Robert Kimberly Part 6

"And what is that?" asked Alice, indicating an ivy-covered pile of stone in the midst of a cl.u.s.ter of elms at some distance to the left of the house and on a hill above it. "How odd and pretty!"

"That is the Morgan chapel."

"Oh, may we see it?"

"Of course," a.s.sented Dolly, less enthusiastically. "Do you really want to see it?"

It was Alice's turn to be interested: "Why, yes, if we may. How quaint-looking," she pursued, scrutinizing the facade.

"It is, in fact, a mediaeval style," said Dolly.

The car was turned into the driveway leading up to the chapel. When the two women had alighted and walked up the steps to the porch, Alice found the building larger than it had appeared from below the Morgan house.

Dolly led the way within. "It really is a beautiful thing," she sighed as they entered. "A reproduction in part--this interior--of a little church in Rome, that Mrs. Morgan was crazy about, Santa Maria in--dear me, I never can remember, Santa Maria in something or other. But I want you to look at this bal.u.s.trade, and to walk up into one of these ambones. Can't you see some dark-faced Savonarola preaching from one on the sins of society?" Dolly ascended the steps of one ambone as she spoke, while Alice walked up into the other.

"You look as if you might do very well there yourself on that topic,"

suggested Alice.

"But I don't have to get into an ambone to preach. I do well anywhere, as long as I have an audience," continued Dolly as she swept the modest nave with a confident glance.

They walked back toward the door: "Here's a perfect light on the chancel window," said Dolly pausing. "Superb coloring, I think."

Alice, held by the soft rich flame of the gla.s.s, halted a moment, and saw in a niche removed from casual sight the bronze figure of a knight standing above a pavement tomb. "Is this a memorial?"

"Poor Bertha," continued Dolly; "ordered most of these windows herself."

"But this bronze, Mrs. De Castro, what is it?"

"A memorial of a son of Bertha's, dear."

The shield of the belted figure bore the Morgan arms. An inscription set in the tomb at his feet took Alice's attention, and Dolly without joining her waited upon her interest.

"And in whose memory do you say this is?" persisted Alice.

"In memory of one of Bertha's sons, dear."

"Is he buried here?"

"No, he lies in Kimberly Acre, the family burial-ground on The Towers estate--where we shall all with our troubles one day lie. This poor boy committed suicide."

"How dreadful!"

"It is too sad a story to tell."

"Of course."

"And I am morbidly sensitive about suicide."

"These Morgans then were relatives of the Mrs. Morgan I met last night?"

"Relatives, yes. But in this instance, that signifies nothing. These, as I told you, were Fritzie's people and are _very_ different."

They reentered the car and drove rapidly down the ridge. In the distance, to the south and east, the red gables of a cl.u.s.ter of buildings showed far away among green, wooded hills.

"That is a school, is it?" asked Alice.

"No, it is a Catholic inst.i.tution. It is a school, in a way, too, but not of the kind you mean--something of a charitable and training school.

The Catholic church of the village stands just beyond there. There are a number of Catholics over toward the seash.o.r.e--delightful people. We have none in our set."

The ridge road led them far into the country and they drove rapidly along ribboned highways until a great hill confronted them and they began to wind around its base toward the lake and home. Half-way up they left the main road, turned into an open gateway, and pa.s.sing a lodge entered the heavy woods of The Towers villa.

"The Towers is really our only show-place," explained Dolly, "though Robert, I think, neglects it. Of course, it is a place that stands hard treatment. But think of the opportunities on these beautiful slopes for landscape gardening."

"It is very large."

"About two thousand acres. Robert, I fancy, cares for the trees more than anything else."

"And he lives here alone?"

"With Uncle John Kimberly. Uncle John is all alone in the world, and a paralytic."

"How unfortunate!"

"Yes. It is unfortunate in some ways; in others not so much so. Don't be shocked. Ours is so big a family we have many kinds. Uncle John!

mercy! he led his poor Lydia a life. And she was a saint if ever a wife was one. I hope she has gone to her reward. She never saw through all the weary years, never knew, _outwardly_, anything of his wickedness."

Dolly looked ahead. "There is the house. See, up through the trees? We shall get a fine view in a minute. I don't know why it has to be, but each generation of our family has had a brainy Kimberly and a wicked Kimberly. The legend is, that when they meet in one, the Kimberlys will end."

CHAPTER V

To afford Alice the effect of the main approach to The Towers itself, Dolly ordered a roundabout drive which gave her guest an idea of the beauties of the villa grounds.

They pa.s.sed glades of unusual size, bordered by natural forests. They drove among pleasing successions of hills, followed up valleys with occasional brooks, and emerged at length on wide, open stretches of a plateau commanding the lake.

A further drive along the bluffs that rose high above the water showed the bolder features of an American landscape unspoiled by overtreatment.

The car finally brought them to the lower end of a long, formal avenue of elms that made a setting for the ample house of gray stone, placed on an elevation that commanded the whole of Second Lake and the southern country for many miles.

Its advantage of position was obvious and the castellated effect, from which its name derived, implied a strength of uncompromising pride commonly a.s.sociated with the Kimberlys themselves.

At Dolly's suggestion they walked around through the south garden which lay toward the lake. At the garden entrance stood a sun-dial and Alice paused to read the inscription:

Per ogni ora che pa.s.sa, im ricordo.

Per ogni ora che batte, una felicita.

Per ogni ora che viene, una speranza.