CHAPTER XX

If Alice or her husband apprehended a stormy sequel to the unpleasant scene in her dressing room both were relieved that none followed. Not a word came up between them as a result of the breach. There was the usual silence that follows a tempestuous outbreak and the usual indirect, almost accidental, resumption of speaking relations after the acute suspicion of renewed hostilities had worn itself out.

MacBirney had the best of reasons for ignoring what had passed. He had, in fact, experienced the most surprising moments of his life and caution advised against the stirring up of any further altercation. Heretofore he had always known just what his wife, when bullied, would do; but he no longer knew and the uncertainty gave him pause.

He found matter for surprise, indeed for a series of surprises, in the manner in which Alice stood newly revealed to him. Dependence and timidity seemed suddenly to have left her. She walked a new path; not one of complete indifference to her husband, but of decision complete in itself. Forced to cast aside his judgment and fall back on her own, Alice accepted the alternative openly. Her new attitude made itself felt in unnumbered ways--sometimes in no more than arranging for a day down-town with Fritzie, sometimes in discussing when Cedar Lodge should be opened and how. MacBirney found himself no longer consulted; Alice told him what she intended to do. If he gave arbitrary or unreasonable orders they were ignored. If he followed the subject further his inquiries were ignored.

Alice realized it was not right to live in a home in this way, but MacBirney himself had taught her so many ways of wrong living that compunction had grown dull. His pupil, long unwilling to accept his debasing standards of married life, long suffering the cruelty of finding them enforced upon her, had at last become all that he had made her and something unpleasantly more--she made herself now complete mistress of her own affairs.

Nor was Alice less surprised at the abject surrender of her husband. She knew him in the end better than he knew himself, and cowardly though he was, she felt the new situation would not endure forever--that worse must surely follow. But those who learn to sleep on dumb reproach and still for years the cry of waking apprehension, learn also not to look with foreboding ahead.

There were, it is true, times in which Alice asked herself if in her new attitude she were not walking in a dream; slumbers in which the old shrinking fear returned; moments in which she could hardly realize her own determination. But the fear that had so long subdued her now served to support her courage. Go back she would not; the present she had made her own, the future must account for itself.

Moreover, as the acuteness of the crisis passed everything looked better. The present tends always to justify itself. And prosperous skies opening on MacBirney's speculative ventures consoled him for such loss of prestige as he suffered in his own home.

He was again, curiously enough, Alice thought, in cordial touch with Robert Kimberly. She never asked a question and did not know for a long time what could account for this change, since he had been abusing Kimberly vigorously during the life of the market pool. Kimberly had never called at the town apartment and Alice heard of him only through Fritzie, who visited The Towers on monetary errands and always spoke interestingly of Robert's affairs.

And now spring airs came even to town, and Alice, breathing them, with the sudden sunshine and the morning song of birds, longed for her country home. She kept the telephone wire busy summoning her gardener to conferences and laid out elaborate plans with him for making Cedar Lodge more beautiful for the summer. A number of things conspired to keep her from getting out to Second Lake early. But the servants had been installed and the lodge put in readiness for her coming.

One night in May--a summer night, warm, lighted by the moon and still--an impulse seized Alice to break away from everything for the country. Morning found her with Fritzie, and accompanied only by their maids, in a big motor-car speeding over the ribbon roads toward Second Lake. A curious play of emotions possessed Alice as they whirled through the dust of the village and swung into the hills toward The Towers. She had given no instructions to her chauffeur as to which road he should take and he had chosen the southern road because the grades were better.

It was months since Alice had seen Kimberly. But not until now did she realize with some apprehension how much he had been in her mind all winter. The near prospect of meeting him disturbed her and she felt an uneasiness at the thought. It was too late to change the route. She felt she had been wrong not to give orders for the north road in time. Then the notion came that she must meet him sometime, anyway, and whenever they met he must be kept within bounds she had set many times since their last hour together. She could see in the distance The Towers gates and the lodge, sentinel-like, away up the road. The mere sight of the familiar entrance brought Kimberly up sharply. The chauffeur checked the car to ask whether he should drive through the grounds. Fritzie said, "Yes."

Alice corrected her, "No, no."

"Why, my dear," exclaimed Fritzie, "not stop to speak to Robert!"

"It will delay us, and I am crazy to get home."

"But it will cut off two miles!"

"And keep us an hour."

"It won't keep us five minutes and the grounds are beautiful."

"We will see them to-morrow. Drive straight ahead, Peters."

Fritzie protested as they flew past the lodge. "I feel like a heathen going by The Towers in this way. I hope Robert won't hear of it."

"I will take all the blame," returned Alice, with a bravado she did not feel. Then she laid her hand on Fritzie's arm. "You may come back right after luncheon."

When they reached the hill beyond Black Rock they saw Cedar Point lying below in the sunshine of the lake. Alice cried out at the beauty of it. Her spirits rose with an emotion that surprised her. For an instant she could not speak. Her eyes moistened and the load that had oppressed her a moment earlier took wings. Before she had quite recovered, the car was down the hill and speeding through the green gates, up the winding avenue of maples, and swinging in an alarming ellipse around to the front of the house.

She ran in through the open doors as if she had left it all but yesterday. Flowers were everywhere. She passed from room to room with the bubbling spirits of a child and dropped at last into her own little chair at her toilet table. Annie, infected with the happiness of her mistress, was wreathed in smiles as she took her hat, while Fritzie, sitting in dusty veil and gloves, telephone in hand, was calling The Towers and in the same breath begging her maid to prepare her bath. No response to Fritzie's telephone message came until late in the afternoon. About four o'clock Robert Kimberly called her up.

"I hear you have arrived," he said.

"This is a pretty time for you to be answering, Robert. Where have you been all day?"

"Driving with Francis. He hasn't been very well lately. I took him over to the Sound. How is Mrs. MacBirney, Fritzie?"

"Come over and see."

"Call her to the telephone."

Alice took the receiver. "How do you do, Mr. Kimberly?"

"Glad to hear your voice. Fritzie has been telling me stories about you all winter."

Alice controlled the pleasant excitement that came with the familiar sound of his own voice. "You mustn't believe the stories you hear," she laughed. "How are you all?"

"One story to-day sounded pretty straight."

"Sometimes those are the least reliable. How is your uncle?"

"Still I shall have to have it out with you--passing us by this morning."

"But you weren't at home."

"Worse and worse--you didn't know that."

She laughed again happily. "You may scold as much as you like, I'm so happy to get home I'm walking on air."

"How do you manage that? I never can get up any excitement over getting home. I wish I might come and see how it affects you."

"Do come."

"Unfortunately I am leaving to-night for the Southwest."

"For the Southwest?" she echoed in surprise. "But we heard of you just back from the West."

"Yes, and with some stories for you. This time it is New Orleans and a terminal project."

"So busy a man! I hope we shall see you when you return."

"I certainly hope so. If I didn't, I shouldn't go. By-the-way," he added humorously, "I seem to have dropped something."

"What can it be?"

"The string you held out a minute ago."

Alice's eyes danced but only the telephone receiver saw them. "What string?"

"About letting me come over. A car was set in this afternoon at Sunbury but the train doesn't pick me up till eleven o'clock to-night. I might run over to see you on my way down----"

"Oh, by all means, do, Mr. Kimberly."

"--just to see how you look when you are happy."

"Do come; but I am always happy."

He hesitated a moment. "If I were sure of that I might not come."

"You _may_ be 'sure,' I assure you. And why, pray, shouldn't you come?"

He retreated easily. "Because in that case I could see your happiness, without intruding on you when you are tired--as you must be now. However, I will run in for a few moments after dinner."

Kimberly appeared shortly before nine o'clock. Fritzie greeted him. "Oh, aren't you youthful to-night?" she exclaimed. He was in a travelling suit and his face was tanned from his Western trip. "You should never wear anything but gray, Robert."

"Has she been as agreeable as this all winter?" asked Kimberly turning to greet Alice.

"All winter," declared Fritzie, answering for herself, "except once when Lottie Nelson's dog chewed up a lace hat for me, and Robert, I have spent this whole winter saying good things about you--haven't I Alice? Even when we saw they were trying to put you in jail."

"Many worthy people seemed to sympathize with that effort," responded Kimberly dryly. "I trust you didn't?" he added turning to Alice.

"I? Not in the least. If they had succeeded, I should have brought you flowers."

The three sat down. Kimberly looked at Alice. "What have you been doing all winter?"

"Nothing."

"Listen to that!" exclaimed Fritzie. "Why, we've been as busy as ants all winter."

"Fritzie would never allow you to do nothing," said Kimberly. "You met a lot of people she tells me."

"I said 'nothing,' because the time went so fast I found no time to do anything I had intended to."

Fritzie objected again: "You kept at your singing all winter, didn't you?"

Kimberly showed interest at once. "Good! Let us hear now how your voice sounds in the country air."

"I haven't any songs."

"You threw some into the wicker trunk," interposed Fritzie.

"Find them, Fritzie, do," said Kimberly. "And what else did you do?" he asked of Alice as Fritzie ran upstairs.

"Everything that country people do," responded Alice. "And you've been West? Tell me all about it."

Kimberly looked very comfortable in a Roman chair as he bent his eyes upon her. "Hardly a spot in Colorado escaped me this time. And I went to Piedmont----"

"To Piedmont?" cried Alice. "Oh, to see the little factory."

"To see the house you lived in when you were there."

"What possible interest could that poor cottage have for any one? You must have realized that we began housekeeping very modestly."

He brushed her suggestion away with a gesture.

"I wanted to see it merely because you had lived in it." He waited a moment. "Can't you understand that?"

"Frankly, I cannot."

"St. Louis was very interesting," he went on.

"Oh, I love St. Louis!" Alice exclaimed.

"So do I," assented Kimberly. "And in St. Louis I went to see the house you were born in. It was worth looking at; your father's house was a house of character and dignity----"

"Why, thank you!"

"--Like many of the older houses I ran across in searching it out----"

Alice seemed unable to rise quite above her embarrassment. "I can hardly believe you are not making fun of me. What ridiculous quests in St. Louis and in Piedmont! Surely there must have been incidents of more importance than these in a three-weeks' trip."

He ignored her comment. "I stood a long time staring at your father's house, and wishing I might have been born in that little old cottage just across the street from where that rich little girl of sixteen lived. I would rather have known you then than lived all I have lived since you were born there."

Alice returned his look with control of every feature. "I did not live there till I was sixteen, if you mean the old home. And if you had been born just across the street you would have had no absurd idea about that little girl in your head. Little girls are not usually interested in little boys across the street. Little boys born thousands of miles away have better chances, I think, of knowing them. And it is better so--for _they_, at least, don't know what absurd, selfish little things girls across the street are."

"That is all wrong----"

"It is not," declared Alice pointedly.

But the force of everything she said was swept away by his manner. "Only give me the same street and the meanest house in it!" His intensity would not be answered. "_I_ would have taken the chances of winning."

"What confidence!"

"And I'd have done it or torn the house down."

Fritzie came back. "I can't find the music anywhere."

Kimberly rose to go to the music room. "No matter," he persisted, "sing anything you can remember, Mrs. MacBirney--just sing."

It seemed easier, as it always seemed when Kimberly persisted, to consent than to decline. Alice sang an English ballad. Then a scrap--all she could remember--of a Moskowski song; then an Italian ballad. Kimberly leaned on the piano.

"Do you like any of those?" asked Alice with her hands running over the keys.

"All of them. But what was the last?"

"An Italian air."

"Yes, I remember it--in Italy. Sing it again, will you?"

"Tell me about that song," he said when she had repeated it. "It is lovely."

"I don't know much. It is a very old song."

"Have I ever told you about a villa on Lago Maggiore?"

"Fritzie has told me. She says it is a dream."

"I should like to hear you sing that song there sometime."

The moon was rising when Kimberly left for the train. Fritzie objected to his going. "Give up your trip. Stay over to-night. What's the difference?"

"I can't, Fritzie. I'm going like a minstrel show, billed for one-night stands. I have engagements ahead of me all the way and if I miss a day I upset the whole schedule."

"What's it all about?"

"A railroad terminal and reorganization. And I've just time to get around and back for Charles's return."

"And the country dance!" said Fritzie.

"Dolly's country dance," explained Alice.

"Good. I don't want to miss that."

Fritzie caught his sleeve. "You disappointed us last year."

"You may count on me," promised Kimberly.

Fritzie pouted. "I know what that means, 'don't count on me!'"

"This time," returned Kimberly as the door of his motor-car was opened for him, "it isn't going to mean that, Fritzie."