CHAPTER XXXII

One afternoon in the early autumn Kimberly came to Cedar Lodge a little later than usual and asked Alice, as he often did, to walk to the lake. He started down the path with something more than his ordinary decision and inclined for a time to reticence. They stopped at a bench near an elm overlooking the water. "You have been in town to-day," said Alice.

"Yes; a conference this morning on the market. Something extraordinary happened."

"In the market?"

"Market conditions are bad enough, but this was something personal."

"Tell me about it."

"MacBirney was present at the conference. After the meeting he came to the head of the table where I was talking with McCrea--and sat down. When McCrea joined the others in the lunchroom, MacBirney said he wanted to speak to me a moment. I told him to go ahead.

"He began at once about his differences with you. His talk puzzled me. I was on the defensive, naturally. But as far as I could see, he designed no attack on me; and of you he could utter nothing but praise--it was rather trying to listen to. I could not fathom his purpose in bringing the matter before me in this singular way, but he ended with an appeal----"

"An appeal!"

"He asked me to bring a message to you. I told him I would deliver any message entrusted to me. He wants you to know that he is very sorry for what has taken place. He admits that he has been in the wrong----"

"It is too late!" Alice in her emotion rose to her feet.

"And he asks you, through me," Kimberly spoke under a strain he did not wholly conceal, "if he may come back and let the past bury itself."

"It is too late."

"He said," Kimberly rose and faced Alice, "there had been differences about religion----"

"Ask him," she returned evenly, "whether I ever sought to interfere with his religious views or practices."

"These, he promises, shall not come between you again."

"Wretched man! His words are not the slightest guarantee of his conduct."

Kimberly took his hat from his head and wiped his forehead. "This was the message, Alice; is he to come back to you?"

"Whatever becomes of me, I never will live again with him."

"That is irrevocable?"

"Yes."

"I have kept my word--that you should have his message as straight as I could carry it."

"I believe you have. He certainly could not, whatever his intentions, have paid you a higher tribute than to entrust you with one for me."

"Then he does not and never can stand between you and me, Alice?"

"He never can."

The expression of his eyes would have frightened her at a moment less intense. Slightly paler than she had been a year earlier and showing in her manner rather than in her face only indefinable traces of the trouble she had been through, Alice brought each day to Kimberly an attraction that renewed itself unfailingly.

He looked now upon her eyes--he was always asking whether they were blue or gray--and upon her brown hair, as it framed her white forehead. He looked with tender fondness on the delicate cheeks that made not alone a setting for her frank eyes but for him added to the appeal of her lips. He sat down again, catching her hand to bring her close.

"Come," he urged, relaxing from his intensity, "sit down. By Heaven, I have suffered to-day! But who wouldn't suffer for you? Who but for the love of woman would bear the cares and burdens of this world?"

Alice smiled oddly. "We have to bear them, you know, for the love of man." She sat down on the bench beside him. "Tell me, how have you suffered to-day?"

"Do you want to know?"

"Of course, I want to know. Don't you always want to know how I have suffered? Though I used to think," she added, as if moved by unpleasant recollections, "that nobody cares when a woman suffers."

"The man that loves her cares. It is one of love's attributes. It makes a woman's sorrow and pain his, just as her joy and happiness are his. Pleasure and pain are twins, anyway, and you cannot separate them. Alice!" He looked suddenly at her. "You love me, don't you?"

Her face crimsoned, for she realized he was bent on making her answer.

"Let us talk about something else, Robert."

He repeated his question.

"Don't make me put it into words yet, Robert," she said at last. "You have so long known the answer--and know that I still speak as his wife. Do I love you?" She covered her face with her hands.

"Alice!" His appeal drew her eyes back to his. They looked speechless at each other. The moment was too much. Instinctively she sprang in fear to her feet, but only to find herself caught within his arm and to feel his burning lips on her lips. She fought his embrace in half-delirious reproach. Then her eyes submitted to his pleading and their lips met with her soft, plunging pulse beating swiftly upon his heart.

It was only for an instant. She pushed him away. "I have answered you. You must spare me now or I shall sink with shame."

"But you are mine," he persisted, "all mine."

She led him up the path toward the house.

"Sometimes I am afraid I shall swallow you up, as the sea swallows up the ship, in a storm of passion."

"Oh no, you will not."

"Why not?"

"Because I am helpless. Was there more to your story?"

"You know then I haven't told it all."

"Tell me the rest."

"When he had finished, I told him I, too, had something to say. 'I shall deliver your message to Alice,' I said. 'But it is only fair to say to you I mean to make her my wife if she will accept me, and her choice will lie between you and me, MacBirney.'

"You should have seen his amazement. Then he collected himself for a stab--and I tried not to let him see that it went deep. 'Whatever the outcome,' he said, 'she will never marry you.'

"'You must recollect you have not been in her confidence for some time,' I retorted. He seemed in no way disconcerted and ended by disconcerting me. 'Remember what I tell you, Mr. Kimberly,' he repeated, 'you will find me a good prophet. She is a Catholic and will never marry you or any other man while I live.'

"'You may be right,' I replied. 'But if Alice marries me she will never live to regret it for one moment on account of her religion. I have no religion myself, except her. She is my religion, she alone and her happiness. You seem to invoke her religion against me. What right have you to do this? Have you helped her in its practice? Have you kept the promises you made when you married a Catholic wife? Or have you made her life a hell on earth because she tried to practise her religion, as you promised she should be free to do? Is she a better Catholic because she believed in you, or a worse because to live in peace with you she was forced to abandon the practice of her religion? These are questions for you to think over, MacBirney. I will give her your message----'

"'Give her my message,' he sneered. 'You would be likely to!'

"'Stop!' I said. 'My word, MacBirney, is good. Friend and foe of mine will tell you that. Even my enemies accept my word. But if I could bring myself to deceive those that trust me I would choose enemies to prey upon before I chose friends. I could deceive my own partners. I could play false to my own brother--all this I could do and more. But if I could practise deceits a thousand times viler than these, I could not, so help me God, lie to a trusting girl that I had asked to be my wife and the mother of my children! Whatever else of baseness I stooped to, _that_ word should be forever good!'

"Alice, I struck the table a blow that made the inkstands jump. My eye-glasses went with a crash. Nelson and McCrea came running in; MacBirney turned white. He tried to stretch his lips in a smile; it was ghastly. Everybody was looking at me. I got up without a word to any one and left the room."

Alice caught his sleeve. "Robert, I am proud of you! How much better you struck than you knew! Oh," she cried, "how could I help loving you?"

"Do you love me?"

"I would give my life for you."

"Don't give it for me; keep it for me. You will marry me; won't you? What did the cur mean by saying what he did, Alice?"

"He meant to taunt me; to remind me of how long I tried to live in some measure up to the religion that he used every means to drive me from--and did drive me from."

"We will restore all that."

"He meant I must come to you without its blessing."

He looked suddenly and keenly at her. "Should you be happier with its blessing?"

"Ah, Robert."

"But should you?"

She gazed away. "It is a happiness I have lost."

"Then you shall have it again."

"I will trust to God for _some_ escape from my difficulties. What else can I do? My husband!" she exclaimed bitterly--"generous man to remind me of religion!"

Kimberly spoke with a quick resolve. "I am going to look into this matter of where you stand as a wife. I am going to know why you can't have a chance to live your life with me. If I give you back what he has robbed you of, our happiness will be doubled."