Robert Kimberly Part 19

"I don't know how unusual it is, but it has happened more than once in our family. I remember my mother's hair once turned in that way. But my mother had much sadness in her life."

"Mrs. De Castro often speaks of your mother."

"She was a brave woman. You have never seen her portrait? Sometime at The Towers you must. And you can see on her temples just what I speak of. But your home-making will have just the opposite effect on you. If care makes the hair white, happiness ought to make it browner than ever."

"I suppose happiness is wholly a matter of illusion."

"I don't see that it makes much difference how we define it; the thing is to be happy. However, if what you say is so, you should cling to your illusions. Get all you can--I should--and keep all you can get."

"You don't mean to say you practise that?"

"Of course I do. And I think for a man I've kept my illusions very well."

"For a _man_!" Alice threw her head back. "That is very comfortable a.s.surance."

He looked at her with composure. "What is it you object to in it?"

"To begin with," demanded Alice, "how can a man have any illusions? He knows everything from the very beginning."

"Oh, by no means. Far from it, I a.s.sure you."

"He has every chance to. It is only the poor women who are constantly disillusionized in life."

"You mustn't be disillusionized, Mrs. MacBirney. Hope unceasingly."

She resented the personal application. "I am not speaking of myself."

"Nor am I speaking of you, only speaking through you to womankind. You 'poor women' should not be discouraged." He raised his head as if he were very confident. "If we can hope, you can hope. I hope every day.

I hope in a woman."

She bore his gaze as she had already borne it once or twice before, steadily, but as one might bear the gaze of a dangerous creature, if strengthened by the certainty of iron bars before its impa.s.sive eyes.

Kimberly was both too considerate and possessed too much sense of fitness to overdo the moment. With his hand he indicated a woman walking along a covered way in front of them. "There, for instance, goes a woman," he continued, following up his point. "Look at her. Isn't she pretty? I like her walk. And a woman's walk! It is impossible to say how much depends on the walk. And all women that walk well have good feet; their heels set right and there is a pleasure in watching each sure foot-fall. Notice, for instance, that woman's feet; her walk is perfect."

"How closely observant!"

"She is well gowned--but everybody is well gowned. And her figure is good. Let us say, I hope in her, hope she will be all she looks. I follow the dream. In a breath, an instant, a twinkling, the illusion has vanished! She has spoken, or she has looked my way and I have seen her face. But even then the face is only the dial of the watch; it may be very fair. Sometime I see her mind--and everything is gone!"

"Would it be impertinent to ask who has put women up in this way to be inspected and criticised?" retorted Alice.

"Not in the least. I am speaking only in ill.u.s.tration and if you are annoyed with me I shall miss making my point. Do I give up merely because I have lost an illusion? Not at all. Another springs up at once, and I welcome it. Let us live in our illusions; every time we part with one and find none to take its place we are poorer, Mrs.

MacBirney, believe me."

"Just the same, I think you are horridly critical of women."

"Then you should advise me to cultivate my illusions in their direction."

"I should if I thought it were necessary. As I have a very high opinion of women, I don't think any illusions concerning them are necessary."

"Loftily said. And I sha'n't allow you to think my own opinion any less high. When I was a boy, women were all angels to me; they are not quite that, we know."

"In spite of illusions."

"But I don't want to put them very much lower than the angels--and I don't. I keep them up because I like to."

Her comment was still keen. "Not because they deserve it."

"I won't quarrel with you--because, then, they do deserve it. It is pleasant to be set right."

The shower had pa.s.sed and the party was making ready to start. Alice rose. "You haven't said what you think of your own kind, as you call them--menkind."

Kimberly held her coat for her to slip into. "Of course, I try not to think of them."

When they reached the summit dividing the lake country from the sea the sun was s.h.i.+ning. To the east, the sound lay at their feet. In the west stretched the heavy forests and the long chain of lakes. They followed the road to the sea and after their sh.o.r.e luncheon relaxed for an hour at the yacht club. Driving back by the river road they put the new car through some paces, and halting at intervals to interchange pa.s.sengers, they proceeded homeward.

Going through Sunbury at five o'clock the cars separated. MacBirney, with whom Robert Kimberly was again riding, had taken in Fritzie Venable and Alice. Leaving the village they chose the hill road around the lake. Brice, Kimberly's chauffeur, took advantage of the long, straight highway leading to it to let the car out a little. They were running very fast when he noticed the sparker was binding and stopped for a moment. It was just below the Roger Morgan place and Kimberly, who could never for a moment abide idleness, suggested that they alight while Brice worked. He stood at the door of the tonneau and gave his hand to Alice as she stepped from the car. In getting out, her foot slipped and she turned her ankle. She would have fallen but that Kimberly caught her. Alice recovered herself immediately, yet not without an instant's dependence on him that she would rather have escaped.

Brice was slow in correcting the mechanical difficulty, and finding it at last in the magneto announced it would make a delay of twenty minutes. Fritzie suggested that they walk through her park and meet the car at the lower end. MacBirney started up one of the hill paths with Alice, Kimberly and Fritzie following. They pa.s.sed Morgan house and higher in the hills they reached the chapel. Alice took her husband in to see the beauty of the interior. She told him Dolly's story of the building and when Fritzie and Kimberly joined them, Alice was regretting that Dolly had failed to recollect the name of the church in Rome it was modelled after. Kimberly came to her aid. "Santa Maria in Cosmedin, I think."

"Oh, do you remember? Thank you," exclaimed Alice. "Isn't it all beautiful, Walter? And those old pulpits--I'm in love with them!"

MacBirney p.r.o.nounced everything admirable and prepared to move on. He walked toward the door with Fritzie.

Alice, with Kimberly, stood before the chancel looking at the bal.u.s.trade. She stopped near the north ambone, and turning saw in the soft light of the aisle the face of the boy dreaming in the silence of the bronze.

Below it, measured words of Keats were dimly visible. Alice repeated them half aloud. "What a strange inscription," she murmured almost to herself.

Kimberly stood at her elbow. "It is strange."

She was silent for a moment. "I think it is the most beautiful head of a boy I have ever seen."

"Have you seen it before?"

"I was here once with Mrs. De Castro."

"She told you the story?"

"No, we remained only a moment." Alice read aloud the words raised in the bronze: "'Robert Ten Broeck Morgan: aetat: 20.'"

"Should you like to hear it?"

"Very much."

"His father married my half-sister--Bertha; Charles and I are sons of my father's second marriage. 'Tennie' was Bertha's son--strangely shy and sensitive from his childhood, even morbidly sensitive. I do not mean unbalanced in any way----"

"I understand."

"A sister of his, Marie, became engaged to a young man of a Southern family who came here after the war. They were married and their wedding was made the occasion of a great family affair for the Morgans, and Alices and Legares and Kimberlys. Tennie was chosen for groomsman. The house that you have seen below was filled with wedding guests. The hour came."

"And such a place for a wedding!" exclaimed Alice.