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."