A week pa.s.sed before Kimberly and Alice met. It was at Charles Kimberly"s. Doctor Bryson, the Nelsons, and Fritzie were there.
As Alice and her husband came down, Charles Kimberly and Robert walked out of the library. Robert bowed to MacBirney and to Alice--who scarcely allowed her eyes to answer his greeting.
"Are you always glad to get back to your own country, Mrs. Kimberly?"
asked MacBirney greeting his hostess.
Imogene smiled. "Dutifully glad."
"Is that all?"
"At least, I come back with the same feeling of relief that I am getting back to democracy."
"That is," suggested Lottie Nelson, "getting back to where you are the aristocracy."
Dolly, who with her husband joined them in time to hear the remark, tossed her head. "I always thank Heaven, Lottie, that we have no aristocracy here."
"But you are wrong, Dolly, we have," objected Robert Kimberly as the party went into the drawing-room. "Democracy is nothing but an aristocracy of ability. What else can happen when you give everybody a chance? We began in this country by ridding ourselves of an aristocracy of heredity and privilege; and we have only succeeded in subst.i.tuting for it the coldest, cruelest aristocracy known to man--the aristocracy of brains. This is the aristocracy that controls our manufacturing, our transportation, our public service and our finance; it makes our laws and apportions our taxation. And from this fell cause done our present griefs arise."
"But you must rid yourself of the grossly material conception of an aristocracy, Mr. Kimberly," said Nelson. "Our real aristocracy, I take it, is not our material one, as Robert Kimberly insists. The true aristocrat, I hold, is the real but mere gentleman."
"Exactly right," a.s.sented De Castro. "The gentleman and nothing else is the thing."
"There is nothing more interesting than the gentleman," returned Robert Kimberly, "except the gentleman plus the brute. But the exception is enormous, for it supplies our material aristocrat."
"You must remember, though, that ideas of superiority and inferiority are very tricky," commented Imogene. "And they persist for centuries.
To the Naples beggar, even to-day, the Germans are "barbarians." And whenever I encounter the two I never can decide which _is_ the aristocrat, the traveller or the beggar."
"I read your speech at the New England dinner last night," said Imogene, turning to Nelson, "and I saw all the nice things that were said about it this morning."
"If credit were due anywhere it would be to the occasion," returned Nelson. "There is always something now in such gatherings to suggest the discomforting reflection that our best native stock is dying out."
Dolly looked distressed. "Oh, dear, are those unfortunate people still dying out? I"ve been worrying over their situation for years. Can"t any one do anything?"
"Don"t let it disturb you, Mrs. De Castro," said Bryson.
"But I am afraid it is getting on my nerves."
"Nothing dies out that doesn"t deserve to die out," continued Bryson.
"As to the people Nelson speaks of, I incline to think they ought to die out. Their whole philosophy of life has been bad. Nature ought to be ashamed, of course, to pa.s.s them by and turn to inferior races for her recruits. But since all races are inferior to them, what can she do but take refuge with the despised foreigner? The men and women that take life on the light-housekeeping plan may do so if they will--for one generation. What may safely be counted on is that nature will find its workers in the human hive even if it has to turn to the savage tribes."
"But the poor savages, doctor--they also are on the verge of extinction, are they not?" demanded Dolly.
"Then nature will provide its workers from one unfailing source--from those we have always with us, the poor and the despised. And it can be depended on with equal certainty to cast the satisfied, cultivated, and intellectual drones into outer darkness."
"My dear, but the doctor is savage, isn"t he?" Lottie Nelson made the appeal indolently to Imogene. "We shall soon be asking, doctor," she concluded languidly, "which tribe you belong to."
"He would answer, the medical tribe," suggested Fritzie.
"Speaking of savages," interposed Arthur De Castro, "Charles and I were making a portage once on the York River. On the trail I met two superb little Canadian lads--straight, swarthy, handsome fellows. They couldn"t speak English. "You must be French," I suggested, addressing the elder by way of compliment in that tongue. Imagine my surprise when he answered with perfect composure, "Non, monsieur. Nous sommes des sauvages!""
"For my part," said Imogene, "I am always glad to hear Doctor Bryson defend families and motherhood. I don"t care how savage he gets."
"I defend motherhood because to me it is the highest state of womanhood.
Merely as an instinct, its mysteries are a never-ending marvel."
Lottie Nelson looked patiently bored. "Oh, tell us about them, do, doctor."
"I will tell you of one," returned Bryson undismayed. "Take the young mother that brings her first child into the world; from the day of its birth until the day of that mother"s death, her child is never wholly out of her thought. The child may die, may be forgotten by every one else on earth, may be to all other conscious existence in this world as a thing that never was. But in its mother"s heart it never dies. I call that a mystery."
The doctor"s glance as he finished fell on Alice"s face. He was sorry at once that he had spoken at all. Her eyes were fixed on him with a look of acute pain.
Alice hardly knew Doctor Bryson, but what he saw in the sadness of her face he quite understood. And though they had never met, other than in a formal way, he never afterward felt that they were wholly strangers.
CHAPTER XXIV
"By the way, Nelson," said De Castro, "what is there in this story in the afternoon papers about Doane and Dora Morgan?"
"It is substantially true, I fancy. They have eloped."
"From whom could they possibly be eloping?" asked Lottie.
"Why, you must know Doane has a wife and two little girls," exclaimed Dolly indignantly.
"I supposed his wife was divorced," returned Lottie helplessly. "Why wasn"t she?"
"Perhaps," suggested Fritzie, "there wasn"t time."
"I don"t care; Dora"s life has been a very unhappy one," persisted Lottie, "and frankly I am sorry for her."
"Even though she has run away with another woman"s husband," said Imogene.
"Don"t _you_ think she deserves a great deal of sympathy, Robert?" asked Lottie, appealing to Kimberly.
"I can"t say that I do," he answered slowly. "What moves one in any consideration of a situation of that kind is, in the first place, the standards of those that fall into it. Who, for instance, can sc.r.a.pe up any interest in the affairs of the abandoned? Or of those who look on irregular relations pretty much as they do on regular? People to enlist sympathy in their troubles must respect themselves."
The conversation drifted and Alice, within range of both tables, caught s.n.a.t.c.hes of the talk at each. She presently heard Lottie Nelson speaking petulantly, and as if repeating a question to Kimberly. "What _do_ men most like, Robert?" Alice could not see Kimberly"s face, but she understood its expression so well that she could imagine the brows either luminously raised if Kimberly were interested, or patiently flat if he were not.
"You ought to know," she heard Kimberly answer. "You have been very successful in pleasing them."
"And failed where I have most wanted to succeed. Oh, no. I am asking you. What _do_ they like?"
The answer halted. "I can"t tell you. To me, of course, few men seem worth pleasing."
"What should you do to please a man, if you were a woman?"