When MacBirney reached home with the victoria Alice had not yet taken
off her hat, and a maid was bringing vases for the lilies. He had been
driving toward Sea Ridge and taken the wrong road and was sorry for his
delay in getting to the church. Alice accepted his excuses in good
part. He tried to explain his misunderstanding about the engagement
with Kimberly. She relieved his endeavors by making everything easy,
telling him finally how Kimberly had brought her home and had left the
grapes and lilies. When the two sat down at luncheon, MacBirney noticed
Alice's preoccupation; she admitted she had a slight headache. She was
glad, however, to have him ask her to go for a long motor drive in the
afternoon, thinking the air would do her good, and they spent three
hours together.
When they got home it was dusk. The dinner served on the porch was
satisfying and the day which had opened with so little of promise seemed
to do better at the close. Indeed, Alice all day had sought quiet
because she had something to say which she was resolved to say this day.
After dinner she remained with her husband in the moonlight. He was
talking, over his cigar, of an idea for adding a strip of woodland to
the lower end of their new estate, when she interrupted him.
"Should you be greatly shocked, Walter, if I said I wish we could go
away from here?" She was leaning toward him on the arm of her chair
when she spoke and her hands were clasped.
His astonishment was genuine. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know. Yet I feel as if we ought to go, Walter."
"What for?"
She was looking earnestly at him, but in the shadow he could not see,
though he felt, her eyes.
"It is hard to explain." She paused a moment. "These people are
delightful; you know I like them as much as you do."
MacBirney took his cigar from his mouth to express his surprise. "I
thought you were crazy about the place and the people and everything
else," he exclaimed. "I thought this was just what you were looking
for! You've said so much about refined luxury and lovely manners----"
"I am thinking of all that." There was enough in her tone of an
intention to be heard to cause him to forget his favorite expedient of
drowning the subject in a flood of words. "But with all this, or to
enjoy it all, one needs peace of mind, and my peace of mind is becoming
disturbed."
Quite misunderstanding her, MacBirney thought she referred to the
question of church-going, and that subject offered so much delicate
ground that Alice continued without molestation.
"It is very hard to say what I meant to say, without saying too little
or too much. You know, Walter, you were worried at one time about how
Mr. Robert Kimberly would look at your proposals, and you told me you
wanted me to be agreeable to him. And without treating him differently
from any one else here, I have tried to pay particular regard to what he
had to say and everything of that kind. It is awfully hard to specify,"
she hesitated in perplexity. "I am sure I haven't discriminated him in
any way from his brother, or Mr. De Castro, for instance. But I have
always shown an interest in things he had to point out, and he seemed to
enjoy--perhaps more than the others--pointing things out. And----"
"Well?"
"It seems to me now as if he has begun to take an interest in everything
_I_ do----"
Her husband became jocular. "Oh, has he?"
Alice's words came at last bluntly. "And it completely upsets me,
Walter."
MacBirney laughed again. "Why so?"
She took refuge in a shade of annoyance. "Because I don't like to think
about it."
"Think about what?"
"About any man's--if I must say it--paying attention to me, except my
husband."
"Now you are hitting me, aren't you, Alice? You are pretty clever, after
all," declared MacBirney still laughing.
She threw herself back in her chair. "Oh, Walter, you don't understand
at all! Nothing could be further from what I am thinking. I ought not
to say he has been attentive enough to speak of. It is not that I
dislike Mr. Kimberly. But he does somehow make me uncomfortable. Perhaps
I don't understand their way here."
"Why, that is all there is to it, Alice. It's merely their way. Give
it no thought. He is simply being agreeable. Don't imagine that every
man that sends you flowers is interested in you. Is that all, Allie?"
"Yes." Her acuteness divined about what he would reply. "And," she
added, "I think, however foolish it may sound, it is enough."
"Don't worry about bridges you will never have to cross. That's the
motto I've followed."
"Yes, I know, but----"
"Just a moment. All you have to do is to treat everybody alike."
"But, Walter----"
"You would have to do that anywhere--shouldn't you? Of course. Suppose
we should go somewhere else and find a man that threatened to become an
admirer----"
"Don't use such a word!"
"Call it what you please--we can't keep moving away from that kind of a
possibility, can we?"
"Still, Walter, I feel as if we might get away from here. I have merely
told you exactly what I thought."
"We can't get away. This is where everything is done in the sugar
business. This is the little world where the big moves are decided
upon. If you are not here, you are not in it. We are in the swim now;
it took long enough to get in it, God knows. Now let us stay. You can
take care of yourself, can't you?"
"How can you ask me!"
He pursued her with a touch of harshness. "How can I ask you? Aren't
you talking about running away from a situation? _I_ don't run away
from situations. I call the man or woman that runs away from a
situation, a coward. Face it down, work it out--don't dodge it."
MacBirney finished without interruption.
In the living room the telephone bell rang. He went in to answer it and
his wife heard him a moment in conversation. Then on the garage wire he
called up the chauffeur and ordered a car. Coming out again on the porch
he explained: "Lottie wants us to come over."
"Lottie?" There was a shade of resentment, almost of contempt, in
Alice's echo and inquiry.
"Lottie Nelson."
"Don't call her Lottie, Walter."
"She calls me Walter."
"She has no business to. What did you tell her? Don't let us go out
to-night."
"It is a little celebration of some kind and I told her we would come."
"My head has ached all day."
"It will do your head good. Come on. I told her we were coming."