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: aetat: 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."