CHAPTER XXIX

"This is a courtship without any spring," said Dolly one night to her husband. They were discussing her brother and Alice. "At first it was all winter, now it is all summer."

She thought they showed themselves together too much in public, and their careless intimacy was, in fact, outwardly unrestrained.

Not that Dolly was censorious. Her philosophy found refuge in fatalism. And since what is to be must be--especially where the Kimberlys were concerned--why worry over the complications? Seemliness, however, Dolly held, was to be regarded, and concerning this she felt she ought to be consulted. The way to be consulted she had long ago learned was to find fault.

But if she herself reproved Kimberly and Alice, Dolly allowed no one else to make their affairs a subject of comment. Lottie Nelson, who could never be wholly suppressed, was silenced when occasion offered. One afternoon at The Hickories, Alice's name being mentioned, Lottie asked whether Robert was still chasing her.

"Chasing her?" echoed Dolly contemptuously and ringing the changes on the objectionable word, "Of course; why shouldn't he chase her? Who else is there to chase? He loves the excitement of the hunt; and who else around here is there to hunt? The other women hunt him. No man wants anything that comes tumbling after him. What we want is what we can't get; or at least what we're not sure of getting."

Kimberly and Alice if not quite unconscious of comment were at least oblivious of it. They motored a great deal, always at their own will, and they accounted to no one for their excursions.

"They are just a pair of bad children," said Imogene to Dolly. "And they act like children."

One of their diversions in their rambling drives was to stop children and talk with them or ask questions of them. One day near Sunbury they encountered a puny, skeleton-faced boy, a highway acquaintance, wheeling himself along in an invalid chair.

They had never hitherto talked with this boy and they now stopped their car and backed up. Alice usually asked the questions. "I thought you lived away at the other end of the village, laddie?"

"Yes'm, I do."

"You haven't wheeled yourself all this way?"

"Yes'm."

"What's the matter with you that you can't walk, Tommie?" demanded Kimberly.

"My back is broken."

Alice made a sympathetic exclamation. "My dear little fellow--I'm very sorry for you!"

The boy smiled. "Oh, don't be sorry for me."

"Not sorry for you?"

"I have a pretty good time; it's my mother--I'm sorry for her."

"Ah, indeed, your mother!" echoed Alice, struck by his words. "I am sorry for both of you then. And how did you break your back?"

"In our yard--climbing, ma'am."

"Poor devil, he's not the first one that has broken his back climbing," muttered Kimberly, taking a note from his waistcoat. "Give him something, Alice."

"As much as this?" cried Alice under her breath, looking at the note and at Kimberly.

"Why not? It's of no possible use to us, and it will be a nine-months' wonder in that little household."

Alice folded the note up and stretched her white-gloved hand toward the boy. "Take this home to your mother."

"Thank you. I can make little baskets," he added shyly.

"Can you?" echoed Alice, pleased. "Would you make one for me?"

"I will bring one up to your house if you want me to."

"That would be too far! And you don't know where I live."

The boy looked at the green and black car as if he could not be mistaken. "Up at The Towers, ma'am."

Brice, who took more than a mild interest in the situation, grinned inwardly.

Kimberly and Alice laughed together. "Very well; bring it to The Towers," directed Kimberly, "I'll see that she gets it."

"Yes, sir."

"And see here; don't lose that note, Tommie. By Heavens, he handles money more carelessly than I do. No matter, wait till his mother sees it."

While they were talking to the boy, Dolly drove up in her car and stopped a moment to chat and scold. They laughed at her and she drove away as if they were hopeless.

"Your sister is the dearest woman," remarked Alice as Dolly's car disappeared. "I am so fond of her, I believe I am growing like her."

"Don't grow too like her."

"Why not?"

"Dolly has too much heart. It gets her into trouble."

"She says you have too much, yourself."

"I've paid for it, too; I've been in trouble."

"And I shall be, if you don't take me home pretty soon."

"Don't let us go home as long as we can go anywhere else," pleaded Kimberly. "When we go home we are separated."

He often attempted to talk with Alice of her husband. "Does he persecute you in any way?" demanded Kimberly, trying vainly to get to details.

Alice's answer was always the same. "Not now."

"But he used to?" Kimberly would persist.

"Don't ask me about that."

"If he ever should lay a hand on you, Alice----"

"Pray, pray," she cried, "don't look like that. And don't get excited; he is not going to lay a hand on me."

They did not reach Cedar Lodge until sundown and when they drove up to the house MacBirney, out from town, was seated on the big porch alone. They called a greeting to him as they slowed up and he answered in kind. Kimberly, without any embarrassment, got out to assist Alice from the car. The courtesy of his manner toward her seemed emphasized in MacBirney's presence.

On this night, it was, perhaps, the picture of Kimberly standing at the door of his own car giving his hand to MacBirney's wife to alight, that angered the husband more than anything that had gone before. Kimberly's consideration for Alice was so pronounced as completely to ignore MacBirney himself.

The small talk between the two when Alice alighted, the laughing exchanges, the amiable familiarity, all seemed to leave no place in the situation for MacBirney, and were undoubtedly meant so to be understood. Kimberly good-humoredly proffered his attentions to that end and Alice could now accept them with the utmost composure.

Fritzie had already come over to Cedar Lodge from Imogene's for dinner and Kimberly returned afterward from The Towers, talking till late in the evening with MacBirney on business affairs. He then drove Fritzie back to The Cliffs.

MacBirney, smarting with the stings of jealousy, found no outlet for his feeling until he was left alone with his wife. It was after eleven o'clock when Alice, reading in her sitting-room, heard her husband try the door connecting from his apartments. Finding it bolted, as usual, MacBirney walked out on the loggia and came into her room through the east door which she had left open for the sea-breeze. He was smoking and he sat down on a divan. Alice laid her book on her knee.

It was a moment before he spoke. "You seem to be making Kimberly a pretty intimate member of the family," he began.

"Oh, do you think so? Charles or Robert?"

"You know very well who I mean."

"If you mean Robert, he is a familiar in every family circle around the lake. It is his way, isn't it? I don't suppose he is more intimate here than at Lottie's, is he? Or at Dolly's or Imogene's?"

"They are his sisters," returned MacBirney, curtly.

"Lottie isn't. And I thought you wanted me rather to cultivate Robert, didn't you, Walter?" asked Alice indifferently.

He was annoyed to be reminded of the fact but made no reply.

"Robert is a delightfully interesting man," continued Alice recklessly, "don't you think so?"

MacBirney returned to the quarrel from another quarter. "Do you know how much money you have spent here at Cedar Lodge in the last four months?"

Alice maintained her composure. "I haven't an idea."

He paused. "I will tell you how much, since you're so very superior to the subject. Just twice as much as we spent the first five years we were married."

"Quite a difference, isn't it?"

"It is--quite a difference. And the difference is reckless extravagance. You seem to have lost your head."

"Suppose it is reckless extravagance! What do you mean to say--that I spent all the money? This establishment is of your choosing, isn't it? And have you spent nothing? How do you expect to move in a circle of people such as live around this lake without reckless extravagance?"

"By using a little common-sense in your expenditures."

For some moments they wrangled over various details of the menage. Alice at length cut the purposeless recrimination short. "You spoke of the first five years we were married. You know I spent literally nothing the first five years of our married life. You continually said you were trying 'to build up.' That was your cry from morning till night, and like a dutiful wife, I wore my own old clothes for the first two years. Then the next three years I wore made-over hats and hunted up ready-made suits to enable you to 'build up.'"

"Yes," he muttered, "and we were a good deal happier then than we are now."

She made an impatient gesture. "Do speak for yourself, Walter. You were happier, no doubt. I can't remember that you ever gave me any chance to be happy."

"Too bad about you. You look like a poor, unhappy thing--half-fed and half-clothed."

"Now that you have 'built up,'" continued Alice, "and brought me into a circle not in the least of my choosing, and instructed me again and again to 'keep our end up,' you complain of 'reckless extravagance.'"

"Well, for a woman that I took with a travelling suit from a bankrupt father, and put at the head of this establishment, you certainly can hold your 'end up,'" laughed MacBirney harshly.

"Just a moment," returned Alice, with angry eyes. "You need not taunt me about my father. When you were measuring every day the sugar and coffee we were to use during the first five years of our married life, you should have foreseen you couldn't move as a millionaire among multimillionaires without spending a lot of money."

MacBirney turned white. "Thank you for reminding me," he retorted, with shining teeth, "of the thrift of which you have since had the advantages."

"Oh dear, no, Walter. The advantages of that kind of thrift are purely imaginary. The least spark of loving-kindness during those years would have been more to me than all the petty meannesses necessary to build up a fortune. But it is too late to discuss all this."

MacBirney could hardly believe his ears. He rose hastily and threw himself into another chair. "You've changed your tune mightily since 'the first five years of our married life,'" he said.

Alice tossed her head.

"But I want you to understand, _I_ haven't."

"I believe that!"

"And I've brought you to time before now, with all of your high airs, and I'll do it again."

"Oh, no; not again."

"I'll teach you who is master under this roof."

"How like the sweet first five years that sounds!"

He threw his cigar angrily away. "I know exactly what's the matter with you. You have run around with this lordly Kimberly till he has turned your head. Now you are going to stop it, now and here!"

"Am I?"

"You are."

"Hadn't you better tell Mr. Kimberly that?"

"I will tell _you_, you are getting yourself talked about, and it is going to stop. Everybody is talking about you."

Alice threw back her head. "So? Where did you hear that?"

"Lambert told me yesterday."

"I hope you were manly enough to defend your wife. Where did you see Lambert?"

"I saw him in town."

"I shouldn't listen to silly gossip from Lambert, and I shouldn't see Lambert again."

"How long have you been adviser as to whom I had better or better not see?" asked MacBirney contemptuously.

"You will find me a good adviser on some points in your affairs, and that is one."

"If you value your advice highly, you should part with it sparingly."

"I know what _you_ value highly; and if Robert Kimberly finds out you are consorting with Lambert it will end your usefulness in _his_ combinations very suddenly."

The thrust, severe in any event, was made keener by the fact that it frightened him into rage. "Since you come from a family that has made such a brilliant financial showing--" he began.

"Oh, I know," she returned wearily, "but you had better take care." He looked at his wife astounded. "You have insulted me enough," she added calmly, "about the troubles of my father. The 'first five years' are at an end. I have spoiled you, Walter, by taking your abuse so long without striking back and I won't do it any more."

"What do you mean?" he cried, springing from his chair. "Do you think you are to keep your doors bolted against me for six months at a time and then browbeat and abuse me when I come into your room to talk to you? Who paid for these clothes you wear?" he demanded, pointing in a fury.

"I try never to think of that, Walter," replied Alice, rising to her feet but controlling herself more than she could have believed possible. "I try never to think of the price I have paid for anything I have; if I did, I should go mad and strip these rags from my shoulders."

She stood her ground with flashing eyes. "_I, not you_," she cried, "have paid for what I have and the clothes I wear. _I_ paid for them--not you--with my youth and health and hopes and happiness. I paid for them with the life of my little girl; with all that a wretched woman can sacrifice to a brute. Paid for them! God help me! How haven't I paid for them?"

She stopped for sheer breath, but before he could find words she spoke again. "Now, I am done with you forever. I am out of your power forever. Thank God, some one will protect me from your brutality for the rest of my life----"

MacBirney clutched the back of a chair. "So you have picked up a lover, have you? This sounds very edifying from my dear, dutiful, religious wife." Hardly able to form the words between his trembling lips, he smiled horribly.

She turned on him like a tigress. "No," she panted, "no! I am no longer your religious wife. It wasn't enough that I should go shabby and hungry to make you rich. Because I still had something left in my miserable life to help me bear your cruelty and meanness you must take that away too. What harm did my religion do you that you should ridicule it and sneer at it and threaten and abuse me for it? You grudged the few hours I took from your household drudgery to get to church. You promised before you married me that our children should be baptized in my faith, and then refused baptism to my dying baby."

Her words rained on him in a torrent. "You robbed me of my religion. You made me live in continual sin. When I pleaded for children, you swore you would have no children. When I told you I was a mother you cursed and villified me."

"Stop!" he screamed, running at her with an oath.

The hatred and suffering of years were compressed into her moment of revolt. They flamed in her cheeks and burned in her eyes as she cried out her choking words. "Stop me if you dare!" she sobbed, watching him clench his fist. "If you raise your hand I will disgrace you publicly, now, to-night!"

He struck her. She disdained even to protect herself and crying loudly for Annie fell backward. Her head caught the edge of the table from which she had risen.

Annie ran from the bedroom at the sound of her mistress's voice. But when she opened the boudoir door, Alice was lying alone and unconscious on the floor.