CHAPTER XVIII

The new picture at The Towers made a topic of interest among Kimberly's friends, but Alice found excuses for not going to see it until MacBirney would brook no further delays. They drove over one afternoon and found Doctor Hamilton and Imogene in the library. Robert Kimberly came downstairs with Charles and greeted the MacBirneys. Tea was brought presently and Kimberly asked Alice to pour it.

"I haven't seen you since your dinner," said he, sitting down after a time by Alice. "You were indisposed the day I called. Imogene tells me you intend spending the winter in town."

"Mr. MacBirney wants to."

"I hoped you would winter in the country."

"I like the country, but Mr. MacBirney likes the town. I shall enjoy it, too. You know we are really country folk and haven't had as much town life as you have."

The others started for the east room. "Come," said Dolly, beckoning Alice, "you want to see the Rubens."

The new picture was hung as a panel between a smaller Rubens and an unknown head of the Virgin, in the manner of Botticelli. Kimberly seated Alice apart from the others and stood behind her.

"You have been in this room before?" he said questioningly.

"Once before. It is very much richer now." She indicated the new picture as she spoke, a large canvas of the Crucifixion. "There are two titles for it," explained Kimberly, "a Latin and a Dutch. I like the Dutch best: 'The Ninth Hour.' This picture doesn't appeal so much to my friends as it has appealed to me. But see what this master magician has chosen here; the supreme moment of the Crucifixion."

Those with them were chatting apart. Alice sat in silence while Kimberly spoke and when he had done they were silent together. "I hope you are going to like it," he said after a pause.

MacBirney asked a question, and Kimberly walked to where he was seated. When he came back he seemed unable to wait longer for Alice's comment. "What is the verdict?"

"Nothing I have ever seen of Rubens's leaves me unmoved," she answered. "This is almost overwhelming, terrible."

"Mrs. MacBirney likes my 'Crucifixion,' Dolly," observed Kimberly after another silence.

"Oh, you needn't quote Alice," exclaimed Dolly from a window seat. "So do I like it. All I said was, that it is a sin to pay so much for a picture."

"No price is too great for a great inspiration. See," he pointed for Alice to the face of a Roman soldier cowering in the foreground of the canvas. "There is one man's face. Hamilton has studied a good many pictures and watched unnumbered faces in every expression of suffering. He has told me that, so far as he knows pictures, the emotion of fear has never been depicted on the human countenance except in that face. As a great surgeon, of a very wide experience, he may be said to know what fear pictured on a human face should be. And there it is before us. Conceive what a triumph for that man to have achieved this, so far from us in the dead centuries, and yet so near to us in this magic of his skill. Observe what a background he has chosen to depict it from--Jerusalem, bathed in the uncanny, terrifying light that accompanies a convulsion of nature. The earth rent, the dead issuing from their graves, nature prostrate, and everywhere--brooding over everything, but stamped most of all on this one guilty face--fear. How it all builds up the agony of that death sweat on the cross! By Heaven, it is tremendous! And Dolly says it is a sin to spend so much money for it. Brother Francis doesn't agree with her; I found him in here early one morning saying his prayers to it."

"Before it," said Alice instantly.

"I thought that no mean tribute. Frankly, do you think me extravagant?"

"Did you really pay the price named in the newspapers?"

"Even then?"

"It does take one's breath away--at least, it took mine."

"I have wanted this picture for years. Hamilton made one trip over with me to look at it--he told me of it first. Then I had to wait all these years for the opportunity to acquire it."

"What patience!"

His eyes were fixed on the picture. "It must have taken patience to paint it. But patience gives us everything in this life." Alice was silent. "You don't agree with me?"

"How do you know that?"

"I feel it; the air is thick with your dissent. But, Alice, I am right and you are wrong."

Her name coming so suddenly and for the first time from his lips astonished her. Her heart sent its blood in protest to her very ears. In a room with other people nothing could be said. But she rose and turning from Kimberly called to her husband, asking if he were ready.

"Before you go I have a favor to ask," said Kimberly, intervening, and Kimberly's petitions had always something of the color of command. "I told you," he said, speaking to Alice, "of my mother's portrait. It is upstairs; will you come see it?"

"I should like very much to see it. Come, Walter," she held out her hand for her husband. "Mr. Kimberly wants us to see his mother's portrait."

Kimberly made no comment, but the manner with which he paused, waiting for MacBirney to join them, sufficiently indicated that he was conscious of waiting. When MacBirney noticed his attitude he moved from those he was with much more quickly than he would have done at his wife's behest. Dolly came with MacBirney and the four walked upstairs. Kimberly's rooms opened to the south. There were five in the apartment and while Kimberly excused himself to take MacBirney in for a moment to speak to his uncle, Dolly took Alice through Kimberly's suite.

"These rooms are charming!" exclaimed Alice, when the men came in to them. "You must see them, Walter. The breakfast room is dear."

They were standing in the library, which served as a writing room and a conference room. It was finished in oak and on the east the breakfast room opened, in white and green.

Alice took her husband's arm. "See, Walter," she said passing through the open door; "isn't this darling? These tones must be restful to wake to!"

"I had lunch here once," announced MacBirney in his choppy way. "With you and your brother and McCrea," he added, turning to Kimberly.

"You never said a word to me about seeing such a pretty place," remarked his wife.

"You've been in the west room?" asked Kimberly.

"Yes, Alice sang for me while you were with Uncle John," responded Dolly.

"I thought I heard music," remarked Kimberly, looking at Alice. "What did you sing?"

"I only hummed an old air."

Kimberly tried to get her to go back to the piano but could not. "I miss music keenly," he said, "I wish I could make a contract with you to sing here every day."

Alice laughed.

"You would be in very good company," interposed Dolly. "Some famous artistes have sung at that piano. Robert," she added, as the two women walked toward his dressing-room, "has everything here but what he ought to have--a wife. When mother lived, The Towers was more than a habitation--it was a home."

In his bedroom, Kimberly indicated a portrait above the fireplace. "This is my mother," he said to Alice. "Sit down for just a moment--I want you to like her."

"I like her very much, already," returned Alice. "But I should like to sit a moment to enjoy the portrait. I wish I could have known your mother."

"This room I fancy best of them all," Dolly was saying to MacBirney as they walked on. "All of this wall panelling and ceiling was made from one mahogany log brought up from Santo Domingo many years ago with a cargo of sugar."

Kimberly, sitting with Alice before his mother's picture, showed a self-consciousness he did not often betray, a solicitude, seemingly, that Alice should agree with his own estimate of his mother. "She was the most tender, kindly woman in the world," he said after a moment.

"Such a mother ought to be an inspiration to you for everything high and good, Mr. Kimberly."

"Yet I have never reached anything high and good."

"Sometime you will."

He looked at her curiously. "Do you really think that?"

"Yes, I do. And thank you for letting me see your mother."

"If you only could have met her!" There was an intensity of regret in his words. "It was a tragedy for such a woman to die young. I have long wanted you to see her portrait; you constantly make me think of her, Alice."

She turned calmly and frankly. "It is most kind of you to say that, Mr. Kimberly. So kind that I am going to be bold enough to ask a favor."

"I know what you are going to ask, but I wish you wouldn't. I want very much to do what you are about to ask me not to do----"

"It is almost nothing--only not to call me Alice."

"There is no use my asking a favor, is there?" He turned with almost a boyish humor in his manner. His mother's eyes seemed to look at her in his eyes as he spoke.

"Not, Mr. Kimberly, this time. I want you to oblige me."

"You are afraid of me." There was no resentment in the words; nothing beyond a regret.

Her answer was low but neither weak nor confused. "Is it quite generous, Mr. Kimberly--here?"

"No," he answered in the same even voice, "it is not. Unhappily, there are times when generosity is weakness. I've been trying ever since I have known you to think of you just as I think of myself. I believe I have tried to give you a little the best of it--yet a selfish man can't always be sure of doing that."

"I trust you think of me," she responded, "only as one of the least important among your friends."

"You are afraid of me. And yet I want your confidence above everything in this world--and I must in some way deserve and win it."

"I do wish you would not say these things. I have to try very hard not to dislike you exceedingly when you speak in this way."

"You do dislike me exceedingly when I speak in this way. I know it perfectly."

If her voice trembled the least bit it was with indignation. "I sometimes ask myself whether I should suffer it even for my husband's sake. You will force me to do something unpleasant, I fear."

"I never will force you to do anything. I do want to call you Alice. But don't hate me for that."

She heard with relief Dolly talking to her husband in the doorway. "It was almost three years before Imogene saw Charles again," Alice heard Dolly say, "and, would you believe it, he began exactly where he left off. After that Imogene decided it was of no use. So, she is Mrs. Kimberly!"

"By Jove! He had patience," laughed MacBirney.

Dolly laughed a little, too. "That is the only exasperating thing about the Kimberly men--their patience."