They found a lively party at the Nelsons'. Guyot was there, with
Lambert, thick-lipped and voluble. Dora Morgan with Doane and Cready
Hamilton had come, worn and bedraggled, from a New England motoring
trip. Dora, still quite hoarse, was singing a music-hall song when the
MacBirneys entered the room.
She stopped. "My ears are crazy to-night--I can't sing," she
complained, responding to Alice's greeting. "I feel as if there were a
motor in my head. Tired? Oh, no, not a bit. But the dust!" Her smile
died and her brows rose till her pretty eyes shone full. She threw her
expiring energy into two husky words: "_Something_ fierce!"
Dolly and her husband with Imogene and Charles had responded to Lottie's
invitation, and Robert Kimberly came later with Fritzie Venable. Dolly
greeted Alice with apologies. "I am here," she admitted with untroubled
contempt, "but not present. I wanted to see what Lambert looks like.
We hear so much about his discoveries. Robert doesn't think much of
them."
Mrs. Nelson, languidly composed, led MacBirney to the men who were in an
alcove off the music room. Near them sat Robert Kimberly talking to
Imogene. Dora could not be coaxed to sing again. But the hostess meant
to force the fighting for a good time. Dora joined the men and Guyot,
under Nelson's wing, came over to meet Alice, who had taken refuge with
Dolly. At a time when the groups were changing, Nelson brought Lambert
over. But neither Alice nor Dolly made objection when his host took him
away again.
Kimberly came after a while with Fritzie to Alice's divan and, standing
behind it, tried by conversation and such attraction of manner as he
could offer, to interest Alice. He failed to waken any response. She
quite understood a woman's refuge from what she wishes to avoid and
persevered in being indifferent to every effort.
Kimberly, not slow to perceive, left presently for the party in the
dining-room. But even as he walked away, Alice's attitude toward him
called to her mind a saying of Fritzie's, that it is not pleasant to be
unpleasant to pleasant people, even if it is unpleasant to be pleasant
to unpleasant people.
"Were you tired after yesterday's ride?" asked Dolly of Alice.
"Not too tired."
"Robert told you about Tennie Morgan's death."
Alice looked at her inquiringly. "How did you know?"
"You were in the Morgan chapel together. And you looked upset when you
came back. I had promised to tell you the story sometime myself. I
know how easy it is to get a false impression concerning family
skeletons. So I asked Robert about it the minute you left the car, and
I was annoyed beyond everything when he said he had told you the whole
story."
"But dear Mrs. De Castro! Why should you be annoyed?"
Dolly answered with decision: "Robert has no business ever to speak of
the affair." Alice could not dispute her and Dolly went on: "I know
just how he would talk about it. Not that I know what he said to you.
But it would be like him to take very much more of the blame on himself
than belongs to him. Men, my dear, look at these things differently
from women, and usually make less of them than women do. In this case
it is exactly the reverse. Robert has always had an exaggerated idea of
his responsibility in the tragedy--that is why it annoys me ever to have
him speak about it. I know my brother better, I think, than anybody
alive knows him, and I am perfectly familiar with all the circumstances.
I know what I am talking about."
Very much in earnest Dolly settled back. "To begin with, Tennie was an
abnormal boy. He was as delicate in his mental texture as cobweb lace.
His sensitiveness was something incredible and twenty things might have
happened to upset his mental balance. No one, my dear, likes to talk
state secrets."
"Pray do not, then. It really is not necessary," pleaded Alice.
"Oh, it is," said Dolly decidedly, "I want you to understand. Suicide
has been a spectre to the Kimberlys for ages. Two generations ago
Schuyler Kimberly committed suicide at sixty-six--think of it! Oh! I
could tell you stories. There has been no suicide in this generation.
But the shadow," Dolly's tones were calm but inflected with a burden of
what cannot be helped may as well be admitted, "seems only to have
passed it to fall upon the next in poor Tennie. Two years afterward
they found his mother dead one morning in bed. I don't know what the
trouble was--it was in Florence. Nobody knows--there was just a little
white froth on her lips. The doctors said heart disease. She was a
strange woman, Bertha, strong-willed and self-indulgent--like all the
rest of us."
"Don't say that of yourself. You are not self-indulgent, you are
generous."
"I am both, dear. But I know the Kimberlys, men and women, first and
last, and that is why I do not want you to get wrong impressions of
them. My brother Robert isn't a saint, neither is Charles. But compare
them with the average men of their own family; compare them with the
average men in their own situation in life; compare them with the
Nelsons and the Doanes; compare them with that old man that Robert is so
patient with! Compare them, my dear, to the men everywhere in the world
they move in--I don't think the Kimberly men of this generation need
apologize particularly.
"Robert was so completely stunned by Tennie's death that for years I did
not know what would happen. Then a great industrial crisis came in our
affairs, though afterward it seemed, in a way, providential. Poor old
Uncle John got it into his head he could make sugar out of corn and
ended by nearly ruining us all. If things had gone on we should all
have been living in apartments within another year. When we were so
deep in the thing that the end was in sight we went to Robert on our
knees, and begged him to take hold of the business and save the
family--oh, it had come quite to that. He had been doing absolutely
nothing for a year and I feared all sorts of things about him. But he
listened and _did_ take hold and made the business so big--well, dear
heart, you have some idea what it is now when they can take over a lot
of factories, such as those of your husband and his associates, on one
year's profits. I suppose, of course, these are state secrets--you
mustn't repeat them----"
"Certainly not."
"And for years they have been the largest lenders of ready money in the
Street. So you can't wonder that we think a great deal of Robert. And
he likes you--I can see that. He has been more natural since you came
here than for years."
"Surely your brothers never can say they have not a devoted sister."
"I can't account for it," persisted Dolly, continuing. "It is just that
your influence is a good one on him; no one can explain those things. I
thought for years he would never be influenced by any woman again.
You've seen how this one," Dolly tossed her head in disgust as she
indicated Lottie Nelson, then passing, "throws herself at him." With
the last words Dolly rose to say she was going home. Imogene was ready
to join her, and Lottie's protests were of no avail. Charles was
upstairs conferring with Nelson and Imogene went up to get him.
Alice walked to the dining-room. Her husband, in an uncommonly
good-humor, was drinking with their hostess. In the centre of the room,
Hamilton, Guyot, Lambert, and Dora Morgan sat at the large table. Guyot
offered Alice a chair. She sat down and found him entertaining. He took
her after a time into the reception room where Lottie had hung a Degas
that Guyot had brought over for her. Alice admired the fascinating
swiftness and sureness of touch but did not agree with Guyot that the
charm was due to the merit of color over line. When the two returned to
the dining-room, Kimberly stood at a cellaret with Fritzie.
Lottie and MacBirney sat with the group at the big table. "Oh, Robert,"
Lottie called to Kimberly as Alice appeared in the doorway, "mix me a
cocktail."
Turning, Kimberly saw Alice: "I am out of practice, Lottie," he said.
"Give me some plain whiskey then."
Kimberly's shortness of manner indicated his annoyance. "You have that
at your hand," he said sitting down.
"How rude, Robert," retorted Lottie, with assumed impatience. She
glanced loftily around. "Walter," she exclaimed, looking across the
table at Alice's husband and taking Alice's breath away with the appeal,
"give me some whiskey."
"Certainly, Mrs. Nelson."
"No, stop; mix me a cocktail."
"Is your husband an expert, Mrs. MacBirney?" asked Guyot as MacBirney
rose.
"Not to my knowledge," answered Alice frankly. "I hope," she added, with
a touch of asperity as her husband stepped to a sideboard, "that Mrs.
Nelson is not fastidious."
"It is disgusting the way my friends are behaving," complained Lottie
turning to Lambert. "This is my birthday----"
"Your birthday!"
"That is why you are all here. And whoever refuses now to drink my
health I cast off forever."
"Is this a regular birthday or are you springing an extra on us?"
demanded Fritzie.
"Go on, MacBirney, with your mixture," exclaimed Lambert, "I'll serve at
the table. You are going to join us, of course, Mrs. MacBirney?"
Alice answered in trepidation: "It must be something very light for me."
"Try whiskey, Mrs. MacBirney," suggested Dora Morgan benevolently, "it
is really the easiest of all."
Alice grew nervous. Kimberly, without speaking, pushed a half-filled
glass toward her. She looked at him in distress. "That will not hurt
you," he said curtly.
The men were talking Belgian politics. Lambert was explaining the
antiquated customs of the reactionaries and the battle of the liberals
for the laicizing of education. He dwelt on the stubbornness of the
clericals and the difficulties met with in modernizing their following.
Kimberly either through natural dislike for Lambert or mere stubbornness
objected to the specific instances of mediaevalism adduced and soon had
the energetic chemist nettled. "What do you know about the subject?"
demanded Lambert at length. "Are you a Catholic?"
"I am not a Catholic," returned Kimberly amiably. "I am as far as
possible, I suppose, from being one. The doors of the church are wide,
but if we can believe even a small part of what is printed of us they
would have to be broadened materially to take in American refiners."
"If you are not a Catholic, what are you?" persisted Lambert with heat.
"I have one serious religious conviction; that is, that there are just
two perfectly managed human institutions; one, the Standard Oil Company,
the other the Catholic Church."
There was now a chance to drop the controversy and the women together
tried to effect a diversion. But Lambert's lips parted over his white
teeth in a smile. "I have noticed sometimes that what we know least
about we talk best about." Kimberly stirred languidly. "I was born of
Catholic parents," continued Lambert, "baptized in the Catholic Church,
educated in it. I should know something about it, shouldn't I? You, Mr.
Kimberly, must admit you know nothing about it." Kimberly snorted a
little. "All the same, I take priests' fables for what they are worth,"
added Lambert; "such, for example, as the Resurrection of Christ."
Lambert laughed heartily. Fritzie looked uneasily at Alice as the words
fell. Her cheeks were crimsoned.
"Can a central fact of Christianity such as the Resurrection fairly be
called a priests' fable?" asked Kimberly.
"Why not?" demanded Lambert with contemptuous brevity. "None but
fossilized Catholics believe such nonsense!"
"There are still some Protestants left," suggested Kimberly mildly.
"No priest dictates to me," continued the chemist, aroused. "No
superstition for me. I want Catholics educated, enlightened, made free.
I should know something about the church, should I not? You admit you
know nothing----"
"No, I did not admit that," returned Kimberly. "You admitted it for me.
And you asked me a moment ago what I was. Lambert, what are you?"
"I am a Catholic--not a clerical!" Lambert emphasized the words by
looking from one to another in the circle. Kimberly spread one of his
strong hands on the table. Fritzie watching him shrank back a little.
"You a Catholic?" Kimberly echoed slowly. "Oh, no; this is a mistake."
His hand closed. "You say you were born a Catholic. And you ridicule
the very corner-stone of your faith. The last time I met you, you were
talking the same sort of stuff. I wonder if you have any idea what it
has cost humanity to give you the faith you sneer at, Lambert? To give
you Catholic parents, men nineteen hundred years ago allowed themselves
to be nailed to crosses and torn by dogs. Boys hardly seven years old
withstood starvation and scourging and boys of fifteen were burned in
pagan amphitheatres that you might be born a Christian; female slaves
were thrown into boiling oil to give you the privilege of faith;
delicate women died in shameful agonies and Roman maidens suffered their
bodies to be torn to pieces with red-hot irons to give you a Christian
mother--and you sit here to-night and ridicule the Resurrection of
Christ! Call yourself liberal, Lambert; call yourself enlightened; call
yourself Modern; but for God's sake don't call yourself a Catholic."
"Stop a moment!" cried Lambert at white heat.
Lottie put out her arm. "Don't let's be cross," she said with
deliberate but unmistakable authority. "I hate a row." She turned her
languid eyes on MacBirney. "Walter, what are these people drinking that
makes them act in this way? Do give Mr. Kimberly something else; he
began it."
Kimberly made no effort to soothe any one's feelings. And when Fritzie
and Alice found an excuse to leave the room he rose and walked leisurely
into the hall after them.
The three talked a few moments. A sound of hilarity came from the music
room. Alice looked uneasily down the hall.
"I never knew your husband could sing," said Fritzie.