CHAPTER XXXVII

Kimberly was lunching next day at the city office when MacBirney's name came in with a request for an interview. He was admitted without delay and while a valet removed the trays and the table, Kimberly greeted his visitor and, indicating a chair, asked him to sit down. He saw at a glance the suppressed feeling in MacBirney's manner; the latter, in fact, carried himself as a man fully resolved to carry out a course yet fearful of the results.

"I have come to give notice of my withdrawal from the June pool in common," began MacBirney without preface.

"I am not the one to give notice to," returned Kimberly civilly, "inasmuch as I am not in the June pool and not in touch with its operations."

"Well, I've sold--I am selling," MacBirney corrected himself hastily, "my allotment, no matter who is at interest."

"McCrea and my brother are the organizers----"

"I understand," interjected MacBirney, "that you made a good deal of talk about my action in the December pool a year ago--I give you no chance to say I haven't served ample notice this time."

"On the contrary, I quieted a great deal of talk about your action a year ago. It was so grossly unfair to your associates that I ascribed your unloading of your stock without notifying them to rank ignorance, and was disposed to overlook it on that ground."

MacBirney smiled with some sarcasm. "Though you were careful enough to say publicly that you would never be caught in another pool with me."

"I never have been, have I? And I did not 'say publicly'; I said so to McCrea, who had my permission to tell you. It cost me six hundred thousand dollars at that time to support the market against you for three days. And while I like to see my associates make money, I object to their making it out of me."

"You didn't say so to poison my wife against me?"

"I have never, MacBirney, spoken of that or of any other of your business affairs to your wife. I never have spoken even your name to your wife, in praise or in blame, until you left her--except twice to ask her if she loved you. Even that she treated as an insult."

"You must have made some progress since then."

Kimberly's head began to move slowly from side to side. "I am told," added MacBirney, in a thin, hard voice, "you are getting ready to marry her."

"Quite true, I am."

MacBirney's rage forced him to his feet. "I am beginning to understand now, Kimberly," he framed the words slowly and carefully, "the way you have plotted against me from the start. I was warned before I ever saw you that you had no respect for the law of God or man where a woman was concerned. I was warned that no woman was safe near you."

Kimberly eyed his enraged associate calmly. "You are travelling far in a few words, MacBirney. I hope you understand, once for all, that certain limits cover a situation even such as this. I don't like your last phrase. It might be made to apply unpleasantly to a woman now very dear to me. I am used to angry men, and what you say about me----"

"What I say about----"

"What you say about me is allowable, no matter what I think of it. But understand this, if you say one word about her--here or elsewhere, now or hereafter--I will stop you, if I have to choke you with my own hands."

"You can't scare me, Kimberly."

"I don't want to; I don't want to choke you; but if you wish to see me try it, pass that limit just once. Now go on, MacBirney."

"I could have nothing to say against Alice."

Kimberly nodded heartily in approval.

"But I have something to say about a man who pretended to be my friend----"

"I never pretended to be your friend."

"--And played traitor to me as you have done. But it's of a piece with your whole record. First you got me down here----"

"I never got you down here."

"--Then you began to lay your plans to ruin my home."

"What were you doing all this time? Trying to circumvent me by making your home happy or trying to help me by neglecting it?"

MacBirney shook his finger at Kimberly in rage. "You can't escape with smooth phrases. You broke up my home!"

Kimberly had regained his coolness. "No, you broke it up. Long before I ever saw you, you broke up your home. It was broken up and only waiting for some one to save your wife from the wreck. MacBirney, you have made a success of your business; one one-hundredth of the effort you have given to your business would have saved your home. Yet you thought you could treat your wife like a servant, humiliate and abuse her and still hold her forth a figurehead for your 'home'!" muttered Kimberly with scorn.

"You, yourself, put her up to the divorce. Deny that, will you?"

"No, I will not deny it," retorted Kimberly relapsing into indifference. "After I came into her life she followed my advice. I believe I have advised her for the best."

"I see your finger trailing through every turn of my trouble now. I saw it too late. But I'm not done with you. And I'm not the only man that understands your trickery. Lambert will have you on your knees in the sugar business before you are very much older. Now, I have come to you with a straight proposition. I want the escrow control of the Western refineries. If you are ready to give it to me we will make a working agreement and have peace. If you are not, I will back Lambert in a string of modern plants that will drive you out of the Western field. We are ready; the question for you to consider is whether you want to compromise."

At this threat Kimberly, so far as the words could be used of him, went to pieces. To be outfaced in his own headquarters by one whom he would have termed a hare-brained upstart in the refining world was too much for his poise. The only outward indication of his surprise and disgust was a smile; but it was a dangerous smile. "I am afraid I am not enough of a business man to compromise, MacBirney," he responded in low tones. "You can't have the escrow control of the Western refineries."

"Very good. That decision suits me. I am now practically out of your stock; we shall see what we shall see."

"One moment, MacBirney," said Kimberly, moved by some sudden impulse of mercy following his rage, as if MacBirney were really too small fry to pit himself against. "You have brought a personal affair and a business affair before me. The business affair, as you are still my associate, I may say a word on. Don't put any money you can't afford to lose behind Lambert, for it will all go. I myself have not got resources enough to give that man a free hand. He has a genius in one direction--that of talking men out of their money.

"Moreover, in this case there is a personal friction of long standing between him and me, and I will never let him lift his head in the sugar business in this country while I am at the head of these companies, not if I have to work twenty-four hours a day to clean him out. But that would not be necessary--for he will not only attend to ruining himself but to ruining every man that goes with him. If you want to quit us, do so. Build as many refineries as you like and we will try to get on peaceably with you--though I myself would not put a dollar into new refineries to-day. You are rich; you had eight hundred thousand dollars when I paid you for your junk, and you made two million dollars in the December pool alone--a good part of it out of me. You will take from these offices eight million dollars in less than three years."

MacBirney's alarm at Kimberly's intimate knowledge of his resources showed in his face. "In railroads you might make it forty millions in the next ten years, with even average prudence," continued Kimberly calmly. "Sugar will be a load, anyway you go into it; but sugar and Lambert will beat you to a frazzle."

Charles Kimberly walked into the room as his brother concluded. "Talk a few moments with Charles about this," suggested Kimberly, coolly, ringing for his office secretary.

"MacBirney," explained Robert Kimberly to his brother, "has sold out his common and has a lot of money loose. I am telling him to go in for railroads."

The secretary entered. Robert Kimberly after giving him some directions, got into his car and was driven up-town to the residence of the archbishop. He alighted before a large, remodelled city house not far from the cathedral. A messenger had already delivered Hamilton's letter of introduction and Kimberly was presenting himself by appointment.

At the door a man-servant took his card and he was met in the reception room by a young clergyman, who conducted him to the second floor. As Kimberly entered the large room into which he was ushered he saw the prelate rising from his table. He was a grave man and somewhat spare in his height, slightly stooped with the passing of seventy years, and bearing in the weariness of his face an expression of kindliness and intelligence.

"This is a pleasure, Mr. Kimberly," he said, extending his hand.

"It is a pleasure for me, your grace."

"Come this way," continued the archbishop, indicating a divan in one corner of the room.

"I brought no letter of introduction other than that from Doctor Hamilton, which I sent you," Kimberly began as the archbishop seated himself.

"Surely, you did not consider even Doctor Hamilton's note necessary," returned the archbishop, while his secretary withdrew. "Your name and that of your family have been familiar to me for many years. And I fear those of my people who venture in upon you with their petitions do not always bring letters."

"You have occupied this see for many years," suggested Kimberly in compliment.

"As priest and bishop I have lived in this diocese more than forty years. It seems a long time. Yet the name of Kimberly was very old here when I came, and without ever meeting one of your family, I have heard much of you all since. So if there were no other reason, I should welcome your call as an opportunity to tell you how grateful I am, and the charities of the archdiocese are, for your repeated generosities. You know we are not blessed among our own people with many benefactors of large means. And the calls come upon us with surprising frequency."

"My father," responded Kimberly, "who was more of a philosopher than a merchant, impressed me very early with the truth that your church was a bulwark of social order--one which to that extent laid all thoughtful men under a debt to it."

"You are a man of wide interests, Mr. Kimberly."

"The country grows too fast, your grace. There seems no escape from expansion."

"Yet you find time for all of your work?"

Kimberly made a deprecatory gesture. "My chief affair is to find men to do my work for me. Personally, I am fairly free."

"From all save responsibility, perhaps. I know how hard it is to delegate that. And you give all of your energy to business. You have no family?"

"No, and this brings me to the object of my visit." Kimberly paused a moment. "I shall soon enter into marriage."

"Ah, I see!"

"And the subject is a difficult one to lay before your grace."

The archbishop saw an indefinable embarrassment in his visitor's manner and raised his thin hand. "Then it has every claim to sympathetic consideration. Forget for a moment that I am almost a stranger--I am certainly no stranger to difficulties. And do no longer address me formally. I said a moment ago that I was glad to meet you if only to thank you for your responses to our numerous needs. But there is another reason.

"When I was a young man, first ordained, my charge was the little village of Sunbury up in the lake country. You may imagine how familiar the Kimberly estates became to me in my daily rounds of exercise. I heard much of your people. Some of their households were of my congregation. Your mother I never met. I used to hear of her as exceedingly frail in health. Once, at least, I recall seeing her driving. But her servants at The Towers were always instructed not alone to offer me flowers for the altar but diligently to see that the altar was generously provided from her gardens and hot-houses.

"I once learned," the archbishop's head drooped slightly in the reminiscence and his eyes rested full upon his visitor, "that she was passing through a dreaded ordeal, concerning which many feared for her. It was on a Sunday before mass that the word came to me. And at the mass I told my little flock that the patroness to whom we owed our constant offering of altar flowers was passing that morning through the valley of the shadow of death, and I asked them to pray for her with me. You were born on a Sunday, Mr. Kimberly." Kimberly did not break the silence and the archbishop spoke on. "You see I am quite old enough myself to be your father. I remember reading an account of your baptism."

Kimberly looked keenly into the clear, gray eyes. Not a shade of thought in the mind of the man before him was lost upon his penetration. "Any recollection of my mother," he said slowly, "touches me deeply. To think that you recall her so beautifully is very grateful to me--as you may well imagine. And that was my birthday! Then if my mother was, or I have ever been, able to help you I am sure we are repaid in being so remembered all these years. I lost my father and my mother many years ago----"

He paused. "It is very pleasant to be remembered," he repeated uncertainly, as if collecting himself. "I shall never forget what you have just told me. And I thank you now for the prayers you said for my mother when she brought me into the world. Your grace," he added abruptly, "I am greatly perplexed."

"Tell me frankly, how and why."

"I came here with some confidence of getting what I should ask for. I am naturally a confident man. Yet my assurance deserts me. It seems, suddenly, that my mission here is vain, that my hopes have deluded me--I even ask myself why I have come. I could almost say I am sorry that I have come."

The archbishop lifted his hand to speak. "Believe me, it is not other than for good that you have come," he said.

Kimberly looked at him questioningly. "I cannot tell for what good," added the archbishop as if to say he could not answer the unspoken question. "But believe me, you have done right and not wrong in coming--of that I am sure. Tell me, first, what you came to tell me, what it is in your heart that has brought you here."