CHAPTER XXXV

Not every day brought unalloyed happiness. Moments of depression asserted themselves with Alice and, if tolerated, led to periods of despondency. She found herself seeking a happiness that seemed to elude her.

Even her depression, banished by recreation, left behind something of a painful subconsciousness like the uneasy subsidence of a physical pain. Activity thus became a part of her daily routine and she gained a reputation for lively spirits.

Kimberly, whose perception was not often at fault, puzzled over the strain of gayety that seemed to disclose a new phase in Alice's nature. Once, after a gay day at Sea Ridge, he surprised her at home in the evening and found her too depressed to dissemble.

"Now," he said, taking both her hands, "you are going to tell me what the matter is."

"Robert, nothing is the matter."

"Something is the matter," he persisted. "Tell me what it is."

"It is less than nothing. Just a miserable spectre that haunts me sometimes. And when I feel in that way, I think I am still his wife. Now you are vexed with me."

"Not for an instant, darling; only perplexed. Your worries are mine and we must work out some relief for them, that is all. And when things worry me you will help me do away with my spectres, won't you?"

He soothed and quieted her, not by ridicule and harshness but by sympathy and understanding, and her love for him, which had found a timid foothold in the frailest response of her womanly reserve, now sent its roots deep into her nature.

It was nothing to her that he was great in the world's eyes; that in itself would have repelled her--she knew what the world would say of her ambition in marrying him. But he grew in her eyes because he grew in her heart as she came to realize more and more his solicitude for her happiness--the only happiness, he told her, in which he ever should find his own.

"I know how it will end, Robert." They were parting after a moment the most intense they had ever allowed themselves together. She was putting away his unwilling arms, as she looked in the darkness of the garden up into his face.

"How will it end?" he asked.

"In my loving you as much as you love me."

Winter passed and the spring was again upon them before they realized it. In the entertaining around the lake they had been feted until it was a relief to run away from it all, as they often did. To escape the park-like regularity of their own domains, they sought for their riding or driving the neglected country below the village. Sometimes on their horses they would explore the backwoods roads and attempt swampy lanes where frogs and cowslips disputed their entry and boggy pools menaced escape.

Alice, hatless and flushed with laughter and the wind, would lead the way into abandoned wood-paths and sometimes they found one that led through a forest waste to a hidden pond where the sun, unseen of men, mirrored itself in glassy waters and dogwood reddened the margin where their horses drank.

In the woods, if she offered a race, Kimberly could never catch Alice no matter what his mount. She loved to thread a reckless way among sapling trees, heedless of branches that caught her neck and kissed her cheeks as she hurried on--riding gave them delightful hours.

They were coming into the village one May morning after a long cross-country run when they encountered a procession of young girls moving across the road from the parish school to the church and singing as they went. The church itself was _en fete_. Country folk gathered along the road-side and clustered about the church door where a priest in surplice waited the coming procession.

Kimberly and Alice, breathing their horses, halted. Dressed in white, like child brides, the little maidens advanced in the sunshine, their eyes cast down in recollection and moving together in awkward, measured step. From their wrists hung rosaries. In their clasped hands they carried prayer-books and white flowers, and white veils hung from the rose wreaths on their foreheads.

"How pretty!" exclaimed Kimberly as the children came nearer.

"Robert," asked Alice suddenly, "what day is this?"

"Thursday, isn't it?"

"It is Ascension Thursday."

The church-bells began to ring clamorously and the little girls, walking slowly, ceased their song. The lovers waited. Childhood, hushed with expectancy and moving in the unconscious appeal of its own innocence, was passing them.

The line met by the young priest reached the open door. Kimberly noted the wistful look in Alice's eyes as the little band entered the church. She watched until the last child disappeared and when she spoke to her horse her eyes were wet. Her companion was too tactful to venture a question. They rode until his silence told her he was aware of her agitation and she turned to him.

"Do you know," she said, slowly searching his eyes, "that you are awfully good?"

"If I am," he responded, "it is a discovery. And the honor, I fear, is wholly yours."

"It is something," she smiled, her voice very sweet, "to have lived to give that news to the world."

They rode again in silence. She felt it would be easier if he were to question her, but it was only after some time that he said: "Tell me what the little procession was about."

"I am ashamed to have acted in this way. But this was the day of my First Communion, Ascension Thursday. It was only a coincidence that I should see a First Communion class this morning."

"What is First Communion?"

"Oh, don't you know?" There was a sadness in the tone. "You don't, of course, you dear pagan. It is _you_ who should have been the Christian and I a pagan. You would never have fallen away."

"You only think you have fallen away, Alice. You haven't. Sometimes you seem to act as if you had fallen from some high estate. You have not; don't think it. You are good enough to be a saint--do you give me credit for no insight? I tell you, you haven't fallen away from your religion. If you had, you would be quite at ease, and you are very ill at ease over it. Alice," he turned about in his saddle, "you would be happier if our marriage could be approved by your church."

"It never can be."

"I have led a number of forlorn hopes in my day. I am going to try this one. I have made up my mind to see your archbishop--I have spoken with Francis about it. I am going to find out, if nothing more, exactly where we stand."