"But instead of the bridal procession that the guests were looking for, a clergyman came down the stairs with a white face. When he could speak, he announced as well as he could that the wedding would not take place that night; that a terrible accident had occurred, and that Tennie Morgan was lying upstairs dead."
Alice could not recall, even afterward, that Kimberly appeared under a strain; but she noticed as she listened that he spoke with a care not quite natural.
"You may imagine the scene," he continued. "But the worst was to come----"
"Oh, you were there?"
"When you hear the rest you will think, if there is a G.o.d, I should have been, for I might have saved him. I was in Honolulu. I did not even hear of it for ten days. They found him in his bathroom where he had dressed, thrown himself on a couch, and shot himself."
"How terrible!"
"In his bedroom they found a letter. It had been sent to him within the hour by a party of blackmailers, pressing a charge--of which he was quite innocent--on the part of a designing woman, and threatening that unless he complied with some impossible demands, his exposure and news of an action for damages should follow in the papers containing the account of his sister"s wedding. They found with this his own letter to his mother. He a.s.sured her the charge was utterly false, but being a Kimberly he knew he should not be believed because of the reputation of his uncles, one of whom he named, and after whom he himself was named, and to whom he had always been closest. This, he feared, would condemn him no matter how innocent he might be; he felt he should be unable to lift from his name a disgrace that would always be recalled with his sister"s wedding; and that if he gave up his life he knew the charges would be dropped because he was absolutely innocent. And so he died."
For a moment Alice stood in silence. "Poor, poor boy!" she said softly.
"How I pity him!"
"Do you so? Then well may I. For I am the uncle whom he named in his letter."
Unable or unwilling to speak she pointed to the tablet as if to say: "You said the uncle he was named after."
He understood. "Yes," he answered slowly, "my name is Robert Ten Broeck Kimberly."
Her eyes fell to the tessellated pavement. "It is frightfully sad," she said haltingly. Then as if she must add something: "I am very sorry you felt compelled to recall so painful a story."
"It isn"t exactly that I felt compelled; yet perhaps that expresses it, too. I have expected sometime to tell it to you."
CHAPTER XIII
The showers returned in the night. They kept Alice company during several sleepless hours. In the morning the sun was out. It was Sunday and when Annie brought her mistress her rolls and chocolate Alice asked the maid if she had been to church.
"Kate and I went to early church," said Annie.
"And what time is late church, Annie?"
"Ten thirty, Mrs. MacBirney."
"I am going myself this morning."
"And what will you wear?"
"Anything that is cool."
Alice was thinking less of what she should wear than of how she should tell her husband that she had resolved upon going to church. Painful experience had taught her what ridicule and resource of conjugal meanness to expect whenever she found courage to say she meant to go to church. Yet hope, consoling phantom, always suggested that her husband the next time might prove more amenable to reason.
When at last she managed casually to mention her momentous resolve, MacBirney showed that he had lost none of his alertness on the subject.
He made use first of surprise to express his annoyance. "To church?"
Then he gave vent to a contemptuous exclamation uttered with a semblance of good-natured indifference. "I thought you had got that notion pretty well out of your head, Alice."
"You have got it pretty well out for me, Walter. Sometimes it comes back. It came this morning--after a wakeful night. I haven"t been for a long time."
"What church do you want to go to?"
His disingenuousness did not stir her. "To my own, of course. There is a little church in the village, you know."
"Oh, that frame affair, yes. Awfully cheap looking, isn"t it? And it threatens rain again. Don"t mind getting wet?"
"Oh, no, I"ll take the victoria."
"You can"t; Peters is going to drive me over to The Towers."
"Then give me one of the cars."
"I understand they are both out of order."
"Oh, Walter! Can"t you have Peters drive you to The Towers after he takes me to Sunbury?"
"I have an engagement with Robert Kimberly at eleven o"clock."
"Could you change it a little, do you think, Walter?"
"An engagement with Robert Kimberly!"
"Or be just a little late for it?"
MacBirney used his opportunity to advantage. "Keep _him_ waiting!
Alice, when you get an idea into your head about going to church you lose your common-sense."
She turned to the window to look at the sky. "I can"t walk," she said hopelessly. Her husband made no comment. As her eyes turned toward the distant Towers she remembered that Robert Kimberly the evening before had asked--and so insistently that it had been one of the causes of her wakefulness--for permission to bring over in the morning some grapes from his hot-houses. He had wanted to come at eleven o"clock and she had a.s.sured him she should not be at home--this because, during some uneasy moments when they were close together in the car, she had resolved that the next morning she should seek if only for an hour an influence long neglected but quite removed from his. It was clear to her as she now stood at the window, that Kimberly had sought every chance to be at her personal service at eleven o"clock, even though her husband professed an engagement with him.
"Couldn"t Peters," she asked, turning again to MacBirney, "drive me down half an hour earlier--before you go? I can wait at the church till he comes back after me?"
MacBirney was reading the stock-market reports in the morning paper.
"All right," he said curtly.
She was contained this time. There had been occasions when scenes such as this had brought hot tears, but five years of steady battering had fairly subdued Alice.
At high ma.s.s, an hour later, villagers saw a fine lady--a Second Lake lady, they shrewdly fancied from the carriage that brought her--kneeling among them in a pew close to the altar, and quite oblivious of those about her, kneeling, too, at times when they stood or sat; kneeling often with her face--which they thought pretty--hidden in her hands as if it somehow had offended; kneeling from the credo until the stragglers in the vestibule and about the church door began to slip away from the last gospel. There was an unusual stir about the church because it was a confirmation Sunday and an archbishop, a white-haired man who had once been in charge of the little Sunbury parish himself, was present.
Alice followed the last of the congregation out of the door and into the village sunshine. She looked up and down the country road for her horses but none were in sight. Below the church where the farmers" rigs stood, a big motor-car watched by village boys was waiting. They knew that the car, with its black and olive tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, was from The Towers because they were familiar with the livery of the villa grooms.
Their curiosity was rewarded when they saw the fine lady come out of the church. The instant she appeared a great gentleman stepped from the black tonneau and, lifting his hat very high, hastened across the muddy road to greet her--certainly she made a picture as she stood on the church steps in her tan pongee gown with her brown hair curling under a rose-wreathed Leghorn hat.
Her heart gave a frightened jump when she saw who was coming. But when the gentleman spoke, his voice was so quiet that even those loitering near could not hear his words. There was some discussion between the two. His slight gestures as they talked, seemed to indicate something of explanation and something of defence. Then a suggestion of urgency appeared in his manner. The fine lady resisted.