Not every day brought unalloyed happiness. Moments of depression
asserted themselves with Alice and, if tolerated, led to periods of
despondency. She found herself seeking a happiness that seemed to elude
her.
Even her depression, banished by recreation, left behind something of a
painful subconsciousness like the uneasy subsidence of a physical pain.
Activity thus became a part of her daily routine and she gained a
reputation for lively spirits.
Kimberly, whose perception was not often at fault, puzzled over the
strain of gayety that seemed to disclose a new phase in Alice's nature.
Once, after a gay day at Sea Ridge, he surprised her at home in the
evening and found her too depressed to dissemble.
"Now," he said, taking both her hands, "you are going to tell me what
the matter is."
"Robert, nothing is the matter."
"Something is the matter," he persisted. "Tell me what it is."
"It is less than nothing. Just a miserable spectre that haunts me
sometimes. And when I feel in that way, I think I am still his wife.
Now you are vexed with me."
"Not for an instant, darling; only perplexed. Your worries are mine and
we must work out some relief for them, that is all. And when things
worry me you will help me do away with my spectres, won't you?"
He soothed and quieted her, not by ridicule and harshness but by
sympathy and understanding, and her love for him, which had found a
timid foothold in the frailest response of her womanly reserve, now sent
its roots deep into her nature.
It was nothing to her that he was great in the world's eyes; that in
itself would have repelled her--she knew what the world would say of her
ambition in marrying him. But he grew in her eyes because he grew in
her heart as she came to realize more and more his solicitude for her
happiness--the only happiness, he told her, in which he ever should find
his own.
"I know how it will end, Robert." They were parting after a moment the
most intense they had ever allowed themselves together. She was putting
away his unwilling arms, as she looked in the darkness of the garden up
into his face.
"How will it end?" he asked.
"In my loving you as much as you love me."
Winter passed and the spring was again upon them before they realized
it. In the entertaining around the lake they had been feted until it
was a relief to run away from it all, as they often did. To escape the
park-like regularity of their own domains, they sought for their riding
or driving the neglected country below the village. Sometimes on their
horses they would explore the backwoods roads and attempt swampy lanes
where frogs and cowslips disputed their entry and boggy pools menaced
escape.
Alice, hatless and flushed with laughter and the wind, would lead the
way into abandoned wood-paths and sometimes they found one that led
through a forest waste to a hidden pond where the sun, unseen of men,
mirrored itself in glassy waters and dogwood reddened the margin where
their horses drank.
In the woods, if she offered a race, Kimberly could never catch Alice no
matter what his mount. She loved to thread a reckless way among sapling
trees, heedless of branches that caught her neck and kissed her cheeks
as she hurried on--riding gave them delightful hours.
They were coming into the village one May morning after a long
cross-country run when they encountered a procession of young girls
moving across the road from the parish school to the church and singing
as they went. The church itself was _en fete_. Country folk gathered
along the road-side and clustered about the church door where a priest
in surplice waited the coming procession.
Kimberly and Alice, breathing their horses, halted. Dressed in white,
like child brides, the little maidens advanced in the sunshine, their
eyes cast down in recollection and moving together in awkward, measured
step. From their wrists hung rosaries. In their clasped hands they
carried prayer-books and white flowers, and white veils hung from the
rose wreaths on their foreheads.
"How pretty!" exclaimed Kimberly as the children came nearer.
"Robert," asked Alice suddenly, "what day is this?"
"Thursday, isn't it?"
"It is Ascension Thursday."
The church-bells began to ring clamorously and the little girls, walking
slowly, ceased their song. The lovers waited. Childhood, hushed with
expectancy and moving in the unconscious appeal of its own innocence,
was passing them.
The line met by the young priest reached the open door. Kimberly noted
the wistful look in Alice's eyes as the little band entered the church.
She watched until the last child disappeared and when she spoke to her
horse her eyes were wet. Her companion was too tactful to venture a
question. They rode until his silence told her he was aware of her
agitation and she turned to him.
"Do you know," she said, slowly searching his eyes, "that you are
awfully good?"
"If I am," he responded, "it is a discovery. And the honor, I fear, is
wholly yours."
"It is something," she smiled, her voice very sweet, "to have lived to
give that news to the world."
They rode again in silence. She felt it would be easier if he were to
question her, but it was only after some time that he said: "Tell me
what the little procession was about."
"I am ashamed to have acted in this way. But this was the day of my
First Communion, Ascension Thursday. It was only a coincidence that I
should see a First Communion class this morning."
"What is First Communion?"
"Oh, don't you know?" There was a sadness in the tone. "You don't, of
course, you dear pagan. It is _you_ who should have been the Christian
and I a pagan. You would never have fallen away."
"You only think you have fallen away, Alice. You haven't. Sometimes you
seem to act as if you had fallen from some high estate. You have not;
don't think it. You are good enough to be a saint--do you give me
credit for no insight? I tell you, you haven't fallen away from your
religion. If you had, you would be quite at ease, and you are very ill
at ease over it. Alice," he turned about in his saddle, "you would be
happier if our marriage could be approved by your church."
"It never can be."
"I have led a number of forlorn hopes in my day. I am going to try this
one. I have made up my mind to see your archbishop--I have spoken with
Francis about it. I am going to find out, if nothing more, exactly
where we stand."