Kimberly was lunching next day at the city office when MacBirney's name
came in with a request for an interview. He was admitted without delay
and while a valet removed the trays and the table, Kimberly greeted his
visitor and, indicating a chair, asked him to sit down. He saw at a
glance the suppressed feeling in MacBirney's manner; the latter, in
fact, carried himself as a man fully resolved to carry out a course yet
fearful of the results.
"I have come to give notice of my withdrawal from the June pool in
common," began MacBirney without preface.
"I am not the one to give notice to," returned Kimberly civilly,
"inasmuch as I am not in the June pool and not in touch with its
operations."
"Well, I've sold--I am selling," MacBirney corrected himself hastily,
"my allotment, no matter who is at interest."
"McCrea and my brother are the organizers----"
"I understand," interjected MacBirney, "that you made a good deal of
talk about my action in the December pool a year ago--I give you no
chance to say I haven't served ample notice this time."
"On the contrary, I quieted a great deal of talk about your action a
year ago. It was so grossly unfair to your associates that I ascribed
your unloading of your stock without notifying them to rank ignorance,
and was disposed to overlook it on that ground."
MacBirney smiled with some sarcasm. "Though you were careful enough to
say publicly that you would never be caught in another pool with me."
"I never have been, have I? And I did not 'say publicly'; I said so to
McCrea, who had my permission to tell you. It cost me six hundred
thousand dollars at that time to support the market against you for
three days. And while I like to see my associates make money, I object
to their making it out of me."
"You didn't say so to poison my wife against me?"
"I have never, MacBirney, spoken of that or of any other of your
business affairs to your wife. I never have spoken even your name to
your wife, in praise or in blame, until you left her--except twice to
ask her if she loved you. Even that she treated as an insult."
"You must have made some progress since then."
Kimberly's head began to move slowly from side to side. "I am told,"
added MacBirney, in a thin, hard voice, "you are getting ready to marry
her."
"Quite true, I am."
MacBirney's rage forced him to his feet. "I am beginning to understand
now, Kimberly," he framed the words slowly and carefully, "the way you
have plotted against me from the start. I was warned before I ever saw
you that you had no respect for the law of God or man where a woman was
concerned. I was warned that no woman was safe near you."
Kimberly eyed his enraged associate calmly. "You are travelling far in a
few words, MacBirney. I hope you understand, once for all, that certain
limits cover a situation even such as this. I don't like your last
phrase. It might be made to apply unpleasantly to a woman now very dear
to me. I am used to angry men, and what you say about me----"
"What I say about----"
"What you say about me is allowable, no matter what I think of it. But
understand this, if you say one word about her--here or elsewhere, now
or hereafter--I will stop you, if I have to choke you with my own
hands."
"You can't scare me, Kimberly."
"I don't want to; I don't want to choke you; but if you wish to see me
try it, pass that limit just once. Now go on, MacBirney."
"I could have nothing to say against Alice."
Kimberly nodded heartily in approval.
"But I have something to say about a man who pretended to be my
friend----"
"I never pretended to be your friend."
"--And played traitor to me as you have done. But it's of a piece with
your whole record. First you got me down here----"
"I never got you down here."
"--Then you began to lay your plans to ruin my home."
"What were you doing all this time? Trying to circumvent me by making
your home happy or trying to help me by neglecting it?"
MacBirney shook his finger at Kimberly in rage. "You can't escape with
smooth phrases. You broke up my home!"
Kimberly had regained his coolness. "No, you broke it up. Long before
I ever saw you, you broke up your home. It was broken up and only
waiting for some one to save your wife from the wreck. MacBirney, you
have made a success of your business; one one-hundredth of the effort
you have given to your business would have saved your home. Yet you
thought you could treat your wife like a servant, humiliate and abuse
her and still hold her forth a figurehead for your 'home'!" muttered
Kimberly with scorn.
"You, yourself, put her up to the divorce. Deny that, will you?"
"No, I will not deny it," retorted Kimberly relapsing into indifference.
"After I came into her life she followed my advice. I believe I have
advised her for the best."
"I see your finger trailing through every turn of my trouble now. I saw
it too late. But I'm not done with you. And I'm not the only man that
understands your trickery. Lambert will have you on your knees in the
sugar business before you are very much older. Now, I have come to you
with a straight proposition. I want the escrow control of the Western
refineries. If you are ready to give it to me we will make a working
agreement and have peace. If you are not, I will back Lambert in a
string of modern plants that will drive you out of the Western field.
We are ready; the question for you to consider is whether you want to
compromise."
At this threat Kimberly, so far as the words could be used of him, went
to pieces. To be outfaced in his own headquarters by one whom he would
have termed a hare-brained upstart in the refining world was too much
for his poise. The only outward indication of his surprise and disgust
was a smile; but it was a dangerous smile. "I am afraid I am not enough
of a business man to compromise, MacBirney," he responded in low tones.
"You can't have the escrow control of the Western refineries."
"Very good. That decision suits me. I am now practically out of your
stock; we shall see what we shall see."
"One moment, MacBirney," said Kimberly, moved by some sudden impulse of
mercy following his rage, as if MacBirney were really too small fry to
pit himself against. "You have brought a personal affair and a business
affair before me. The business affair, as you are still my associate, I
may say a word on. Don't put any money you can't afford to lose behind
Lambert, for it will all go. I myself have not got resources enough to
give that man a free hand. He has a genius in one direction--that of
talking men out of their money.
"Moreover, in this case there is a personal friction of long standing
between him and me, and I will never let him lift his head in the sugar
business in this country while I am at the head of these companies, not
if I have to work twenty-four hours a day to clean him out. But that
would not be necessary--for he will not only attend to ruining himself
but to ruining every man that goes with him. If you want to quit us, do
so. Build as many refineries as you like and we will try to get on
peaceably with you--though I myself would not put a dollar into new
refineries to-day. You are rich; you had eight hundred thousand dollars
when I paid you for your junk, and you made two million dollars in the
December pool alone--a good part of it out of me. You will take from
these offices eight million dollars in less than three years."
MacBirney's alarm at Kimberly's intimate knowledge of his resources
showed in his face. "In railroads you might make it forty millions in
the next ten years, with even average prudence," continued Kimberly
calmly. "Sugar will be a load, anyway you go into it; but sugar and
Lambert will beat you to a frazzle."
Charles Kimberly walked into the room as his brother concluded. "Talk a
few moments with Charles about this," suggested Kimberly, coolly,
ringing for his office secretary.
"MacBirney," explained Robert Kimberly to his brother, "has sold out his
common and has a lot of money loose. I am telling him to go in for
railroads."
The secretary entered. Robert Kimberly after giving him some
directions, got into his car and was driven up-town to the residence of
the archbishop. He alighted before a large, remodelled city house not
far from the cathedral. A messenger had already delivered Hamilton's
letter of introduction and Kimberly was presenting himself by
appointment.
At the door a man-servant took his card and he was met in the reception
room by a young clergyman, who conducted him to the second floor. As
Kimberly entered the large room into which he was ushered he saw the
prelate rising from his table. He was a grave man and somewhat spare in
his height, slightly stooped with the passing of seventy years, and
bearing in the weariness of his face an expression of kindliness and
intelligence.
"This is a pleasure, Mr. Kimberly," he said, extending his hand.
"It is a pleasure for me, your grace."
"Come this way," continued the archbishop, indicating a divan in one
corner of the room.
"I brought no letter of introduction other than that from Doctor
Hamilton, which I sent you," Kimberly began as the archbishop seated
himself.
"Surely, you did not consider even Doctor Hamilton's note necessary,"
returned the archbishop, while his secretary withdrew. "Your name and
that of your family have been familiar to me for many years. And I fear
those of my people who venture in upon you with their petitions do not
always bring letters."
"You have occupied this see for many years," suggested Kimberly in
compliment.
"As priest and bishop I have lived in this diocese more than forty
years. It seems a long time. Yet the name of Kimberly was very old
here when I came, and without ever meeting one of your family, I have
heard much of you all since. So if there were no other reason, I should
welcome your call as an opportunity to tell you how grateful I am, and
the charities of the archdiocese are, for your repeated generosities.
You know we are not blessed among our own people with many benefactors
of large means. And the calls come upon us with surprising frequency."
"My father," responded Kimberly, "who was more of a philosopher than a
merchant, impressed me very early with the truth that your church was a
bulwark of social order--one which to that extent laid all thoughtful
men under a debt to it."
"You are a man of wide interests, Mr. Kimberly."
"The country grows too fast, your grace. There seems no escape from
expansion."
"Yet you find time for all of your work?"
Kimberly made a deprecatory gesture. "My chief affair is to find men to
do my work for me. Personally, I am fairly free."
"From all save responsibility, perhaps. I know how hard it is to
delegate that. And you give all of your energy to business. You have
no family?"
"No, and this brings me to the object of my visit." Kimberly paused a
moment. "I shall soon enter into marriage."
"Ah, I see!"
"And the subject is a difficult one to lay before your grace."
The archbishop saw an indefinable embarrassment in his visitor's manner
and raised his thin hand. "Then it has every claim to sympathetic
consideration. Forget for a moment that I am almost a stranger--I am
certainly no stranger to difficulties. And do no longer address me
formally. I said a moment ago that I was glad to meet you if only to
thank you for your responses to our numerous needs. But there is
another reason.
"When I was a young man, first ordained, my charge was the little
village of Sunbury up in the lake country. You may imagine how familiar
the Kimberly estates became to me in my daily rounds of exercise. I
heard much of your people. Some of their households were of my
congregation. Your mother I never met. I used to hear of her as
exceedingly frail in health. Once, at least, I recall seeing her
driving. But her servants at The Towers were always instructed not
alone to offer me flowers for the altar but diligently to see that the
altar was generously provided from her gardens and hot-houses.
"I once learned," the archbishop's head drooped slightly in the
reminiscence and his eyes rested full upon his visitor, "that she was
passing through a dreaded ordeal, concerning which many feared for her.
It was on a Sunday before mass that the word came to me. And at the
mass I told my little flock that the patroness to whom we owed our
constant offering of altar flowers was passing that morning through the
valley of the shadow of death, and I asked them to pray for her with me.
You were born on a Sunday, Mr. Kimberly." Kimberly did not break the
silence and the archbishop spoke on. "You see I am quite old enough
myself to be your father. I remember reading an account of your
baptism."
Kimberly looked keenly into the clear, gray eyes. Not a shade of
thought in the mind of the man before him was lost upon his penetration.
"Any recollection of my mother," he said slowly, "touches me deeply. To
think that you recall her so beautifully is very grateful to me--as you
may well imagine. And that was my birthday! Then if my mother was, or
I have ever been, able to help you I am sure we are repaid in being so
remembered all these years. I lost my father and my mother many years
ago----"
He paused. "It is very pleasant to be remembered," he repeated
uncertainly, as if collecting himself. "I shall never forget what you
have just told me. And I thank you now for the prayers you said for my
mother when she brought me into the world. Your grace," he added
abruptly, "I am greatly perplexed."
"Tell me frankly, how and why."
"I came here with some confidence of getting what I should ask for. I
am naturally a confident man. Yet my assurance deserts me. It seems,
suddenly, that my mission here is vain, that my hopes have deluded me--I
even ask myself why I have come. I could almost say I am sorry that I
have come."
The archbishop lifted his hand to speak. "Believe me, it is not other
than for good that you have come," he said.
Kimberly looked at him questioningly. "I cannot tell for what good,"
added the archbishop as if to say he could not answer the unspoken
question. "But believe me, you have done right and not wrong in
coming--of that I am sure. Tell me, first, what you came to tell me,
what it is in your heart that has brought you here."