Robert Kimberly Part 18

"Well, I don't care what you are _considering_, Robert," declared Dolly with unmistakable emphasis, "we will _talk_ about something else."

CHAPTER XI

The conversation split up. Kimberly, unruffled, turned to Alice and went on in an undertone: "I am going to tell you Francis's views on the subject anyway. He has the most intense way of expressing himself and the pantomime is so contributing. 'Suicide, Mr. Kimberly,' he said to me one day, 'is no good. What would a man look like going back to G.o.d, carrying his head in his hand? "Well, I am back, and here are the brains you gave me." "What did you do with them?" "I blew them out with a bullet!" That is a poor showing I think, Mr. Kimberly, for business. Suicide is _no_ good.'"

"But who is this Brother Francis," asked Alice, "whom I hear so much of?

Tell me about him."

"He is one of the fixtures at The Towers. A religious phenomenon whom I personally think a great deal of; an attendant and a nurse. He is an Italian with the courtesy of a gentleman worn under a black gown so shabby that it would be absurd to offer it to a second-hand man."

"Does the combination seem so odd?"

"To me he _is_ an extraordinary combination."

"How did you happen to get him?"

"That also is curious. The Kimberlys are cantankerous enough when well; when ill they are likely to be insupportable. Not only that, but kindness and faithfulness are some of the things that money cannot buy; they give themselves but never sell themselves. When my uncle fell ill, after a great mental strain, we hired nurses for him until we were distracted--men and women, one worse than another. We tried all colors and conditions of human kind without finding one that would suit Uncle John. I began to think of throwing him into the lake--and told him so.

He cried like a child the day I had the set-to with him. To say the truth, the old gentleman hasn't many friends left anywhere, but early impressions are a great deal to us, you know, and I remember him when he was a figure in the councils of the sugar world.

"I recall," continued Kimberly, "a certain Black Friday in our own little affairs when the wolves got after us. The banks were throwing over our securities by the wagon-load, and this old man who sits and swears and shakes there, alone, upstairs, was all that remained between us and destruction. He stood in our down-town office with fifty men fighting to get at him--struggling, yelling, screaming, and cursing, and some who couldn't even scream or curse, livid and pawing the air.

"He stood behind his desk all day like a field-marshal, counselling, advising, ordering, buying, steadying, rea.s.suring, juggling millions in his two hands like conjuror's b.a.l.l.s. I could never forget that. I am not answering your question----"

"But do go on!" There were no longer tears in Alice's eyes. They were alive with interest. "That," she exclaimed, "was splendid!"

"He won out, and then he set himself on vengeance. That was the end of our dependence on other people's banks. Most people learn sooner or later that a banking connection is an expensive luxury. He finally drove off the street the two inst.i.tutions that tried to save themselves at our expense. The father of Cready and Frank Hamilton, Richard Hamilton, a rank outsider, helped Uncle John in that crisis and Uncle John made Richard Hamilton to pillow his head on tens of millions.

Since that day we have been our own bankers; that is, we own our own banks. And I this is curious, never from that day to this has Uncle John completely trusted any man--not even me--except this very man we are talking about."

"Brother Francis?"

"Brother Francis. You asked how I got him; it is not uninteresting; a sort of sermon on good deeds. Just before this big school in the valley was started, the order to which he belongs had been expelled from France--it was years ago; the reformers over there needed their property. Half a dozen of the Brothers landed down here in the village with hardly a coat to their backs. But they went to work and in a few years had a little school. The industry of these people is astonis.h.i.+ng."

"One day they came to The Towers for aid. Old Brother Adrian, the head Brother, came himself--as he long afterward told me--with a heavy heart, indeed, with fear and trembling. The iron gates and the Krupp eagles frightened him, he said, when he entered the grounds. And when he asked for the mistress of the house, he could hardly find voice to speak. My mother was away, so Aunt Lydia appeared--you have seen her portrait, haven't you?"

"No."

"You must; it is not unlike you. Aunt Lydia and my mother were two of the loveliest women I have ever known. When she came down that day, Brother Adrian supposing it was my mother begged a slight aid for the work they had undertaken in the valley. Aunt Lydia heard him in silence, and without saying a word went upstairs, wrote out a cheque and brought it down. He glanced at the figures on it--fifty--thanked her, gave it to the young Brother with him, and with some little compliment to the beauty of The Towers, rose to go.

"While they were moving toward the door the young Brother, studying the cheque grew pale, halted, looked at it again and handed it to his superior. Brother Adrian looked at the paper and at the young Brother and stood speechless. The two stared a moment at each other. Aunt Lydia enjoyed the situation. Brother Adrian had thought the gift had been fifty dollars--it was fifty thousand.

"He fainted. Servants were hurried in. Even when he recovered, he was dazed--he really for a year had not had enough to eat. Aunt Lydia always delighted in telling how the young Brother helped him down the avenue after he could walk. This is a tediously long story."

"Do go on."

"When he again reached the big iron gates he turned toward the house and with many strange words and gestures called down the mercies of Heaven on that roof and all that should ever sleep under it----"

"How beautiful!"

"He blessed us right and left, up and down, fore and aft--he was a fine old fellow, Adrian. When my mother heard the story she was naturally embarra.s.sed. It looked something like obtaining blessings under false pretences. The only thing she could do to ease her conscience was to send over a second cheque."

"Princely!"

"It came near killing Brother Adrian. It seems odd, too, compared with the cut-and-dried way in which we solemnly endow inst.i.tutions nowadays, doesn't it? They all three are dead, but we have always stood, in a way, with Adrian's people.

"The young man that made the exciting call with him is now the superior over there, Brother Edmund. After the trouble we had with Uncle John, in finding some one he could stand and who could stand him, I went one day in despair to Brother Edmund. I allowed him to commit himself properly on what they owed to Aunt Lydia's goodness and the rest, and then began to abuse him and told him he ought to supply a nurse for my uncle. He told me theirs was a teaching order and not a nursing order.

I redoubled my harshness. 'It is all very well when _you_ need anything,' I said, 'when _we_ need anything it is different. Did those women,' I thundered, 'ask what you were, when you were starving here?'

"It wasn't precisely logical, but abuse should be vigorous rather than logical, anyway, and I tried to be vigorous. They got very busy, I can tell you. They held a conclave of some sort and decided that Uncle John must be taken care of. If he were a common pauper, they argued, they would not refuse to take care of him; should they refuse because he was a pauper of means? They concluded that it was a debt they owed to Aunt Lydia and by Heaven, next morning over came this sallow-faced, dark-eyed Brother Francis, and there he is still with Uncle John."

CHAPTER XII

MacBirney's personal efforts in effecting the combination with the Kimberly interests were adjudged worthy of a substantial recognition at the hands of the company and he was given charge of the Western territory together with a place on the big directorate of all the companies and made one of the three voting trustees of the syndicate stock. The two other trustees were, as a "matter of form," Kimberly men--McCrea and Cready Hamilton. This meant for MacBirney a settled Eastern residence and one befitting a gentleman called to an honor so unusual. He was made to feel that his new circ.u.mstances entailed new backgrounds socially as well as those that had been accorded him in a monetary way, and through the Kimberlys, negotiations were speedily concluded for his acquiring of the Cedar Lodge villa some miles across the lake from The Towers.

At the end of a trying two months, the MacBirneys were in their new home and Alice had begun receiving from her intimates congratulations over the telephone. Another month, and a busy one, went to finis.h.i.+ng touches. At the end of that period there was apparently more than ever to be done. It seemed that a beginning had hardly been made, but the new servants were at home in their duties, and Alice thought she could set a date for an evening. Her head, night and day, was in more or less of a whirl.

The excitement of new fortunes had come very suddenly upon her and with her husband she walked every day as if borne on the air of waking dreams. Dolly declared that Alice was working too hard, and that her weary conferences with decorators and furnishers were too continual.

Occasionally, Dolly took matters into her own hands and was frequently in consultation on domestic perplexities; sometimes she dragged Alice abruptly from them.

Even before it had been generally seen, the new home, once thrown open, secured Alice's reputation among her friends. What was within it reflected her taste and discrimination. And her appointments were not only good, they were distinctive. To be able to drape the vestments of a house so as to make of it almost at once a home was not a feat to pa.s.s unnoticed among people who studied effects though they did not invariably secure them.

Robert Kimberly declared that Alice, under many disadvantages, had achieved an air of stability and permanence in her home. Dolly told Lottie Nelson that nothing around the lake among the newer homes compared with it. Lottie Nelson naturally hated Alice more cordially than ever for her success. She ventured, when the new house was being discussed at a dinner, to say that Mr. MacBirney seemed to have excellent taste; whereupon Charles Kimberly over a salad bluntly replied that the time MacBirney had shown his taste was when he chose a wife.

"But," added Charles, reflectively, "perhaps a man doesn't prove his taste so much in getting a wife as in keeping one.

"Any man," he continued, "may be lucky enough to get a wife; we see that every day. But who, save a man of feeling, could keep, well, say Imogene or Dolly, for instance?"

Robert agreed that if the MacBirney home showed anything it showed the touch of an agreeable woman. "Any one," he declared, paraphrasing his brother, "can buy pretty things, but it takes a clever woman to combine them."

One result of the situation was a new cordiality from Lottie Nelson to the MacBirneys. And since it had become necessary to pay court to them, Lottie resolved to pay hers to Mr. MacBirney. She was resourceful rather than deep, and hoped by this to annoy Alice and possibly to stir Robert Kimberly out of his exasperating indifference. The indifference of a Kimberly could a.s.sume in its proportions the repose of a monument.

Lottie, too, was a mover in many of the diversions arranged to keep the lake set amused. But as her efforts did not always tend to make things easy for Alice, Dolly became active herself in suggesting things.

One Sat.u.r.day morning a message came from her, directing Alice to forbid her husband's going to town, drop everything, provide a lunch and join a motoring party for the seash.o.r.e. MacBirney following the lines of Robert Kimberly's experience with cars had secured at his suggestion, among others, a foreign car from which things might reasonably be expected.

Imogene Kimberly and Charles took Alice with them and Dolly rode with MacBirney, who had Robert Kimberly with him in the new car to see how it behaved. Kimberly's own chauffeur drove for them. Doane took Arthur De Castro and Fritzie Venable. The servants and the lunch followed with a De Castro chauffeur.

As the party climbed toward Sea Ridge a shower drove them into the grounds of a country club. While it rained, the women, their long veils thrown back, walked through the club house, and the men paced about, smoking.

Alice, seated at a table on the veranda, was looking at an ill.u.s.trated paper when Robert Kimberly joined her. He told her what extravagant stories he had heard from Dolly about the success of her new home. She laughed over his sister's enthusiasm, admitted her own, and confessed at length how the effort to get satisfactory effects had tired her. He in turn described to her what he had once been through in starting a new refinery and how during the strain of six weeks the hair upon his temples had perceptibly whitened, turning brown again when the mental pressure was relieved.

"I never heard of such a thing," exclaimed Alice.