At noon next day MacBirney, seeking his wife, found her in her
dressing-room. She had come from the garden and stood before a table
filled with flowers, which she was arranging in vases.
"I've been looking for you." MacBirney threw himself into a convenient
chair as he spoke. "Robert Kimberly is downstairs."
"Mr. Kimberly? To see you, I suppose."
"No, to see you."
"To see _me_?" Alice with flowers in her hand, paused. Then she
carried a vase to the mantel-piece. "At this time of day?"
"Well--to see us, he says."
She returned to the table. "What in the world does he want to see us
about?"
MacBirney laughed. "He says he has something to say to both of us. I
told him I would bring you down."
A breath would have toppled Alice over. "I can't dress to go down now,"
she managed to say. "It may be something from Dolly. Ask him to give
you any message he has."
Walking hurriedly to the mantel with another jar of roses, she found her
fear extreme. Could it be possible Kimberly would dream of saying to
her husband what he had said to her yesterday? She smothered at the
thought, yet she knew his appalling candor and felt unpleasantly
convinced that he was capable of repeating every word of it. The idea
threw her into a panic. She resolved not to face him under such
circumstances; she was in no position to do so. "Tell him," she said
abruptly, "that as much as I should like to hear what he has to say, he
will have to excuse me this morning."
"He offered to come this evening if you preferred."
"We have other guests to-night," returned Alice coldly. "And I can't be
bothered now."
"Bothered?" echoed MacBirney with sarcasm. "Perhaps I had better tell
him that."
"By all means, if you want to," she retorted in desperation. "Tell him
anything you like."
Her husband rose. "You are amiable this morning."
"No, I am not, I'm sorry to say. I am not quite well--that is the real
truth and must be my excuse. Make it for me or not as you like."
MacBirney walked downstairs. After an interminable time, Alice,
breathing more freely, heard Kimberly's car moving from the door. When
she went down herself she watched narrowly the expression of her
husband's face. But he was plainly interested in nothing more serious
than Fritzie's account of the country dance. When Alice ventured to ask
directly what Kimberly's messages were, he answered that Kimberly had
given none. With Fritzie, Alice took a drive after luncheon somewhat
easier in mind. Yet she reflected that scarcely twenty-four hours had
passed and she already found herself in an atmosphere of suspense and
apprehension from which there seemed no escape.
While she was dressing that night, flowers from The Towers' gardens were
brought to Cedar Lodge in boxfuls, just as they had regularly been sent
the year before--roses for the tables, violets for Alice's rooms,
orchids for herself. If she only dared send them back! Not, she knew,
that it would make any difference with the sender, but it would at least
express her indignation. She still speculated as to whether Kimberly
would dare to tell her husband and upon what would happen if he should
tell him.
And her little dream of publicity as an antidote! What had become of it
already? So far as Kimberly was concerned, she now firmly believed he
was ready to publish his attitude toward her to the world. And she
shrank with every instinct from the prospective shame and humiliation.
The water about her seemed very deep as she reflected, and she felt
singularly helpless. She had never heard of a situation just such as
this, never imagined one exactly like it. This man seemed different
from every other she had ever conceived of; more frankly brutal than
other brutes and more to be dreaded than other men.
A week passed before Kimberly and Alice met. It was at Charles
Kimberly's. Doctor Bryson, the Nelsons, and Fritzie were there.
As Alice and her husband came down, Charles Kimberly and Robert walked
out of the library. Robert bowed to MacBirney and to Alice--who scarcely
allowed her eyes to answer his greeting.
"Are you always glad to get back to your own country, Mrs. Kimberly?"
asked MacBirney greeting his hostess.
Imogene smiled. "Dutifully glad."
"Is that all?"
"At least, I come back with the same feeling of relief that I am getting
back to democracy."
"That is," suggested Lottie Nelson, "getting back to where you are the
aristocracy."
Dolly, who with her husband joined them in time to hear the remark,
tossed her head. "I always thank Heaven, Lottie, that we have no
aristocracy here."
"But you are wrong, Dolly, we have," objected Robert Kimberly as the
party went into the drawing-room. "Democracy is nothing but an
aristocracy of ability. What else can happen when you give everybody a
chance? We began in this country by ridding ourselves of an aristocracy
of heredity and privilege; and we have only succeeded in substituting
for it the coldest, cruelest aristocracy known to man--the aristocracy
of brains. This is the aristocracy that controls our manufacturing, our
transportation, our public service and our finance; it makes our laws
and apportions our taxation. And from this fell cause done our present
griefs arise."
"But you must rid yourself of the grossly material conception of an
aristocracy, Mr. Kimberly," said Nelson. "Our real aristocracy, I take
it, is not our material one, as Robert Kimberly insists. The true
aristocrat, I hold, is the real but mere gentleman."
"Exactly right," assented De Castro. "The gentleman and nothing else is
the thing."
"There is nothing more interesting than the gentleman," returned Robert
Kimberly, "except the gentleman plus the brute. But the exception is
enormous, for it supplies our material aristocrat."
"You must remember, though, that ideas of superiority and inferiority
are very tricky," commented Imogene. "And they persist for centuries.
To the Naples beggar, even to-day, the Germans are 'barbarians.' And
whenever I encounter the two I never can decide which _is_ the
aristocrat, the traveller or the beggar."
"I read your speech at the New England dinner last night," said Imogene,
turning to Nelson, "and I saw all the nice things that were said about
it this morning."
"If credit were due anywhere it would be to the occasion," returned
Nelson. "There is always something now in such gatherings to suggest
the discomforting reflection that our best native stock is dying out."
Dolly looked distressed. "Oh, dear, are those unfortunate people still
dying out? I've been worrying over their situation for years. Can't
any one do anything?"
"Don't let it disturb you, Mrs. De Castro," said Bryson.
"But I am afraid it is getting on my nerves."
"Nothing dies out that doesn't deserve to die out," continued Bryson.
"As to the people Nelson speaks of, I incline to think they ought to die
out. Their whole philosophy of life has been bad. Nature ought to be
ashamed, of course, to pass them by and turn to inferior races for her
recruits. But since all races are inferior to them, what can she do but
take refuge with the despised foreigner? The men and women that take
life on the light-housekeeping plan may do so if they will--for one
generation. What may safely be counted on is that nature will find its
workers in the human hive even if it has to turn to the savage tribes."
"But the poor savages, doctor--they also are on the verge of extinction,
are they not?" demanded Dolly.
"Then nature will provide its workers from one unfailing source--from
those we have always with us, the poor and the despised. And it can be
depended on with equal certainty to cast the satisfied, cultivated, and
intellectual drones into outer darkness."
"My dear, but the doctor is savage, isn't he?" Lottie Nelson made the
appeal indolently to Imogene. "We shall soon be asking, doctor," she
concluded languidly, "which tribe you belong to."
"He would answer, the medical tribe," suggested Fritzie.
"Speaking of savages," interposed Arthur De Castro, "Charles and I were
making a portage once on the York River. On the trail I met two superb
little Canadian lads--straight, swarthy, handsome fellows. They
couldn't speak English. 'You must be French,' I suggested, addressing
the elder by way of compliment in that tongue. Imagine my surprise when
he answered with perfect composure, 'Non, monsieur. Nous sommes des
sauvages!'"
"For my part," said Imogene, "I am always glad to hear Doctor Bryson
defend families and motherhood. I don't care how savage he gets."
"I defend motherhood because to me it is the highest state of womanhood.
Merely as an instinct, its mysteries are a never-ending marvel."
Lottie Nelson looked patiently bored. "Oh, tell us about them, do,
doctor."
"I will tell you of one," returned Bryson undismayed. "Take the young
mother that brings her first child into the world; from the day of its
birth until the day of that mother's death, her child is never wholly
out of her thought. The child may die, may be forgotten by every one
else on earth, may be to all other conscious existence in this world as
a thing that never was. But in its mother's heart it never dies. I
call that a mystery."
The doctor's glance as he finished fell on Alice's face. He was sorry
at once that he had spoken at all. Her eyes were fixed on him with a
look of acute pain.
Alice hardly knew Doctor Bryson, but what he saw in the sadness of her
face he quite understood. And though they had never met, other than in
a formal way, he never afterward felt that they were wholly strangers.