Robert Kimberly Part 45

She stopped for sheer breath, but before he could find words she spoke again. "Now, I am done with you forever. I am out of your power forever. Thank G.o.d, some one will protect me from your brutality for the rest of my life----"

MacBirney clutched the back of a chair. "So you have picked up a lover, have you? This sounds very edifying from my dear, dutiful, religious wife." Hardly able to form the words between his trembling lips, he smiled horribly.

She turned on him like a tigress. "No," she panted, "no! I am no longer your religious wife. It wasn't enough that I should go shabby and hungry to make you rich. Because I still had something left in my miserable life to help me bear your cruelty and meanness you must take that away too. What harm did my religion do you that you should ridicule it and sneer at it and threaten and abuse me for it? You grudged the few hours I took from your household drudgery to get to church. You promised before you married me that our children should be baptized in my faith, and then refused baptism to my dying baby."

Her words rained on him in a torrent. "You robbed me of my religion.

You made me live in continual sin. When I pleaded for children, you swore you would have no children. When I told you I was a mother you cursed and villified me."

"Stop!" he screamed, running at her with an oath.

The hatred and suffering of years were compressed into her moment of revolt. They flamed in her cheeks and burned in her eyes as she cried out her choking words. "Stop me if you dare!" she sobbed, watching him clench his fist. "If you raise your hand I will disgrace you publicly, now, to-night!"

He struck her. She disdained even to protect herself and crying loudly for Annie fell backward. Her head caught the edge of the table from which she had risen.

Annie ran from the bedroom at the sound of her mistress's voice. But when she opened the boudoir door, Alice was lying alone and unconscious on the floor.

CHAPTER x.x.x

She revived only after long and anxious ministrations on Annie's part.

But with the return of her senses the blood surged again in her veins in defiance of her husband. Her first thought was one of pa.s.sionate hatred of him, and the throbbing pain in her head from her fall against the table served to sharpen her resentment.

MacBirney, possessed of enough craft to slip away from an unpleasant situation, returned early to town, only hoping the affair would blow over, and still somewhat dazed by the amazing rebellion of an enduring wife.

He realized that a storm might break now at any moment over his head.

Always heavily committed in the speculative markets, he well understood that if Kimberly should be roused to vengeance by any word from Alice the consequences to his own fortune might be appalling.

It chanced that Kimberly was away the following day and Alice had twenty-four hours to let her wrath cool. Two days of reflection were enough. The sense of her shame and her degradation as a woman at the hands of a man so base as her husband were alone enough to suggest moderation in speaking to Kimberly of the quarrel.

But more than this was to be considered. What would Kimberly do if she told him everything? A scandalous encounter, even a more serious issue between the two men was too much to think of. She felt that Kimberly was capable in anger of doing anything immoderate and it was better by far, her calmer judgment told her, to bury her humiliation in her own heart than to risk something worse. She was now, she well knew, with this secret, a terror to her cowardly husband, just as he had been, through a nightmare of wretched years, her own terror.

For the first time, on the afternoon of the second day, she found herself awaiting with burning impatience some word from The Towers. She had resolved what to say to Kimberly and wanted now to say it quickly.

When the telephone bell rang promptly at four o'clock her heart dilated with happiness; she knew the call came from one who never would fail her. Alice answered the bell herself and her tones were never so maddening in Kimberly's ears as when she told him, not only that he might come, but that she was weary with waiting. She stood at the window when his car drove up and tripped rapidly downstairs. When she greeted him he bent down to kiss her hand.

She did not resist his eagerness. She even drew a deep breath as she returned his look, and having made ready for him with a woman's lovely cunning, enjoyed its reward.

"I've been crazy to see you," he cried. "It is two days, Alice. How can I tell you how lovely you are?"

Her eyes, cast down, were lifted to his when she made her confession.

"Do you really like this rig? It is the first toilet I ever made with the thought of n.o.body but you in my head. So I told Annie" she murmured, letting her hand rest on his coat sleeve, "to be sure I was exactly right."

He caught her hands.

"Let's go into the garden," she said as he held them. "I have something to say to you."

They sat down together. "Something has happened since I saw you," she began.

"Has the break come?" demanded Kimberly instantly.

"We had a very painful scene night before last," said Alice. "The break has come. He has gone to town--he went yesterday morning. I have asked myself many questions since then. My father and mother are dead. I have no home to go to, and I will not live even under the same roof with him any longer. I feel so strange. I feel turned out, though there was nothing of that in what he said--indeed, I am afraid I did most of the talking."

"I wish to G.o.d I had heard you!"

"It is better not. Every heart knoweth its own bitterness----"

"Let me help bear yours."

"I feel homeless, I feel so alone, so ashamed--I don't know what I don't feel. You will never know what humiliation, what pain I have been through for two days. Robert--" her voice faltered for an instant.

Then she spoke on, "I never can tell you of the sickness and shame I have long felt of even pretending to live with some one I could not respect."

"Close the book of its recollection. I came into your life for just such a moment, to be everything you need. I am home, husband, and protection--everything."

"If I could only make my senses believe my ears." She paused. "It seems as if I am in a dream and shall wake with a horror."

"No, this is a dream come true. I foresaw this time and I have provided for it. Only delicacy has kept me from asking you before about your very personal affairs and your private purse, Alice. Understand at once," he took her hands vehemently, "everything I have is yours without the least reserve. Do you understand? Money is the last thing to make any one happy, I well know that, but in addition to the word of my heart to your heart--the transfers to you, Alice, have long been made and at this moment you have, merely waiting for you to draw upon them, more funds than you could make use of in ten lifetimes. Everything is provided for. There are tears in your eyes. Sit still for a moment and let me speak."

"No, I must speak. I am in a horrible position. I cannot at such a juncture receive anything from you. But there are matters to be faced.

Shall I stay here? If I do, he must go. Shall I go? And if I do go, where?"

"Let me answer with a suggestion. My family are all devoted to us.

Dolly and Imogene are good counsellors. I will lay the matter before them. After a family council we shall know just what to do and how. I have my own idea; we shall see what the others say. Dolly, you know, has taken you under her wing from the first, and Dolly you will find is a powerful protector. If I tell you what I did to-day you will gasp with astonishment. I cabled for a whole new set of photographs of the Maggiore villa. I want our first year together, Alice, to be in Italy."

CHAPTER x.x.xI

Accompanied by Imogene, Dolly hastened over to Cedar Lodge in the morning. Alice met them in the hall. "My dear," cried Dolly, folding her impulsively in her arms, "you are charged with fate!"

Then she drew back, laid her hands on Alice's shoulders and, bringing her face tenderly forward, kissed her. "How can I blame Robert for falling in love with you? And yet!" She turned to Imogene. "If we had been told that first night that _this_ was the woman of our destiny!

How do you bear your new honors, dearie? What! Tears! Nonsense, my child. You are freighted with the Kimberly hopes now. You are one of us. Tears are at an end. I, too, cried when I first knew of it. Come, sit down. Imogene will tell you everything." And having announced this much, Dolly proceeded with the telling herself.

"When you first knew of it?" echoed Alice. "Pray, when was that?"

"Oh, long, long ago--before ever you did, my dear. But no matter now.

We talked last night, Arthur, Charles, Imogene, and Robert and I until midnight. And this is what we said: 'The dignity of your personal position is, before everything else, to be rigidly maintained.' Mr.

MacBirney will be required to do this. He will be counselled on this point--made to understand that the obligation to maintain the dignity of his wife's position is primary. Robert, of course, objected to this.

He was for allowing no one but himself to do anything----"

"I hope you clearly understand, Dolly, I should allow Mr. Kimberly to do nothing whatever at this juncture," interposed Alice quickly.

"I understand perfectly, dear. But there are others of us, you know, friends of your own dear mother, remember. Only, aside from all of that, we considered that the situation admitted of but one arrangement.

Charles will tell Nelson exactly what MacBirney is to do, and Nelson will see that it is done. The proper bankers will advise you of your credits from your husband, for the present--and they are to be very generous ones, my dear," added Dolly significantly. "So all that is taken care of and Mr. MacBirney will further be counselled not to come near Cedar Lodge or Second Lake until further orders. Do you understand?"

"Why, yes, Dolly," a.s.sented Alice perplexed, "but Mr. MacBirney's acquiescence in all this is very necessary it seems to me. And he may agree to none of it."