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CHAPTER VII

The test of Alice's willingness to smile came within a brief fortnight, when with the De Castros, she was the guest of Imogene Kimberly at The Cliffs, Imogene's home.

"This is all most informal," said Imogene, as she went downstairs arm-in-arm with Alice; "as you see, only one-half the house is open."

"The open half is so lovely," returned Alice, "that I'm glad to take the other half on faith."

"It was my only chance--this week, and as Dolly says, I 'jumped at it'! I am sorry your husband has disappointed us."

"He was called to town quite unexpectedly."

"But Providence has provided a substitute. Robert Kimberly is coming." Alice almost caught her breath. "He is another of those men," continued Imogene, "whom you never can get when you want them. Fortunately he telephoned a moment ago saying he must see Charles. I answered that the only possible way to see him was to come over now, for he is going fishing and leaves at midnight. The guides wired this morning that the ice is out. And when the ice goes out," Imogene raised her hands, "neither fire nor earthquake can stop Charles. Here is Robert now. Oh, and he has Doctor Hamilton with him. All the better. If we can get both we shall have no lack of men."

Robert Kimberly and Doctor Hamilton were coming down the hall. "How delightful!" cried Imogene, advancing, "and I am so glad you've come, doctor."

Kimberly paused. He saw Alice lingering behind her hostess and the De Castros with Fritzie Venable coming downstairs.

"You have a dinner on," he said to Imogene.

"Only a small one."

"But you didn't tell me----"

"Just to give you a chance to show your indifference to surprises, Robert."

She introduced Doctor Hamilton to Alice. "These two are always together," she explained to Alice, lifting her fan toward the doctor and her brother-in-law. "But any hostess is fortunate to capture them like this, just the right moment."

Hamilton, greeting Alice, turned to Imogene: "What is this about your husband's going to Labrador to-morrow?"

"He is going to-night. The salmon are doing something or other."

"Deserted Gaspé, has he?"

"Temporarily," said Imogene, pausing to give an order to a butler. Robert waited a moment for her attention. "I brought the doctor," he explained, "because I couldn't leave him to dine alone. And now----"

"And now," echoed Imogene, "you see how beautifully it turns out. The Nelsons declined, Mr. MacBirney disappoints me, Charles goes fishing, and can't get home to-night in time to dine. But there are still seven of us--what could be better? Mrs. De Castro will claim the doctor. Arthur won't desert me, and, Robert, you may give an arm to Fritzie and one to Mrs. MacBirney."

There was now no escape from a smile, and Alice resolved to be loyal to her hostess. The party moved into the drawing-room.

Fritzie Venable tried to engage Kimberly in answering her questions about a saddle-horse that one of his grooms had recommended. Kimberly professed to know nothing about it. When it became apparent that he really did know nothing of the horse, Fritzie insisted on explaining.

Her spirited talk, whether concerning her own troubles or those of other people, was not uninteresting. Soon she talked more especially to Alice. Kimberly listened not inattentively but somewhat perfunctorily, and the manner, noticeable at their second meeting, again impressed Alice.

Whether it was a constraint or an unpleasing reserve was not clear; and it might have been the abstraction of a busied man, one of that type familiar in American life who are inherently interesting, but whose business affairs never wholly release their thought.

Whatever the cause, Fritzie was sufficiently interested in her own stories to ignore it and in a degree to overcome the effect of it. She was sure of her ground because she knew her distinguished connection had a considerate spot in his heart for her. She finally attacked him directly, and at first he did not go to the trouble of a defence. When she at length accused him, rather sharply, of letting business swallow him up, Kimberly, with Alice listening, showed a trace of impatience.

"The old sugar business!" Fritzie exclaimed reproachfully, "it is taking the spirituality completely out of the Kimberly family."

Robert looked at her in genuine surprise and burst into a laugh. "What's that?" he demanded, bending incredulously forward.

Fritzie tossed her head. "I don't care!"

"Spirituality?" echoed Kimberly, with a quiet malice. His laugh annoyed Fritzie, but she stuck to her guns: "Spirits, then; or gayety, or life!" she cried. "I don't care what you call it. Anything besides everlastingly piling up money. Oh, these almighty dollars!"

"You tire of them so quickly, is it, Fritzie? Or is it that they don't feel on familiar terms enough to stay long with you?" he asked, while Alice was smiling at the encounter.

Fritzie summoned her dignity and pointed every word with a nod. "I simply don't want to see all of my friends--ossify! Should you?" she demanded, turning to Alice for approval.

"Certainly not," responded Alice.

"Bone black is very useful in our business," observed Kimberly.

Fritzie's eyes snapped. "Then buy it! Don't attempt to supply the demand out of your own bones!"

It would have been churlish to refuse her her laugh. Kimberly and Alice for the first time laughed together and found it pleasant.

Fritzie, following up her advantage, asked Doctor Hamilton whether he had heard Dora Morgan's latest joke. "She had a dispute," continued Fritzie, "with George Doane last night about Unitarians and Universalists----"

"Heavens, have those two got to talking religion?" demanded Kimberly, wearily.

"George happened to say to Cready Hamilton that Unitarians and Universalists believed just about the same doctrine. When Dora insisted it was not so, George told her she couldn't name a difference. 'Why, nonsense, George,' said Dora, 'Unitarians deny the divinity of Christ, but Universalists don't believe in a damned thing.' And the funny part of it was, George got furious at her," concluded Fritzie with merriment.

"I suppose you, too, fish," ventured Alice to Kimberly as the party started for the dining-room.

"My fishing is something of a bluff," he confessed. "That is, I fish, but I don't get anything. My brother really does get the fish," he said as he seated her. "He campaigns for them--one has to nowadays, even for fish. I can't scrape up interest enough in it for that. I whip one pool after another and drag myself wearily over portages and chase about in boats, and my guides fable wisely but I get next to nothing."

Alice laughed. Even though he assumed incompetence it seemed assumed. And in saying that he got no fish one felt that he did get them.

Arthur was talking of Uncle John's nurse--whom the circle had nicknamed "Lazarus." He referred to the sacrifices made sometimes by men.

"It won't do to say," De Castro maintained, "that these men are mere clods, that they have no nerves, no sensitiveness. The first one you meet may be such a one; the next, educated or of gentle blood."

"'Lazarus,'" he continued, "is by no means a common man. He is a gentleman, the product of centuries of culture--this is evident from five minutes' talk with him. Yet he has abandoned everything--family, surroundings, luxuries--for a work that none of us would dream of undertaking."

"And what about women, my dear?" demanded Dolly. "I don't say, take a class of women--take any woman. A woman's life is nothing but sacrifice. The trouble is that women bear their burdens uncomplainingly. That is where all women make a mistake. My life has been a whole series of sacrifices, and I propose people shall know it."

"No matter, Dolly," suggested Imogene, "your wrongs shall be righted in the next world."

"I should just like the chance to tell my story up there," continued Dolly, fervently.

Kimberly turned to Alice: "All that Dolly fears," said he, in an aside, "is that heaven will prove a disappointment. But to change the subject from heaven abruptly--you are from the West, Mrs. MacBirney."

"Do you find the change so abrupt? and must I confess again to the West?"

"Not if you feel it incriminates you."

"But I don't," protested Alice with spirit.

"Has your home always been there?"

"Yes, in St. Louis; and it is a very dear old place. Some of my early married life was spent much farther West."

"How much farther?"

"So much that I can hardly make anybody comprehend it--Colorado."

"How so?"

"They ask me such wild questions about buffalos and Indians. I have found one woman since coming here who has been as far West as Chicago, once."

"In what part of Colorado were you?"

"South of Denver."

"You had beautiful surroundings."

"Oh, do you know that country?"

"Not nearly as well as I should like to. It is beautiful."

Alice laughed repentantly as she answered: "More beautiful to me now, I'm afraid, than it was then."

"Any town is quiet for a city girl, of course. Was it a small town?"

"Quite small. And odd in many ways."

"I see; where the people have 'best clothes'----"

"Don't make fun."

"And wear them on Sunday. And there is usually one three-story building in the town--I was marooned over Sunday once in a little Western town, with an uncle. I saw a sign on a big building: 'Odd Fellows' Hall.' Who are the Odd Fellows, uncle?' I asked. He was a crusty old fellow: 'Optimists, my son, optimists,' he growled, 'They build three-story buildings in two-story towns.' What was your town, by the way?"

"Piedmont."

"Piedmont?" Kimberly paused a moment. "I ought to know something of that town."

Alice looked surprised. "You?"

"The uncle I spoke of built a railroad through there to the Gulf. Isn't there a town below Piedmont named Kimberly?"

"To be sure there is. How stupid! I never thought it was named after your uncle."

"No, that uncle was a Morgan,", interposed Imogene, listening, "the town was named after your next neighbor."

"How interesting! And how could you make such fun of me--having me tell you of a country you knew all about! And a whole town named after you!"

"That is a modest distinction," remarked Kimberly. "As a boy I was out there with an engineering party and hunted a little. My uncle gave me the town as a Christmas present."

"A town for a Christmas present!"

"I suspected after I began paying taxes on my present that my uncle had got tired of it. They used to sit up nights out there to figure out new taxes. In the matter of devising taxes it is the most industrious, progressive, tireless community I have ever known. And their pleas were so ingenious; they made you feel that if you opposed them you were an enemy to mankind."

"Then they beguiled Robert every once in a while," interposed Fritzie, "into a town hall or public library or a park or electric lighting plant. Once they asked him for a drinking fountain." Fritzie laughed immoderately at the recollection. "He put in the fountain and afterward learned there was no water within fifteen miles; they then urged him to put in a water-works system to get water to it."

"I suggested a brewery to supply the fountain," said Arthur, looking over, "and that he might work out even by selling the surplus beer. There were difficulties, of course; if he supplied the fountain with beer, nobody would buy it in bottles. Then it was proposed to sell the surplus beer to the neighboring towns. But with the fountain playing in Kimberly, these would pretty certainly be depopulated. Per contra, it was figured that this might operate to raise the price of his Kimberly lots. But while we were working the thing out for him, what do you think happened?"

"I haven't an idea," laughed Alice.

"The town voted for prohibition."

"Fancy," murmured Imogene, "and named Kimberly!"

"And what became of the fountain?"

"Oh, it is running; he put in the water-works."

"Generous man!"

"Generous!" echoed Hamilton. "Don't be deceived, Mrs. MacBirney. You should see what he charges them for water. I should think it would be on his conscience, if he has one. He is Jupiter with the frogs. Whatever they ask, he gives them. But when they get it--how they do get it!"

"Don't believe Doctor Hamilton, Mrs. MacBirney," said Robert Kimberly. "I stand better with my Western friends than I do with these cynical Easterners. And if my town will only drink up the maintenance charges, I am satisfied."

"The percentage of lime in the water he supplies is something fierce," persisted the doctor. "It is enough to kill off the population every ten years. I suggested a hospital."

"But didn't Mr. MacBirney tell me they have a sugar factory there?" asked Alice.

"They have," said De Castro. "One of Robert's chemists was out there once trying to analyze the taxes. Incidentally, he brought back some of the soil, thinking there might be something in it to account for the tax mania. And behold, he found it to be fine for sugar beets! Irrigation ditches and a factory were put in. You should see how swell they are out there now."

"Robert has had all kinds of resolutions from the town," said Fritzie.

Kimberly turned to Alice to supplement the remark. "Quite true, I have had all kinds--they are strong on resolutions. But lately these have been less sulphurous."

"Well, isn't it odd? My father's ranch once extended nearly all the way from Piedmont to the very town you are speaking of!" exclaimed Alice.

Kimberly looked at her with interest. "Was that really yours--the big ranch north of Kimberly?"

"I spent almost every summer there until I was fifteen."

"That must have been until very lately."

Alice returned his look with the utmost simplicity. "No, indeed, it is ten years ago."

Kimberly threw back his head and it fell forward a little on his chest. "How curious," he said reflectively; "I knew the ranch very well."

When they were saying good-night, Imogene whispered to Alice: "I congratulate you."

Alice, flushed with the pleasure of the evening, stood in her wraps. She raised her brows in pleased surprise. "Pray what for?"

"Your success. The evening, you know, was in your honor; and you were decidedly the feature of it."

"I really didn't suspect it."

"And you made a perfect success with your unexpected neighbor."

"But I didn't do anything at all!"

"It isn't every woman that succeeds without trying. We have been working for a long time to pull Robert out of the dumps." Imogene laughed softly. "I noticed to-night while you were talking to him that he tossed back his head once or twice. When he does that, he is waking up! Here is your car, Dolly," she added, as the De Castros came into the vestibule.

"Arthur is going to take Doctor Hamilton and Fritzie in our car, Imogene," explained Dolly. "Robert has asked Mrs. MacBirney and me to drive home around the south shore with him."

CHAPTER VIII

Charles Kimberly was at The Towers the morning after the return from his fishing trip, to confer with Uncle John and his brother upon the negotiations for the MacBirney properties. In the consideration of any question each of the three Kimberlys began with a view-point quite distinct from those of the others.

John Kimberly, even in old age and stricken physically to an appalling degree, swerved not a hair's-breadth from his constant philosophy of life. He believed first and last in force, and that feeble remnant of vitality which disease, or what Dolly would have termed, "God's vengeance," had left him, was set on the use of force.

To the extent that fraud is an element of force, he employed fraud; but it was only because fraud is a part of force, and whoever sets store by the one will not always shrink from the other. Any disposition of a question that lacked something of this complexion seemed to Uncle John a dangerous one.

Charles had so long seen bludgeoning succeed that it had become an accepted part of his business philosophy. But in the day he now faced, new forces had arisen. Public sentiment had become a factor in industrial problems; John was blind to its dangerous power; Charles was quite alive to it.

New views of the problem of competition had been advanced, and in advocating them, one of the Kimberlys, Robert, was known to be a leader. This school sought to draw the sting of competitive loss through understandings, coöperation, and peace, instead of suspicion, random effort, and war.

Charles saw this tendency with satisfaction; Uncle John saw it sceptically. But Charles, influenced by the mastery of his uncle, became unsettled in his conclusions and stood liable to veer in his judgment to one side or the other of the question, as he might be swayed by apprehensions concerning the new conditions or rested in confidence in the policies of the old.

Between these two Kimberly make-ups, the one great in attack, the other in compromise, stood Robert. "Say what you please," Nelson often repeated to McCrea, "John may be all right, but his day is past. Charlie forgets every day more than the opposition know, all told. But I call Robert the devil of the family. How does he know when to be bold? Can you tell? How does he know when to be prudent? I know men, if I do anything, McCrea--but I never can measure that fellow."

Whatever Robert liked at least enlisted all of his activities and his temperament turned these into steam cylinders. John Kimberly influenced Robert in no way at all and after some years of profanity and rage perceived that he never should. This discovery was so astounding that after a certain great family crisis he silently and secretly handed the sceptre of family infallibility over to his nephew.

Left thus to himself, Robert continued to think for himself. The same faculties that had served John a generation earlier now served Robert. John had forgotten that when a young man he had never let anybody think for him, and the energy that had once made John, also made his younger nephew.

The shrewdness that had once overcome competition by war now united with competitors to overcome the public by peace. The real object of industrial endeavor being to make money, a white-winged and benevolent peace, as Nelson termed it, should be the policy of all interests concerned. And after many hard words, peace with eighty per cent. of the business was usually achieved by the united Kimberlys.

It had cost something to reach this situation; and now that the West had come into the sugar world it became a Kimberly problem to determine how the new interests should be taken care of.

On the morning that Charles called he found Uncle John in his chair. They sent for Robert, and pending his appearance opened the conference. At the end of a quarter of an hour Robert had not appeared. Charles looked impatiently at his watch and despatched a second servant to summon his brother. After twenty-five minutes a third call was sent.

During this time, in the sunniest corner of the south garden, sheltered by a high stone wall crested with English ivy and overgrown with climbing roses, sat Robert Kimberly indolently watching Brother Francis and a diminutive Skye terrier named Sugar.

Sugar was one of Kimberly's dogs, but Francis had nursed Sugar through an attack after the kennel keepers had given him up. And the little dog although very sick and frowsy had finally pulled through. The intimacy thus established between Sugar and Francis was never afterward broken but by death.

In this sunny corner, Kimberly, in a loose, brown suit of tweed, his eyes shaded by a straw hat, sat in a hickory chair near a table. It was the corner of the garden in which Francis when off duty could oftenest be found. A sheltered walk led to the pergola along which he paced for exercise. Near the corner of the wall stood an oak. And a bench, some chairs and a table made the spot attractive. Sugar loved the bench, and, curled up on it, usually kept watch while Francis walked. On cold days the dog lay with one hair-curtained eye on the coming and going black habit. On warm days, cocking one ear for the measured step, he dozed.

Francis, when Sugar had got quite well, expressed himself as scandalized that the poor dog had never been taught anything. He possessed, his new master declared, neither manners nor accomplishments, and Francis amid other duties had undertaken, in his own words, to make a man of the little fellow.

Robert, sitting lazily by, instead of attending the conference call, and apparently thinking of nothing--though no one could divine just what might be going on under his black-banded hat--was watching Francis put Sugar through some of the hard paces he had laid out for him.

"That dog is naturally stupid, Francis--all my dogs are. They continually cheat me on dogs," said Kimberly presently. "You don't think so? Very well, I will bet you this bank-note," he took one from his waistcoat as he spoke, "that you cannot stop him this time on 'two'."

"I have no money to bet you, Robert."

"I will give you odds."

"You well know I do not bet--is it not so?"

"You are always wanting money; now I will bet you the bank-note against one dollar, Francis, that you cannot stop him on 'two'."

Francis threw an eye at the money in Kimberly's hand. "How much is the bank-note, Robert?"

"One hundred dollars."

Francis put the temptation behind him. "You would lose your money. Sugar knows how to stop. In any case, I have no dollar."

"I will bet the money against ten cents."

"I have not even ten cents."

"I am sorry, Francis, to see a man receiving as large a salary as you do, waste it in dissipation and luxury. However, if you have no money, I will bet against your habit."

"If I should lose my habit, what would I do?"

"You could wear a shawl," argued Kimberly.

"All would laugh at me. In any case, to bet the clothes off my back would be a sin."

"I am so sure I am right, I will bet the money against your snuff-box, Francis," persisted Kimberly.

"My snuff-box I cannot bet, since Cardinal Santopaolo gave it to me."

"Francis, think of what you could do for your good-for-nothing boys with one hundred dollars."

Francis lifted his dark eyes and shook his head.

"I will bet this," continued the tempter, "against the snuff in your box, that you can't stop him this time on 'two'."

"Sugar will stop on 'two'," declared Francis, now wrought up.

"Dare you bet?"

"Enough! I bet! It is the snuff against the money. May my poor boys win!"

The sunny corner became active. Kimberly straightened up, and Francis began to talk to Sugar.

"Now tell me again," said Kimberly, "what this verse is."

"I say to him," explained Francis, "that the good soldier goes to war----"

"I understand; then you say, 'One, two, three!'"

"Exactly."

"When you say 'three,' he gets the lump?"

"Yes."

"But the first time you say the verse you stop at 'two.' Then you repeat the verse. If the dog takes the lump before you reach the end the second time and say 'three'----"

"You get the snuff!" Francis laid the box on the table beside Kimberly's bank-note.

"Sugar! Guarda!" The Skye terrier sat upright on his haunches and lifted his paws. Francis gave him a preliminary admonition, took from a mysterious pocket a lump of sugar, laid it on the tip of the dog's nose, and holding up his finger, began in a slow and clearly measured tone:

"Buon soldato

Va alia guerra,

Mangia male,

Dorme in terra.

Uno, due--

Buon soldato

Va--"

But here Sugar, to Francis's horror, snapped the lump into his mouth and swallowed it.

"You lose," announced Kimberly.

Francis threw up his hands. "My poor boys!"

"This is the time, Francis, your poor boys don't get my money. I get your snuff."

"Ah, Sugar, Sugar! You ruin us." The little Skye sitting fast, looked innocently and affectionately up at his distressed master. "Why," demanded the crestfallen Francis, "could you not wait for the lump one little instant?"

"Sugar is like me," suggested Kimberly lazily, "he wants what he wants when he wants it."

Alice, this morning, had been deeply in his thoughts. From the moment he woke he had been toying indolently with her image--setting it up before his imagination as a picture, then putting it away, then tempting his lethargy again with the pleasure of recalling it.

He drew a cigar-case from his pocket and carefully emptied the snuff out of the box into it. "When do you get more snuff, Francis?"

"On Saturday."

"This is Tuesday. The box is nearly full. It looks like good stuff." He paused between each sentence. "But you would bet."

Francis without looking busied himself with his little pupil.

"I have emptied the box," announced Kimberly. There was no answer. "Do you want any of it back?"

Francis waved the offer aside.

"A few pinches, Francis?"

"Nothing."

"That dog," continued Kimberly, rapping the box to get every grain out and perceiving the impossibility of harrying Francis in any other way, "is good for nothing anyway. He wasn't worth saving."

"That dog," returned Francis earnestly, "is a marvel of intelligence and patience. He has so sweet a temper, and he is so quick, Robert, to comprehend."

"I fail to see it."

"You will see it. The fault is in me."

"I don't see that either."

Francis looked at Kimberly appealingly and pointed benevolently at Sugar. "I ask too much of that little dog. He will learn. 'Patience, Francis,' he says to me, 'patience; I will learn.'"

Summoning his philosophy to bridge over the disappointment, Francis, as he stood up, absent-mindedly felt in his deep pocket for his snuff-box. It was in difficulties such as this that recourse to a frugal pinch steadied him. He recollected instantly that the snuff was gone, and with some haste and stepping about, he drew out his handkerchief instead--glancing toward Kimberly as he rubbed his nose vigorously to see if his slip had been detected.

Needless to say it had been--less than that would not have escaped Kimberly, and he was already enjoying the momentary discomfiture. Sugar at that moment saw a squirrel running down the walk and tore after him.

Francis with simple dignity took the empty snuff-box from the table and put it back in his pocket. His composure was restored and the incident to him was closed.

Kimberly understood him so well that it was not hard to turn the talk to a congenial subject. "I drove past the college the other day. I see your people are doing some building."

Francis shrugged his shoulders. "A laundry, Robert."

"Not a big building, is it?"

"We must go slow."

"It is over toward where you said the academy ought to go."

"My poor academy! They do not think it will ever come."

"You have more buildings now than you have students. What do you want with more buildings?"

"No, no. We have three hundred students--three hundred now." Francis looked at his questioner with eyes fiercely eager. "That is the college, Robert. The academy is something else--for what I told you."

"What did you tell me?" Kimberly lighted a cigar and Francis began again to explain.

"This is it: Our Sisters in the city take now sixteen hundred boys from seven to eight years old. These boys they pick up from the orphan courts, from the streets, from the poor parents. When these boys are twelve the Sisters cannot keep them longer, they must let them go and take in others.

"Here we have our college and these boys are ready for it when they are sixteen. But, between are four fatal years--from twelve to sixteen. If we had a school for such boys, think what we could do. They would be always in hand; now, they drift away. They must go to work in the city filth and wickedness. Ah, they need the protection we could give them in those terrible four years, Robert. They need the training in those years to make of them mechanics and artisans--to give them a chance, to help them to do more than drift without compass or rudder--do you not see?

"Those boys that are bright, that we find ready to go further, they are ready at sixteen for our college; we keep and educate them. But the others--the greater part--at sixteen would leave us, but trained to earn. And strengthened during those four critical years against evil. Ah!"

Francis paused. He spoke fast and with an intensity that absorbed him.

Kimberly, leaning comfortably back, sat with one foot resting on his knee. He knocked the ash of his cigar upon the heel of his shoe as he listened--sometimes hearing Francis's words, sometimes not. He had heard all of them before at one time or another; the plea was not new to him, but he liked the fervor of it.

"Ah! It is not for myself that I beg." Brother Francis's hands fell resignedly on his knees. "It is for those poor boys, to keep them, Robert, from going to hell--from hell in this world and in the next. To think of it makes me always sorrowful--it makes a beggar of me--a willing beggar."

Kimberly moved his cigar between his lips.

"But where shall I get so much money?" exclaimed Francis, helplessly. "It will take a million dollars to do what we ought to do. You are a great man, Robert; tell me, how shall I find it?"

"I can't tell you how to find it; I can tell you how to make it."

"How?"

"Go into the sugar business."

"Then I must leave God's business."

"Francis, if you will pardon me, I think for a clever man you are in some respects a great fool. I am not joking. What I have often said about your going into the sugar business, I repeat. You would be worth ten thousand dollars a year to me, and I will pay you that much any day."

Francis looked at Kimberly as if he were a madman, but contented himself with moving his head slowly from side to side in protest. "I cannot leave God's business, Robert. I must work for him and pray to him for the money. Sometime it will come."

"Then tell Uncle John to raise your wages," suggested Kimberly, relapsing into indifference.

"Robert, will you not sometime give me a letter to introduce me to the great banker who comes here, Hamilton?"

"He will not give you anything."

"He has so much money; how can he possibly need it all?"

"You forget, Francis, that nobody needs money so much as those that have it."

"Ah!"

"Hamilton may have no more money than I have, and you don't ask me for a million dollars."

"It is not necessary to ask you. You know I need it. If you could give it to me, you would."

"If I gave you a million dollars how should I ever get it back?"

Francis spoke with all seriousness. "God will pay you back."

"Yes, but when? That is a good deal of money to lend to God."

"It is a good deal."

"When do I get it back, and how?"

"He will surely pay you, Robert; God pays over there."

"That won't do--over there. It isn't honest."

Francis started. "Not honest?"

"You are offering deferred dividends, Francis. What would my stockholders say if I tried that kind of business? Gad, they would drag me into court."

"Ah, yes! But, Robert; you pay for to-day: he pays for eternity."

Kimberly smoked a moment. "In a proposition of that kind, Francis, it seems to me the question of guarantees is exceedingly important. You good men are safe enough; but where would the bad men come in on your eternal dividends?"

"You are not with the bad men, Robert. Your heart is not bad. You are, perhaps, cruel----"

"What?"

"But generous. Sometime God will give you a chance."

"You mean, sometime I will give God a chance."

"No, Robert, what I say I mean--sometime, God will give you a chance."

Charles Kimberly's impatient voice was heard from the pergola.

"Robert! We've been waiting thirty minutes," he stormed.

"I am just coming."

CHAPTER IX

That afternoon MacBirney played golf with Charles Kimberly. Toward five o'clock, Alice in one of the De Castro cars drove around to The Hickories after him. When he came in, she was sitting on the porch with a group of women, among them Fritzie Venable and Lottie Nelson.

"I must be very displeasing to Mrs. Nelson," Alice said to her husband as they drove away. "It upsets me completely to meet that woman."

"Why, what's the matter with her?" asked MacBirney, in a tone which professing friendly surprise really implied that the grievance might after all be one of imagination.

"I haven't an idea," declared Alice a little resentfully. "I am not conscious of having done a thing to offend her."

"You are oversensitive."

"But, Walter, I can tell when people mean to be rude."

"What did Mrs. Nelson do that was rude?" asked her husband in his customary vein of scepticism.

"She never does anything beyond ignoring me," returned Alice. "It must be, I think, that she and I instinctively detest each other. They were talking about a dinner and musicale Thursday night that Mr. Robert Kimberly is giving at The Towers. Miss Venable said she supposed we were going, and I had to say I really didn't know. We haven't been asked, have we?"

"Not that I know of."

"Mrs. Nelson looked at me when Fritzie spoke; I think it is the first time that she ever has looked at me, except when she had to say 'good-morning' or 'good-evening.' I was confused a little when I answered, I suppose; at any rate, she enjoyed it. Mr. Kimberly would not leave us out, would he?"

"I don't think so. He was playing golf this afternoon with Cready Hamilton, and he stopped to offer me his yacht for the week of the cup races."

"Why, how delightful! How came he ever to do that?"

"And I think he has made up his mind what he is going to do about placing me on the board," continued MacBirney, resuming his hard, thin manner and his eager tone of business. "I wish I knew just what is coming."

Alice had scarcely reached her room when she found the dinner invitation. She felt a little thrill of triumph as she read it. Her maid explained that the note had been laid in the morning with Mrs. De Castro's letters.

Late in the evening Kimberly came over with his sister-in-law, Imogene. The De Castros were at the seashore overnight and the visitors' cards were sent up to the MacBirneys. It was warm and the party sat on the south veranda. Kimberly talked with Alice and she told him they hoped to be present at his dinner.

"You are sure to be, aren't you?" he asked. "The evening is given for you."

"For us?"

"No, not for 'us,' but for you," he said distinctly. "Mr. MacBirney has said he is fond of the water--you like music; and I am trying something for each of you. I should have asked you about your engagements before the cards went out. If there is any conflict the date can easily be recalled."

"Oh, no. That would be a pity."

"Not at all. I change my arrangements when necessary every ten minutes."

"But there isn't any conflict, and I shall be delighted to come. Pray, how do you know I like music?"

"I heard you say so once to Arthur De Castro. Tell me what you are amused about?"

"Have I betrayed any amusement?"

"For just about the hundredth part of a second, in your eyes."

They were looking at each other and his gaze though within restraint was undeniably alive. Alice knew not whether she could quite ignore it or whether her eyes would drop in an annoying admission of self-consciousness. She avoided the latter by confessing. "I am sure I don't know at all what you are talking about----"

"I am sure you do, but you are privileged not to tell if you don't want to."

"Then--our dinner card was mislaid and until to-night we didn't know whether----"

"There was going to be any dinner."

"Oh, I knew that. I was at the Casino this afternoon----"

"I saw you."

"And when I was asked whether I was going to the dinner at The Towers I couldn't, of course, say."

"Who asked you, Mrs. Nelson?"

"No, indeed. What made you think it was she?"

"Because she asked me if you were to be there. When I said you were, she laughed in such a way I grew suspicious. I thought, perhaps, for some reason you could not come, and now I am confessing--I ran over to-night expressly to find out."

"How ridiculous!"

"Rather ridiculous of me not to know before-hand."

"I don't mean that--just queer little complications."

"A mislaid dinner-card might be answerable for more than that."

"It was Miss Venable who asked, quite innocently. And had I known all I know now, I could have taken a chance, perhaps, and said yes."

"You would have been taking no chance where my hospitality is concerned."

"Thank you, Mr. Kimberly, for my husband and myself."

"And you might have added in this instance that if you did not go there would be no dinner."

Alice concealed an embarrassment under a little laugh. "My husband told me of your kindness in placing your yacht at our disposal for the races."

"At his disposal."

"Oh, wasn't I included in that?"

"Certainly, if you would like to be. But tastes differ, and you and Mr. MacBirney being two----"

"Oh, no, Mr. Kimberly; my husband and I are one."

"--and possibly of different tastes," continued Kimberly, "I thought only of him. I hope it wasn't ungracious, but some women, you know, hate the water. And I had no means of knowing whether you liked it. If you do----"

"And you are not going to the races, yourself?"

"If you do, I shall know better the next time how to arrange."

"And you are not going to the races?"

"Probably not. Do you like the water?"

"To be quite frank, I don't know."

"How so?"

"I like the ocean immensely, but I don't know how good a sailor I should be on a yacht."

Imogene was ready to go home. Kimberly rose. "I understand," he said, in the frank and reassuring manner that was convincing because quite natural. "We will try you some time, up the coast," he suggested, extending his hand. "Good-night, Mrs. MacBirney."

"I believe Kimberly is coming to our side," declared MacBirney after he had gone upstairs with Alice.

Annie had been dismissed and Alice was braiding her hair. "I hope so; I begin to feel like a conspirator."

MacBirney was in high spirits. "You don't look like one. You look just now like Marguerite." He put his hands around her shoulders, and bending over her chair, kissed her. The caress left her cold.

"Poor Marguerite," she said softly.

"When is the dinner to be?"

"A week from Thursday. Mr. Kimberly says the yacht is for you, but the dinner is for me," continued Alice as she lifted her eyes toward her husband.

"Good for you."

"He is the oddest combination," she mused with a smile, and lingering for an instant on the adjective. "Blunt, and seemingly kind-hearted----"

"Not kind-hearted," MacBirney echoed, incredulously. "Why, even Nelson, and he's supposed to think the world and all of him, calls him as cold as the grave when he wants anything."

Alice stuck to her verdict. "I can't help what Nelson says; and I don't pretend to know how Mr. Kimberly would act when he wants anything. A kind-hearted man is kind to those he likes, and a cold-blooded man is just the same to those he likes and those he doesn't like. There is always something that stands between a cold-blooded man and real consideration for those he likes--and that something is himself."

Alice was quite willing her husband should apply her words as he pleased. She thought he had given her ample reason for her reflection on the subject.

But MacBirney was too self-satisfied to perceive what her words meant and too pleased with the situation to argue. "Whatever he is," he responded, "he is the wheel-horse in this combination--everybody agrees on that--and the friendship of these people is an asset the world over. If we can get it and keep it, we are the gainers."

"Whatever we do," returned Alice, "don't let us trade on it. I shrink from the very thought of being a gainer by his or any other friendship. If we are to be friends, do let us be so through mutual likes and interests. Mr. Kimberly would know instantly if we designed it in any other way, I am sure. I never saw such penetrating eyes. Really, he takes thoughts right out of my head."

MacBirney laughed in a hard way. "He might take them out of a woman's head. I don't think he would take many out of a man's."

"He wouldn't need to, dear. A man's thought's, you know, are clearly written on the end of his nose. I wish I knew what to wear to Mr. Kimberly's dinner."