"I have led a number of forlorn hopes in my day. I am going to try this one. I have made up my mind to see your archbishop--I have spoken with Francis about it. I am going to find out, if nothing more, exactly where we stand."

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

In response to a request from Kimberly, Hamilton came out to spend the night at The Towers. Dolly was leaving just as the doctor arrived. She beckoned him to her car.

"You are to save the sixteenth for us, doctor; don't forget to tell Mrs.

Hamilton," she said. "We have persuaded Robert to give a lawn fete for Grace and Larrie and we want you. Then, too--but this is a secret--Robert's own wedding occurs two weeks later. That will be private, of course, so the affair on the sixteenth will include all of our friends, and we want you to be sure to be here."

When the doctor sat down with Kimberly in the library after dinner, the latter spoke of his coming marriage. "You know," he said briefly, as the doctor took a book from the table, "I am going to make Mrs.

MacBirney my wife."

"I do. I rejoice in it. You know what I think of her."

"She has at last set the date and we are to be married on the thirtieth of June. It will be very quiet, of course. And, by the way, save the sixteenth of June for us, doctor."

"Mrs. De Castro has told me. We shall be glad to come out."

"You, I know, do not approve of marriages made through divorce,"

continued Kimberly, bluntly.

"No, nor do you," returned the doctor. "Not as a general proposition.

In this case, frankly, I look on it as the most fortunate thing that has happened in the Kimberly family since your own mother married into it."

"She was a Whitney," muttered Kimberly, leaning back and lifting his chest as he often did when talking. "Arthur De Castro has a strain of that blood. He has all her refinement. The Kimberlys are brutes.

"MacBirney," he went on abruptly, "complained to McCrea yesterday--among other things that he wants to quarrel about--that I had broken up his home. I have not; I think you know that."

"A man came to me the other day"--the doctor laid aside his book--"to say he was going to stand on his 'rights' and sue for alienation a man who had run off with his wife. He asked me what I thought of it. 'I suppose you want my honest opinion,' I replied. 'Yet I am afraid it won't comfort you much. What "rights" have you established in your marriage that anybody is bound to respect?' He looked at me astonished.

'The rights of a husband,' he answered. 'Doesn't the law, doesn't society give them to me?' 'A man that asks equity from society,' said I, 'ought to come into court with clean hands.' I should like to know whose hands are cleaner than mine,' he replied, 'I married, made a home for my wife and supported her.'"

Kimberly leaning further back let his chin sink on his breast, but his eyes shining under his black brows showed that he followed the story.

"'But where are the fruits of your marriage?' I asked," continued the doctor, narrating. "'Don't stare at me--where are the children? How have you lived with your wife? As nature and law and society intended you should--or as a mere paramour? Children would have protected your wife as a woman; the care of children would have filled her life and turned her mind from the distraction of listening to another man. Why didn't you make a wife and mother of the woman you married instead of a creature? In that case you might have pleaded "rights." But you thought you could beat the game; and the game has beaten you. You thought you could take the indulgence of marriage without its responsibilities. Either you debased your wife to your level or allowed her to debase you to hers. Don't talk about "rights," you haven't any.'"

Hamilton ceased.

"What did the fellow say?" asked Kimberly.

"What could he say?" demanded Hamilton.

They sat a moment in silence.

Kimberly broke it. "It is a humiliating fact, Hamilton--I often think of it," he said moodily--"that the only way in which we can determine our own moral standing is by measuring the standards of our vicious cla.s.ses. I mean by our vicious cla.s.ses the social driftwood who figure in the divorce courts and the scandal of the day and should be placed in a social penitentiary.

"What is really alarming to-day is that our standards of what const.i.tutes vice have fallen so low. We speak of husbands; has there ever been a period in the history of our race when husbands have fallen so low? There was a time when the man that spoke the English tongue would defend his home with his life----"

"In those days they had homes to defend."

"--when it meant death to the man that crossed the threshold of his honor----"

"They had honor, too."

"But consider the baseness the American husband has reached. When he suspects his wife's infidelity, instead of hiding his possible disgrace, he employs detectives to make public the humiliating proofs of it. He advertises himself in the bill he files in the courts. He calls on all men to witness his abas.e.m.e.nt. He proclaims his shame from the housetops and wears his stripes as a robe of honor. And instead of killing the interloper he brands the woman that bears his name, perhaps the mother of his children, as a public creature--isn't it curiously infamous? And this is what our humane, enlightened, and progressive social views have brought us to--we have fallen too low to shoot!

"However," concluded Kimberly, shaking himself free from the subject, "my own situation presents quite other difficulties. And, by the way, Francis is still ailing. He asked the superior yesterday for a subst.i.tute and went home ill. You have seen Uncle John?"

"A moment, before dinner."

"Is he failing, Hamilton?"

"Mentally, no; physically, he loses ground lately."

"We die hard," said Kimberly, reflecting, "we can't help it. The old gentleman certainly brightened up after he heard of my coming marriage.

Not that I told him--Dolly did so. It pleased him marvellously. I couldn't understand exactly why, but Dolly suggested it was one of the natural instincts of Uncle John coming out. His eyes sparkle when the subject is mentioned," continued Kimberly dryly. "I really think it is the covetous instinct in him that is gratified. He has always disliked MacBirney and always itched to see him 'trimmed.' This seems to satisfy, heroically, Uncle John's idea of 'tr.i.m.m.i.n.g' him. He is as elated as if he were doing the 'tr.i.m.m.i.n.g' himself."

Kimberly explained to Hamilton why he had sent for him and asked him for a letter of introduction to the archbishop, whom he desired to meet.

"You are on one or two executive boards with him, I think," suggested Kimberly. "Do you know him well enough to oblige me?"

"I know him very well," returned Hamilton. "And you, too, ought to know him."

The surgeon wrote the note at once.

"MOST REVEREND AND DEAR ARCHBISHOP:

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

Kimberly was lunching next day at the city office when MacBirney's name came in with a request for an interview. He was admitted without delay and while a valet removed the trays and the table, Kimberly greeted his visitor and, indicating a chair, asked him to sit down. He saw at a glance the suppressed feeling in MacBirney's manner; the latter, in fact, carried himself as a man fully resolved to carry out a course yet fearful of the results.

"I have come to give notice of my withdrawal from the June pool in common," began MacBirney without preface.

"I am not the one to give notice to," returned Kimberly civilly, "inasmuch as I am not in the June pool and not in touch with its operations."

"Well, I've sold--I am selling," MacBirney corrected himself hastily, "my allotment, no matter who is at interest."

"McCrea and my brother are the organizers----"

"I understand," interjected MacBirney, "that you made a good deal of talk about my action in the December pool a year ago--I give you no chance to say I haven't served ample notice this time."