Robert Kimberly Part 39

"They were gone longer than they expected," said Fritzie. "Robert was having such a good time. Lottie Nelson tells me Dolly's guest made the greatest sort of a hit with Robert. He didn't like her at first. Then she sang a song that attracted him, and he kept her singing that song all the time. He sat in a big chair near the piano and wouldn't move.

The funny thing was, she was awfully bored the way he acted. By the way, you must not miss the golf to-morrow. Everybody will be out."

Alice hardly heard the last words. She was thinking about Kimberly's entertaining the celebrity. Every other incident of the voyage had been lost upon her. When she found herself alone her disappointment and resentment were keen. Some unaccountable dread annoyed her. He was then, she reflected, like all other men, filled with mere professions of devotion.

Something more disturbed her. The incident revealed to her that he had grown to be more in her thoughts than she realized. Racks and thumb-screws could not have dragged from her the admission that she was interested in him. It was enough that he professed to be devoted to her and had been led away by the first nod of another woman.

CHAPTER XXVI

The golf course and the casino were crowded next day when Alice arrived.

Yet among the throng of men and women, her interest lay only in the meeting of one, as in turn his interest in all the summer company lay only in seeking Alice. She had hardly joined Imogene and the lake coterie when Kimberly appeared.

The players had driven off and the favorites, of whom there were many, could already be trailed across the hills by their following. When the "out" score had been posted, De Castro suggested that the party go down to the tenth hole to follow the leaders in.

A sea-breeze tempered the suns.h.i.+ne and the long, low lines of the club-house were gayly decorated. Pavilions, spread here and there among the trees, gave the landscape a festival air.

On the course, the bright coloring of groups of men and women moving across the fields made a spectacle changing every moment in brilliancy.

Kimberly greeted Alice with a gracious expectancy. He was met with a lack of response nothing less than chilling. Surprised, though fairly seasoned to rebuffs, and accepting the unexpected merely as a difficulty, Kimberly set out to be entertaining.

His resource in this regard was not scanty but to-day Alice succeeded in taxing his reserves. In his half-mile tramp with her in the "gallery,"

punctuated by occasional halts, he managed but once to separate her from the others. The sun annoyed him. Alice was aware of his lifting his straw hat frequently to press his handkerchief to beads of perspiration that gathered on his swarthy forehead, but she extended no sympathy.

In spite of his discomfort, however, his eyes flashed with their accustomed spirit and his dogged perseverance in the face of her coldness began to plead for itself. When the moving "gallery" had at last left them for an instant behind, Kimberly dropped on a bench under the friendly shade of a thorn apple tree.

"Sit down a moment, do," he begged, "until I get a breath."

"Do you find it warm?"

"Not at all," he responded with negligible irony. "It is in some respects uncommonly chilly." He spoke without the slightest petulance.

"For Heaven's sake, tell me what I have done!"

"I don't know what you mean."

"I mean, you are not kind in your manner toward me. I left you--I hoped you would remember--to do a favor for you----"

"For me?" Her tone was not in the least rea.s.suring.

"At least, I conceived it to be for you," he replied.

"That is a mistake."

"Very good. Let us call it mistake number one. I spent five days with Dolly and her guests----"

"Guests," repeated Alice, lingering slightly on the word, as she poked the turf slowly with her sunshade, "or guest?"

"Guest!" he echoed, "Ah!" He paused. "Who has put me wrong in so simple a matter? What I did was no more than to be agreeable to Dolly's guests.

I spent much time with the guest of honor at Dolly's repeated requests.

She happened to sing a song that pleased me very much, for one particular reason; it was your lovely little Italian air; I am not ashamed to say it brought back pleasant moments. Since she could do nothing else that was so pleasing," he continued, "I kept her singing the song. She became bored and naturally ceased to be good-natured.

Then, Dolly asked me to run around by Nantucket, which we could have done in two days. Not to be churlish, I consented. Then the coal gave out, which took another day."

"What a mishap! Well, I am glad to hear the trip went pleasantly."

"If you are, something has gone wrong with you----"

"Nothing whatever, I can a.s.sure you."

"You are offended with me."

"I a.s.sure you I am not."

"I a.s.sure you, you are." He took the sunshade from her hand. "You remember the fable about the man that tried to oblige everybody? He wasn't a refiner--he was a mere miller. At the start I really did my best for three days to entertain Dolly's lovely vampire and at the end of that time she made a face at me--and wound up by telling Dolly my head was full of another woman. Then--to be quite shamefully frank--I had to dodge Lottie Nelson's apologies for her unpleasant temper on an evening that you remember; altogether my lot was not a happy one. My head was full of another woman. You remember you said n.o.body could resist her charm? I thought of it. What is charm? I often asked myself. I saw nothing of charm in that charming woman. Who can define it? But penetration! She could read you like a printed book. We talked one night of American women. I dared to say they were the loveliest in the world. She grew incensed. 'They know absolutely nothing!' she exclaimed. 'That is why we like them' I answered. 'They are innocent; you are as corrupt as I am.' Then she would call me a hypocrite." He stopped suddenly and Alice felt his eyes keenly upon her. "Is it possible you do not believe what I am saying?"

"Innocent women believe whatever they are told."

"I don't deserve sarcasm. I am telling the simple truth. For once I am wholly at fault, Alice. I don't know what the matter is. _What_ has happened?"

"Nothing has happened; only to-day I seem especially stupid."

"Are you as frank with me as I am with you?"

She made no answer. He drew back as if momentarily discouraged. "If you no longer believe me--what can I do?"

"It isn't at all that I do not believe you--what difference should it make whether or no I believe you? Suppose I were frank enough to admit that something I heard of you had disappointed me a little. What credit should I have for commenting on what in no way concerns me?"

"Anything heard to my discredit should be carefully received. Believe the best of me as long as you can. It will never be necessary, Alice, for any one to tell you I am unworthy; when that day comes you will know it first from me. And if I ever am unworthy, it will not be because I willed to be--only because through my baseness I never could know what it means to be worthy of a woman far above me."

She reached out her hand for her sunshade but he refused to give it back. She tried to rise; he laid his hand on her arm. "A moment! It was about me, was it?" he continued. "Did you receive it cautiously?

Put me in your position. How do you think one would fare who came to me with anything to your discredit? Think of it, Alice--how do you think one would fare--look at me."

She looked up only for an instant and as if in protest. But in spite of herself something in her own eyes of confidence in him, some tribute to his honesty, stood revealed, and inspired him with a new courage.

"You say what you hear of me does not concern you. Anything you hear of me does concern you vitally." His intensity frightened her, and thinking to escape him, she still sat motionless.

"Everything I do, important or trivial, has its relation to you. Do you believe me? Alice, you must believe me. You do believe me. How can you say that anything you hear of me does not concern you? It concerns you above every living person. It concerns your happiness----"

"Such wildness--such extravagance!" she exclaimed trying to control her fear.

"I tell you I am neither wild nor extravagant. Our happiness, our very lives are bound up together. It isn't that I say to you, you are mine--I am yours."

The furious beating of her heart would not be stilled. "How can you say such things!"

"I say them because I can't escape your influence in my life. I only want to come up to where you are--not to drag you down to where I am--to where I have been condemned to be from the cradle. If what you hear of me conflicts with what I say to you, believe nothing of what you hear."

His words fell like blows. "If I could show you my very heart I could not be more open. It is you who are everything to me--you alone."

Breathless and rigid she looked away. Hardly breathing himself, Kimberly watched her. Her lip quivered. "Oh, my heart!" he murmured.