The test of Alice's willingness to smile came within a brief fortnight,
when with the De Castros, she was the guest of Imogene Kimberly at The
Cliffs, Imogene's home.
"This is all most informal," said Imogene, as she went downstairs
arm-in-arm with Alice; "as you see, only one-half the house is open."
"The open half is so lovely," returned Alice, "that I'm glad to take the
other half on faith."
"It was my only chance--this week, and as Dolly says, I 'jumped at it'!
I am sorry your husband has disappointed us."
"He was called to town quite unexpectedly."
"But Providence has provided a substitute. Robert Kimberly is coming."
Alice almost caught her breath. "He is another of those men," continued
Imogene, "whom you never can get when you want them. Fortunately he
telephoned a moment ago saying he _must_ see Charles. I answered that
the only possible way to see him was to come over now, for he is going
fishing and leaves at midnight. The guides wired this morning that the
ice is out. And when the ice goes out," Imogene raised her hands,
"neither fire nor earthquake can stop Charles. Here is Robert now. Oh,
and he has Doctor Hamilton with him. All the better. If we can get
both we shall have no lack of men."
Robert Kimberly and Doctor Hamilton were coming down the hall. "How
delightful!" cried Imogene, advancing, "and I am so glad _you_'ve come,
doctor."
Kimberly paused. He saw Alice lingering behind her hostess and the De
Castros with Fritzie Venable coming downstairs.
"You have a dinner on," he said to Imogene.
"Only a small one."
"But you didn't tell me----"
"Just to give you a chance to show your indifference to surprises,
Robert."
She introduced Doctor Hamilton to Alice. "These two are always
together," she explained to Alice, lifting her fan toward the doctor and
her brother-in-law. "But any hostess is fortunate to capture them like
this, just the right moment."
Hamilton, greeting Alice, turned to Imogene: "What is this about your
husband's going to Labrador to-morrow?"
"He is going to-night. The salmon are doing something or other."
"Deserted Gaspe, has he?"
"Temporarily," said Imogene, pausing to give an order to a butler.
Robert waited a moment for her attention. "I brought the doctor," he
explained, "because I couldn't leave him to dine alone. And now----"
"And now," echoed Imogene, "you see how beautifully it turns out. The
Nelsons declined, Mr. MacBirney disappoints me, Charles goes fishing,
and can't get home to-night in time to dine. But there are still seven
of us--what could be better? Mrs. De Castro will claim the doctor.
Arthur won't desert me, and, Robert, you may give an arm to Fritzie and
one to Mrs. MacBirney."
There was now no escape from a smile, and Alice resolved to be loyal to
her hostess. The party moved into the drawing-room.
Fritzie Venable tried to engage Kimberly in answering her questions
about a saddle-horse that one of his grooms had recommended. Kimberly
professed to know nothing about it. When it became apparent that he
really did know nothing of the horse, Fritzie insisted on explaining.
Her spirited talk, whether concerning her own troubles or those of other
people, was not uninteresting. Soon she talked more especially to
Alice. Kimberly listened not inattentively but somewhat perfunctorily,
and the manner, noticeable at their second meeting, again impressed
Alice.
Whether it was a constraint or an unpleasing reserve was not clear; and
it might have been the abstraction of a busied man, one of that type
familiar in American life who are inherently interesting, but whose
business affairs never wholly release their thought.
Whatever the cause, Fritzie was sufficiently interested in her own
stories to ignore it and in a degree to overcome the effect of it. She
was sure of her ground because she knew her distinguished connection had
a considerate spot in his heart for her. She finally attacked him
directly, and at first he did not go to the trouble of a defence. When
she at length accused him, rather sharply, of letting business swallow
him up, Kimberly, with Alice listening, showed a trace of impatience.
"The old sugar business!" Fritzie exclaimed reproachfully, "it is taking
the spirituality completely out of the Kimberly family."
Robert looked at her in genuine surprise and burst into a laugh.
"What's that?" he demanded, bending incredulously forward.
Fritzie tossed her head. "I don't care!"
"Spirituality?" echoed Kimberly, with a quiet malice. His laugh annoyed
Fritzie, but she stuck to her guns: "Spirits, then; or gayety, or life!"
she cried. "I don't care what you call it. Anything besides
everlastingly piling up money. Oh, these almighty dollars!"
"You tire of them so quickly, is it, Fritzie? Or is it that they don't
feel on familiar terms enough to stay long with you?" he asked, while
Alice was smiling at the encounter.
Fritzie summoned her dignity and pointed every word with a nod. "I
simply don't want to see _all_ of my friends--ossify! Should you?" she
demanded, turning to Alice for approval.
"Certainly not," responded Alice.
"Bone black is very useful in our business," observed Kimberly.
Fritzie's eyes snapped. "Then buy it! Don't attempt to supply the
demand out of your own bones!"
It would have been churlish to refuse her her laugh. Kimberly and Alice
for the first time laughed together and found it pleasant.
Fritzie, following up her advantage, asked Doctor Hamilton whether he
had heard Dora Morgan's latest joke. "She had a dispute," continued
Fritzie, "with George Doane last night about Unitarians and
Universalists----"
"Heavens, have those two got to talking religion?" demanded Kimberly,
wearily.
"George happened to say to Cready Hamilton that Unitarians and
Universalists believed just about the same doctrine. When Dora insisted
it was not so, George told her she couldn't name a difference. 'Why,
nonsense, George,' said Dora, 'Unitarians deny the divinity of Christ,
but Universalists don't believe in a damned thing.' And the funny part
of it was, George got furious at her," concluded Fritzie with merriment.
"I suppose you, too, fish," ventured Alice to Kimberly as the party
started for the dining-room.
"My fishing is something of a bluff," he confessed. "That is, I fish,
but I don't get anything. My brother really does get the fish," he said
as he seated her. "He campaigns for them--one has to nowadays, even for
fish. I can't scrape up interest enough in it for that. I whip one
pool after another and drag myself wearily over portages and chase about
in boats, and my guides fable wisely but I get next to nothing."
Alice laughed. Even though he assumed incompetence it seemed assumed.
And in saying that he got no fish one felt that he did get them.
Arthur was talking of Uncle John's nurse--whom the circle had nicknamed
"Lazarus." He referred to the sacrifices made sometimes by men.
"It won't do to say," De Castro maintained, "that these men are mere
clods, that they have no nerves, no sensitiveness. The first one you
meet may be such a one; the next, educated or of gentle blood."
"'Lazarus,'" he continued, "is by no means a common man. He is a
gentleman, the product of centuries of culture--this is evident from
five minutes' talk with him. Yet he has abandoned everything--family,
surroundings, luxuries--for a work that none of us would dream of
undertaking."
"And what about women, my dear?" demanded Dolly. "I don't say, take a
class of women--take any woman. A woman's life is nothing but
sacrifice. The trouble is that women bear their burdens
uncomplainingly. That is where all women make a mistake. My life has
been a whole series of sacrifices, and I propose people shall know it."
"No matter, Dolly," suggested Imogene, "your wrongs shall be righted in
the next world."
"I should just like the chance to tell my story up there," continued
Dolly, fervently.
Kimberly turned to Alice: "All that Dolly fears," said he, in an aside,
"is that heaven will prove a disappointment. But to change the subject
from heaven abruptly--you are from the West, Mrs. MacBirney."
"Do you find the change so abrupt? and must I confess again to the
West?"
"Not if you feel it incriminates you."
"But I don't," protested Alice with spirit.
"Has your home always been there?"
"Yes, in St. Louis; and it is a very dear old place. Some of my early
married life was spent much farther West."
"How much farther?"
"So much that I can hardly make anybody comprehend it--Colorado."
"How so?"
"They ask me such wild questions about buffalos and Indians. I have
found one woman since coming here who has been as far West as Chicago,
once."
"In what part of Colorado were you?"
"South of Denver."
"You had beautiful surroundings."
"Oh, do you know that country?"
"Not nearly as well as I should like to. It is beautiful."
Alice laughed repentantly as she answered: "More beautiful to me now,
I'm afraid, than it was then."
"Any town is quiet for a city girl, of course. Was it a small town?"
"Quite small. And odd in many ways."
"I see; where the people have 'best clothes'----"
"Don't make fun."
"And wear them on Sunday. And there is usually one three-story building
in the town--I was marooned over Sunday once in a little Western town,
with an uncle. I saw a sign on a big building: 'Odd Fellows' Hall.'
Who are the Odd Fellows, uncle?' I asked. He was a crusty old fellow:
'Optimists, my son, optimists,' he growled, 'They build three-story
buildings in two-story towns.' What was your town, by the way?"
"Piedmont."
"Piedmont?" Kimberly paused a moment. "I ought to know something of
that town."
Alice looked surprised. "You?"
"The uncle I spoke of built a railroad through there to the Gulf. Isn't
there a town below Piedmont named Kimberly?"
"To be sure there is. How stupid! I never thought it was named after
your uncle."
"No, that uncle was a Morgan,", interposed Imogene, listening, "the town
was named after your next neighbor."
"How interesting! And how could you make such fun of me--having me tell
you of a country you knew all about! And a whole town named after you!"
"That is a modest distinction," remarked Kimberly. "As a boy I was out
there with an engineering party and hunted a little. My uncle gave me
the town as a Christmas present."
"A town for a Christmas present!"
"I suspected after I began paying taxes on my present that my uncle had
got tired of it. They used to sit up nights out there to figure out new
taxes. In the matter of devising taxes it is the most industrious,
progressive, tireless community I have ever known. And their pleas were
so ingenious; they made you feel that if you opposed them you were an
enemy to mankind."
"Then they beguiled Robert every once in a while," interposed Fritzie,
"into a town hall or public library or a park or electric lighting
plant. Once they asked him for a drinking fountain." Fritzie laughed
immoderately at the recollection. "He put in the fountain and afterward
learned there was no water within fifteen miles; they then urged him to
put in a water-works system to get water to it."
"I suggested a brewery to supply the fountain," said Arthur, looking
over, "and that he might work out even by selling the surplus beer.
There were difficulties, of course; if he supplied the fountain with
beer, nobody would buy it in bottles. Then it was proposed to sell the
surplus beer to the neighboring towns. But with the fountain playing in
Kimberly, these would pretty certainly be depopulated. Per contra, it
was figured that this might operate to raise the price of his Kimberly
lots. But while we were working the thing out for him, what do you
think happened?"
"I haven't an idea," laughed Alice.
"The town voted for prohibition."
"Fancy," murmured Imogene, "and named Kimberly!"
"And what became of the fountain?"
"Oh, it is running; he put in the water-works."
"Generous man!"
"Generous!" echoed Hamilton. "Don't be deceived, Mrs. MacBirney. You
should see what he charges them for water. I should think it would be
on his conscience, if he has one. He is Jupiter with the frogs.
Whatever they ask, he gives them. But when they get it--how they do get
it!"
"Don't believe Doctor Hamilton, Mrs. MacBirney," said Robert Kimberly.
"I stand better with my Western friends than I do with these cynical
Easterners. And if my town will only drink up the maintenance charges,
I am satisfied."
"The percentage of lime in the water he supplies is something fierce,"
persisted the doctor. "It is enough to kill off the population every ten
years. I suggested a hospital."
"But didn't Mr. MacBirney tell me they have a sugar factory there?"
asked Alice.
"They have," said De Castro. "One of Robert's chemists was out there
once trying to analyze the taxes. Incidentally, he brought back some of
the soil, thinking there might be something in it to account for the tax
mania. And behold, he found it to be fine for sugar beets! Irrigation
ditches and a factory were put in. You should see how swell they are
out there now."
"Robert has had all kinds of resolutions from the town," said Fritzie.
Kimberly turned to Alice to supplement the remark. "Quite true, I
_have_ had all kinds--they are strong on resolutions. But lately these
have been less sulphurous."
"Well, isn't it odd? My father's ranch once extended nearly all the way
from Piedmont to the very town you are speaking of!" exclaimed Alice.
Kimberly looked at her with interest. "Was that really yours--the big
ranch north of Kimberly?"
"I spent almost every summer there until I was fifteen."
"That must have been until very lately."
Alice returned his look with the utmost simplicity. "No, indeed, it is
ten years ago."
Kimberly threw back his head and it fell forward a little on his chest.
"How curious," he said reflectively; "I knew the ranch very well."
When they were saying good-night, Imogene whispered to Alice: "I
congratulate you."
Alice, flushed with the pleasure of the evening, stood in her wraps.
She raised her brows in pleased surprise. "Pray what for?"
"Your success. The evening, you know, was in your honor; and you were
decidedly the feature of it."
"I really didn't suspect it."
"And you made a perfect success with your unexpected neighbor."
"But I didn't do anything at all!"
"It isn't every woman that succeeds without trying. We have been
working for a long time to pull Robert out of the dumps." Imogene
laughed softly. "I noticed to-night while you were talking to him that
he tossed back his head once or twice. When he does that, he is waking
up! Here is your car, Dolly," she added, as the De Castros came into
the vestibule.
"Arthur is going to take Doctor Hamilton and Fritzie in our car,
Imogene," explained Dolly. "Robert has asked Mrs. MacBirney and me to
drive home around the south shore with him."