Robert Kimberly Part 10

"And now," echoed Imogene, "you see how beautifully it turns out. The Nelsons declined, Mr. MacBirney disappoints me, Charles goes fis.h.i.+ng, and can't get home to-night in time to dine. But there are still seven of us--what could be better? Mrs. De Castro will claim the doctor.

Arthur won't desert me, and, Robert, you may give an arm to Fritzie and one to Mrs. MacBirney."

There was now no escape from a smile, and Alice resolved to be loyal to her hostess. The party moved into the drawing-room.

Fritzie Venable tried to engage Kimberly in answering her questions about a saddle-horse that one of his grooms had recommended. Kimberly professed to know nothing about it. When it became apparent that he really did know nothing of the horse, Fritzie insisted on explaining.

Her spirited talk, whether concerning her own troubles or those of other people, was not uninteresting. Soon she talked more especially to Alice. Kimberly listened not inattentively but somewhat perfunctorily, and the manner, noticeable at their second meeting, again impressed Alice.

Whether it was a constraint or an unpleasing reserve was not clear; and it might have been the abstraction of a busied man, one of that type familiar in American life who are inherently interesting, but whose business affairs never wholly release their thought.

Whatever the cause, Fritzie was sufficiently interested in her own stories to ignore it and in a degree to overcome the effect of it. She was sure of her ground because she knew her distinguished connection had a considerate spot in his heart for her. She finally attacked him directly, and at first he did not go to the trouble of a defence. When she at length accused him, rather sharply, of letting business swallow him up, Kimberly, with Alice listening, showed a trace of impatience.

"The old sugar business!" Fritzie exclaimed reproachfully, "it is taking the spirituality completely out of the Kimberly family."

Robert looked at her in genuine surprise and burst into a laugh.

"What's that?" he demanded, bending incredulously forward.

Fritzie tossed her head. "I don't care!"

"Spirituality?" echoed Kimberly, with a quiet malice. His laugh annoyed Fritzie, but she stuck to her guns: "Spirits, then; or gayety, or life!"

she cried. "I don't care what you call it. Anything besides everlastingly piling up money. Oh, these almighty dollars!"

"You tire of them so quickly, is it, Fritzie? Or is it that they don't feel on familiar terms enough to stay long with you?" he asked, while Alice was smiling at the encounter.

Fritzie summoned her dignity and pointed every word with a nod. "I simply don't want to see _all_ of my friends--ossify! Should you?" she demanded, turning to Alice for approval.

"Certainly not," responded Alice.

"Bone black is very useful in our business," observed Kimberly.

Fritzie's eyes snapped. "Then buy it! Don't attempt to supply the demand out of your own bones!"

It would have been churlish to refuse her her laugh. Kimberly and Alice for the first time laughed together and found it pleasant.

Fritzie, following up her advantage, asked Doctor Hamilton whether he had heard Dora Morgan's latest joke. "She had a dispute," continued Fritzie, "with George Doane last night about Unitarians and Universalists----"

"Heavens, have those two got to talking religion?" demanded Kimberly, wearily.

"George happened to say to Cready Hamilton that Unitarians and Universalists believed just about the same doctrine. When Dora insisted it was not so, George told her she couldn't name a difference. 'Why, nonsense, George,' said Dora, 'Unitarians deny the divinity of Christ, but Universalists don't believe in a d.a.m.ned thing.' And the funny part of it was, George got furious at her," concluded Fritzie with merriment.

"I suppose you, too, fish," ventured Alice to Kimberly as the party started for the dining-room.

"My fis.h.i.+ng is something of a bluff," he confessed. "That is, I fish, but I don't get anything. My brother really does get the fish," he said as he seated her. "He campaigns for them--one has to nowadays, even for fish. I can't sc.r.a.pe up interest enough in it for that. I whip one pool after another and drag myself wearily over portages and chase about in boats, and my guides fable wisely but I get next to nothing."

Alice laughed. Even though he a.s.sumed incompetence it seemed a.s.sumed.

And in saying that he got no fish one felt that he did get them.

Arthur was talking of Uncle John's nurse--whom the circle had nicknamed "Lazarus." He referred to the sacrifices made sometimes by men.

"It won't do to say," De Castro maintained, "that these men are mere clods, that they have no nerves, no sensitiveness. The first one you meet may be such a one; the next, educated or of gentle blood."

"'Lazarus,'" he continued, "is by no means a common man. He is a gentleman, the product of centuries of culture--this is evident from five minutes' talk with him. Yet he has abandoned everything--family, surroundings, luxuries--for a work that none of us would dream of undertaking."

"And what about women, my dear?" demanded Dolly. "I don't say, take a cla.s.s of women--take any woman. A woman's life is nothing but sacrifice. The trouble is that women bear their burdens uncomplainingly. That is where all women make a mistake. My life has been a whole series of sacrifices, and I propose people shall know it."

"No matter, Dolly," suggested Imogene, "your wrongs shall be righted in the next world."

"I should just like the chance to tell my story up there," continued Dolly, fervently.

Kimberly turned to Alice: "All that Dolly fears," said he, in an aside, "is that heaven will prove a disappointment. But to change the subject from heaven abruptly--you are from the West, Mrs. MacBirney."

"Do you find the change so abrupt? and must I confess again to the West?"

"Not if you feel it incriminates you."

"But I don't," protested Alice with spirit.

"Has your home always been there?"

"Yes, in St. Louis; and it is a very dear old place. Some of my early married life was spent much farther West."

"How much farther?"

"So much that I can hardly make anybody comprehend it--Colorado."

"How so?"

"They ask me such wild questions about buffalos and Indians. I have found one woman since coming here who has been as far West as Chicago, once."

"In what part of Colorado were you?"

"South of Denver."

"You had beautiful surroundings."

"Oh, do you know that country?"

"Not nearly as well as I should like to. It is beautiful."

Alice laughed repentantly as she answered: "More beautiful to me now, I'm afraid, than it was then."

"Any town is quiet for a city girl, of course. Was it a small town?"

"Quite small. And odd in many ways."

"I see; where the people have 'best clothes'----"

"Don't make fun."