ROBERT KIMBERLY.
by Frank H. Spearman.
CHAPTER I
The dancing pavilion, separated from the Casino itself by an arched pa.s.sageway and affording another pretty view of the lake in the moonlight, was filled with young people when Alice entered.
"It will be cool here, I think," suggested Dolly De Castro, leading the way for her guest. "The Hickories is by no means a gay place," she continued, seating herself beside Alice where they could see the dancers moving in and out of the long room. "And it isn"t a club. There is just this Casino and the fields for golf and polo. It is a neighborhood affair--and really the quietest place of the kind in the Lake country.
Too bad you could not have been here three weeks ago for the Kermess."
"So Miss Venable said. They are great fun."
"We revive one occasionally to preserve the Dutch traditions of the family," continued Dolly. "Mrs. Charles Kimberly--Imogene--gave it this year. Last year I gave it. You would have seen everybody, especially the Sea Ridge people. Fritzie, dear?" Dolly paused to stay a slender young woman who was pa.s.sing. "Miss Venable," she explained, still speaking to Alice, "is our favorite cousin and will make you acquainted with every one."
Fritzie Venable whose lively, brown eyes escaped beauty only through a certain keenness of expression, stopped with a smile and waited on Dolly"s word.
"I want Mrs. MacBirney to go over to the Nelsons" after a while. This dance is really a young people"s affair," Dolly went on, turning to Alice. "These are friends of Grace"s and Larrie"s and I don"t know half of them. Take care of Mrs. MacBirney a moment, Fritzie, will you, while I find Arthur?" asked Dolly, rising and leaving the two together.
Alice looked after Dolly as she walked away. Dolly had the Kimberly height and preserved it with a care that gave dignity to her carriage.
Her dignity, indeed, showed in her words as well as in her manner; but in both it battled with a mental intensity that fought for immediate expression. Dolly persuaded and dictated unblushingly, though it could not be said, unpleasingly.
"I know you are enjoying Mrs. De Castro and her lovely home," said Fritzie to Alice. "Of course," she added as Alice a.s.sented, "The Towers is on a much grander scale. But I think Black Rock is the "homiest"
place on Second Lake. I suppose since I saw you yesterday you have been all around?"
"Not quite; but I"ve met many lovely people."
"You can"t help liking Second Lake people. They are a kind-hearted, generous set--notably so for people of means."
"Aren"t such people usually generous?"
Fritzie looked doubtful: "People of large means, perhaps, yes. Indeed, the only trouble here is, there are too many of that sort. Everybody is prosperous and everybody, with, I think, two exceptions, contented. I,"
laughed Fritzie, "am one of the exceptions. There being no possibility of preeminence in the line of means, I believe I have in my role of discontent a certain distinction; and as far as I can see, as much fun as anybody. In fact, I"ve often thought the only place where I should care to be rich would be among the poor. Where every one overflows with luxury distinctions are necessarily lost--and I like distinctions.
Isn"t this pretty for dancing?"
"Everything over here is pretty," said Alice.
"The place takes its name, "The Hickories," from the grove back of it.
You see there was nothing about the Lake itself to serve the purpose of a country club--no golf course, no polo field. All this stretch of the eastern sh.o.r.e is a part of The Towers estate, but Mr. Kimberly was good enough to set it apart for the rest of us--you have met Mr. Robert Kimberly?"
"Neither of the Mr. Kimberlys as yet."
"There is Charles now." Fritzie indicated a smooth-faced, youthful-looking man coming in through one of the veranda openings.
"That is he speaking to Dolly. They call him the handsome Kimberly."
Alice smiled: "For a man that"s rather a severe handicap, isn"t it?"
"To be called handsome?"
"It suggests in a way that good looks are exceptional in the family, and they are not, for their sister, Mrs. De Castro is very handsome, I think. Which brother is this?"
"The married brother; the other is Robert. They call him the homely Kimberly. He isn"t really homely, but his face in repose _is_ heavy. He is the bachelor."
"Mr. MacBirney tells me he is completely wrapped up in business."
"Rather--yes; of late years."
"That, I presume, is why he has never married."
"Perhaps," a.s.sented Fritzie with a prudent pause. "Some men," she went on somewhat vaguely, "get interested, when they are young, in women in general. And afterward never settle down to any one woman, you know."
"I should think that kind of a man would be tiresome."
Fritzie looked at young Mrs. MacBirney somewhat in surprise, but there was nothing in Alice"s frank eyes to provoke criticism. They met Fritzie"s with an a.s.surance of good-nature that forestalled hostility.
Then, too, Fritzie remembered that Mrs. MacBirney was from the West where people speak freely. "Robert is deliberate but not a bit tiresome," was all Fritzie said in answer. "Indeed, he is not communicative."
"I didn"t mean in that way," explained Alice. "I should only be afraid a man like that would take himself so seriously."
Fritzie laughed: "He wouldn"t know what that meant. You had music at your dinner to-night."
"Lovely music: the Hawaiian singers."
"I was sorry I couldn"t be there. They always come out to sing for Robert when they are in the States, and they are always in dreadful financial straits when they get as far from home as this, and he is always making up their deficits. They used to sing at The Towers, from barges on the lake. But The Towers is hardly ever opened nowadays for a function. The music over the water with the house illuminated was simply superb. And the evening winding up with fireworks!" sighed Fritzie in pleasing retrospect.
"There is Robert now," she continued.. "Do you see him? With Mrs.
Charles Kimberly. They are devoted. Isn"t she a slip? And the daintiest little thing. Robert calls her his little Quakeress--her people were Quakers. She seems lost among the Kimberlys--though Robert isn"t quite so tall as his brother, only more muscular and slower."
Robert Kimberly with Imogene on his arm entered from the opposite side of the room and walked across the floor to take her to her husband. His face was darker than that of Charles and heavier eyebrows rendered his expression less alert. Fritzie waved a hand at Imogene, who answered with her fan and greeted Alice.
"And there comes Mrs. Nelson--the pale brunette. Heroic woman, I call her. She has been fighting her advancing weight for ten years. Isn"t she trim? Heavens, she ought to be. She lives in Paris half the time and does nothing but dress and flirt."
"And who is it with her?"
"The stately creature with her is Dora Morgan. She is a divorcee. She likewise lives in Paris and is quite a singer. I haven"t heard her lately but she used to sing a little off the key; she dresses a little off the key yet, to say nothing of the way she acts sometimes. They are going to dance."
A small orchestra of stringed instruments with a French horn, hidden somewhere in a balcony, began the faint strains of a German waltz. The night was warm. Young people in white strolling through dim veranda openings into the softly lighted room moved at once out upon the floor to the rhythm of the music. Others, following, paused within the doorways to spin out ends of small talk or persist in negligible disputes. The dancers wore the pretty Hawaiian leis in honor of the Island singers.
"There were some interesting men at the dinner to-night," said Alice.
"You mean the German refiners? Yes, they are Charles Kimberly"s guests," remarked Fritzie as the floor filled. "There they are now, in that group in the archway with Mr. Nelson."
"But the smaller man was not at the dinner."
"No, that is Guyot, the French representative of the Kimberlys. He and George Doane, the bald, good-looking man next to him, have the party in charge. You met the immense man, Herr Gustav Baumann, at dinner. He is a great refiner and a Hawaiian planter. They are on their way to Honolulu now and leave within an hour or two in Robert Kimberly"s car for San Francisco. The Baumanns have known the Kimberlys for generations. Should you ever think Herr Baumann could dance? He is as light as a cat on his feet, but he waltzes in the dreadful European round-and-round way. The black-haired man with the big nose is Lambert, a friend of his, a promoter and a particularly famous chemist whom Robert Kimberly, by the way, hates--he is a Belgian. I can"t bear him, either--and, Heavens, Guyot is bringing him over here now to ask me to dance!"
Fritzie"s fear proved true. However, she accepted graciously as Lambert was brought forward and bowed in making his request. But she did not fail to observe that though he bowed low, Lambert"s bold eyes were glued on Alice even while he was begging Fritzie for the dance. Something in Alice"s slender face, the white hardly touched enough with pink, except under animation, held Lambert"s glance. Alice, already prejudiced, directed her eyes as far away as possible under the inspection and was glad that Fritzie rose at once.
Robert Kimberly joined Baumann and Edward Nelson. "You have not told me yet, Robert," Baumann began, "how you put in your time here in the country."