrimination. And her appointments were not only good, they were distinctive. To be able to drape the vestments of a house so as to make of it almost at once a home was not a feat to pass unnoticed among people who studied effects though they did not invariably secure them.

Robert Kimberly declared that Alice, under many disadvantages, had achieved an air of stability and permanence in her home. Dolly told Lottie Nelson that nothing around the lake among the newer homes compared with it. Lottie Nelson naturally hated Alice more cordially than ever for her success. She ventured, when the new house was being discussed at a dinner, to say that Mr. MacBirney seemed to have excellent taste; whereupon Charles Kimberly over a salad bluntly replied that the time MacBirney had shown his taste was when he chose a wife. "But," added Charles, reflectively, "perhaps a man doesn't prove his taste so much in getting a wife as in keeping one.

"Any man," he continued, "may be lucky enough to get a wife; we see that every day. But who, save a man of feeling, could keep, well, say Imogene or Dolly, for instance?"

Robert agreed that if the MacBirney home showed anything it showed the touch of an agreeable woman. "Any one," he declared, paraphrasing his brother, "can buy pretty things, but it takes a clever woman to combine them."

One result of the situation was a new cordiality from Lottie Nelson to the MacBirneys. And since it had become necessary to pay court to them, Lottie resolved to pay hers to Mr. MacBirney. She was resourceful rather than deep, and hoped by this to annoy Alice and possibly to stir Robert Kimberly out of his exasperating indifference. The indifference of a Kimberly could assume in its proportions the repose of a monument.

Lottie, too, was a mover in many of the diversions arranged to keep the lake set amused. But as her efforts did not always tend to make things easy for Alice, Dolly became active herself in suggesting things.

One Saturday morning a message came from her, directing Alice to forbid her husband's going to town, drop everything, provide a lunch and join a motoring party for the seashore. MacBirney following the lines of Robert Kimberly's experience with cars had secured at his suggestion, among others, a foreign car from which things might reasonably be expected.

Imogene Kimberly and Charles took Alice with them and Dolly rode with MacBirney, who had Robert Kimberly with him in the new car to see how it behaved. Kimberly's own chauffeur drove for them. Doane took Arthur De Castro and Fritzie Venable. The servants and the lunch followed with a De Castro chauffeur.

As the party climbed toward Sea Ridge a shower drove them into the grounds of a country club. While it rained, the women, their long veils thrown back, walked through the club house, and the men paced about, smoking.

Alice, seated at a table on the veranda, was looking at an illustrated paper when Robert Kimberly joined her. He told her what extravagant stories he had heard from Dolly about the success of her new home. She laughed over his sister's enthusiasm, admitted her own, and confessed at length how the effort to get satisfactory effects had tired her. He in turn described to her what he had once been through in starting a new refinery and how during the strain of six weeks the hair upon his temples had perceptibly whitened, turning brown again when the mental pressure was relieved.

"I never heard of such a thing," exclaimed Alice.

"I don't know how unusual it is, but it has happened more than once in our family. I remember my mother's hair once turned in that way. But my mother had much sadness in her life."

"Mrs. De Castro often speaks of your mother."

"She was a brave woman. You have never seen her portrait? Sometime at The Towers you must. And you can see on her temples just what I speak of. But your home-making will have just the opposite effect on you. If care makes the hair white, happiness ought to make it browner than ever."

"I suppose happiness is wholly a matter of illusion."

"I don't see that it makes much difference how we define it; the thing is to be happy. However, if what you say is so, you should cling to your illusions. Get all you can--I should--and keep all you can get."

"You don't mean to say you practise that?"

"Of course I do. And I think for a man I've kept my illusions very well."

"For a man!" Alice threw her head back. "That is very comfortable assurance."

He looked at her with composure. "What is it you object to in it?"

"To begin with," demanded Alice, "how can a man have any illusions? He knows everything from the very beginning."

"Oh, by no means. Far from it, I assure you."

"He has every chance to. It is only the poor women who are constantly disillusionized in life."

"You mustn't be disillusionized, Mrs. MacBirney. Hope unceasingly."

She resented the personal application. "I am not speaking of myself."

"Nor am I speaking of you, only speaking through you to womankind. You 'poor women' should not be discouraged." He raised his head as if he were very confident. "If we can hope, you can hope. I hope every day. I hope in a woman."

She bore his gaze as she had already borne it once or twice before, steadily, but as one might bear the gaze of a dangerous creature, if strengthened by the certainty of iron bars before its impassive eyes. Kimberly was both too considerate and possessed too much sense of fitness to overdo the moment. With his hand he indicated a woman walking along a covered way in front of them. "There, for instance, goes a woman," he continued, following up his point. "Look at her. Isn't she pretty? I like her walk. And a woman's walk! It is impossible to say how much depends on the walk. And all women that walk well have good feet; their heels set right and there is a pleasure in watching each sure foot-fall. Notice, for instance, that woman's feet; her walk is perfect."

"How closely observant!"

"She is well gowned--but everybody is well gowned. And her figure is good. Let us say, I hope in her, hope she will be all she looks. I follow the dream. In a breath, an instant, a twinkling, the illusion has vanished! She has spoken, or she has looked my way and I have seen her face. But even then the face is only the dial of the watch; it may be very fair. Sometime I see her mind--and everything is gone!"

"Would it be impertinent to ask who has put women up in this way to be inspected and criticised?" retorted Alice.

"Not in the least. I am speaking only in illustration and if you are annoyed with me I shall miss making my point. Do I give up merely because I have lost an illusion? Not at all. Another springs up at once, and I welcome it. Let us live in our illusions; every time we part with one and find none to take its place we are poorer, Mrs. MacBirney, believe me."

"Just the same, I think you are horridly critical of women."

"Then you should advise me to cultivate my illusions in their direction."

"I should if I thought it were necessary. As I have a very high opinion of women, I don't think any illusions concerning them are necessary."

"Loftily said. And I sha'n't allow you to think my own opinion any less high. When I was a boy, women were all angels to me; they are not quite that, we know."

"In spite of illusions."

"But I don't want to put them very much lower than the angels--and I don't. I keep them up because I like to."

Her comment was still keen. "Not because they deserve it."

"I won't quarrel with you--because, then, they do deserve it. It is pleasant to be set right."

The shower had passed and the party was making ready to start. Alice rose. "You haven't said what you think of your own kind, as you call them--menkind."

Kimberly held her coat for her to slip into. "Of course, I try not to think of them."

When they reached the summit dividing the lake country from the sea the sun was shining. To the east, the sound lay at their feet. In the west stretched the heavy forests and the long chain of lakes. They followed the road to the sea and after their shore luncheon relaxed for an hour at the yacht club. Driving back by the river road they put the new car through some paces, and halting at intervals to interchange passengers, they proceeded homeward.

Going through Sunbury at five o'clock the cars separated. MacBirney, with whom Robert Kimberly was again riding, had taken in Fritzie Venable and Alice. Leaving the village they chose the hill road around the lake. Brice, Kimberly's chauffeur, took advantage of the long, straight highway leading to it to let the car out a little. They were running very fast when he noticed the sparker was binding and stopped for a moment. It was just below the Roger Morgan place and Kimberly, who could never for a moment abide idleness, suggested that they alight while Brice worked. He stood at the door of the tonneau and gave his hand to Alice as she stepped from the car. In getting out, her foot slipped and she turned her ankle. She would have fallen but that Kimberly caught her. Alice recovered herself immediately, yet not without an instant's dependence on him that she would rather have escaped.

Brice was slow in correcting the mechanical difficulty, and finding it at last in the magneto announced it would make a delay of twenty minutes. Fritzie suggested that they walk through her park and meet the car at the lower end. MacBirney started up one of the hill paths with Alice, Kimberly and Fritzie following. They passed Morgan house and higher in the hills they reached the chapel. Alice took her husband in to see the beauty of the interior. She told him Dolly's story of the building and when Fritzie and Kimberly joined them, Alice was regretting that Dolly had failed to recollect the name of the church in Rome it was modelled after. Kimberly came to her aid. "Santa Maria in Cosmedin, I think."

"Oh, do you remember? Thank you," exclaimed Alice. "Isn't it all beautiful, Walter? And those old pulpits--I'm in love with them!"

MacBirney pronounced everything admirable and prepared to move on. He walked toward the door with Fritzie.

Alice, with Kimberly, stood before the chancel looking at the balustrade. She stopped near the north ambone, and turning saw in the soft light of the aisle the face of the boy dreaming in the silence of the bronze.

Below it, measured words of Keats were dimly visible. Alice repeated them half aloud. "What a strange inscription," she murmured almost to herself.

Kimberly stood at her elbow. "It is strange."

She was silent for a moment. "I think it is the most beautiful head of a boy I have ever seen."

"Have you seen it before?"

"I was here once with Mrs. De Castro."

"She told you the story?"

"No, we remained only a moment." Alice read aloud the words raised in the bronze: "'Robert Ten Broeck Morgan: ætat: 20.'"

"Should you like to hear it?"

"Very much."

"His father married my half-sister--Bertha; Charles and I are sons of my father's second marriage. 'Tennie' was Bertha's son--strangely shy and sensitive from his childhood, even morbidly sensitive. I do not mean unbalanced in any way----"

"I understand."

"A sister of his, Marie, became engaged to a young man of a Southern family who came here after the war. They were married and their wedding was made the occasion of a great family affair for the Morgans, and Alices and Legares and Kimberlys. Tennie was chosen for groomsman. The house that you have seen below was filled with wedding guests. The hour came."

"And such a place for a wedding!" exclaimed Alice.

"But instead of the bridal procession that the guests were looking for, a clergyman came down the stairs with a white face. When he could speak, he announced as well as he could that the wedding would not take place that night; that a terrible accident had occurred, and that Tennie Morgan was lying upstairs dead."

Alice could not recall, even afterward, that Kimberly appeared under a strain; but she noticed as she listened that he spoke with a care not quite natural.

"You may imagine the scene," he continued. "But the worst was to come----"

"Oh, you were there?"

"When you hear the rest you will think, if there is a God, I should have been, for I might have saved him. I was in Honolulu. I did not even hear of it for ten days. They found him in his bathroom where he had dressed, thrown himself on a couch, and shot himself."

"How terrible!"

"In his bedroom they found a letter. It had been sent to him within the hour by a party of blackmailers, pressing a charge--of which he was quite innocent--on the part of a designing woman, and threatening that unless he complied with some impossible demands, his exposure and news of an action for damages should follow in the papers containing the account of his sister's wedding. They found with this his own letter to his mother. He assured her the charge was utterly false, but being a Kimberly he knew he should not be believed because of the reputation of his uncles, one of whom he named, and after whom he himself was named, and to whom he had always been closest. This, he feared, would condemn him no matter how innocent he might be; he felt he should be unable to lift from his name a disgrace that would always be recalled with his sister's wedding; and that if he gave up his life he knew the charges would be dropped because he was absolutely innocent. And so he died."

For a moment Alice stood in silence. "Poor, poor boy!" she said softly. "How I pity him!"

"Do you so? Then well may I. For I am the uncle whom he named in his letter."

Unable or unwilling to speak she pointed to the tablet as if to say: "You said the uncle he was named after."

He understood. "Yes," he answered slowly, "my name is Robert Ten Broeck Kimberly."

Her eyes fell to the tessellated pavement. "It is frightfully sad," she said haltingly. Then as if she must add something: "I am very sorry you felt compelled to recall so painful a story."

"It isn't exactly that I felt compelled; yet perhaps that expresses it, too. I have expected sometime to tell it to you."

CHAPTER XIII

The showers returned in the night. They kept Alice company during several sleepless hours. In the morning the sun was out. It was Sunday and when Annie brought her mistress her rolls and chocolate Alice asked the maid if she had been to church.

"Kate and I went to early church," said Annie.

"And what time is late church, Annie?"

"Ten thirty, Mrs. MacBirney."

"I am going myself this morning."

"And what will you wear?"

"Anything that is cool."

Alice was thinking less of what she should wear than of how she should tell her husband that she had resolved upon going to church. Painful experience had taught her what ridicule and resource of conjugal meanness to expect whenever she found courage to say she meant to go to church. Yet hope, consoling phantom, always suggested that her husband the next time might prove more amenable to reason.

When at last she managed casually to mention her momentous resolve, MacBirney showed that he had lost none of his alertness on the subject. He made use first of surprise to express his annoyance. "To church?" Then he gave vent to a contemptuous exclamation uttered with a semblance of good-natured indifference. "I thought you had got that notion pretty well out of your head, Alice."

"You have got it pretty well out for me, Walter. Sometimes it comes back. It came this morning--after a wakeful night. I haven't been for a long time."

"What church do you want to go to?"

His disingenuousness did not stir her. "To my own, of course. There is a little church in the village, you know."

"Oh, that frame affair, yes. Awfully cheap looking, isn't it? And it threatens rain again. Don't mind getting wet?"

"Oh, no, I'll take the victoria."

"You can't; Peters is going to drive me over to The Towers."

"Then give me one of the cars."

"I understand they are both out of order."

"Oh, Walter! Can't you have Peters drive you to The Towers after he takes me to Sunbury?"

"I have an engagement with Robert Kimberly at eleven o'clock."

"Could you change it a little, do you think, Walter?"

"An engagement with Robert Kimberly!"

"Or be just a little late for it?"

MacBirney used his opportunity to advantage. "Keep him waiting! Alice, when you get an idea into your head about going to church you lose your common-sense."

She turned to the window to look at the sky. "I can't walk," she said hopelessly. Her husband made no comment. As her eyes turned toward the distant Towers she remembered that Robert Kimberly the evening before had asked--and so insistently that it had been one of the causes of her wakefulness--for permission to bring over in the morning some grapes from his hot-houses. He had wanted to come at eleven o'clock and she had assured him she should not be at home--this because, during some uneasy moments when they were close together in the car, she had resolved that the next morning she should seek if only for an hour an influence long neglected but quite removed from his. It was clear to her as she now stood at the window, that Kimberly had sought every chance to be at her personal service at eleven o'clock, even though her husband professed an engagement with him.

"Couldn't Peters," she asked, turning again to MacBirney, "drive me down half an hour earlier--before you go? I can wait at the church till he comes back after me?"

MacBirney was reading the stock-market reports in the morning paper. "All right," he said curtly.

She was contained this time. There had been occasions when scenes such as this had brought hot tears, but five years of steady battering had fairly subdued Alice.

At high mass, an hour later, villagers saw a fine lady--a Second Lake lady, they shrewdly fancied from the carriage that brought her--kneeling among them in a pew close to the altar, and quite oblivious of those about her, kneeling, too, at times when they stood or sat; kneeling often with her face--which they thought pretty--hidden in her hands as if it somehow had offended; kneeling from the credo until the stragglers in the vestibule and about the church door began to slip away from the last gospel. There was an unusual stir about the church because it was a confirmation Sunday and an archbishop, a white-haired man who had once been in charge of the little Sunbury parish himself, was present.

Alice followed the last of the congregation out of the door and into the village sunshine. She looked up and down the country road for her horses but none were in sight. Below the church where the farmers' rigs stood, a big motor-car watched by village boys was waiting. They knew that the car, with its black and olive trimmings, was from The Towers because they were familiar with the livery of the villa grooms.

Their curiosity was rewarded when they saw the fine lady come out of the church. The instant she appeared a great gentleman stepped from the black tonneau and, lifting his hat very high, hastened across the muddy road to greet her--certainly she made a picture as she stood on the church steps in her tan pongee gown with her brown hair curling under a rose-wreathed Leghorn hat.

Her heart gave a frightened jump when she saw who was coming. But when the gentleman spoke, his voice was so quiet that even those loitering near could not hear his words. There was some discussion between the two. His slight gestures as they talked, seemed to indicate something of explanation and something of defence. Then a suggestion of urgency appeared in his manner. The fine lady resisted.

From under her pongee parasol she looked longingly up the road and down for her horses, but for a while no horses came. At last a carriage looking like her own did come down the lake road and she hoped for a moment. Then as the carriage drove rapidly past her face fell.

The great gentleman indicated his annoyance at the insolent mud that spattered from the carriage wheel by a look, but he kept quite near to the fine lady and his eyes fell very kindly on her pink cheeks. Her carriage did not come even after they had gone to his car and seated themselves in the tonneau to await it. He was too clever to hurry her. He allowed her to wait until she saw her case was quite hopeless, then she told him he might drive her home.

"I came," he explained, answering an annoyed note in a second question that she asked, "because I understood you were going to church----"

"But I did not say I was."

"I must have dreamed it."

Brice, sitting at the wheel in front of them, smiled--but only within his heart--when this came to his ears; because it was Brice who had been asked during the morning where Mrs. MacBirney was and Brice who had reported. He was senior to Peters, senior to all the Second Lake coachmen and chauffeurs, and usually found out whatever he wanted to find out.

"At any rate," Kimberly laughed good-naturedly, "I have been waiting here half an hour for you."

Brice knew that this was true to the minute, for in that half-hour there had been many glances at two good watches and a hamper of hot-house grapes. Brice himself, since a certain missed train, involving language that lingered yet in his ears, carried a good watch.

But to-day not even amiable profanity, which Brice recalled as normal during extended waits, had accompanied the unusual detention. No messenger had been despatched to sound the young village priest with a view of expediting the mass and the fine lady had been in nowise interrupted during her lengthened devotions. Kimberly, in this instance, had truthfully been a model of patience.

"These are the grapes," Brice heard behind him, as he let the machine out a bit and fancied the top of the hamper being raised. "Aren't they exceptional? I found the vines in Algeria. There are lilies on this side."

An expression of involuntary admiration came from the tonneau. "Assumption lilies! For your sister?"

"No, for you. They are to celebrate the feast."

"The feast? Why, of course!" Then came a categorical question, animated but delivered with keenness: "How did you know that to-day is the feast of the Assumption?"

A bland evasion followed. "I supposed that every one knew the fifteenth of August is the feast of the Assumption. Taste this grape."

"I am very sure you didn't know."

"But I did. Taste the grape."

"Who told you?"

"Whence have you the faculties of the Inquisition? Why do you rack me with questions?"

"I begin to suspect, Mr. Kimberly, that you belong on the rack."

"No doubt. At least I have spent most of my life there."

"Come, please! Who told you?"

"Francis, of course; now will you taste this grape?"

CHAPTER XIV

When MacBirney reached home with the victoria Alice had not yet taken off her hat, and a maid was bringing vases for the lilies. He had been driving toward Sea Ridge and taken the wrong road and was sorry for his delay in getting to the church. Alice accepted his excuses in good part. He tried to explain his misunderstanding about the engagement with Kimberly. She relieved his endeavors by making everything easy, telling him finally how Kimberly had brought her home and had left the grapes and lilies. When the two sat down at luncheon, MacBirney noticed Alice's preoccupation; she admitted she had a slight headache. She was glad, however, to have him ask her to go for a long motor drive in the afternoon, thinking the air would do her good, and they spent three hours together.

When they got home it was dusk. The dinner served on the porch was satisfying and the day which had opened with so little of promise seemed to do better at the close. Indeed, Alice all day had sought quiet because she had something to say which she was resolved to say this day. After dinner she remained with her husband in the moonlight. He was talking, over his cigar, of an idea for adding a strip of woodland to the lower end of their new estate, when she interrupted him.

"Should you be greatly shocked, Walter, if I said I wish we could go away from here?" She was leaning toward him on the arm of her chair when she spoke and her hands were clasped.

His astonishment was genuine. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know. Yet I feel as if we ought to go, Walter."

"What for?"

She was looking earnestly at him, but in the shadow he could not see, though he felt, her eyes.

"It is hard to explain." She paused a moment. "These people are delightful; you know I like them as much as you do."

MacBirney took his cigar from his mouth to express his surprise. "I thought you were crazy about the place and the people and everything else," he exclaimed. "I thought this was just what you were looking for! You've said so much about refined luxury and lovely manners----"

"I am thinking of all that." There was enough in her tone of an intention to be heard to cause him to forget his favorite expedient of drowning the subject in a flood of words. "But with all this, or to enjoy it all, one needs peace of mind, and my peace of mind is becoming disturbed."

Quite misunderstanding her, MacBirney thought she referred to the question of church-going, and that subject offered so much delicate ground that Alice continued without molestation.

"It is very hard to say what I meant to say, without saying too little or too much. You know, Walter, you were worried at one time about how Mr. Robert Kimberly would look at your proposals, and you told me you wanted me to be agreeable to him. And without treating him differently from any one else here, I have tried to pay particular regard to what he had to say and everything of that kind. It is awfully hard to specify," she hesitated in perplexity. "I am sure I haven't discriminated him in any way from his brother, or Mr. De Castro, for instance. But I have always shown an interest in things he had to point out, and he seemed to enjoy--perhaps more than the others--pointing things out. And----"

"Well?"

"It seems to me now as if he has begun to take an interest in everything I do----"

Her husband became jocular. "Oh, has he?"

Alice's words came at last bluntly. "And it completely upsets me, Walter."

MacBirney laughed again. "Why so?"

She took refuge in a shade of annoyance. "Because I don't like to think about it."

"Think about what?"

"About any man's--if I must say it--paying attention to me, except my husband."

"Now you are hitting me, aren't you, Alice? You are pretty clever, after all," declared MacBirney still laughing.

She threw herself back in her chair. "Oh, Walter, you don't understand at all! Nothing could be further from what I am thinking. I ought not to say he has been attentive enough to speak of. It is not that I dislike Mr. Kimberly. But he does somehow make me uncomfortable. Perhaps I don't understand their way here."

"Why, that is all there is to it, Alice. It's merely their way. Give it no thought. He is simply being agreeable. Don't imagine that every man that sends you flowers is interested in you. Is that all, Allie?"

"Yes." Her acuteness divined about what he would reply. "And," she added, "I think, however foolish it may sound, it is enough."

"Don't worry about bridges you will never have to cross. That's the motto I've followed."

"Yes, I know, but----"

"Just a moment. All you have to do is to treat everybody alike."

"But, Walter----"

"You would have to do that anywhere--shouldn't you? Of course. Suppose we should go somewhere else and find a man that threatened to become an admirer----"

"Don't use such a word!"

"Call it what you please--we can't keep moving away from that kind of a possibility, can we?"

"Still, Walter, I feel as if we might get away from here. I have merely told you exactly what I thought."

"We can't get away. This is where everything is done in the sugar business. This is the little world where the big moves are decided upon. If you are not here, you are not in it. We are in the swim now; it took long enough to get in it, God knows. Now let us stay. You can take care of yourself, can't you?"

"How can you ask me!"

He pursued her with a touch of harshness. "How can I ask you? Aren't you talking about running away from a situation? I don't run away from situations. I call the man or woman that runs away from a situation, a coward. Face it down, work it out--don't dodge it."

MacBirney finished without interruption.

In the living room the telephone bell rang. He went in to answer it and his wife heard him a moment in conversation. Then on the garage wire he called up the chauffeur and ordered a car. Coming out again on the porch he explained: "Lottie wants us to come over."

"Lottie?" There was a shade of resentment, almost of contempt, in Alice's echo and inquiry.

"Lottie Nelson."

"Don't call her Lottie, Walter."

"She calls me Walter."

"She has no business to. What did you tell her? Don't let us go out to-night."

"It is a little celebration of some kind and I told her we would come."

"My head has ached all day."

"It will do your head good. Come on. I told her we were coming."

CHAPTER XV

They found a lively party at the Nelsons'. Guyot was there, with Lambert, thick-lipped and voluble. Dora Morgan with Doane and Cready Hamilton had come, worn and bedraggled, from a New England motoring trip. Dora, still quite hoarse, was singing a music-hall song when the MacBirneys entered the room.

She stopped. "My ears are crazy to-night--I can't sing," she complained, responding to Alice's greeting. "I feel as if there were a motor in my head. Tired? Oh, no, not a bit. But the dust!" Her smile died and her brows rose till her pretty eyes shone full. She threw her expiring energy into two husky words: "Something fierce!"

Dolly and her husband with Imogene and Charles had responded to Lottie's invitation, and Robert Kimberly came later with Fritzie Venable. Dolly greeted Alice with apologies. "I am here," she admitted with untroubled contempt, "but not present. I wanted to see what Lambert looks like. We hear so much about his discoveries. Robert doesn't think much of them."

Mrs. Nelson, languidly composed, led MacBirney to the men who were in an alcove off the music room. Near them sat Robert Kimberly talking to Imogene. Dora could not be coaxed to sing again. But the hostess meant to force the fighting for a good time. Dora joined the men and Guyot, under Nelson's wing, came over to meet Alice, who had taken refuge with Dolly. At a time when the groups were changing, Nelson brought Lambert over. But neither Alice nor Dolly made objection when his host took him away again.

Kimberly came after a while with Fritzie to Alice's divan and, standing behind it, tried by conversation and such attraction of manner as he could offer, to interest Alice. He failed to waken any response. She quite understood a woman's refuge from what she wishes to avoid and persevered in being indifferent to every effort.

Kimberly, not slow to perceive, left presently for the party in the dining-room. But even as he walked away, Alice's attitude toward him called to her mind a saying of Fritzie's, that it is not pleasant to be unpleasant to pleasant people, even if it is unpleasant to be pleasant to unpleasant people.

"Were you tired after yesterday's ride?" asked Dolly of Alice.

"Not too tired."

"Robert told you about Tennie Morgan's death."

Alice looked at her inquiringly. "How did you know?"

"You were in the Morgan chapel together. And you looked upset when you came back. I had promised to tell you the story sometime myself. I know how easy it is to get a false impression concerning family skeletons. So I asked Robert about it the minute you left the car, and I was annoyed beyond everything when he said he had told you the whole story."

"But dear Mrs. De Castro! Why should you be annoyed?"

Dolly answered with decision: "Robert has no business ever to speak of the affair." Alice could not dispute her and Dolly went on: "I know just how he would talk about it. Not that I know what he said to you. But it would be like him to take very much more of the blame on himself than belongs to him. Men, my dear, look at these things differently from women, and usually make less of them than women do. In this case it is exactly the reverse. Robert has always had an exaggerated idea of his responsibility in the tragedy--that is why it annoys me ever to have him speak about it. I know my brother better, I think, than anybody alive knows him, and I am perfectly familiar with all the circumstances. I know what I am talking about."

Very much in earnest Dolly settled back. "To begin with, Tennie was an abnormal boy. He was as delicate in his mental texture as cobweb lace. His sensitiveness was something incredible and twenty things might have happened to upset his mental balance. No one, my dear, likes to talk state secrets."

"Pray do not, then. It really is not necessary," pleaded Alice.

"Oh, it is," said Dolly decidedly, "I want you to understand. Suicide has been a spectre to the Kimberlys for ages. Two generations ago Schuyler Kimberly committed suicide at sixty-six--think of it! Oh! I could tell you stories. There has been no suicide in this generation. But the shadow," Dolly's tones were calm but inflected with a burden of what cannot be helped may as well be admitted, "seems only to have passed it to fall upon the next in poor Tennie. Two years afterward they found his mother dead one morning in bed. I don't know what the trouble was--it was in Florence. Nobody knows--there was just a little white froth on her lips. The doctors said heart disease. She was a strange woman, Bertha, strong-willed and self-indulgent--like all the rest of us."

"Don't say that of yourself. You are not self-indulgent, you are generous."

"I am both, dear. But I know the Kimberlys, men and women, first and last, and that is why I do not want you to get wrong impressions of them. My brother Robert isn't a saint, neither is Charles. But compare them with the average men of their own family; compare them with the average men in their own situation in life; compare them with the Nelsons and the Doanes; compare them with that old man that Robert is so patient with! Compare them, my dear, to the men everywhere in the world they move in--I don't think the Kimberly men of this generation need apologize particularly.

"Robert was so completely stunned by Tennie's death that for years I did not know what would happen. Then a great industrial crisis came in our affairs, though afterward it seemed, in a way, providential. Poor old Uncle John got it into his head he could make sugar out of corn and ended by nearly ruining us all. If things had gone on we should all have been living in apartments within another year. When we were so deep in the thing that the end was in sight we went to Robert on our knees, and begged him to take hold of the business and save the family--oh, it had come quite to that. He had been doing absolutely nothing for a year and I feared all sorts of things about him. But he listened and did take hold and made the business so big--well, dear heart, you have some idea what it is now when they can take over a lot of factories, such as those of your husband and his associates, on one year's profits. I suppose, of course, these are state secrets--you mustn't repeat them----"

"Certainly not."

"And for years they have been the largest lenders of ready money in the Street. So you can't wonder that we think a great deal of Robert. And he likes you--I can see that. He has been more natural since you came here than for years."

"Surely your brothers never can say they have not a devoted sister."

"I can't account for it," persisted Dolly, continuing. "It is just that your influence is a good one on him; no one can explain those things. I thought for years he would never be influenced by any woman again. You've seen how this one," Dolly tossed her head in disgust as she indicated Lottie Nelson, then passing, "throws herself at him." With the last words Dolly rose to say she was going home. Imogene was ready to join her, and Lottie's protests were of no avail. Charles was upstairs conferring with Nelson and Imogene went up to get him.

Alice walked to the dining-room. Her husband, in an uncommonly good-humor, was drinking with their hostess. In the centre of the room, Hamilton, Guyot, Lambert, and Dora Morgan sat at the large table. Guyot offered Alice a chair. She sat down and found him entertaining. He took her after a time into the reception room where Lottie had hung a Degas that Guyot had brought over for her. Alice admired the fascinating swiftness and sureness of touch but did not agree with Guyot that the charm was due to the merit of color over line. When the two returned to the dining-room, Kimberly stood at a cellaret with Fritzie.

Lottie and MacBirney sat with the group at the big table. "Oh, Robert," Lottie called to Kimberly as Alice appeared in the doorway, "mix me a cocktail."

Turning, Kimberly saw Alice: "I am out of practice, Lottie," he said.

"Give me some plain whiskey then."

Kimberly's shortness of manner indicated his annoyance. "You have that at your hand," he said sitting down.

"How rude, Robert," retorted Lottie, with assumed impatience. She glanced loftily around. "Walter," she exclaimed, looking across the table at Alice's husband and taking Alice's breath away with the appeal, "give me some whiskey."

"Certainly, Mrs. Nelson."

"No, stop; mix me a cocktail."

"Is your husband an expert, Mrs. MacBirney?" asked Guyot as MacBirney rose.

"Not to my knowledge," answered Alice frankly. "I hope," she added, with a touch of asperity as her husband stepped to a sideboard, "that Mrs. Nelson is not fastidious."

"It is disgusting the way my friends are behaving," complained Lottie turning to Lambert. "This is my birthday----"

"Your birthday!"

"That is why you are all here. And whoever refuses now to drink my health I cast off forever."

"Is this a regular birthday or are you springing an extra on us?" demanded Fritzie.

"Go on, MacBirney, with your mixture," exclaimed Lambert, "I'll serve at the table. You are going to join us, of course, Mrs. MacBirney?"

Alice answered in trepidation: "It must be something very light for me."

"Try whiskey, Mrs. MacBirney," suggested Dora Morgan benevolently, "it is really the easiest of all."

Alice grew nervous. Kimberly, without speaking, pushed a half-filled glass toward her. She looked at him in distress. "That will not hurt you," he said curtly.

The men were talking Belgian politics. Lambert was explaining the antiquated customs of the reactionaries and the battle of the liberals for the laicizing of education. He dwelt on the stubbornness of the clericals and the difficulties met with in modernizing their following.

Kimberly either through natural dislike for Lambert or mere stubbornness objected to the specific instances of mediævalism adduced and soon had the energetic chemist nettled. "What do you know about the subject?" demanded Lambert at length. "Are you a Catholic?"

"I am not a Catholic," returned Kimberly amiably. "I am as far as possible, I suppose, from being one. The doors of the church are wide, but if we can believe even a small part of what is printed of us they would have to be broadened materially to take in American refiners."

"If you are not a Catholic, what are you?" persisted Lambert with heat.

"I have one serious religious conviction; that is, that there are just two perfectly managed human institutions; one, the Standard Oil Company, the other the Catholic Church."

There was now a chance to drop the controversy and the women together tried to effect a diversion. But Lambert's lips parted over his white teeth in a smile. "I have noticed sometimes that what we know least about we talk best about." Kimberly stirred languidly. "I was born of Catholic parents," continued Lambert, "baptized in the Catholic Church, educated in it. I should know something about it, shouldn't I? You, Mr. Kimberly, must admit you know nothing about it." Kimberly snorted a little. "All the same, I take priests' fables for what they are worth," added Lambert; "such, for example, as the Resurrection of Christ." Lambert laughed heartily. Fritzie looked uneasily at Alice as the words fell. Her cheeks were crimsoned.

"Can a central fact of Christianity such as the Resurrection fairly be called a priests' fable?" asked Kimberly.

"Why not?" demanded Lambert with contemptuous brevity. "None but fossilized Catholics believe such nonsense!"

"There are still some Protestants left," suggested Kimberly mildly.

"No priest dictates to me," continued the chemist, aroused. "No superstition for me. I want Catholics educated, enlightened, made free. I should know something about the church, should I not? You admit you know nothing----"

"No, I did not admit that," returned Kimberly. "You admitted it for me. And you asked me a moment ago what I was. Lambert, what are you?"

"I am a Catholic--not a clerical!" Lambert emphasized the words by looking from one to another in the circle. Kimberly spread one of his strong hands on the table. Fritzie watching him shrank back a little.

"You a Catholic?" Kimberly echoed slowly. "Oh, no; this is a mistake." His hand closed. "You say you were born a Catholic. And you ridicule the very corner-stone of your faith. The last time I met you, you were talking the same sort of stuff. I wonder if you have any idea what it has cost humanity to give you the faith you sneer at, Lambert? To give you Catholic parents, men nineteen hundred years ago allowed themselves to be nailed to crosses and torn by dogs. Boys hardly seven years old withstood starvation and scourging and boys of fifteen were burned in pagan amphitheatres that you might be born a Christian; female slaves were thrown into boiling oil to give you the privilege of faith; delicate women died in shameful agonies and Roman maidens suffered their bodies to be torn to pieces with red-hot irons to give you a Christian mother--and you sit here to-night and ridicule the Resurrection of Christ! Call yourself liberal, Lambert; call yourself enlightened; call yourself Modern; but for God's sake don't call yourself a Catholic."

"Stop a moment!" cried Lambert at white heat.

Lottie put out her arm. "Don't let's be cross," she said with deliberate but unmistakable authority. "I hate a row." She turned her languid eyes on MacBirney. "Walter, what are these people drinking that makes them act in this way? Do give Mr. Kimberly something else; he began it."

Kimberly made no effort to soothe any one's feelings. And when Fritzie and Alice found an excuse to leave the room he rose and walked leisurely into the hall after them.

The three talked a few moments. A sound of hilarity came from the music room. Alice looked uneasily down the hall.

"I never knew your husband could sing," said Fritzie.

CHAPTER XVI

It dawned only gradually on Alice that her husband was developing a surprising tendency. He walked into the life that went on at the Nelson home as if he had been born to it. From an existence absorbed in the pursuit of business he gave himself for the moment to one absorbed in pursuit of the frivolous. Alice wondered how he could find anything in Lottie Nelson and her following to interest him; but her husband had offered two or three unpleasant, even distressing, surprises within as few years and she took this new one with less consternation than if it had been the first.

Yet it was impossible not to feel annoyance. Lottie Nelson, in what she would have termed an innocent way, for she cared nothing for MacBirney, in effect appropriated him, and Alice began to imagine herself almost third in the situation.

Tact served to carry the humiliated wife over some of the more flagrant breaches of manners that Mrs. Nelson did not hesitate at, if they served her caprice. MacBirney became "Walter" to her everywhere. She would call him from the city in the morning or from his bed at night; no hour was too early to summon him and none too late. The invitations to the Nelsons' evenings were extended at first both to Alice and to him. Alice accepted them in the beginning with a hopeless sort of protest, knowing that her husband would go anyway and persuading herself that it was better to go with him. If she went, she could not enjoy herself. Drinking was an essential feature of these occasions and Alice's efforts to avoid it made her the object of a ridicule on Lottie's part that she took no pains to conceal.

It was at these gatherings that Alice began to look with a degree of hope for a presence she would otherwise rather have avoided. Kimberly when he came, which was not often, brought to her a sense of relief because experience had shown that he would seek to shield her from embarrassment rather than to expose her to it.

Lottie liked on every occasion to assume to manage Kimberly together with the other men of her acquaintance. But from being, at first, complaisant, or at least not unruly, Kimberly developed mulish tendencies. He would not, in fact, be managed. When Lottie attempted to force him there were outbreaks. One came about over Alice, she being a subject on which both were sensitive.

Alice, seeking once at the De Castros' to escape both the burden of excusing herself and of drinking with the company, appealed directly to Kimberly. "Mix me something mild, will you, please, Mr. Kimberly?"

Kimberly made ready. Lottie flushed with irritation. "Oh, Robert!" She leaned backward in her chair and spoke softly over her fan. "Mix me something mild, too, won't you?"

He ignored Lottie's first request but she was foolish enough to repeat it. Kimberly checked the seltzer he was pouring long enough to reply to her: "What do you mean, Lottie? 'Mix you something mild!' You were drinking raw whiskey at dinner to-night. Can you never understand that all women haven't the palates of ostriches?" He pushed a glass toward Alice. "I don't know how it will taste."

Lottie turned angrily away.

"Now I have made trouble," said Alice.

"No," answered Kimberly imperturbably, "Mrs. Nelson made trouble for herself. I'm sorry to be rude, but she seems lately to enjoy baiting me."

Kimberly appeared less and less at the Nelsons' and the coolness between him and Lottie increased.

She was too keen not to notice that he never came to her house unless Alice came and that served to increase her pique. Such revenge as she could take in making a follower of MacBirney she took.

Alice chafed under the situation and made every effort to ignore it. When matters got to a point where they became intolerable she uttered a protest and what she dreaded followed--an unpleasant scene with her husband. While she feared that succeeding quarrels of this kind would end in something terrible, they ended, in matter of fact, very much alike. People quarrel, as they rejoice or grieve, temperamentally, and a wife placed as Alice was placed must needs in the end submit or do worse. MacBirney ridiculed a little, bullied a little, consoled a little, promised a little, and urged his wife to give up silly, old-fashioned ideas and "broaden out."

He told her she must look at manners and customs as other people looked at them. When Alice protested against Lottie Nelson's calling him early and late on the telephone and receiving him in her room in the morning--MacBirney had once indiscreetly admitted that she sometimes did this--he declared these were no incidents for grievance. If any one were to complain, Nelson, surely, should be the one. Alice maintained that it was indecent. Her husband retorted that it was merely her way, that Lottie often received Robert Kimberly in this way--though this, so far as Robert was concerned, was a fiction--and that nobody looked at the custom as Alice did. However, he promised to amend--anything, he pleaded, but an everlasting row.

Alice had already begun to hate herself in these futile scenes; to hate the emotion they cost; to hate her heartaches and helplessness. She learned to endure more and more before engaging in them, to care less and less for what her husband said in them, less for what he did after them, less for trying to come to any sort of an understanding with him.