The showers returned in the night. They kept Alice company during
several sleepless hours. In the morning the sun was out. It was Sunday
and when Annie brought her mistress her rolls and chocolate Alice asked
the maid if she had been to church.
"Kate and I went to early church," said Annie.
"And what time is late church, Annie?"
"Ten thirty, Mrs. MacBirney."
"I am going myself this morning."
"And what will you wear?"
"Anything that is cool."
Alice was thinking less of what she should wear than of how she should
tell her husband that she had resolved upon going to church. Painful
experience had taught her what ridicule and resource of conjugal
meanness to expect whenever she found courage to say she meant to go to
church. Yet hope, consoling phantom, always suggested that her husband
the next time might prove more amenable to reason.
When at last she managed casually to mention her momentous resolve,
MacBirney showed that he had lost none of his alertness on the subject.
He made use first of surprise to express his annoyance. "To church?"
Then he gave vent to a contemptuous exclamation uttered with a semblance
of good-natured indifference. "I thought you had got that notion pretty
well out of your head, Alice."
"You have got it pretty well out for me, Walter. Sometimes it comes
back. It came this morning--after a wakeful night. I haven't been for
a long time."
"What church do you want to go to?"
His disingenuousness did not stir her. "To my own, of course. There is
a little church in the village, you know."
"Oh, that frame affair, yes. Awfully cheap looking, isn't it? And it
threatens rain again. Don't mind getting wet?"
"Oh, no, I'll take the victoria."
"You can't; Peters is going to drive me over to The Towers."
"Then give me one of the cars."
"I understand they are both out of order."
"Oh, Walter! Can't you have Peters drive you to The Towers after he
takes me to Sunbury?"
"I have an engagement with Robert Kimberly at eleven o'clock."
"Could you change it a little, do you think, Walter?"
"An engagement with Robert Kimberly!"
"Or be just a little late for it?"
MacBirney used his opportunity to advantage. "Keep _him_ waiting!
Alice, when you get an idea into your head about going to church you
lose your common-sense."
She turned to the window to look at the sky. "I can't walk," she said
hopelessly. Her husband made no comment. As her eyes turned toward the
distant Towers she remembered that Robert Kimberly the evening before
had asked--and so insistently that it had been one of the causes of her
wakefulness--for permission to bring over in the morning some grapes
from his hot-houses. He had wanted to come at eleven o'clock and she
had assured him she should not be at home--this because, during some
uneasy moments when they were close together in the car, she had
resolved that the next morning she should seek if only for an hour an
influence long neglected but quite removed from his. It was clear to
her as she now stood at the window, that Kimberly had sought every
chance to be at her personal service at eleven o'clock, even though her
husband professed an engagement with him.
"Couldn't Peters," she asked, turning again to MacBirney, "drive me down
half an hour earlier--before you go? I can wait at the church till he
comes back after me?"
MacBirney was reading the stock-market reports in the morning paper.
"All right," he said curtly.
She was contained this time. There had been occasions when scenes such
as this had brought hot tears, but five years of steady battering had
fairly subdued Alice.
At high mass, an hour later, villagers saw a fine lady--a Second Lake
lady, they shrewdly fancied from the carriage that brought her--kneeling
among them in a pew close to the altar, and quite oblivious of those
about her, kneeling, too, at times when they stood or sat; kneeling
often with her face--which they thought pretty--hidden in her hands as
if it somehow had offended; kneeling from the credo until the stragglers
in the vestibule and about the church door began to slip away from the
last gospel. There was an unusual stir about the church because it was
a confirmation Sunday and an archbishop, a white-haired man who had once
been in charge of the little Sunbury parish himself, was present.
Alice followed the last of the congregation out of the door and into the
village sunshine. She looked up and down the country road for her
horses but none were in sight. Below the church where the farmers' rigs
stood, a big motor-car watched by village boys was waiting. They knew
that the car, with its black and olive trimmings, was from The Towers
because they were familiar with the livery of the villa grooms.
Their curiosity was rewarded when they saw the fine lady come out of the
church. The instant she appeared a great gentleman stepped from the
black tonneau and, lifting his hat very high, hastened across the muddy
road to greet her--certainly she made a picture as she stood on the
church steps in her tan pongee gown with her brown hair curling under a
rose-wreathed Leghorn hat.
Her heart gave a frightened jump when she saw who was coming. But when
the gentleman spoke, his voice was so quiet that even those loitering
near could not hear his words. There was some discussion between the
two. His slight gestures as they talked, seemed to indicate something
of explanation and something of defence. Then a suggestion of urgency
appeared in his manner. The fine lady resisted.
From under her pongee parasol she looked longingly up the road and down
for her horses, but for a while no horses came. At last a carriage
looking like her own did come down the lake road and she hoped for a
moment. Then as the carriage drove rapidly past her face fell.
The great gentleman indicated his annoyance at the insolent mud that
spattered from the carriage wheel by a look, but he kept quite near to
the fine lady and his eyes fell very kindly on her pink cheeks. Her
carriage did not come even after they had gone to his car and seated
themselves in the tonneau to await it. He was too clever to hurry her.
He allowed her to wait until she saw her case was quite hopeless, then
she told him he might drive her home.
"I came," he explained, answering an annoyed note in a second question
that she asked, "because I understood you were going to church----"
"But I did not say I was."
"I must have dreamed it."
Brice, sitting at the wheel in front of them, smiled--but only within
his heart--when this came to his ears; because it was Brice who had been
asked during the morning where Mrs. MacBirney was and Brice who had
reported. He was senior to Peters, senior to all the Second Lake
coachmen and chauffeurs, and usually found out whatever he wanted to
find out.
"At any rate," Kimberly laughed good-naturedly, "I have been waiting
here half an hour for you."
Brice knew that this was true to the minute, for in that half-hour there
had been many glances at two good watches and a hamper of hot-house
grapes. Brice himself, since a certain missed train, involving language
that lingered yet in his ears, carried a good watch.
But to-day not even amiable profanity, which Brice recalled as normal
during extended waits, had accompanied the unusual detention. No
messenger had been despatched to sound the young village priest with a
view of expediting the mass and the fine lady had been in nowise
interrupted during her lengthened devotions. Kimberly, in this
instance, had truthfully been a model of patience.
"These are the grapes," Brice heard behind him, as he let the machine
out a bit and fancied the top of the hamper being raised. "Aren't they
exceptional? I found the vines in Algeria. There are lilies on this
side."
An expression of involuntary admiration came from the tonneau.
"Assumption lilies! For your sister?"
"No, for you. They are to celebrate the feast."
"The feast? Why, of course!" Then came a categorical question,
animated but delivered with keenness: "How did you know that to-day is
the feast of the Assumption?"
A bland evasion followed. "I supposed that every one knew the fifteenth
of August is the feast of the Assumption. Taste this grape."
"I am very sure _you_ didn't know."
"But I _did_. Taste the grape."
"Who told you?"
"Whence have you the faculties of the Inquisition? Why do you rack me
with questions?"
"I begin to suspect, Mr. Kimberly, that you belong on the rack."
"No doubt. At least I have spent most of my life there."
"Come, please! Who told you?"
"Francis, of course; now will you taste this grape?"