Robert Kimberly Part 41

They were standing in an arbor and Kimberly was plucking grapes for her.

"He is less than nothing to me," she continued, "as you too well know--or I should not be here now eating your grapes."

"Your grapes, Alice. Everything here is yours. I haven't spoken much about our difficulties--'our' difficulties! The sweetness of the one word blots out the annoyance of the other. But you must know I shall never rest until you are installed here with all due splendor as mistress, not alone of the grapes, but of all you survey, for this is to be wholly and simply yours. And if I dare ask you now and here, Alice--you whose every breath is more to me than the thought of all other women--I want you to be my wife."

Her lips tightened. "And I am the wife of another man--it is horrible."

He heard the tremor in her tone. "Look at me."

"I cannot look at you."

"When you are free----"

"Free!" Her voice rising in despair, fell again into despair. "I shall never be free."

"You shall, and that speedily, Alice!" She could imagine the blood surging into Kimberly's neck and face as he spoke. "I am growing fearful that I cannot longer stand the thought of his being under the same roof with you."

"He cannot even speak to me except before Annie."

Kimberly paused. "I do not like it. I want it changed."

"How can I change it?"

"We shall find a way, and that very soon, to arrange your divorce from him."

"It is the one word, the one thought that crushes me." She turned toward him as if with a hard and quick resolve. "You know I am a Catholic, and you know I am ashamed to say it."

"Ashamed?"

"I have disgraced my faith."

"Nonsense, you are an ornament to any faith."

"Do not say that!" She spoke with despairing vehemence. "You don't realize how grotesque it sounds. If what you say were true I should not be here."

He drew himself up. There was a resentful note in his tone. "I did not suppose myself such a moral leper that it would be unsafe for any one to talk to me. Other Catholics--and good ones--talk to me, and apparently without contamination."

"It is only that _I_ have no right to. Now you are going to be angry with me."

He saw her eyes quiver. "G.o.d forbid! I misunderstood. And you are sensitive, dearest."

"I am sensitive," she said reluctantly. "More than ever, perhaps, since I have ceased practising my religion."

"But why have you ceased?"

Her words came unwillingly. "I could not help it."

"Why could you not help it?"

"You ask terribly hard questions."

"You must have wanted to give it up."

"I did not want to. I was forced to."

"Who could force you?"

He saw what an effort it cost her to answer. The words were dragged from her. "I could not live with my husband and practise it."

"So much the more reason for quitting him, isn't it?"

"Oh, I want to. I want to be free. If I only could."

"Alice, you speak like one in despair. There is nothing to be so stirred about. You want to be free, I want you to be, you shall be.

Don't get excited over the matter of a divorce. Your eyes are like saucers at the thought. Why?"

"Only because for me it is the final disgrace--not to be separated from him--but to marry again with him alive! It means the last step for me.

And the public scandal! What will they say of me, who knew me at home?"

"Alice, this is the wildest supersensitiveness. The whole world lives in divorced marriages. Public scandal? No one will ever hear of your divorce. The courts that grant your plea will attend to suppressing everything."

"Not everything!"

"Why not? We abase them every day to so many worse things that their delicate gorges will not rise at a little favor like that."

She looked at him gravely. "What does the world say of you for doing such things?"

"I never ask. You know, of course, I never pay any attention to what the world says of anything I do. Why should I? It would be difficult for the world to despise me as much as I despise it. You don't understand the world. All you need is my strength. I felt that from the very first--that if I could give you my strength the combination would be perfect. That is why I am so helplessly in love with you--my strength must be yours. I want to put you on a throne. Then I stand by, see?--and guard your majesty with a great club. And I can do it."

They laughed together, for he spoke guardedly, as to being heard of others, but with ominous energy. "I believe you could," murmured Alice.

"Don't worry over your religion. I will make you practise it. I will make a devotee of you."

"Robert! Robert!"

He stooped for her hand and in spite of a little struggle would not release it until he had kissed it. "Do you know it is the first time my name has ever pa.s.sed your lips?" he murmured.

She was silent and he went on with another thought. "Alice, I don't believe you are as bad a Catholic as you think. I'll tell you why. I have known Catholic women, and men, too, that have given up their religion. Understand, I know nothing about your religion, but I do know something about men and women. And when they begin elaborate explanations they think they deceive me. In matter of fact, they deceive only themselves. When they begin to talk about progress, freedom of thought, decay of dogmas, individual liberty and all that twaddle, and a.s.sume a distinctly high, intellectual att.i.tude, even though I don't know what they have given up, I know what they are a.s.suming; I get their measure instantly. I've sometimes thought that when G.o.d calls us up to speak on judgment day He will say in the most amiable manner: 'Just tell your own story in your own way.' And that our own stories, told in our own way, will be all the data He will need to go ahead on. Indeed, He would not always need divine prescience to see through them; in most cases mere human insight would be enough.

Just listen to the ordinary story of the ordinary man and notice how out of his own mouth he condemns himself. I see that sort of posturing every day in weak-kneed men and women who want to enlist large sums of money to float magnificent schemes. Now you are honest with yourself and honest with me, and I see in this a vital difference."

They walked back through the garden and encountered Brother Francis who was taking the air. Kimberly stopped him. Nelson and Imogene joined the group. "Ah, Francis!" exclaimed Imogene, "have they caught you saying your beads?"

"Not this time, Mrs. Kimberly."

"Come now, confess. What were you doing?"

Brother Francis demurred and protested but there was no escape. He pointed to The Towers. "I came out to see the beautiful illumination.

It is very beautiful, is it not?"