Robert Kimberly Part 40

But in the words she heard an incredible tenderness. It moved her where intensity had failed. It stilled the final pangs of revolt at his words.

She drifted for an instant in a dream. New and trembling thoughts woke in a reluctant dawn and glowed in her heart like faint, far streamers of a new day.

"Oh, my heart!" The words came again, as if out of another world. She felt her hand taken by a strong, warm hand. "Do you tremble for me? Is my touch so heavy? How shall I ever safeguard the flower of your delicacy to my clumsiness?"

She neither breathed nor moved. "No matter. You will teach me how, Alice. Learning how you can be happiest, I shall be happiest. I feel beggared when I lay my plea before you. What are all my words unless you breathe life upon them? A few things--not many--I have succeeded in. And I succeeded," the energy of success echoed in his confession, "only because I let nothing of effort stand between me and the goal.

You have never been happy. Let me try to succeed with your happiness."

A silence followed, golden as the moment. Neither felt burdened. About them was quiet and the stillness seemed to flow from the hush of their thoughts.

"It is easy for you to speak," she faltered at last, "too easy for me to listen. I am unhappy--so are many women; many would be strong enough never to listen to what you have said. I myself should be if I were what you picture me. And that is where all the trouble lies. You mistake me; you picture to yourself an Alice that doesn't exist. If I could return your interest I should disappoint you. I am not depreciating myself to extort compliments--you would supply them easily, I know. Only--I know myself better than you know me."

"What you say," he responded, "might have point if I were a boy--it would have keen point. While to me your beauty--do not shake your head despairingly--your beauty is the delicacy of girlhood, you yourself are a woman. You have known life, and sorrow. I cannot lead you as a fairy once led you from girlhood into womanhood--would that I could have done it! He should be a very tender guide who does that for a woman.

"But I can lead you, I think, Alice, to everything in this world that consoles a woman for what she gives to it. Do not say I do not know you--that is saying I do not know myself, men, women, life--it is saying I know nothing. Modest as I am," he smiled lightly, "I am not yet ready to confess to that. I do know; as men that have lived and tasted and turned away and longed and waited, know--so I know you. And I knew from the moment I saw you that all my happiness in this world must come from you."

"Oh, I am ashamed to hear you say that. I am ashamed to hear you say anything. What base creature am I, that I have invited you to speak!"

She turned and looked quickly at him, but with fear and resolve in her eyes. "This you must know, here and now, that I can never be, not if you kill me, another Dora Morgan."

He met her look with simple frankness. "The world is filled with Dora Morgans. If you could be, Alice, how could I say to you what I never have said, or thought of saying, to any Dora Morgan?"

"To be a creature would kill me. Do not be deceived--I know."

"Or do worse than kill you. No, you are like me. There is no half-way for you and me. Everything--or nothing!"

She rose to her feet. He saw that she supported herself for a moment with one hand still on the bench rail. He took her other hand within his own and drew her arm through his arm.

It was the close of the day. The sun, setting, touched the hills with evening, and below the distant Towers great copses of oak lay like islands on the mirrored landscape. They walked from the bench slowly together. "Just a little help for the start," he murmured playfully as he kept her at his side. "The path is a new one. I shall make it very easy for your feet."

CHAPTER XXVII

"I hope you rested well after your excitement," said Kimberly to Alice, laughing rea.s.suringly as he asked. It was the day following their parting at the golf grounds. He had driven over to Cedar Lodge and found Alice in the garden waiting for Dolly. The two crossed the terrace to a sheltered corner of the garden overlooking the bay where they could be alone. After Alice had seated herself Kimberly repeated his question.

She regarded him long and thoughtfully as she answered, and with a sadness that was unexpected: "I did not rest at all. I do not even yet understand--perhaps I never shall--why I let you talk to me in that wild, wild way. But if I did not rest last night, I thought. I am to blame--I know that--as much as you are. Don't tell me. I am as much to blame as you are. But this cannot go on."

His eyes were upon her hands as they lay across flowers in her lap. He took a spray from her while she spoke and bent his look upon it. She was all in white and he loved to see her in white. In it she fulfilled to him a dream of womanhood. "I ought to ask you what you mean when you say and think these fearful things," she went on, waiting for him to lift his eyes. "I ought to ask you; but you do not care what it means, at least as far as you are concerned. And you never ask yourself what it means as far as I am concerned."

He replied with no hesitation. "I began asking myself that question almost the first time I ever saw you. I have asked myself nothing else ever since. It means for both of us exactly the same thing; for you, everything you can ask that I can give you; for me, everything I can give you that you can ask."

"If there were no gulf between us--but there is. And even if what you say were true, you can see how impossible it would be for me to say those words back to you."

He looked at the spray. "Quite true; you cannot. But I shall ask so little--less of you than of any woman in the world. And you will give only what you can, and when you can. And you alone are to be the judge of what you can give and when, until our difficulties are worked out.

"I shall only show you now that I _can_ be patient. I never have been--I have confessed to that. Now I am going to the test. Meantime, you don't realize, Alice, quite, how young you are, do you? Nor how much in earnest I am. Let us turn to that for a while."

From a shrub at his side he plucked sprigs of rosemary and crushed them with the spray. "Even love never begins but once. So, for every hour that pa.s.ses, a memory; for every hour that tarries, a happiness; for every hour that comes, a hope. Do you remember?"

"I read it on your sun-dial."

"Every one may read it there. Where I want you to read it is in my heart."

"I wonder whether it is most what you say, or the way in which you say it, that gets people into trouble?"

"On the contrary; my life has been spent in getting people out of trouble, and in waiting to say things to you."

"You are improving your opportunity in that respect. And you are losing a still more delightful opportunity, for you don't know how much relief you can give me by leaving most of them unsaid."

"It is impossible, of course, to embrace all of our opportunities--often impossible to embrace the cause of them."

"Don't pick me up in that way, please."

He held his hands over hers and dropped the crushed rosemary on them.

"Would that I could in any way. Since I cannot, let me annoy you."

Dolly appeared at a distance, and they walked down the terrace to meet her. She kissed Alice. "What makes you look so girlish to-day? And what is all this color around your eyes? Never wear anything but white.

I never should myself," sighed Dolly. "You know Alice and I are off for the seash.o.r.e," she added, turning to her brother.

"So I hear."

"Come along."

"Who is going?"

"Everybody, I suppose. They all know about the trip."

"Where do you dine?"

"On the sh.o.r.e near the light-house. Arthur is bringing some English friends out from town; we are going to dance."

That night by the sea Kimberly and Alice danced together. He held her like a child, and his strength, which for a moment startled her, was a new charm when she glided across the long, half-lighted floor within his arm. Her grace responded perfectly to the ease with which he led, and they, stopped only when both were breathing fast, to stroll out on the dark pier and drink in the refreshment of the night wind from the ocean.

They remained out of doors a long time, talking sometimes, laughing sometimes, walking sometimes, sometimes sitting down for a moment or kneeling upon the stone parapet benches to listen to the surf pounding below them. When they went in, he begged her again to dance. Not answering in words she only lifted her arm with a smile. Making their way among those about them they glided, he in long, undulating steps, she retreating in swift, answering rhythm, touching the floor as lightly as if she trod on air.

"This plume in your hat," he said as they moved on and on to the low, sensuous strains of the music, "it nods so lightly. Where do you carry your wings?"

The very effort of speaking was exhilarating. "It is you," she answered, "who are supplying the wings."

The gayety of the others drew them more closely together. Little confidences of thought and feeling--in themselves nothing, in their unforbidden exchange everything--mutual confessions of early impressions each of the other, compliments more eagerly ventured and ignored now rather than resented. Surprise read in each other's eyes, dissent not ungracious and denial that only laughingly denied--all went to feed a secret happiness growing fearfully by leaps and bounds into ties that never could be broken.

The dance with its exhilaration, the plunging of her pulse and her quick, deep breathing, shone in Alice's cheeks and in her eyes. The two laughed at everything; everything colored their happiness because everything was colored by it.

The party drove home after a very late supper, Alice heavily wrapped and beside Dolly in Kimberly's car. Entertainments for the English party followed for a week and were wound up by Kimberly with an elaborate evening for them at The Towers. For the first time in years the big house was dressed _en fete_ and the illuminations made a picture that could be seen as far as the village.

Twenty-four sat at The Towers round table that night. Alice herself helped Dolly to pair the guests and philosophically a.s.signed her husband to Lottie Nelson. Kimberly complimented her upon her arrangement.

"Why not?" she asked simply, though not without a certain bitterness with which she always spoke of her husband. "People with tastes in common seem to drift together whether you pair them or not."