CHAPTER XLVIII

The apprehension that had long waited upon Robert Kimberly's intentions weighed upon his circle. It was not enough for those about him to assure themselves that their affairs of business or of pleasure must move on whether Robert should determine to move on with them or not. His aloofness carried with it an uncertainty that was depressing.

If he were wholly gone it would be one thing; but to be not gone and not of them was quite another. When Nelson brought the codicil providing for the school, satisfactorily framed, Kimberly had changed his intention and resolved, instead of incorporating the foundation in his will, to make immediate provision for an endowment. When the details were worked out, Nelson left to bring his wife home from Paris. Lottie's first visit was to Dolly's home, and there she found Imogene and Fritzie. She tiptoed in on the surprised group with a laugh.

They rose in astonishment, but Lottie looked so trim and charming in her French rig that she disarmed criticism. For a moment every one spoke at once. Then Dolly's kind heart gave way as she mentally pronounced Lottie faultless.

"You never looked so well in your life," she exclaimed with sincerity. "I declare, Lottie, you are back to the sprightliness of girlhood. Paris certainly agrees with you."

Lottie smiled. "I have had two great rejuvenators this year--Paris and a good conscience."

Fritzie could not resist. "Do they go together, Lottie?" she asked.

Lottie responded with perfect ease: "Only when one is still young, dear. I shouldn't dare recommend them to mature persons."

"You felt no risk in the matter yourself?" suggested Fritzie.

"Not in the least," laughed Lottie, pushing down her slender girdle. But she was too happy to quarrel and had returned resolved to have only friends. "You must tell me all about poor Robert." She turned, as she spoke to Dolly, with a sudden sympathy in her tender eyes. "I have thought so much about his troubles. And I am just crazy to see the poor fellow. What is he doing?"

"He is in town for a few days, just now. But he has been away for two months--with the yacht."

"Where?"

"No one knows. Somewhere along the coast, I suppose."

"With whom?"

"Alone."

Lottie threw her eyes upward. "_What_ does he _mean_? What do _you_ all mean by letting him get into such a rut? Such isolation; such loneliness! He needs to be cheered up, poor fellow. Dolly, I should think _you_ would be frightened to death----"

"What could I possibly do that I haven't done?" demanded Dolly. "No one can do a thing with Robert when he is set. I have simply _had_ to give up."

"You _mustn't_ give up," protested Lottie courageously. "It is just the giving up that ruins everything. Personally, _I_ am convinced that no one can long remain insensible to genuine and sincere sympathy. And certainly no one could accuse poor Robert of being unresponsive."

"Certainly not--if you couldn't," retorted Fritzie.

Lottie turned with amiability. "Now, Fritzie dear, you are _not_ going to be unkind to me. I put myself entirely out of the case. It is something we ought all to work for together. It is our duty, I think."

She spoke very gently but paused to give the necessary force to her words. "Truly, it would be depressing to _any_ one to come back to a gay circle and find it broken up in the way ours is. We can't help the past. Its sorrows belong to it alone. We must let the dead bury the dead and all work together to restore the old spirit when everybody was happy--don't you feel so, Arthur?" she asked, making that sudden kind of an appeal to Arthur De Castro to which it is difficult to refuse assent.

"Certainly we should. And I hope you will be successful, Lottie, in pulling things together."

"Robert is at home now, isn't he?"

"He has been at home a fortnight," returned Arthur, "but shut up with the new board of directors all the time. MacBirney walked the plank, you know, last fall when Nelson went on the board."

"I think it was very nice of Robert to confer such an honor on Nelson," observed Lottie simply, "and I intend to tell him so. He is always doing something for somebody," she continued, rising to go. "And I want to see what the constant kindness he extends to others will do if extended to him."

"She also wants to see," suggested Fritzie to Imogene, as Dolly and Arthur walked with Lottie to the door, "what Paris and a good conscience, and a more slender figure, will do for him."

"Now, Fritzie!"

"If Robert Kimberly," blurted Fritzie hotly, "ever takes up again with Lottie Nelson, I'll never speak to him as long as I live."

"Again? When did he ever take up with her?"

"I don't care. You never can tell what a man will do."

Imogene, less easily moved, only smiled. "Dolly entertains the Nelsons to-morrow evening, and Robert will be asked very particularly to come."

Kimberly did not return home, as was expected, that night. At The Towers they had no definite word as to whether he would be out on the following day. Dolly called up the city office but could only leave a message for him. As a last resort she sent a note to The Towers, asking Robert to join them for the evening in welcoming Lottie. Her failure to receive an answer before the party sat down to dinner rather led Dolly to conclude that they should not see him and she felt no surprise when a note was handed her while the coffee was being served. She tore it open and read:

"DEAR DOLLY:

"I am just home and have your note. I am sorry not to be with you to-night to join in welcoming the Nelsons. I send all good wishes to the little company, but what I have now to tell you will explain my absence.

"I had already made an appointment before I learned of your arrangements for the evening. Father Pauly, the village clergyman, sleeps to-night at The Towers and I am expecting him as I write. He does not know of my intention, but before he leaves I shall ask him to receive me into the Roman Catholic Church.

"ROBERT."

Dolly handed the note to Arthur. He asked if he should read it aloud. She nodded assent.

Fritzie, next morning, crossing the lake with flowers for Alice, was kneeling at her grave when Kimberly came up. She rose hastily but could not control herself and burst into tears. Kimberly took her hands as she came to him. "Dear Fritzie," he murmured, "_you_ haven't forgotten."

"I loved you both, Robert."

They walked down the hill together. Fritzie asked questions and Kimberly met her difficulties one after another. "What great difference does it make, Fritzie, whether I work here or elsewhere? I want a year, possibly longer, of seclusion--and no one will bother me at the Islands. Meantime, in a year I shall be quite forgotten."

Charles Kimberly was waiting at The Towers for a conference. The brothers lunched together and spent the afternoon in the library. Dolly came over as they were parting. "Is it true, Robert," she asked piteously, "that you are going to Molokai?"

"Not for weeks yet, Dolly. Much remains to be arranged here."

"To the lepers?"

"Only for a year or two." He saw the suffering in her face and bent over her with affectionate humor. "I must go somewhere for a while, Dolly. You understand, don't you?"

She shook the tears from her long lashes. "You need not tell me. Robert, you will never come back."

He laughed tenderly. "My heart is divided, Dolly. Part of it is here with you who love me; part of it, you know, is with her. If I come back, I shall find you here. If I do not come back, I shall find her THERE."

In a distant ocean and amid the vastness of a solitude of waters the winter sun shines warm upon a windward cliff. From the face of this gigantic shape, rising half a mile into the air, springs a tapestry of living green, prodigal with blossoms and overhanging at intervals a field of flowers.

On the heights of the crumbling peak the wild goat browses in cool and leafy groves. In its grassy chimneys rabbits crouch with listening ears, and on the sheer face of the precipice a squirrel halts upon a dizzy vine. Above its crest a seabird poises in a majesty of flight, and in the blue distance a ship sails into a cloudless sky. This is Molokai.

At the foot of the mountain the morning sun strikes upon a lowland, thrust like a tongue of fire into the cooling sea, and where the lava meets the wave, breakers beat restlessly.

On one shore of this lowland spit, and under the brow of the cliff, a handful of white cottages cluster. On the opposite shore lies a whitewashed hamlet brightened by tropical gardens and shaded with luxuriant trees; it is the leper port. Near the sea stands a chapel surmounted by a cross. Beyond it a larger and solitary cross marks a second village--the village of the leper dead.

An island steamer whistled one summer evening for the port, and a landing boat put out from the pier. It was the thirtieth of June. Three passengers made ready to disembark, two of them women, Sisters of St. Francis, who had offered themselves for the leper mission, and the third a man, a stranger, who followed them over the steamer's side and, rearranging their luggage, made a place for the two women in the stern of the weather-beaten craft.

It was the close of the day and the sun flowed in a glory of gold over the sea. On one edge of the far horizon a rain cloud drifted. In the east the moon was rising full and into a clear sky. A heavy swell lifted the boat from the steamer's side. The three passengers steadied themselves as they rose on its crest, and the brown oarsmen, catching the sweep of the sea, headed for the long line of foam that crawled upon the blackened rocks.

On the distant beach a black-robed figure outlined against the evening sky watched with straining eyes the sweep of the dripping oars and with arm uplifted seemed to wait with beating heart upon their stroke for him who was coming. Along the shore, cripples hastening from the village crowded the sandy paths toward the pier. In the west, the steamer was putting out again upon its course, and between the two the little boat, a speck upon the waves, made its way stoutly through the heaving sea.

THE END

* * * * * * * *

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