Athalie
by Robert W. Chambers · English · Gutenberg #27342 · 555,739 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Athalie
Author: Robert W. Chambers
Illustrator: Frank Craig
Release date: November 27, 2008 [eBook #27342]
Most recently updated: January 4, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27342
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATHALIE ***
Produced by Suzanne Shell, Jen Haines and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Transcribers Note: Spelling variations and colloquial
spellings have been retained as they appear in the
original.
ATHALIE
[Illustration: "'Clive is a good deal of a man.... I never
had a better companion.'" [PAGE 242.]]
ATHALIE
BY
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
FRANK CRAIG
NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1915
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
COPYRIGHT, 1914, 1915, BY THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
TO
MY FRIEND
MESSMORE KENDALL
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"'Clive is a good deal of a man.... I never had a
better companion.'" _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
"'Boy?' inquired Ledlie, resting one soil-incrusted
boot on his spade." 2
"'I'd like to come down here for the summer vacation,'
said the boy, awkwardly." 34
"'I'm glad I saw you,' said the girl; 'I hope you
won't forget me.'" 40
"C. Bailey, Jr., and Athalie Greensleeve ... had
supped together more than once at the Regina." 78
"Beside her, eager, happy, flattered, walked C.
Bailey, Jr., very conscious that he was being
envied." 80
"'I like her,' repeated Clive, Jr., a trifle annoyed." 82
"It was in this place that Clive encountered Cecil
Reeve one stormy midnight." 114
"He rather liked being with his own sort again." 116
"'Wasn't a civil bow enough?'" 126
"One lovely morning in May she arose early in order
to write to Clive." 148
"Mr. Wahlbaum ... was very quiet, very considerate,
very attentive." 150
"Doris continued to haunt agencies and theatrical offices." 154
"With him she visited the various museums and art
galleries." 168
"With a basket containing Hafiz, her suit-case, and a
furled umbrella she started for her new lodgings." 178
"'Wasn't it suicide?' asked Athalie." 180
"She said in a low voice, still watching intently:
'Blue sky, green trees, a snowy shore, and little
azure wavelets....'" 210
"Mrs. Bailey, Jr., looked pale and pretty sitting
there." 232
"During convalescence he read 'Under Two Flags'
and approved the idea." 234
"His theme happened to be his own wonderful trap
record, that evening." 244
"'There is your extra,' she said pleasantly." 266
"Once more, the old happy companionship began." 284
"Finally ... he cut the envelope and seated himself
beside the lamp." 300
"When he saw her he sprang out and came forward." 316
"She suddenly sat upright, resting one slender hand on
his shoulder." 330
"Clive nodded: 'Keep them off the place, Connor.'" 346
"'Sure I was that worritted,' burst out Mrs. Connor." 348
"'Michael,' she said, smiling." 372
"And then her hands were in his and she was looking
into his beloved eyes once more." 378
"Sometimes Athalie lunched there in the garden with
him." 400
ATHALIE
CHAPTER I
When Mrs. Greensleeve first laid eyes on her baby she knew it was
different from the other children.
"What is the matter with it?" she asked.
The preoccupied physician replied that there was nothing the matter.
In point of fact he had been admiring the newly born little girl when
her mother asked the question.
"She's about as perfect as they make 'em," he concluded, placing the
baby beside her mother.
The mother said nothing. From moment to moment she turned her head on
the pillow and gazed down at her new daughter with a curious,
questioning expression. She had never gazed at any of her other
children so uneasily. Even after she fell asleep the slightly puzzled
expression remained as a faint crease between her brows.
Her husband, who had been wandering about from the bar to the office,
from the office to the veranda, and occasionally entirely around the
exterior of the road-house, came in on tiptoe and looked rather
vacantly at them both.
Then he went out again as though he was not sure where he might be
going. He was a little man and mild, and he did not look as though he
had been created for anything in particular, not even for the purpose
of procreation.
It was one of those early April days when birds make a great fuss over
their vocal accomplishments, and the brown earth grows green over
night--when the hot spring sun draws vapours from the soil, and the
characteristic Long Island odour of manure is far too prevalent to
please anybody but a native.
Peter Greensleeve, wandering at hazard around the corner of the
tavern, came upon his business partner, Archer B. Ledlie leisurely
digging for bait in the barn-yard. The latter was in his
shirt-sleeves--always a good sign for continued fair weather.
"Boy?" inquired Ledlie, resting one soil-incrusted boot on his spade.
"Another girl," admitted Greensleeve.
"Gawsh!" After a moment's rumination he picked up a squirming
angle-worm from the edge of the shallow excavation and dropped it into
the empty tomato can.
"Going fishing?" inquired Greensleeve without interest.
"I dunno. Mebbe. Your boy Jack seen a trout into Spring Pond."
Ledlie, who was a large, heavy, red-faced man with a noticeably small
mouth, faded blue eyes, and grey chin whiskers, picked a budding sprig
from a bush, nibbled it, and gravely seated himself on the edge of the
horse-trough. He was wearing a cigar behind his ear which he
presently extracted, gazed at, then reconsidering the extravagance,
replaced.
[Illustration: "'Boy?' inquired Ledlie, resting one soil-incrusted
boot on his spade."]
"Three gals, Pete--that's your record," he remarked, gazing
reproachfully out across the salt meadows beyond the causeway. "They
won't bring you in nothin'," he added, shutting his thin lips.
"I kind of like them," said Greensleeve with a sigh.
"They'll eat their heads off," retorted Ledlie; "then they'll git
married an' go off some'rs. There ain't nothin' to gals nohow. You
oughtn't to have went an' done it."
There seemed to be no further defence for Greensleeve. Ledlie
continued to chew a sprig of something green and tender, revolving it
and rolling it from one side of his small, thin-lipped mouth to the
other. His thin little partner brooded in the sunshine. Once he
glanced up at the sign which swung in front of the road-house: "Hotel
Greensleeve: Greensleeve and Ledlie, proprietors."
"Needs painting, Archie," he volunteered mildly.
"I dunno," said the other. "Since the gunnin' season closed there
ain't been no business except them sports from New York. The bar done
good; that's all."
"There were two commercial men Wednesday week."
"Yes, an' they found fault with their vittles. They can go to the
other place next time," which was as near as Ledlie ever came to
profanity.
After a silence Ledlie said: "Here come your kids, Pete. I guess I'll
let 'em dig a little bait for me."
Down the road they came dancing, and across the causeway over Spring
Pond--Jack, aged four, Doris, three, and Catharine, two; and they
broke into a run when they caught sight of their father, travelling as
fast as their fat little legs could carry them.
"Is there a new baby? Is there a new baby?" shouted Jack, while still
at a distance.
"Is it a boy? I want another brother! Is it a boy?" shrilled Doris as
she and baby Catharine came panting up with flushed and excited faces.
"It's a girl," said Greensleeve mildly. "You'd better go into the
kitchen and wash your faces."
"A girl!" cried Jack contemptuously. "What did mamma do that for?"
"Oh, goodness!" pouted Doris, "I didn't want any more girls around.
What are you going to name her, papa?"
"Athalie, I believe," he said absently.
"Athalie! What kind of name is that?" demanded Jack.
"I dunno. Your mamma wanted it in case the baby was a girl."
The children, breathing hard and rapidly, stood in a silent cluster
looking up at their father. Ledlie yawned frightfully, and they all
instantly turned their eyes on him to discover if possible the
solitary tooth with which rumour credited him. They always gazed
intently into his mouth when he yawned, which irritated him.
"Go on in and wash yourselves!" he said as soon as speech became
possible. "Ain't you heard what your papa told you!"
They were not afraid of Mr. Ledlie; they merely found him
unsympathetic, and therefore concerned themselves with him not at all.
Ignoring him, Jack said, addressing his father: "I nearly caught a
snake up the road. Gee! But he was a dandy."
"He had stripes," said Doris solemnly.
"He wiggled," asserted little Catharine, and her eyes became very
round.
"What kind was he, papa?" inquired Jack.
"Oh, just a snake," replied Greensleeve vaguely.
The eager faces of the children clouded with disappointment; dawning
expectancy faded; it was the old, old tragedy of bread desired, of the
stone offered.
"I liked that snake," muttered Jack. "I wanted to keep him for a pet.
I wanted to know what kind he was. He seemed very friendly."
"Next time," suggested Ledlie, "you pet him on the head with a rock."
"What?"
"Snakes is no good. There's pizen into 'em. You kill every one you see
an' don't ask questions."
In the boy's face intelligence faded. Impulse lay stunned after its
headlong collision with apathy, and died out in the clutch of
ignorance.
"Is that so, papa?" he asked, dully.
"Yes, I guess so," nodded Greensleeve. "Mr. Ledlie knows all about
snakes and things."
"Go on in an' wash!" repeated Ledlie. "You don't git no supper if you
ain't cleaned up for table. Your papa says so, don't you, Pete?"
Greensleeve usually said what anybody told him to say.
"Walk quietly," he added; "your poor mamma's asleep."
Reluctantly the children turned toward the house, gazing inquiringly
up at the curtained window of their mother's room as they trooped
toward the veranda.
Jack swung around on the lower step:
"Papa!" he shouted.
"Well?"
"I forget what her name is!"
"Athalie."
CHAPTER II
Her first memories were of blue skies, green trees, sunshine, and the
odour of warm moist earth.
Always through life she retained this memory of her early
consciousness--a tree in pink bloom; morning-glories covering a
rotting board fence; deep, rich, sun-warmed soil into which her baby
fingers burrowed.
A little later commenced her memory of her mother--a still,
white-shawled figure sewing under a peach tree in pink bloom.
Vast were her mother's skirts, as Athalie remembered them--a wide
white tent under which she could creep out of the sunlight and hide.
Always, too, her earliest memories were crowded with children, hosts
of them in a kaleidoscopic whirl around her, and their voices seemed
ever in her ears.
By the age of four she had gradually understood that this vaguely
pictured host of children numbered only three, and that they were her
brother and two sisters--very much grown up and desirable to play
with. But at seven she began to be surprised that Doris and Catharine
were no older and no bigger than they were, although Jack's twelve
years still awed her.
It was about this time that the child began to be aware of a
difference between herself and the other children. For a year or two
it did not trouble her, nor even confuse her. She seemed to be aware
of it, that was all.
When it first dawned on her that her mother was aware of it too, she
could never quite remember. Once, very early in her career, her mother
who had been sewing under the peach tree, dropped her work and looked
down at her very steadily where she sat digging holes in the dirt.
And Athalie had a vague idea in after life that this was the
beginning; because there had been a little boy sitting beside her all
the while she was digging; and, somehow, she was aware that her mother
could not see him.
She was not able to recollect whether her mother had spoken to her, or
even whether she herself had conversed with the little boy. He never
came again; of that she was positive.
When it was that her brother and sisters began to suspect her of being
different she could not remember.
In the beginning she had not understood their half-incredulous
curiosity concerning her; and, ardently communicative by nature, she
was frank with them, confident and undisturbed, until their child-like
and importunate aggressiveness, and the brutal multiplicity of their
questions drove her to reticence and shyness.
For what seemed to amaze them or excite them to unbelief or to jeers
seemed to her ordinary, unremarkable, and not worthy of any particular
notice--not even of her own.
That she sometimes saw things "around corners," as Jack put it, had
seemed natural enough to her. That, now and then, she seemed to
perceive things which nobody else noticed never disturbed her even
when she became aware that other people were unable to see them. To
her it was as though her own eyesight were normal, and astigmatism the
rule among other people.
But the blunt, merciless curiosity of other children soon taught
Athalie to be on her guard. She learned that embarrassed reserve which
tended toward secretiveness and untruth before she was eleven.
And in school she learned to lie, learned to deny accusations of being
different, pretended that what her sisters accused her of had been
merely "stories" made up to amuse them.
So, in school, she made school-life endurable for herself. Yet,
always, there seemed to be _something_ between her and other children
that made intimacies impossible.
At the same time she was conscious of the admiration of the boys, of
something about herself that they liked outside of her athletic
abilities.
She had a great many friends among the boys; she could out-run,
out-jump, out-swim any of them in the big country school. She was
supple and trim, golden-haired and dark-eyed, and ready for anything
that required enterprise and activity of mind or body. Her ragged
skirts were still short at eleven--short enough not to impede her. And
she led the chase for pleasure all over that part of Long Island,
running wild with the pack from hill to tide-water until every farmer
in the district knew "the Greensleeve girl."
There was, of course, some deviltry among cherry trees and apple
orchards--some lawlessness born of sheer exuberance and superb
health--some malicious trespassing, some harrying of unpopular
neighbours. But not very much, considering.
Her home life was colourless, calm, comfortable, and uneventful as she
regarded it. Business at the Hotel Greensleeve had fallen off and in
reality the children had very little. But children at that age who
live all day in the open, require little except sympathetic
intelligence for their million daily questions.
This the Greensleeve children found wanting except when their mother
did her best to stimulate her own latent intelligence for their sakes.
But it rested on the foundation of an old-fashioned and limited
education. Only the polite, simpler, and more maidenly arts had been
taught her in the little New Jersey school her father had kept. And
her education ceased when she married Greensleeve, the ex-"professor"
of penmanship, a kind, gentle, unimaginative man, unusually dull even
for a teacher. And he was a failure even at that.
They began married life by buying the house they were now living in;
and when Greensleeve also failed as a farmer, they opened the place as
a public tavern, and took in Ledlie to finance it.
So it was to her mother that Athalie went for any information that her
ardent and growing intellect required. And her mother, intuitively
surmising the mind-hunger of youth, and its vigorous needs, did her
limited best to satisfy it in her children. And that is really all the
education they had; for what they got in the country school amounted
to--well it amounted to what anybody ever gets in school.
* * * * *
Her most enduring, most vivid memories of her mother clustered around
those summer days of her twelfth year, brief lamp-lit scenes between
long, sunlit hours of healthy, youthful madness--quiet moments when
she came in flushed and panting from the headlong chase after
pleasure, tired, physically satisfied, to sit on the faded carpet at
her mother's feet and clasp her hands over her mother's knees.
Then "what?" and "why?" and "when?" and "how?" were the burden of the
child's eager speech. Nothing seemed to have escaped her quick ears or
eyes, no natural phenomena of the open; life, birth, movement, growth,
the flow, and ebb of tides, thunder pealing from high-piled clouds,
the sun shining through fragrant falling rain, mists that grew over
swamp and meadow.
And, "Why?" she always asked.
Nothing escaped her;--swallows skimming and sheering Spring Pond,
trout that jumped at sunset, the quick furry shapes of mink and
muskrat, the rattling flash of a blue-winged kingfisher, a tall heron
wading, a gull mewing.
Nothing escaped her; the casual caress of mating birds, procreation in
farm-yard and barn-yard, fledgelings crying from a robin's nest of mud
and messy refuse, blind kittens tugging at their blinking mother.
Death, too, she saw,--a dusty heap of feathers here, a little mound of
fur, there, which the idle breezes stirred under the high sky,--and
once a dead dog, battered, filthy and bloody, shot by the roadside;
and once some pigs being killed on a farm, all screaming.
Then, in that school as in every school, there was the sinister
minority, always huddling in corners, full of mean silences and
furtive leering. And their half-heard words, half-understood
phrases,--a gesture, a look that silenced and perplexed her--these the
child brought also to her mother, sitting at her feet, face against
her knees.
* * * * *
For a month or two her mother had not been very well, and the doctor
who had brought Athalie into the world stopped in once or twice a
week. When he was with her mother the children were forbidden the
room.
One evening in particular Athalie remembered. She had been running her
legs off playing hounds-and-hares across country from the salt-hay
stacks to the chestnut ridge, and she had come in after sunset to find
her mother sewing in her own bedroom, her brother and sisters studying
their lessons in the sitting-room where her father also sat reading
the local evening paper.
Supper was over, but Athalie went to the kitchen and presently
returned to her mother's room carrying a bowl of bread and milk and
half a pie.
Here on the faded carpet at her mother's feet, full in the lamplight
she sat her down and ate in hungry silence while her mother sewed.
Athalie seldom studied. A glance at her books seemed to be enough for
her. And she passed examinations without effort under circumstances
where plodders would have courted disaster.
Rare questions from her mother, brief replies marked the meal. When
she had satisfied her hunger she jumped up, ran downstairs with the
empty dishes, and came slowly back again,--a slender, supple figure
with tangled hair curling below her shoulders, dirty shirt-waist,
soiled features and hands, and the ragged blue skirt of a sailor suit
hanging to her knees.
"Your other sailor suit is washed and mended," said her mother,
smiling at her child in tatters.
Athalie, her gaze remote, nodded absently. After a moment she lifted
her steady dark blue eyes:
"A boy kissed me, mamma," she remarked, dropping cross-legged at her
mother's feet.
"Don't kiss strange boys," said her mother quietly.
"I didn't. But why not?"
"It is not considered proper."
"Why?"
Her mother said: "Kissing is a common and vulgar practice except in
the intimacy of one's own family."
"I thought so," nodded Athalie; "I soaked him for doing it."
"Who was he?"
"Oh, it was that fresh Harry Eldon. I told him if he ever tried to get
fresh with me again I'd kill him.... Mamma?"
"Yes?"
"All that about poor old Mr. Manners isn't true, is it?"
Her mother smiled. The children had been taught to leave a morsel on
their plates "for manners"; and to impress it upon them their mother
had invented a story about a poor old man named Manners who depended
upon what they left, and who crept in to eat it after they had retired
from table.
So leaving something "for Manners" had been thoroughly and
successfully inculcated, until the habit was formed. And now Athalie
was the last of the children to discover the gentle fraud practised
upon her.
"I'm glad, anyway," concluded the child. "I never thought we left him
enough to eat."
Her mother said: "I shall tell you only truths after this. You are old
enough to understand reason, now, and to reason a little yourself."
"I do.... But I am not yet perfectly sure where babies come from. You
said you would tell me _that_ some day. I'd really like to know,
mamma."
Her mother continued to sew for a while, then, passing the needle
through the hem she looked down at her daughter.
"Have you formed any opinion of your own?"
"Yes," said the child honestly.
"Then I'd better tell you the truth," said her mother tranquilly,
"because the truth is very wonderful and beautiful--and interesting."
So she related to the child, very simply and clearly all that need be
told concerning the mystery of life in its beginnings; and Athalie
listened, enchanted.
And mostly it thrilled the child to realise that in her, too, lay
latent a capability for the creation of life.
* * * * *
Another hour with her mother she remembered in after years.
Mrs. Greensleeve had not been as well: the doctor came oftener.
Frequently Athalie returning from school discovered her mother lying
on the bed. That evening the child was sitting on the floor at her
mother's feet as usual, just inside the circle of lamplight, playing
solitaire with an ancient pack of cards.
Presently something near the door attracted her attention and she
lifted her head and sat looking at it, mildly interested, until,
suddenly, she felt her mother's eyes on her, flushed hotly, and turned
her head away.
"_What_ were you looking at?" asked her mother in a low voice.
"Nothing, mamma."
"Athalie!"
"What, mamma?"
"_What_ were you looking at?"
The child hung her head: "Nothing--" she began; but her mother checked
her: "Don't lie, Athalie. I'll try to understand you. Now tell me what
you were--what you thought you were looking at over there near the
door."
The child turned and glanced back at the door over her shoulder.
"There is nothing there--now," she muttered.
"Was there anything?"
Athalie sat silent for a while, then she laid her clasped hands across
her mother's knees and rested her cheek on them.
"There was a woman there," she said.
"Where?"
"Over by the door."
"You saw her, Athalie?"
"Yes, mamma."
"Did she open the door and come in and then close it behind her?"
"No."
"How did she come in?"
"I don't know. She--just came in."
"Was she a young woman?"
"No, old."
"Very old?"
"Not very. There was grey in her hair--a little."
"How was she dressed?"
"She wore a night-gown, mamma. There were spots on it--like medicine."
"Had you ever seen her before?"
"I think so."
"Who was she?"
"Mrs. Allen."
Her mother sat very still but her clasped hands tightened and a little
of the colour faded from her cheeks. There was a Mrs. Allen who had
been suffering from an illness which she herself was afraid she had.
"Do you mean Mrs. James Allen who lives on the old Allen farm?" she
asked quietly.
"Yes, mamma."
* * * * *
In the morning they heard of Mrs. Allen's death. And it was several
months before Mrs. Greensleeve again spoke to her daughter on the one
subject about which Athalie was inclined to be most reticent. But that
subject now held a deadly fascination for her mother.
They had been sitting together in Mrs. Greensleeve's bedroom; the
mother knitting, in bed propped up upon the pillows. Athalie,
cross-legged on a hassock beside her, was doing a little mending on
her own account, when her mother said abruptly but very quietly:
"I have always known that you possess a power--which others cannot
understand."
The child's face flushed deeply and she bent closer over her mending.
"I knew it when they first brought you to me, a baby just born.... I
don't know how I knew it, but I did."
Athalie, sewing steadily, said nothing.
"I think," said her mother, "you are, in some degree, what is called
clairvoyant."
"What?"
"Clairvoyant," repeated her mother quietly. "It comes from the French,
_clair_, clear; the verb _voir_, to see; _clair-voyant_, seeing
clearly. That is all, Athalie.... Nothing to be ashamed of--if it is
true,--" for the child had dropped her work and had hidden her face in
her hands.
"Dear, are you afraid to talk about it to your mother?"
"N-no. What is there to say about it?"
"Nothing very much. Perhaps the less said the better.... I don't know,
little daughter. I don't understand it--comprehend it. If it's so,
it's so.... I see you sometimes looking at things I cannot see; I know
sometimes you hear sounds which I cannot hear.... Things happen which
perplex the rest of us; and, somehow I seem to know that they do not
perplex you. What to us seems unnatural to you is natural, even a
commonplace matter of course."
"That's it, mamma. I have never seen anything that did not seem quite
natural to me."
"Did you know that Mrs. Allen had died when you--thought you saw her?"
"I did see her."
"Yes.... Did you know she had died?"
"Not until I saw her."
"Did you know it then?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"I don't know how I knew it. I seemed to know it."
"Did you know she had been ill?"
"No, mamma."
"Did it in any way frighten you--make you uneasy when you saw her
standing there?"
"Why, no," said Athalie, surprised.
"Not even when you knew she was dead?"
"No. Why should it? Why should I be afraid?"
Her mother was silent.
"Why?" asked Athalie, curiously. "Is there anything to be afraid of
with God and all his angels watching us? Is there?"
"No."
"Then," said the child with some slight impatience, "why is it that
other people seem to be a little afraid of me and of what they say I
can hear and see? I have good eyesight; I see clearly; that is all,
isn't it? And there is nothing to frighten anybody in seeing clearly,
is there?"
"No, dear."
"People make me so cross," continued Athalie,--"and so ashamed when
they ask so many questions. What is there to be surprised at if
sometimes I see things _inside_ my mind. They are just as real as when
I see them _outside_. They are no different."
Her mother nodded, encouragingly.
"When papa was in New York," went on Athalie, "and I saw him talking
to some men in a hotel there, why should it be surprising just because
papa was in New York and I was here when I saw him?"
"It surprises others, dear, because they cannot see what is beyond the
vision of their physical senses."
Athalie said: "They tease me in school because they say I can see
around corners. It makes me very cross and unhappy, and I don't want
anybody to know that I see what they can't see. I'm ashamed to have
them know it."
"Perhaps it is just as well you feel that way. People are odd. What
they do not understand they ridicule. A dog that would not notice a
horse-drawn vehicle will bark at an automobile."
"Mamma?"
"Yes, dear."
"Do you know that dogs, and I think cats, too, see many things that I
do; and that other people do not see."
"Why do you think so?"
"I have noticed it.... The other evening when the white cat was dozing
on your bed, and I was down here on the floor, sewing, I
saw--something. And the cat looked up suddenly and saw it, too."
"Athalie!"
"She did, mamma. I knew perfectly well that she saw what I saw."
"What was it you saw?"
"Only a young man. He walked over to the window--"
"And then?"
"I don't know, mamma. I don't know where they go. They go, that's all
I know."
"Who was he?"
"I don't know."
"Did he look at us?"
"Yes.... He seemed to be thinking of something pleasant."
"Did he smile?"
"He--had a pleasant look.... And once,--it was last Sunday--over by
the bed I saw a little boy. He was kneeling down beside the bed. And
Mr. Ledlie's dog was lying here beside me.... Don't you remember how
he suddenly lifted his head and barked?"
"Yes, I remember. But you didn't tell me why at the time."
"I didn't like to.... I never like to speak about these--people--I
see."
"Had you ever before seen the little boy?"
"No, mamma."
"Was he--alive--do you think?"
"Why, yes. They all are alive."
"Mrs. Allen was not alive when you saw her over by the door."
The child looked puzzled. "Yes," she said, "but that was a little
different. Not _very_ different. They are all perfectly alive, mamma."
"Even the ones we call dead? Are you sure of it?"
"Yes.... Yes, I'm sure of it. They are not dead.... Nothing seems to
die. Nothing stays dead."
"What! Why do you believe that?"
Athalie said slowly: "Somebody shot and killed a poor little dog,
once,--just across the causeway bridge.... And the dog came into the
garden afterward and ran all around, smelling, and wagging his tail."
"Athalie! Athalie! Be careful to control your imagination."
"Yes," said the child, thoughtfully, "I must be careful to control it.
I can imagine almost anything if I try."
"How hard have you ever tried to imagine some of the things you
see--or think you see?"
"Mamma, I never try. I--I don't care to see them. I'd rather not.
Those things come. _I_ haven't anything to do with it. I don't know
these people, and I am not interested. I _did_ try to see papa in New
York--if you call that imagination."
But her mother did not know what to call it because at the hour when
Athalie had seen him, that mild and utterly unimaginative man was
actually saying and doing what his daughter had seen and heard.
"Also," said Athalie, "I _was_ thinking about that poor little yellow
dog and wondering whether he was past all suffering, when he came
gaily trotting into the garden, waving his tail quite happily. There
was no dust or blood on him. He rolled on the grass, too, and barked
and barked. But nobody seemed to hear him or notice him excepting I."
For a long while silence reigned in the lamp-lit room. When the other
children came in to say good night to their mother she received them
with an unusual tenderness. They went away; Athalie rose, yawning the
yawn of healthy fatigue:
"Good night, mamma."
"Good night, little daughter."
They kissed: the mother drew her into a sudden and almost convulsive
embrace.
"Darling, are you sure that nothing really dies?"
"_I_ have never seen anything really dead, mamma. Even the 'dead'
birds,--why, the evening sky is full of them--the little 'dead' ones
I mean--flock after flock, twittering and singing--"
"Dear!"
"Yes, mamma."
"When you see me--_that_ way--will you--speak?"
"Yes."
"Promise, darling."
"Yes.... I'll kiss you, too--if it is possible...."
"Would it be possible?"
The child gazed at her, perplexed and troubled: "I--don't--know," she
said slowly. Then, all in a moment her childish face paled and she
clung to her mother and began to cry.
And her mother soothed her, tenderly, smilingly, kissing the tears
from the child's eyes.
The next morning after the children had gone to school Mrs.
Greensleeve was operated on--without success.
CHAPTER III
The black dresses of the children had become very rusty by spring, but
business had been bad at the Hotel Greensleeve, and Athalie, Doris,
and Catharine continued to wear their shabby mourning.
Greensleeve haunted the house all day long, roaming from bar to
office, from one room to another, silently opening doors of unoccupied
chambers to peer about in the dusty obscurity, then noiselessly
closing them, he would slink away down the dim corridor to his late
wife's room and sit there through the long sunny afternoon, his weak
face buried in his hands.
Ledlie had grown fatter, redder of visage, whiter of hair and beard.
When a rare guest arrived, or when local loafers wandered into the bar
with the faint stench of fertilizer clinging to their boots, he
shuffled ponderously from office to bar, serving as economically as he
dared whoever desired to be served.
Always a sprig of something green protruded from his small tight
mouth. His pale eyes, now faded almost colourless, had become weak and
red-rimmed, and he blinked continually except in the stale
semi-darkness of the house.
Always, now, he was muttering and grumbling his disapproval of the
children--"Eatin' their heads off I tell you, Pete! What good is all
this here schoolin' doin' 'em when they ought to git out some'rs an'
earn their vittles?"
But if Greensleeve's attitude was one of passive acquiescence, he made
no effort to withdraw the children from school. Once, when life was
younger, and Jack, his first baby, came, he had dreamed of college for
him, and of a career--in letters perhaps--something dignified,
leisurely, profound beyond his own limits. And of a modest corner
somewhere within the lustre of his son's environment where he and his
wife, grey-haired, might dream and admire, finding there surcease from
care and perhaps the peace which passes all understanding.
The ex-"professor" of penmanship had been always prone to dream. No
dull and sordid reality, no hopeless sorrow had yet awakened him. Nor
had his wife's death been more real than the half-strangled anguish of
a dreamer, tossing in darkness. As for the children, they paid no more
attention to Ledlie than they might have to a querulous but
superannuated dog.
Jack, now fifteen, still dawdled at school, where his record was not
good. Perhaps it was partly because he had no spending money, no
clothing to maintain his boyish self-respect, no prospects of any
sort, that he had become sullen, uncommunicative, and almost loutish.
Nobody governed him; his father was unqualified to control anybody or
anything; his mother was dead.
With her death went the last vestige of any tie that had held the boy
to the home anchorage--of any feeling of responsibility concerning
the conduct expected and required of him.
He shirked his studies, came home only to eat and sleep, remained out
late without explanation or any home interference, except for the
constant disputes and quarrels with Doris and Catharine, now aged
respectively fourteen and thirteen.
To Athalie he had little to say. Perhaps he did not realise it but he
was slightly afraid of her. And it was from her that he took any pains
at all to conceal his irregularities.
Once, coming in from school, she had found the house deserted, and
Jack smelling of alcohol just slouching out of the bar.
"If you do that again I shall tell father," she said, horrified.
"What do I care!" he had retorted sullenly. And it was true; the boy
no longer cared what anybody might think as long as Athalie already
knew and detested what he had done.
There was a garage in the neighbouring village. He spent most of his
time hanging around it. Sometimes he came home reeking of oil and
gasoline, sometimes his breath was tainted with tobacco and alcohol.
He was so much bigger and older than Athalie that the child had never
entirely lost her awe of him. His weakness of character, his failings,
and the fact that he was a trifle afraid of her opinion, combined to
astonish and bewilder her.
For a long while she tried to understand the gradual but certain
reversal of their relations. And one night, still more or less in awe
of him, she got out of bed and went softly into his room.
He was not asleep. The sudden apparition of his youngest sister
considerably startled him, and he sat up in his ragged night-shirt and
stared at her where she stood in the moonlight.
"You look like one of your own spooks!" he said. "What's the matter
with you?"
"I wanted to talk with you, Jack."
"What about?"
"You."
For a moment he sat there eyeing her uneasily; then:
"Well, go ahead!" he said ungraciously; and stretched himself back on
the pillows.
She came and seated herself on the bed's edge:
"Jack, please don't drink beer."
"Why not? Aw, what do you know about men, anyway? Don't they all smoke
and drink?"
"Mamma asked you not to."
"Gee-whiz! I was a kid then. But a man isn't a baby."
Athalie sighed. Her brother eyed her restlessly, aware of that slight
feeling of shame which always invaded his sullen, defiant discontent
when he knew that he had lowered himself in her estimation.
For, if the boy was a little afraid of her, he also cared more for her
than he ever had for any of the family except his mother.
He was only the average boy, stumbling blindly, almost savagely
through the maze of adolescence, with no guide, nobody to warn or
counsel him, nothing to stimulate his pride, no anchorage, no
experience.
Whatever character he had he had been born with: it was environment
and circumstance that were crippling it.
"See here, Athalie," he said, "you're a little girl and you don't
understand. There isn't any harm in my smoking a cigarette or two or
in drinking a glass of beer now and then."
"Isn't there, Jack?"
"No. So don't you worry, Sis.... And, say! I'm not going back to
school."
"What?"
"What's the use? I can't go to college. Anyway what's the good of
algebra and physics and chemistry and history and all that junk? I
guess I'll go into business."
"What business?"
"I don't know. I've been working around the garage. I can get a job
there if I want it."
"Did you ask papa?"
"What's the use? He'll let me do what I please. I guess I'll start in
to-morrow."
* * * * *
His father did not interfere when his only son came slouching up to
inform him of his decision.
After Jack had gone away toward the village and his new business, his
father remained seated on the shabby veranda, his head sunken on his
soiled shirtfront, his wasted hands clasped over his stomach.
For a little while, perhaps, he remembered his earlier ambitions for
the boy's career. Maybe they caused him pain. But if there was pain it
faded gradually into the lethargy which had settled over him since his
wife's death.
A grey veil seemed to have descended between him and the sun,--there
was greyness everywhere, and dimness, and uncertainty--in his mind, in
his eyesight--and sometimes the vagueness was in his speech. He had
noticed that--for, sometimes the word he meant to use was not the word
he uttered. It had occurred a number of times, making foolish what he
had said.
And Ledlie had glanced at him sharply once or twice out of his sore
and faded eyes when Greensleeve had used some word while thinking of
another.
When he was not wandering around the house he sat on the veranda in a
great splint-bottomed arm-chair--a little untidy figure, more or less
caved in from chest to abdomen, which made his short thin legs hanging
just above the floor seem stunted and withered.
To him, here, came his daughters in their soiled and rusty black
dresses, just out of school, and always stopping on impulse of
sympathy to salute him with, "Hello, papa!" and with the touch of
fresh, warm lips on his colourless cheek.
Sometimes they lingered to chatter around him, or bring out pie and
cake to eat in his company. But very soon his gaze became remote, and
the children understood that they were at liberty to go, which they
did, dancing happily away into the outer sunshine, on pleasure
bent--the matchless pleasures of the very young whose poverty has not
as yet disturbed them.
As the summer passed the sunlight grew greyer to Peter Greensleeve.
Also, more often, he mixed his words and made nonsense of what he
said.
The pain in his chest and arms which for a year had caused him
discomfort, bothered him at night, now. He said nothing about it.
That summer Doris had taken a course in stenography and typewriting,
going every day to Brooklyn by train and returning before sunset.
When school began she asked to be allowed to continue. Catharine, too,
desired to learn. And if their father understood very clearly what
they wanted, it is uncertain. Anyway he offered no objections.
That winter he saw his son very seldom. Perhaps the boy was busy. Once
or twice he came to ask his father for money, but there was none to
give him,--very little for anybody--and Doris and Catharine required
that.
Some little money was taken in at the Hotel Greensleeve; commercial
men were rather numerous that winter: so were duck-hunters. Athalie
often saw them stamping around in the bar, the lamplight glistening on
their oil-skins and gun-barrels, and touching the silken plumage of
dead ducks--great strings of them lying on the bar or on the floor.
Once when she came home from school earlier than usual, she went into
the kitchen and found a hot peach turnover awaiting her, constructed
for her by the slovenly cook, and kept hot by the still more slovenly
maid-of-all-work--the only servants at the Hotel Greensleeve.
Sauntering back through the house, eating her turnover, she noticed
Mr. Ledlie reading his newspaper in the office and her father
apparently asleep on a chair before the stove.
There were half a dozen guests at the inn, duck-hunters from New York,
but they were evidently still out with their bay-men.
Nibbling her pastry Athalie loitered along the hall and deposited her
strapped books on a chair under the noisy wall-clock. Then, at hazard,
she wandered into the bar. It was growing dusky; nobody had lighted
the ceiling lamp.
At first she thought the room was empty, and had strolled over toward
the stove to warm her snow-wet shoes, when all at once she became
aware of a boy.
The boy was lying back on a leather chair, stockinged feet crossed,
hands in his pocket, looking at her. He wore the leather shooting
clothes of a duck-hunter; on the floor beside him lay his cap,
oil-skins, hip-boots, and his gun. A red light from the stove fell
across his dark, curly hair and painted one side of his face crimson.
Athalie, surprised, was not, however, in the least disturbed or
embarrassed. She looked calmly at the boy, at the woollen stockings on
his feet.
"Did you manage to get dry?" she asked in a friendly voice.
Then he seemed to come to himself. He took his hands from his pockets
and got up on his stockinged feet.
"Yes, I'm dry now."
"Did you have any luck?"
"I got fifteen--counting shell-drake, two redheads, a black duck, and
some buffle-heads."
"Where were you shooting?"
"Off Silver Shoal."
"Who was your bay-man?"
"Bill Nostrand."
"Why did you stop shooting so early?"
"Fifteen is the local limit this year."
Athalie nodded and bit into her turnover, reflectively. When she
looked up, something in the boy's eye interested her.
"Are you hungry?" she asked.
He looked embarrassed, then laughed: "Yes, I am."
"Wait; I'll get you a turnover," she said.
When she returned from the kitchen with his turnover he was standing.
Rather vaguely she comprehended this civility toward herself although
nobody had ever before remained standing for her.
Not knowing exactly what to do or say she silently presented the
pastry, then drew a chair up into the red firelight. And the boy
seated himself.
"I suppose you came with those hunters from New York," she said.
"Yes. I came with my father and three of his friends."
"They are out still I suppose."
"Yes. They went over to Brant Point."
"I've often sailed there," remarked Athalie. "Can you sail a boat?"
"No."
"It is easy.... I could teach you if you are going to stay a while."
"We are going back to New York to-morrow morning.... How did you learn
to sail a boat?"
"Why, I don't know. I've always lived here. Mr. Ledlie has a boat.
Everybody here knows how to manage a cat-boat.... If you'll come down
this summer I'll teach you. Will you?"
"I will if I can."
They were silent for a few minutes. It grew very dark in the bar-room,
and the light from the stove glimmered redder and redder.
The boy and girl lay back in their chairs, lingering over their peach
pastry, and inspecting each other with all the frank insouciance of
childhood.
Athalie still wore the red hood and cloak which had represented her
outer winter wardrobe for years. Her dull, thick gold hair curled
crisply over the edges of the hood which framed in its oval the lovely
features of a child in perfect health.
The boy, dark-haired and dark-eyed, gazed fascinated and unembarrassed
at this golden blond visitor hooded and cloaked in scarlet.
"Does your father keep this hotel?" he asked after a pause.
"Yes. I am Athalie Greensleeve. What is your name?"
"C. Bailey, Junior."
"What is the _C_ for?"
"Clive."
"Do you go to school?"
"Yes, but I'm back for the holidays."
"Holidays," she repeated vaguely. "Oh, that's so. Christmas will come
day after to-morrow."
He nodded. "I think I'm going to have a new pair of guns, some books,
and a horse. What do you expect?"
"Nothing," said Athalie.
"What? Isn't there anything you want?" And then, too late, some
glimmer of the real state of affairs illuminated his boyish brain. And
he grew red with embarrassment.
They had finished their pastry; Athalie wiped her hands on a soiled
and ragged and crumpled handkerchief, then scrubbed her scarlet mouth.
"I'd like to come down here for the summer vacation," said the boy,
awkwardly. "I don't know whether my mother would like it."
"Why? It is pleasant."
[Illustration: "'I'd like to come down here for the summer vacation,'
said the boy, awkwardly."]
He glanced instinctively around him at the dark and shabby bar-room,
but offered no reason why his mother might not care for the Hotel
Greensleeve. One thing he knew; he meant to urge his mother to come,
or to let him come.
A few minutes later the outer door banged open and into the bar came
stamping four men and two bay-men, their oil-skins shining with
salt-spray, guns glistening. Thud! went the strings of dead ducks on
the floor; somebody scratched a match and lighted the ceiling lamp.
"Hello, Junior!" cried one of the men in oil-skins,--"how did you
make out on Silver Shoals?"
"All right, father," he began; but his father had caught sight of
Athalie who had risen to retreat.
"Who are you, young lady?" he inquired with a jolly smile,--"are you
little Red-Riding Hood or the Princess Far Away, or perhaps the
Sleeping Beauty recently awakened?"
"I'm Athalie Greensleeve."
"Lady Greensleeves! I _knew_ you were somebody quite as distinguished
as you are beautiful. Would you mind saying to Mr. Greensleeve that
there is much moaning on the bar, and that it will still continue
until he arrives to instil the stillness of the still--"
"What?"
"We merely want a drink, my child. Don't look so seriously and
distractingly pretty. I was joking, that's all. Please tell your
father how very thirsty we are."
As the child turned to obey, C. Bailey, Sr., put one big arm around her
shoulders: "I didn't mean to tease you on such short acquaintance," he
whispered. "Are you offended, little Lady Greensleeves?"
Athalie looked up at him in puzzled silence.
"Smile, just once, so I shall know I am forgiven," he said. "Will
you?"
The child smiled confusedly, caught the boy's eye, and smiled again,
most engagingly, at C. Bailey, Sr.'s, son.
"Oho!" exclaimed the senior Bailey laughingly and looking at his son,
"I'm forgiven for your sake, am I?"
"For heaven's sake, Clive," protested one of the gunners, "let the
little girl go and find her father. If I ever needed a drink it's
now!"
So Athalie went away to summon her father. She found him as she had
last noticed him, sitting asleep on the big leather office chair.
Ledlie, behind the desk, was still reading his soiled newspaper, which
he continued to do until Athalie cried out something in a frightened
voice. Then he laid aside his paper, blinked at her, got up leisurely
and shuffled over to where his partner was sitting dead on his leather
chair.
* * * * *
The duck-hunters left that night. One after another the four gentlemen
came over to speak to Athalie and to her sisters. There was some
confusion and crowding in the hallway, what with the doctor, the
undertaker's assistants, neighbours, and the New York duck-hunters.
Ledlie ventured to overcharge them on the bill. As nobody objected he
regretted his moderation. However, the taking off of Greensleeve
helped business in the bar where sooner or later everybody drifted.
When the four-seated livery wagon drove up to take the gunning party
to the train, the boy lingered behind the others and then hurried back
to where Athalie was standing, white-faced, tearless, staring at the
closed door of the room where they had taken her father.
Bailey Junior's touch on her arm made her turn: "I am sorry," he said.
"I hope you will not be very unhappy.... And--here is a Christmas
present--"
He took the dazed child's icy little hand in his, and, fumbling the
business rather awkwardly, he finally contrived to snap a strap-watch
over the delicate wrist. It was the one he had been wearing.
"Good-bye, Athalie," he murmured, very red.
The girl gazed at him out of her lovely confused eyes for a moment.
But when she tried to speak no sound came.
"Good-bye," he said again, choking slightly. "I'll surely, surely come
back to see you. Don't be unhappy. I'll come."
But it was many years before he returned to the Hotel Greensleeve.
CHAPTER IV
She was fifteen years old before she saw him again. His strap-watch
was still on her wrist; his memory, unfaded, still enshrined in her
heart of a child, for she was as yet no more than that at fifteen. And
the moment she saw him she recognised him.
It was on the Sixth Avenue Elevated Station at Twenty-third Street one
sunny day in April; he stood waiting for the downtown train which she
stepped out of when it stopped.
He did not notice her, so she went over to him and called him by name;
and the tall, good-looking, fashionably dressed young fellow turned to
her without recognition.
But the next instant his smooth, youthful face lighted up, and off
came his hat with the gay college band adorning it:
"Athalie Greensleeve!" he exclaimed, showing his pleasure
unmistakably.
"C. Bailey, Junior," she rejoined as steadily as she could, for her
heart was beating wildly with the excitement of meeting him and her
emotions were not under full control.
"You have grown so," he said with the easy, boyish cordiality of his
caste, "I didn't recognise you for a moment. Tell me, do you still
live down--er--down there?"
She said:
"I knew you as soon as I set eyes on you. You are very much taller,
too.... No, we went away from Spring Pond the year after my father
died."
"I see," he said sympathetically. And back into his memory flashed
that scene with her by the stove in the dusky bar. And then he
remembered her as she stood in her red hood and cloak staring at the
closed door of the room where her dead father lay. And he remembered
touching her frosty little hand, and the incident of the watch.
"I never went back there," he mused, half to himself, looking
curiously at the girl before him. "I wanted to go--but I never did."
"No, you never came back," she said slowly.
"I couldn't. I was only a kid, you see. My mother wouldn't let me go
there that summer. And father and I joined a club down South so we did
not go back for the duck-shooting. That is how it happened."
She nodded, gravely, but said nothing to him about her faith in his
return, how confidently, how patiently she had waited through that
long, long summer for the boy who never returned.
"I did think of you often," he volunteered, smiling at her.
"I thought of you, too. I hoped you would come and let me teach you to
sail a boat."
"That's so! I remember now. You were going to show me how."
"Have you learned to sail a boat?"
"No. I'll tell you what I'll do, Athalie, I'll come down this
summer--"
"But I don't live there any more."
"That's so. Where do you live?"
She hesitated, and his eyes fell for the first time from her youthful
and engaging face to the clothes she wore--black clothes that seemed
cheap even to a boy who had no knowledge of feminine clothing. She was
all in rusty black, hat, gloves, jacket and skirt; and the austere and
slightly mean setting made the contrast of her hair and skin the more
fresh and vivid.
"I live," she replied diffidently, "with my two sisters in West
Fifty-fourth Street. I am stenographer and typewriter in the offices
of a department store."
"I'd like to come to see you," he said impulsively. "Shall I--when
vacation begins?"
"Are you still at school?"
He laughed: "I'm at Harvard. I'm down for Easter just now. Tell me,
Athalie, would you care to have me come to see you when I return?"
"If you would care to come."
"I surely would!" he said cordially, offering his hand in adieu--"I
want to ask you a lot of questions and we can talk over all those
jolly old times,"--as though years of comradeship lay behind them
instead of an hour or two. Then his glance fell on the slim hand he
was shaking, and he saw the strap-watch which he had given her still
clasped around her wrist.
"You wear that yet?--that old shooting-watch of mine!" he laughed.
She smiled.
"I'll give you a better one than that next Christmas," he said, taking
out a little notebook and pencil. "I'll write it down--'strap-watch
for Athalie Greensleeve next Christmas'--there it is! And--will you
give me your address?"
She gave it; he noted it, closed his little Russia-leather book with a
snap, and pocketed it.
"I'm glad I saw you," said the girl; "I hope you won't forget me. I am
late; I must go--I suppose--"
[Illustration: "'I'm glad I saw you,' said the girl; 'I hope you won't
forget me.'"]
"Indeed I won't forget you," he assured her warmly, shaking the
slender black-gloved hand again.
He meant it when he said it. Besides she was so pretty and frank and
honest with him. Few girls he knew in his own caste were as
attractive; none as simple, as direct.
He really meant to call on her some day and talk things over. But
days, and weeks, and finally months slipped away. And somehow, in
thinking of her and of his promise, there now seemed very little left
for them to talk about. After all they had said to each other nearly
all there was to be said, there on the Elevated platform that April
morning. Besides he had so many, many things to do; so many pleasures
promised and accepted, visits to college friends, a fishing trip with
his father,--really there seemed to be no hour in the long vacation
unengaged.
He always wanted to see her when he thought of her; he really meant to
find a moment to do it, too. But there seemed to be no moment
suitable.
Even when he was back in Cambridge he thought about her occasionally,
and planned, vaguely, a trip to New York so that he might redeem his
promise to her.
He took it out in thinking.
At Christmas, however, he sent her a wrist-watch, a dainty French
affair of gold and enamel; and a contrite note excusing himself for
the summer delinquencies and renewing his promise to call on her.
The Dead Letter Office returned watch and letter.
CHAPTER V
There was a suffocating stench of cabbage in hallway and corridor as
usual when Athalie came in that evening. She paused to rest a tired
foot on the first step of the stairway, for a moment or two, quietly
breathing her fatigue, then addressed herself to the monotonous labour
before her, which was to climb five flights of unventilated stairs,
let herself into the tiny apartment with her latch-key, and
immediately begin her part in preparing the evening meal for three.
Doris, now twenty-one, sprawled on a lounge in her faded wrapper
reading an evening paper. Catharine, a year younger, stood by a
bureau, some drawers of which had been pulled out, sorting over odds
and ends of crumpled finery.
"Well," remarked Doris to Athalie, as she came in, "what do _you_
know?"
"Nothing," said Athalie listlessly.
Doris rattled the evening paper: "Gee!" she commented, "it's getting
to be something fierce--all these young girls disappearing! Here's
another--they can't account for it; her parents say she had no love
affair--" And she began to read the account aloud while Catharine
continued to sort ribbons and Athalie dropped into a big, shabby
chair, legs extended, arms pendant.
When Doris finished reading she tossed the paper over to Athalie who
let it slide from her knees to the floor.
"Her picture is there," said Doris. "She isn't pretty."
"Isn't she?" yawned Athalie.
Catharine jerked open another drawer: "It's always a man's doing. You
bet they'll find that some fellow had her on a string. What idiots
girls are!"
"_I_ should worry," remarked Doris. "Any fresh young man who tries to
get me jingled will wish he hadn't."
"Don't talk that way," remonstrated Athalie.
"What way?"
"That slangy way you think is smart. What's the use of letting down
when you know better."
"What's the use of keeping up on fifteen per? I could do the Gladys to
any Percy on fifty. My talk suits my wages--and it suits me, too....
God!--I suppose it's fried ham again to-night," she added, jumping up
and walking into the kitchenette. And, pausing to look back at her
sisters: "If any Johnny asks me to-night I'll go!--I'm that hungry for
real food."
"Don't be a fool," snapped Catharine.
Athalie glanced at the alarm clock, passed her hands wearily across
her eyes, and rose: "It's after six, Doris. You haven't time for
anything very much." And she went into the kitchenette.
Once or twice during the preparation of the meal Doris swore in her
soft girlish voice, which made the contrast peculiarly shocking; and
finally Athalie said bluntly: "If I didn't know you were straight I
wouldn't think so from the way you behave."
Doris turned on her a flushed and angry face: "Will you kindly stop
knocking me?"
"I'm not. I'm only saying that your talk is loose. And so it is."
"What's the difference as long as I'm not on the loose myself?"
"The difference is that men will think you are; that's all."
"Men mistake any girl who works for a living."
"Then see that the mistake is their fault not yours. I don't
understand why a girl can't keep her self-respect even if she's a
stenographer, as I am, or works in a shop as Catharine does, or in the
theatre as you do. And if a girl talks loosely, she'll think loosely,
sooner or later."
"Hurry up that supper!" called Catharine. "I'm going to a show with
Genevieve, and I want time to dress."
Athalie, scrambling the eggs, which same eggs would endure no other
mode of preparation, leaned over sideways and kissed Doris on her
lovely neck.
"Darling," she said, "I'm not trying to be disagreeable; I only want
us all to keep up."
"I know it, ducky. I guess you're right. I'll cut out that rough stuff
if you like."
Athalie said: "It's only too easy to let down when you're thrown with
careless and uneducated people as we are. I have to struggle against
it all the while. For, somehow I seem to know that a girl who keeps
up her grammar keeps up her self-respect, too. If you slouch mentally
you slouch physically. And then it's not so difficult to slouch
morally."
Doris laughed: "You funny thing! You certainly have educated yourself
a lot since school,--you use such dandy English."
"I _read_ good English."
"I know you do. I can't. If somebody would only write a rattling story
in good English!--but I've got to have the story first of all or I
can't read it. All those branch-library books you lug in are too slow
for me. If it wasn't for hearing you talk every day I'd be talking
like the rest of the chorus at the Egyptian Garden;--'Sa-ay, ain't you
done with my make-up box? Yaas, you _did_ swipe it! I seen you. Who's
a liar? All right, if you want to mix it--'"
"Don't!" pleaded Athalie. "Oh, Doris, I don't see why you can't find
some other business--"
Doris began to strut about the kitchenette.
"Please don't! It makes me actually ill!"
"When I learn how to use my voice and my legs you'll see me playing
leads. Here, ducky, I'll take the eggs--"
Athalie, her arms also full, followed her out to the table which
Catharine had set very carelessly.
They drank Croton water and strong tea, and gravely discussed how,
from their several limited wardrobes sufficient finery might be
extracted to clothe Catharine suitably for her evening's
entertainment.
"It's rotten to be poor," remarked the latter. "You're only young
once, and this gosh-dinged poverty spoils everything for me."
"Quit kicking," said Doris. "I don't like these eggs but I'm eating
them. If I were wealthy I'd be eating terrapin, wouldn't I?"
"Genevieve has a new gown for to-night," pouted Catharine. "How can I
help feeling shabby and unhappy?"
"Genevieve seems to have a number of unaccountable things," remarked
Doris, partly closing her velvet eyes. "She has a fur coat, too."
"Doris! That isn't square of you!"
"That isn't the question. Is Genevieve on the square? That's what
worries me, Kit!"
"What a perfectly rotten thing to say!" insisted Catharine
resentfully. "You know she's on the level!"
"Well then, _where_ does she get it? You know what her salary is?"
Athalie said, coolly: "Every girl ought to believe every other girl on
the square until the contrary is proven. It's shameful not to."
"Come over to the Egyptian Garden and try it!" laughed Doris. "If you
can believe that bunch of pet cats is on the square you can believe
anything, Athalie."
Catharine, still very deeply offended, rose and went into the bedroom
which she shared with Doris. Presently she called for somebody to
assist her in dressing.
Doris, being due at the theatre by seven o'clock, put on her rusty
coat and hat, and, nodding to Athalie, walked out; and the latter
went away to aid Catharine.
"You _do_ look pretty," she insisted after Catharine had powdered her
face and neck and had wiped off her silky skin with the chamois rag.
The girl gazed at her comely, regular features in the mirror, patted
her hair, moistened her red lips, then turned her profile and gazed at
it with the aid of a hand-glass.
"Who else is going?" inquired Athalie.
"Some friends of Genevieve's."
"Men?"
"I believe so."
"Two, I suppose."
Catharine nodded.
"Don't you know their names?"
"No. Genevieve says that one of them is crazy to meet me."
"Where did he see you?"
"At Winton's. I put on some evening gowns for his sister."
Athalie watched her pin on her hat, then held her coat for her.
"They'll all bear watching," she remarked quietly. "If it's merely
society they want you know as well as I that they seek it in their own
circles, not in ours."
Catharine made no audible response. She began to re-pin her hat, then,
pettishly: "I wish I had a taxi to call for me so I needn't wear a
hat!"
"Why not wish for an automobile?" suggested Athalie, laughing. "Women
who have them don't wear hats to the theatre."
"It _is_ tough to be poor!" insisted Catharine fiercely. "It drives me
almost frantic to see what I see in all those limousines,--and then
walk home, or take a car if I'm flush."
"How are you going to help it, dear?" inquired Athalie in that gently
humorous voice which usually subdued and shamed her sisters.
But Catharine only mumbled something rebellious, turned, stared at
herself in the glass, and walked quickly toward the door.
"As for me," she muttered. "I don't blame any girl--"
"What?"
But Catharine marched out with a twitch of her narrow skirts, still
muttering incoherencies.
Athalie, thoughtful, but not really disturbed, went into the empty
sitting-room, picked up the evening paper, glanced absently at the
head-lines, dropped it, and stood motionless in the centre of the
room, one narrow hand bracketed on her hip, the other pinching her
under lip.
For a few minutes she mused, then sighing, she walked into the
kitchenette, unhooked a blue-checked apron, rolled up her sleeves as
far as her white, rounded arms permitted, and started in on the
dishes.
Occasionally she whistled at her task--the clear, soft, melodious
whistle of a bullfinch--carolling some light, ephemeral air from the
"Review" at the Egyptian Garden.
When the crockery was done, dried and replaced, she retired to her
bedroom and turned her attention to her hands and nails, minutely
solicitous, always in dread of the effects of housework.
There was an array of bottles, vials, jars, lotions, creams, scents on
her bureau. She seated herself there and started her nightly grooming,
interrupting it only to exchange her street gown and shoes for a
dainty negligée and slippers.
Her face, now, as she bent over her slender, white fingers, took on a
seriousness and gravity more mature; and there was in its pure, fresh
beauty something almost austere.
The care of her hands took her a long time; and they were not finished
then, for she had yet her bath to take and her hair to do before the
cream-of-something-or-other was applied to hands and feet so that they
should remain snowy and satin smooth.
Bathed, and once more in negligée, she let down the dull gold mass of
hair which fell heavily curling to her shoulders. Then she started to
comb it out as earnestly, seriously, and thoroughly as a beautiful,
silky Persian cat applies itself to its toilet.
But there was now an absent expression in her dark blue eyes as she
sat plaiting the shining gold into two thick and lustrous braids.
Perhaps she wondered, vaguely, why the spring-tide and freshness of a
girl's youth should exhale amid the sere and sordid circumstances
which made up, for her, the sum-total of existence; why it happened
that whatever was bright and gay and attractive in the world should be
so utterly outside the circle in which her life was passing.
Yet in her sober young face there was no hint of discontent, nothing
of meanness or envy to narrow the blue eyes, nothing of bitterness to
touch the sensitive lips, nothing, even, of sadness; only a
gravity--like the seriousness of a youthful goddess musing alone on
mysteries unexplained even on Olympus.
Seven years' experience in earning her own living had made her wiser
but had not really disenchanted her. And for seven years now, she had
held the first position she secured in New York--stenographer and
typist for Wahlbaum, Grossman & Co.
It had been perplexing and difficult at first; so many men connected
with the great department store had evinced a desire to take her to
luncheon and elsewhere. But when at length by chance she took personal
dictation from Wahlbaum himself in his private office--his own
stenographer having triumphantly secured a supporting husband, and a
general alarm having been sent out for another to replace her--Athalie
suddenly found herself in a permanent position. And, automatically,
all annoyances ceased.
Wahlbaum was a Jew, big, hearty, honest, and keen as a razor. Never
was he in a hurry, never flustered or impatient, never irritable. And
she had never seen him angry, or rude to anybody. He laughed a great
deal in a tremendously resonant voice, smoked innumerable big, fat,
light-coloured cigars, never neglected to joke with Athalie when she
came in the morning and when she left at night, and never as much as
by the flutter of an eyelid conveyed to her anything that any girl
might not hear without offence.
Grossman's reputation was different, but except for a smirk or two he
had never bothered her. Nor did anybody else connected with the firm.
They all were too much afraid of Wahlbaum.
So, except for the petty, contemptible annoyances to which all young
girls are more or less subjected in any cosmopolitan metropolis,
Athalie had found business agreeable enough except for the
confinement.
That was hard on a country-bred girl; and she could scarcely endure
the imprisonment when the warm sun of April looked in through the
windows of Mr. Wahlbaum's private office, and when soft breezes
stirred the curtains and fluttered the papers on her desk.
Always in the spring the voice of brook and surf, of woodland and
meadow called to her. In her ears was ever the happy tumult of the
barn-yard, the lowing of cattle at the bars, the bleat of sheep. And
her heart beat passionate response.
Athalie was never ill. The nearest she came to it was a dull feeling
of languor in early spring. But it did not even verge on either
resentment or despondency.
In winter it was better. She had learned to accept with philosophy the
noises of the noisiest of cities. Even, perhaps, she rather liked
them, or at least, on her two weeks' vacation in the country, she
found, to her surprise, that she missed the accustomed and incessant
noises of New York.
Her real hardships were two; poverty and loneliness.
The combined earnings of herself and her sisters did not allow them a
better ventilated, or more comfortable apartment than the grimy one
they lived in. Nor did their earnings permit them more or better
clothing and food.
As for loneliness, she had, of course, her sisters. But healthy,
imaginative, ardent youth requires more than sisters,--more even than
feminine friends, of which Athalie had a few. What she needed, as all
girls need, were acquaintances and friends among men of her own age.
And she had none--that is, no friends. Which is the usual fate of any
business girl who keeps up such education and cultivation as she
possesses, and attempts to add to it and to improve her quality.
Because the men of her social and business level are vastly inferior
to the women,--inferior in manners, cultivation, intelligence,
quality--which seems almost to make their usually excellent morals
peculiarly offensive.
That was why Athalie knew loneliness. Doris, recently, had met a few
idle men of cultivated and fashionable antecedents. Catharine, that
very evening, was evidently going to meet a man of that sort for the
first time in her career.
As for Athalie, she had had no opportunity to meet any man she cared
to cultivate since she had last talked with C. Bailey, Jr., on the
platform of the Sixth Avenue Elevated;--and that was now nearly four
years ago.
* * * * *
Braiding up her hair she sat gazing at herself in the mirror while her
detached thoughts drifted almost anywhere--back to Spring Pond and
the Hotel Greensleeve, back to her mother, to the child cross-legged
on the floor,--back to her father, and how he sat there dead in his
leather chair;--back to the bar, and the red gleam of the stove, and a
boy and girl in earnest conversation there in the semi-darkness,
eating peach turnovers--
She turned her head, leisurely: the electric bell had sounded twice
before she realised that she ought to pull the wire which opened the
street door below.
So she got up, pulled the wire, and then sauntered out into the
sitting-room and set the door ajar, not worrying about her somewhat
intimate costume because it was too late for tradesmen, and there was
nobody else to call on her or on her sisters excepting other girls
known to them all.
The sitting-room seemed chilly. Half listening for the ascending
footsteps and the knocking, partly absorbed in other thoughts, she
seated herself and lay back in the dingy arm-chair, before the
radiator, elevating her dainty feet to the top of it and crossing
them.
A gale was now blowing outside; invisible rain, or more probably
sleet, pelted and swished across the curtained panes. Far away in the
city, somewhere, a fire-engine rushed clanging through cañons,
storm-swept, luminously obscure. Her nickel alarm clock ticked loudly
in the room; the radiator clicked and fizzed and snapped.
Presently she heard a step on the stair, then in the corridor outside
her door. Then came the knocking on the door but unexpectedly loud,
vigorous and impatient.
And Athalie, surprised, twisted around in her chair, looking over her
shoulder at the door.
"Please come in," she said in her calm young voice.
CHAPTER VI
A rather tall man stepped in. He wore a snow-dusted, fur-lined
overcoat and carried in his white-gloved hands a top hat and a
silver-hooked walking stick.
He had made a mistake, of course; and Athalie hastily lowered her feet
and turned half around in her chair again to meet his expected
apologies; and then continued in that attitude, rigid and silent.
"Miss Greensleeve?" he asked.
She rose, mechanically, the heavy lustrous braids framing a face as
white as a flower.
"Is that _you_, Athalie!" he asked, hesitating.
"C. Bailey, Junior," she said under her breath.
There was a moment's pause, then he stepped toward her and, very
slowly, she offered a hand still faintly fragrant with "cream of
lilacs."
A damp, chilly wind came from the corridor; she went over and closed
the door, stood for a few seconds with her back against it looking at
him.
Now under the mask of manhood she could see the boy she had once
known,--under the short dark moustache the clean-cut mouth unchanged.
Only his cheeks seemed firmer and leaner, and the eyes were now the
baffling eyes of a man.
"How did you know I was here?" she asked, quite unconscious of her
own somewhat intimate attire, so entirely had the shock of surprise
possessed her.
"Athalie, you have not changed a bit--only you are so much prettier
than I realised," he said illogically.... "How did I know you lived
here? I didn't until we bought this row of flats last week--my
father's company--I'm in it now.... And glancing over the list of
tenants I saw your name."
She said nothing.
"Do you mind my coming? I was going to write and ask you. But walking
in this way rather appealed to me. Do you mind?"
"No."
"May I stay and chat for a moment? I'm on my way to the opera. May I
stay a few minutes?"
She nodded, not yet sufficiently composed to talk very much.
He glanced about him for a place to lay coat and hat; then slipping
out of the soft fur, disclosed himself in evening dress.
She had dropped into the arm-chair by the radiator; and, as he came
forward, stripping off his white gloves, suddenly she became conscious
of her bare, slippered feet and drew them under the edges of her
negligée.
"I was not expecting anybody,--" she began, and checked herself.
Certainly she did not care to rise, now, and pass before him in search
of more suitable clothing. Therefore the less said the better.
He had found a rather shaky chair, and had drawn it up in front of the
radiator.
"This is very jolly," he said. "Do you realise that this is our third
encounter?"
"Yes."
"It really begins to look inevitable, doesn't it?"
She smiled.
"Three times, you know, is usually considered significant," he added
laughingly. "It doesn't dismay you, does it?"
She laughed, resting her cheek against the upholstered wing of her
chair and looked at him with shy but undisguised pleasure.
"You haven't changed a single bit, Athalie," he declared.
"No, I haven't changed."
"Do you remember our last meeting--on the Elevated?"
"Yes."
"Lord!" he said; "that was four years ago. Do you realise it?"
"Yes."
A slight colour grew on his cheeks.
"I _was_ a piker, wasn't I?"
After a moment, looking down at her idly clasped hands lying on her
knees: "I hoped you would come," she said gravely.
"I wanted to. I don't suppose you'll believe that; but I did.... I
don't know how it happened that I didn't make good. There were so many
things to do, all sorts of engagements,--and the summer vacation
seemed ended before I could understand that it had begun."--He scowled
in retrospection, and she watched his expression out of her dark blue
eyes--clear, engaging eyes, sweet as a child's.
"That's no excuse," he concluded. "I should have kept my word to
you--and I really wanted to.... And I was not quite such a piker as
you thought me."
"I didn't think that of you, C. Bailey, Junior."
"You must have!"
"I didn't."
"That's because you're so decent, but it makes my infamy the
blacker.... Anyway I _did_ write you and _did_ send you the
strap-watch. I sent both to Fifty-fourth Street. The Dead Letter
Office returned them to me."... He drew from his inner pocket a
letter and a packet. "Here they are."
She sat up slowly and very slowly took the letter from his hand.
"Four years old," he commented. "Isn't that the limit?" And he began
to tear the sealed paper from the packet.
"What a shame," he went on contritely, "that you wore that old
gun-metal watch of mine so long. I was mortified when I saw it on your
wrist that day--"
"I wear it still," she said with a smile.
"Nonsense!" he glanced at her bare wrist and laughed.
"I _do_," she insisted. "It is only because I have just bathed and am
prepared for the night that I am not wearing it now."
He looked up, incredulous, then his expression changed subtly.
"Is that so?" he asked.
But the hint of seriousness confused her and she merely nodded.
He had freed the case from the sealed paper and now he laid it on her
knees, saying: "Thank the Lord I'm not such a piker now as I was,
anyway. I hope you'll wear it, Athalie, and fire that other affair out
of your back window."
"There is no back window," she said, raising her charming eyes to
his,--"there's only an air-shaft.... Am I to open it?--I mean this
case?"
"It is yours."
She opened it daintily.
"Oh, C. Bailey, Junior!" she said very gently. "You mustn't do this!"
"Why?"
"It's _too_ beautiful. Isn't it?"
"Nonsense, Athalie. Here, I'll wind it and set it for you. This is how
it works--" pulling out the jewelled lever and setting it by the tin
alarm-clock on the mantel. Then he wound it, unclasped the woven gold
wrist-band, took her reluctant hand, and, clasping the jewel over her
wrist, snapped the catch.
For a few moments her fair head remained bent as she gazed in silence
at the tiny moving hands. Then, looking up:
"Thank you, C. Bailey, Junior," she said, a little solemnly perhaps.
He laughed, somewhat conscious of the slight constraint: "You're
welcome, Athalie. Do you really like it?"
"It is wonderfully beautiful."
"Then I'm perfectly happy and contented--or I will be when you read
that letter and admit I'm not as much of a piker as I seemed."
She laughed and coloured: "I never thought that of you. I only--missed
you."
"Really?"
"Yes," she said innocently.
For a second he looked rather grave, then again, conscious of his own
constraint, spoke gaily, lightly:
"You certainly are the real thing in friendship. You are far too
generous to me."
She said: "Incidents are not frequent enough in my life to leave me
unimpressed. I never knew any other boy of your sort. I suppose that
is why I never forgot you."
Her simplicity pricked the iridescent and growing bubble of his
vanity, and he laughed, discountenanced by her direct explanation of
how memory chanced to retain him. But it did not occur to him to ask
himself how it happened that, in all these years, and in a life so
happily varied, so delightfully crowded as his own had always been, he
had never entirely forgotten her.
"I wish you'd open that letter and read it," he said. "It's my
credential. Date and postmark plead for me."
But she had other plans for its unsealing and its perusal, and said
so.
"Aren't you going to read it, Athalie?"
"Yes--when you go."
"Why?"
"Because--it will make your visit seem a little longer," she said
frankly.
"Athalie, are you really glad to see me?"
She looked up as though he were jesting, and caught in his eye another
gleam of that sudden seriousness which had already slightly confused
her. For a moment only, both felt the least sense of constraint, then
the instinct that had forbidden her to admit any significance in his
seriousness, parted her lips with that engaging smile which he had
begun to know so well, and to await with an expectancy that approached
fascination.
"Peach turnovers," she said. "Do you remember? If I had not been glad
to see you in those days I would not have gone into the kitchen to
bring you one.... And I have already told you that I am unchanged....
Wait! I am changed.... I am very much wealthier." And she laughed her
delicious, unembarrassed laugh of a child.
He laughed, too, then shot a glance around the shabby room.
"What are you doing, Athalie?" he asked lightly.
"The same."
"I remember you told me. You are stenographer and typist."
"Yes."
"Where?"
"I am with Wahlbaum, Grossman & Co."
"Are they decent to you?"
"Very."
He thought a moment, hesitated, appeared as though about to speak,
then seemed to reject the idea whatever it might have been.
"You live with your sisters, don't you?" he asked.
"Yes."
He planted his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, his head on his
hands, apparently buried in thought.
After a little while: "C. Bailey, Junior," she ventured, "you must not
let me keep you too long."
"What?" He lifted his head.
"You are on your way to the opera, aren't you?"
"Am I? That's so.... I'd rather stay here if you'll let me."
"But the _opera_!" she protested with emphasis.
"What do I care for the opera?"
"Don't you?"
He laughed: "No; do you?"
"I'm mad about it."
Still laughing he said: "Then, in my place, _you_ wouldn't give up the
opera for _me_, would you, Athalie?"
She started to say "No!" very decidedly; but checked herself. Then,
deliberately honest:
"If," she began, "I were going to the opera, and you came in
here--after four years of not seeing you--and if I had to choose--I
don't believe I'd go to the opera. But it would be a dreadful wrench,
C. Bailey, Junior!"
"It's no wrench to me."
"Because you often go."
"Because, even if I seldom went there could be no question of choice
between the opera and Athalie Greensleeve."
"C. Bailey, Junior, you are not honest."
"Yes, I am. Why do you say so?"
"I judge by past performances," she said, her humorous eyes on him.
"Are you going to throw past performances in my face every time I come
to see you?"
"Are you coming again?"
"That isn't generous of you, Athalie--"
"I really mean it," said the girl. "Are you?"
"Coming here? Of course I am if you'll let me!"
The last time he had said, "If you _want_ me." Now it was modified to
"If you'll _let_ me,"--a development and a new footing to which
neither were yet accustomed, perhaps not even conscious of.
"C. Bailey, Junior, do you want to come?"
"I do indeed. It is so bully of you to be nice to me
after--everything. And it's so jolly to talk over--things--with you."
She leaned forward in her chair, her pretty hands joined between her
knees.
"Please," she said, "don't say you'll come if you are not coming."
"But I am--"
"I know you said so twice before.... I don't mean to be horrid or to
reproach you, but--I am going to tell you--I was disappointed--even
a--a little--unhappy. And it--lasted--some time.... So, if you are not
coming, tell me so now.... It is hard to wait--too long."
"Athalie," he said, completely surprised by the girl's frank avowal
and by the unsuspected emotion in himself which was responding, "I
am--I had no idea--I don't deserve your kindness to me--your
loyalty--I'm a--I'm a--a pup! That's what I am--an undeserving,
ungrateful, irresponsible, and asinine pup! That's what all boys in
college are--but it's no excuse for not keeping my word--for making
you unhappy--"
"C. Bailey, Junior, you were just a boy. And I was a child.... I am
still, in spite of my nineteen years--nearly twenty at that--not much
different, not enough changed to know that I'm a woman. I feel exactly
as I did toward you--not grown up,--or that you have grown up.... Only
I know, somehow, I'd have a harder time of it now, if you tell me
you'll come, and then--"
"I _will_ come, Athalie! I _want_ to," he said impetuously. "You're
more interesting,--a lot jollier,--than any girl I know. I always
suspected it, too--the bigger fool I to lose all that time we might
have had together--"
She, surprised for a moment, lifted her pretty head and laughed
outright, checking his somewhat impulsive monologue. And he looked at
her, disturbed.
"I'm only laughing because you speak of all those years we might have
had together, as though--" And suddenly she checked herself in her
turn, on the brink of saying something that was not so funny after
all.
Probably he understood what impulse had prompted her to terminate
abruptly both laughter and discourse, for he reddened and gazed rather
fixedly at the radiator which was now clanking and clinking in a very
noisy manner.
"You ought to have a fireplace and an open fire," he said. "It's the
cosiest thing on earth--with a cat on the hearth and a big chair and a
good book.... Athalie, do you remember that stove? And how I sat there
in wet shooting clothes and stockinged feet?"
"Yes," she said, drawing her own bare ones further under her chair.
"Do you know what you looked like to me when you came in so silently,
dressed in your red hood and cloak?"
"What did I look like?"
"A little fairy princess."
"_I?_ In that ragged cloak?"
"_I_ didn't see the rags. All I saw was your lithe little fairy figure
and your yellow hair and your wonderful dark eyes in the ruddy light
from the stove. I tell you, Athalie, I was enchanted."
"How odd! I never dreamed you thought that of me when I stood there
looking at you, utterly lost in admiration--"
"Oh, come, Athalie!" he laughed; "you are getting back at me!"
"It's true. I thought you the most wonderful boy I had ever seen."
"Until I disillusioned you," he said.
"You never did, C. Bailey, Junior."
"What! Not when I proved a piker?"
But she only smiled into his amused and challenging eyes and slowly
shook her head.
Once or twice, mechanically, he had slipped a flat gold cigarette case
from his pocket, and then, mechanically still, had put it back. Not
accustomed to modern men of his caste she had not paid much attention
to the unconscious hint of habit. Now as he did it again it occurred
to her to ask him why he did not smoke.
"May I?"
"Yes. I like it."
"Do you smoke?"
"No--now and then when I'm troubled."
"Is that often?" he asked lightly.
"Very seldom," she replied, amused; "and the proof is that I never
smoked more than half a dozen cigarettes in all my life."
"Will you try one now?" he asked mischievously.
"I'm not in trouble, am I?"
"I don't know. _I_ am."
"What troubles you, C. Bailey, Junior?" she asked, humorously.
"My disinclination to leave. And it's after eleven."
"If you never get into any more serious trouble than that," she said,
"I shall not worry about you."
"Would you worry if I were in trouble?"
"Naturally."
"Why?"
"Why? Because you are my friend. Why shouldn't I worry?"
"Do you really take our friendship as seriously as that?"
"Don't _you_?"
He changed countenance, hesitated, flicked the ashes from his
cigarette. Suddenly he looked her straight in the face:
"Yes. I _do_ take it seriously," he said in a voice so quietly and
perhaps unnecessarily emphatic that, for a few moments, she found
nothing to say in response.
Then, smilingly: "I am glad you look at it that way. It means that you
will come back some day."
"I will come to-morrow if you'll let me."
Which left her surprised and silent but not at all disquieted.
"Shall I, Athalie?"
"Yes--if you wish."
"Why not?" he said with more unnecessary emphasis and as though
addressing himself, and perhaps others not present. "I see no reason
why I shouldn't if you'll let me. Do you?"
"No."
"May I take you to dinner and to the theatre?"
A quick glow shot through her, leaving a sort of whispering confusion
in her brain which seemed full of distant voices.
"Yes, I'd like to go with you."
"That's fine! And we'll have supper afterward."
She smiled at him through the ringing confusion in her brain.
"Do you mind taking supper with me after the play?"
"No."
"Where then?"
"Anywhere--with you, C. Bailey, Junior."
Things began to seem to her a trifle unreal; she saw him a little
vaguely: vaguely, too, she was conscious that to whatever she said he
was responding with something more subtly vital than mere words.
Faintly within her the instinct stirred to ignore, to repress
something in him--in herself--she was not clear about just what she
ought to repress, or which of them harboured it.
One thing confused and disturbed her; his tongue was running loose,
planning all sorts of future pleasures for them both together,
confidently, with an enthusiasm which, somehow, seemed to leave her
unresponsive.
"Please don't," she said.
"What, Athalie?"
"Make so many promises--plans. I--am afraid of promises."
He turned very red: "What on earth have I done to you!"
"Nothing--yet."
"Yes I have! I once made you unhappy; I made you distrust me--"
"No:--that is all over now. Only--if it happened again--I should
really--miss you--very much--C. Bailey, Junior.... So don't promise me
too much--now.... Promise a little--each time you come--if you care
to."
In the silence that grew between them the alarm went off with a
startling clangour that brought them both to their feet.
It was midnight.
"I set it to wake myself before my sisters came in," she explained
with a smile. "I usually have something prepared for them to eat when
they've been out."
"I suppose they do the same for you," he said, looking at her rather
steadily.
"I don't go out in the evening."
"You do sometimes."
"Very seldom.... Do you know, C. Bailey, Junior, I have never been out
in the evening with a man?"
"What?"
"Never."
"Why?"
"I suppose," she admitted with habitual honesty, "it's because I don't
know any men with whom I'd care to be seen in the evening. I don't
like ordinary people."
"How about me?" he asked, laughing.
She merely smiled.
CHAPTER VII
Doris came in about midnight, her coat and hat plastered with sleet,
her shoes soaking. She looked rather forlornly at the bowl of hot milk
and crackers which Athalie brought from the kitchenette.
"I'd give next week's salary for a steak," she said, taking the bowl
and warming her chilled hands on it.
"You know what meat costs," said Athalie. "I'd give it to you for
supper if I could."
Doris seated herself by the radiator; Athalie knelt and drew off the
wet shoes, unbuttoned the garters and rolled the stockings from the
icy feet.
"I had another chance to-night: they were college boys: some of the
girls went--" remarked Doris disjointedly, forcing herself to eat the
crackers and milk because it was hot, and snuggling into the knitted
slippers which Athalie brought. After a moment or two she lifted her
pretty, impudent face and sniffed inquiringly.
"_Who's_ been smoking? You?"
"No."
"Who? Genevieve?"
"No. Who do you suppose called?"
"Search _me_."
"C. Bailey, Junior!"
Doris looked blank, then: "Oh, that boy you had an affair with about a
hundred years ago?"
"That same boy," said Athalie, smiling.
"He'll come again next century I suppose--like a comet," shrugged
Doris, nestling closer to the radiator.
Athalie said nothing; her sister slowly stirred the crackers in the
milk and from time to time took a spoonful.
"Next time," she said presently, "I shall go out to supper when an
attractive man asks me. I know how to take care of myself--and the
supper, too."
Athalie started to say something, and stopped. Perhaps she remembered
C. Bailey, Jr., and that she had promised to dine and sup with him,
"anywhere."
She said in a low voice: "It's all right, I suppose, if you know the
man."
"I don't care whether I know him or not as long as it's a good
restaurant."
"Don't talk that way, Doris!"
"Why not? It's true."
There was a silence. Doris set aside the empty bowl, yawned, looked at
the clock, yawned again.
"This is too late for Catharine," she said, drowsily.
"I know it is. Who are the people she's with?"
"Genevieve Hunting--I don't know the men:--some of Genevieve's
friends."
"I hope it's nobody from Winton's."
There had been in the Greensleeve family, a tacit understanding that
it was not the thing to accept social attentions from anybody
connected with the firm which employed them. Winton, the male milliner
and gown designer, usually let his models alone, being in perpetual
dread of his wife; but one of the unhealthy looking sons had become a
nuisance to the girls employed there. Recently he had annoyed
Catharine, and the girl was afraid she might have to lunch with him or
lose her position.
Doris yawned again, then shivered.
"Go to bed, ducky," said Athalie. "I'll wait up for Catharine."
So Doris took herself off to bed and Athalie sank into the shabby
arm-chair by the radiator to wait for her other sister.
It was two o'clock when she came in, flushed, vague-eyed, a rather
silly and fixed smile on her doll-like face. Athalie, on the verge of
sleep, rose from her chair, rubbing her eyes:
"What on earth, Catharine--"
"We had supper,--that's why I'm late.... I've got to have a dinner
gown I tell you. Genevieve's is the smartest thing--"
"Where did you go?"
"To the Regina. I didn't want to--dressed this way but Cecil Reeve
said--"
"Who?"
"Cecil--Mr. Reeve--one of Genevieve's friends--the man who was so
crazy to meet me--"
"Oh! Who else was there?" asked Athalie drily.
"A Mr. Ferris--Harry Ferris they call him. He's quite mad about
Genevieve--"
"Why did you drink anything?"
"I?"
"You did, didn't you?"
"I had a glass of champagne."
"What else?"
"Nothing--except something pink in a glass--before we sat down to
supper.... And something violet coloured, afterward."
"Your breath is dreadful; do you realise it?"
Catharine seemed surprised, then her eyes wandered vaguely, drowsily,
and she laid her gloved hand on Athalie's arm as though to steady
herself.
"What sort of man is your new friend, Cecil Reeve?" inquired Athalie.
"He's nice--a gentleman. And they were so amusing;--we laughed so
much.... I told him he might call.... He's really all right,
Athalie--"
"And Mr. Ferris?"
"Well--I don't know about him; he's Genevieve's friend;--I don't know
him so well.... But of course he's all right--a gentleman--"
"That's the trouble," said Athalie in a low voice.
"What is the trouble?"
"These friends of yours--and of Doris, and of mine ... they're
gentlemen.... And that is why we find them agreeable, socially.... But
when they desire social amusement they know where to find it."
"Where?"
"Where girls who work for a living are unknown. Where they never are
asked, never go, never are expected to go. But that is where such men
are asked, where such men are expected; and it is where they go for
social diversion--not to the Regina with two of Winton's models, nor
to the Café Arabesque with an Egyptian Garden chorus girl, nor--" she
hesitated, flushed, and was silent, staring mentally at the image of
C. Bailey, Jr., which her logic and philosophy had inevitably evoked.
"Then, what is a business girl to do?" asked Catharine, vaguely.
Athalie shook her golden head, slowly: "Don't ask me."
Catharine said, still more vaguely: "She must do
something--pleasant--before she's too old and sick to--to care what
happens."
"I know it.... Men, of that kind, _are_ pleasant.... I don't see why
we shouldn't go out with them. It's all the chance we have. Or will
ever have.... I've thought it over. I don't see that it helps for us
to resent their sisters and mothers and friends. Such women would
never permit us to know them. The nearest we can get to them is to
know their sons."
"I don't want to know them--"
"Yes, you do. Be honest, Catharine. Every girl does. And really I
believe if the choice were offered a business girl, she would rather
know the mothers and sisters than the sons."
"There's no use thinking about it," said Catharine.
"No, there is no use.... And so I don't see any harm in being friends
with their sons.... It will hurt at times--humiliate us--maybe
embitter us.... But it's that or nothing."
"We needn't be silly about their sons."
Athalie opened her dark blue eyes, then laughed confidently: "Oh, as
for anything like _that_! I should hope not. We three ought to know
_something_ by this time."
"I should think so," murmured Catharine; and her warm, wine-scented
breath fell on Athalie's cheek.
CHAPTER VIII
Before February had ended C. Bailey, Jr., and Athalie Greensleeve had
been to more than one play, had dined and supped together more than
once at the Regina.
The magnificence of the most fashionable restaurant in town had
thrilled and enchanted Athalie. At close range for the first time she
had an opportunity to inspect the rich, the fashionable, and the
great. As for celebrities, they seemed to be merely a by-product of
the gay, animated, beautifully gowned throngs: people she had heard
of, people more important still of whom she had never heard, people
important only to themselves of whom nobody had ever heard thronged
the great rococo rooms. The best hotel orchestra in America played
there; the loveliest flowers, the most magnificent jewels, the most
celebrated cuisine in the entire Republic--all were there for Athalie
Greensleeve to wonder at and to enjoy. There were other things for her
to wonder at, too,--the seemingly exhaustless list of C. Bailey,
Jr.'s, acquaintances; for he was always nodding to somebody or
returning salutes wherever they were, in the theatre, or the street,
in his little limousine car, at restaurants. Men sometimes came up and
spoke and were presented to Athalie: women, never.
But although she was very happy after her first evening out with C.
Bailey, Jr., she realised that a serious inroad upon her savings was
absolutely necessary if she were to continue her maiden's progress
with this enchanting young man. Clothing of a very different species
than any she had ever permitted herself was now becoming a necessity.
She made the inroad. It was worth while if only to see his surprise
and his naïve pride in her.
And truly the girl was very lovely in the few luxuries she ventured to
acquire--so lovely, indeed, that many heads turned and many eyes
followed her calm and graceful progress in theatre aisle, amid
thronged tables, on the Avenue, anywhere and everywhere she moved
along the path of life now already in flowery bloom for her.
And beside her, eager, happy, flattered, walked C. Bailey, Jr., very
conscious that he was being envied; very proud of the beautiful young
girl with whom he was so constantly identifying himself, and who, very
obviously, was doing him honour.
Of his gratified and flattered self-esteem the girl was unconscious;
that he was really happy with her, proud of her appearance, kind to
her beyond reason and even beyond propriety perhaps,--invariably
courteous and considerate, she was vividly aware. And it made her
intensely happy to know that she gave him pleasure and to accept it
from him.
It _was_ pleasure to Clive; but not entirely unmitigated. His father
asked him once or twice who the girl was of whom "people" were
talking; and when his son said: "She's absolutely all right, father,"
Bailey, Sr., knew that she was--so far.
[Illustration: "C. Bailey, Jr., and Athalie Greensleeve ... had supped
together more than once at the Regina."]
"But what's the use, Clive?" he asked with a sort of sad humour. "Is
it necessary for you, too, to follow the path of the calf?"
"I like her."
"And other men are inclined to, and have no opportunity; is that it,
my son? The fascination of monopoly? The chicken with the worm?"
"I _like_ her," repeated Clive, Jr., a trifle annoyed.
"So you have remarked before. Who is she?"
"Do you remember that charming little child in the red hood and cloak
down at Greensleeve's tavern when we were duck-shooting?"
"Is _that_ the girl?"
"Yes."
"What is she?"
"Stenographer."
Bailey, Sr., shrugged his shoulders, patiently.
"What's the _use_, Clive?"
"Use? Well there's no particular use. I'm not in love with her. Did
you think I was?"
"I don't think any more. Your mother does that for me.... Don't make
anybody unhappy, my son."
* * * * *
His mother, also, had made very frank representations to him on
several occasions, the burden of them being that common people beget
common ideas, common associations corrupt good manners, and that
"nice" girls would continue to view with disdain and might ultimately
ostracise any misguided young man of their own caste who played about
with a woman for whose existence nobody who was anybody could account.
"The daughter of a Long Island road-house keeper! Why, Clive! where is
your sense of fitness! Men don't do that sort of thing any more!"
"What sort of thing, mother?"
"What you are doing."
"What am I doing?"
"Parading a very conspicuous young woman about town."
"If you saw her in somebody's drawing-room you'd merely think her
beautiful and well-bred."
"Clive! Will you please awake from that silly dream?"
"That's the truth, mother. And if she spoke it would merely confirm
the impression. You won't believe it but it's true."
"That's absurd, Clive! She may not be uneducated but she certainly
cannot be either cultivated or well-bred."
"She is cultivating herself."
"Then for goodness' sake let her do it! It's praiseworthy and
commendable for a working girl to try to better herself. But it
doesn't concern you."
"Why not? If a business girl does better herself and fit herself for a
better social environment, it seems to me her labour is in vain if
people within the desired environment snub her."
"What kind of argument is that? Socialistic? I merely know it is
unbaked. What theory is it, dear?"
[Illustration: "Beside her, eager, happy, flattered, walked C. Bailey,
Jr., very conscious that he was being envied."]
"I don't know what it is. It seems reasonable to me, mother."
"Clive, are you trying to make yourself sentimentalise over that
Greensleeve woman?"
"I told you that I am not in love with her; nor is she with me. It's
an agreeable and happy comradeship; that's all."
"People think it something more," retorted his mother, curtly.
"That's their fault, not Athalie's and not mine."
"Then, why do you go about with her? _Why?_ You know girls enough,
don't you?"
"Plenty. They resemble one another to the verge of monotony."
"Is that the way you regard the charming, well-born, well-bred,
clever, cultivated girls of your own circle, whose parents were the
friends of your parents?"
"Oh, mother, I like them of course.... But there's something about a
business girl--a girl in the making--that is more amusing, more
companionable, more interesting. A business girl seems to wear better.
She's better worth talking to, listening to,--it's better fun to go
about with her, see things with her, discuss things--"
"What on earth are you talking about! It's perfect babble; it's
nonsense! If you really believe you have a penchant for sturdy and
rather grubby worthiness unadorned you are mistaken. The inclination
you have is merely for a pretty face and figure. I know you. If I
don't, who does! You're rather a fastidious young man, even finicky,
and very, very much accustomed to the best and only the best. Don't
talk to me about your disinterested admiration for a working girl. You
haven't anything in common with her, and you never could have. And
you'd better be very careful not to make a fool of yourself."
"How?"
"As all men are likely to do at your callow age."
"Fall in love with her?"
"You can call it that. The result is always deplorable. And if she's a
smart, selfish, and unscrupulous girl, the result may be more
deplorable still, as far as we all are concerned. What is the need of
my saying this? You are grown; you know it already. Up to the present
time you've kept fastidiously clear of such entanglements. You say you
have, and your father and I believe you. So what is the use of
beginning now,--creating an unfortunate impression in your own set,
spending your time with such a girl as this Greensleeve girl--"
"Mother," he said, "you're going about this matter in the wrong way. I
am not in love with Athalie Greensleeve. But there is no girl I like
better, none perhaps I like quite as well. Let me alone. There's no
sentiment between her and me so far. There won't be any--unless you
and other people begin to drive us toward each other. I don't want you
to do that. Don't interfere. Let us alone. We're having a good
time,--a perfectly natural, wholesome, happy time together."
[Illustration: "'I _like_ her,' repeated Clive, Jr., a trifle
annoyed."]
"What is it leading to?" demanded his mother impatiently.
"To nothing except more good times. That's absolutely all. That's all
that good times lead to where any of the girls you approve of are
concerned--not to sentiment, not to love, merely to more good times.
Why on earth can't people understand that even if the girl happens to
be earning her own living?"
"People don't understand. That is the truth, and you can't alter it,
Clive. The girl's reputation will always suffer. And that's where you
ought to show yourself generous."
"What?"
"If you really like and respect her."
"How am I to show myself generous, as you put it?"
"By keeping away from her."
"Because people gossip?"
"Because," said his mother sharply, "they'll think the girl is your
mistress if you continue to decorate public resorts with her."
"Would--_you_ think so, mother?"
"No. You happen to be my son. And you're truthful. Otherwise I'd think
so."
"You would?"
"Certainly."
"That's rotten," he said, slowly.
"Oh, Clive, don't be a fool. You can't do what you're doing without
arousing suspicion everywhere--from a village sewing-circle to the
smartest gathering on Manhattan Island! You know it."
"I have never thought about it."
"Then think of it now. Whether it's rotten, as you say, or not, it's
so. It's one of the folk-ways of the human species. And if it is,
merely saying it's rotten can't alter it."
Mrs. Bailey's car was at the door; Clive took the great sable coat
from the maid who brought it and slipped it over the handsome
afternoon gown that his handsome mother wore.
For a moment he stood, looking at her almost curiously--at the
brilliant black eyes, the clear smooth olive skin still youthful
enough to be attractive, at the red lips, mostly nature's hue, at the
cheeks where the delicate carmine flush was still mostly nature's.
He said: "You have so much, mother.... It seems strange you should not
be more generous to a girl you have never seen."
His handsome, capable, and experienced mother gazed at him out of
friendly and amused eyes from which delusion had long since fled. And
that is where she fell short, for delusion is the offspring of
imagination; and without imagination no intelligence is complete. She
said: "I can be generous with any woman except where my son concerns
himself with her. Where anybody else's son is involved I could be
generous to any girl, even--" she smiled her brilliant smile--"even
perhaps not too maliciously generous. But the situation in your case
doesn't appeal to me as humorous. Keep away from her, Clive; it's
easier than ultimately to run away from her."
CHAPTER IX
The course of irresponsible amusement which C. Bailey, Jr., continued
to pursue at intervals with the fair scion of the house--road-house--of
Greensleeve, did not run as smoothly as it might have, and was not
unmixed with carping reflections and sordid care on his part, and with
an increasing number of interruptions, admonitions, and warnings on
the part of his mother.
That pretty lady, flint-hardened in the igneous social lava-pot,
continued to hear disquieting tales of her son's doings. They came to
her right and left, from dance and card-table, opera-box and supper
party, tea and bazaar and fashionable reception.
One grim-visaged old harridan of whom Manhattan stood in fawning fear,
bluntly informed her that she'd better look out for her boy if she
didn't want to become a grandmother.
Which infuriated and terrified Mrs. Bailey and set her thinking with
all the implacable concentration of which she was capable.
So far in life she had accomplished whatever she set out to do.... And
of all things on earth she dreaded most to become a grandmother of any
description whatever.
But between Athalie and Clive, if there had been any doubts concerning
the propriety or expediency of their companionship neither he nor she
had, so far, expressed them.
Their comradeship, in fact, had now become an intimacy--the sort that
permits long silences without excuse or embarrassment on either side.
She continued to charm and surprise him; and to discover, daily, in
him new traits to admire in a character which perhaps he did not
really possess.
In this girl he seemed to find an infinite variety. Moods, impulsive
or deliberate, and capricious or logical, continued to stimulate his
interest in her every time they met. On no two days was she exactly
the same--or so he seemed to think. And yet her basic qualities were,
it appeared to him, characteristic and unvarying,--directness,
loyalty, generosity, freedom from ulterior motive and a gay confidence
in a world which, for the first time in her life, she had begun to
find unexpectedly exciting.
They had been one evening to a musical comedy which by some fortunate
chance was well written, well sung, and well done. And they were in
excellent spirits as they left the theatre and stood waiting for his
small limousine car, she in her pretty furs held close to her throat,
humming under her breath a refrain from the delightful finale, he
smoking a cigarette and watching the numbers being flashed for the
long line of carriages and motors which moved up continually through
the lamp-lit darkness.
"Athalie," he said, "suppose we side-step the Regina and try
Broadway. Are you in the humour for it?"
She laughed and her eyes sparkled in the electric glow: "Are you,
Clive?"
"Yes, I am. I feel very devilish."
"So do I,--devilishly hungry."
"That's fine. Where shall we go?"
"The Café Arabesque?... The name sounds exciting."
"All right--" as his car drew up and the gold-capped porter opened the
door;--so he directed his chauffeur to drive them to the Café
Arabesque.
"If you don't like it," he added to Athalie, drawing the fur robe over
her knees and his, "we can go somewhere else."
"That's very nice of you. I don't have to suffer for my mistakes."
"Nobody ever ought to suffer for mistakes because nobody would ever
make mistakes on purpose," he said, laughing.
"Such a delightful philosophy! Please remind me of it when I'm in
agony over something I'm sorry I did."
"I'm afraid you'll have to remind me too," he said, still laughing.
"Is it a bargain?"
"Certainly."
The car stopped; he sprang out and aided her to the icy sidewalk.
"I don't think I ever saw you as pretty as you are to-night," he
whispered, slipping his arm under hers.
"_Are_ you really growing more beautiful or do I merely think so?"
"I don't know," she said, happily; "I'll tell you a secret, shall I?"
He inclined his ear toward her, and she said in a laughing whisper:
"Clive, I _feel_ beautiful to-night. Do you know how it feels to feel
beautiful?"
"Not personally," he admitted; and they separated still laughing like
two children, the focus of sympathetic, amused, or envious glances
from the brilliantly dressed throng clustering at the two cloak rooms.
She came to him presently where he was waiting, and, instinctively the
groups around the doors made a lane for the fair young girl who came
forward with the ghost of a smile on her lips as though entirely
unconscious of herself and of everybody except the man who moved out
to meet her.
"It's true," he murmured; "you _are_ the most beautiful thing in this
beauty-ridden town."
"You'll spoil me, Clive."
"Is that possible?"
"I don't know. Don't try. There is a great deal in me that has never
been disturbed, never been brought out. Maybe much of it is evil," she
added lightly.
He turned; she met his eyes half seriously, half mockingly, and they
laughed. But what she had said so lightly in jest remained for a few
moments in his mind to occupy and slightly trouble it.
From their table beside the bronze-railed gallery, they could overlook
the main floor where a wide lane for dancing had been cleared and
marked out with crimson-tasselled ropes of silk.
A noisy orchestra played imbecile dance music, and a number of male
and female imbeciles took advantage of it to exercise the only
portions of their anatomy in which any trace of intellect had ever
lodged.
Athalie, resting one dimpled elbow on the velvet cushioned rail,
watched the dancers for a while, then her unamused and almost
expressionless gaze swept the tables below with a leisurely absence of
interest which might have been mistaken for insolence--and envied as
such by a servile world which secretly adores it.
"Well, Lady Greensleeves?" he said, watching her.
"Some remarkable Poiret and Lucille gowns, Clive.... And a great deal
of paint." She remained a moment in the same attitude--leisurely
inspecting the throng below, then turned to him, her calm
preoccupation changing to a shyly engaging smile.
"Are you still of the same mind concerning my personal
attractiveness?"
"I _have_ spoiled you!" he concluded, pretending chagrin.
"Is that spoiling me--to hear you say you approve of me?"
"Of course not, you dear girl! Nothing could ever spoil you."
She lifted her Clover Club, looking across the frosty glass at him;
and the usual rite was silently completed. They were hungry; her
appetite was always a natural and healthy one, and his sometimes
matched it, as happened that night.
"Now, this is wonderful," he said, lighting a cigarette between
courses and leaning forward, elbows on the cloth, and his hands
clasped under his chin; "a good show, a good dinner, and good company.
What surfeited monarch could ask more?"
"Why mention the company last, Clive?"
"I've certainly spoiled you," he said with a groan; "you've tasted
adulation; you prefer it to your dinner."
"The question is do _you_ prefer my company to the dinner and the
show? _Do_ you! If so why mention me last in the catalogue of your
blessings?"
"I always mention you last in my prayers--so that whoever listens will
more easily remember," he said gaily.
The laughter still made the dark blue eyes brilliant but they grew
more serious when she said: "You don't really ever _pray_ for me,
Clive. Do you?"
"Yes. Why not?"
The smile faded in her eyes and in his.
"I didn't know you prayed at all," she remarked, looking down at her
wine glass.
"It's one of those things I happen to do," he said with a slight
shrug.
They mused for a while in silence, her mind pursuing its trend back to
childhood, his idly considering the subject of prayer and wondering
whether the habit had become too mechanical with him, or whether his
less selfish petitions might possibly carry to the Source of All
Things.
Then having drifted clear of this nebulous zone of thought, and
coffee having been served, they came back to earth and to each other
with slight smiles of recognition--delicate salutes acknowledging each
other's presence and paramount importance in a world which was going
very gaily.
They discussed the play; she hummed snatches of its melodies below her
breath at intervals, her dark blue eyes always fixed on him and her
ears listening to him alone. Particularly now; for his mood had
changed and he was drifting back toward something she had said earlier
in the evening--something about her own possible capacity for good and
evil. It was a question, only partly serious; and she responded in the
same vein:
"How should I know what capabilities I possess? Of course I have
capabilities. No doubt, dormant within me lies every besetting sin,
every human failing. Perhaps also the cardinal, corresponding, and
antidotic virtues to all of these."
"I suppose," he said, "every sin has its antithesis. It's like a chess
board--the human mind--with the black men ranged on one side and the
white on the other, ready to move, to advance, skirmish, threaten,
manoeuvre, attack, and check each other, and the intervening squares
represent the checkered battlefield of contending desires."
The simile striking her as original and clever, she made him a pretty
compliment. She was very young in her affections.
"If," she nodded, "a sin, represented by a black piece, dares to stir
or intrude or threaten, then there is always the better thought,
represented by a white piece, ready to block and check the black one.
Is that it?"
"Exactly," he said, secretly well pleased with himself. And as for
Athalie, she admired his elastic and eloquent imagination beyond
words.
"Do you know," she said, "you have never yet told me anything about
your business. Is it all right for me to ask, Clive?"
"Certainly. It's real estate--Bailey, Reeve, and Willis. Willis is
dead, Reeve out of it, and my father and I are the whole show."
"Reeve?" she repeated, interested.
"Yes, he lives in Paris, permanently. He has a son here, in the
banking business."
"Cecil Reeve?"
"Yes. Do you know him?"
"No. My sister Catharine does."
Clive seemed interested and curious: "Cecil Reeve and I were at
Harvard together. I haven't seen much of him since."
"What sort is he, Clive?"
"Nice--Oh, very nice. A good sport;--a good deal of a sport.... Which
sister did you say?"
"Catharine."
"That's the cunning little one with the baby stare and brown curls?"
"Yes."
There was a silence. Clive sat absently fidgeting with his glass, and
Athalie watched him. Presently without looking up he said: "Yes, Cecil
Reeve is a very decent sport.... Rather gay. Good-looking chap. Nice
sort.... But rather a sport, you know."
The girl nodded.
"Catharine mustn't believe all he says," he added with a laugh. "Cecil has
a way--I'm not knocking him, you understand--but a young--inexperienced
girl--might take him a little bit too seriously.... Of course your sister
wouldn't."
"No, I don't think so.... Are _you_ that way, too?"
He raised his eyes: "Do you think I am, Athalie?"
"No.... But I can't help wondering--a little uneasily at times--how
you can find me as--as companionable as you say you do.... I can't
help wondering how long it will last."
"It will last as long as you do."
"But you are sure to find me out sooner or later, Clive."
"Find you out?"
"Yes--discover my limits, exhaust my capacity for entertaining you,
extract the last atom of amusement out of me. And--what _then_?"
"Athalie! What nonsense!"
"Is it?"
"Certainly it's nonsense. How can I possibly tire of such a girl as
you? I scarcely even know you yet. I don't begin to know you. Why you
are a perfectly unexplored, undiscovered girl to me, yet!"
"Am I?" she asked, laughing. "I supposed you had discovered about all
there is to me."
He shook his head, looking at her curiously perplexed: "Every time we
meet you are different. You always have interesting views on any
subject. You stimulate my imagination. How could I tire?
"Besides, somehow I am always aware of reserved and hidden forces in
you--of a character which I only partly know and admire--capabilities,
capacities of which I am ignorant except that, intuitively, I seem to
know they are part of you."
"Am I as complex as that to you?"
"Sometimes," he admitted. "You are just now for example. But usually
you are only a wonderfully interesting and charming girl who brings
out the best side of me and keeps me amused and happy every moment
that I am with you."
"There really is not much more to me than that," she said in a low
voice. "You sum me up--a gay source of amusement: nothing more."
"Athalie, you know you are more vital than that to me."
"No, I don't know it."
"You do! You know it in your own heart. You know that it is a
straight, clean, ardent friendship that inspires me and--" she looked
up, serious, and very quiet.
--"You know," he continued impulsively, "that it is not only your
beauty, your loveliness and grace and that inexplicable charm you seem
to radiate, that brings me to seek you every time that I have a moment
to do so.
"Why, if it were that alone, it would all have been merely a matter of
sentiment. Have I ever been sentimental with you?"
"No."
"Have I ever made love to you?"
She did not reply. Her eyes were fixed on her glass.
"Have I, Athalie?" he repeated.
"No, Clive," she said gently.
"Well then; is there not on my part a very deep, solidly founded, and
vital friendship for you? Is there not a--"
"Don't let's talk about it," she interrupted in a low voice. "You
always make me very happy; you say I please you--interest and amuse
you. That is enough--more than enough--more than I ever hoped or
asked--"
"I said you make me happy;--happier than I have ever been," he
explained with emphasis. "Do you suppose for a moment that your regard
for me is warmer, deeper, more enduring, than is mine for you? Do you,
Athalie?"
She lifted her eyes to his. But she had nothing more to say on the
subject.
However, he began to insist,--a little impatiently,--on a direct
answer. And finally she said:
"Clive, you came into a rather empty life when you came into mine.
Judge how completely you have filled it.... And what it would be if
you went out of it. Your own life has always been full. If I should
disappear from it--" she ceased.
The quiet, accentless, almost listless dignity of the words surprised
and impressed him for a moment; then the reaction came in a faint glow
through every vein and a sudden impulse to respond to her with an
assurance of devotion a little out of key with the somewhat stately
and reserved measure of their duet called friendship.
"You also fill my life," he said. "You give me what I never had--an
intimacy and an understanding that satisfies. Had I my way I would be
with you all the time. No other woman interests me as you do. There
_is_ no other woman."
"Oh, Clive! And all the charming people you know--"
"I know many. None like you, Athalie."
"That is very sweet of you.... I'm trying to believe it.... I want
to.... There are many days to fill in when I am not with you. To fill
them with such a belief would be to shorten them.... I don't know. I
often wonder where you are; what you are doing; with what stately and
beautiful creature you are talking, laughing, walking, dancing."--She
shrugged her shoulders and gazed down at the dancers below. "The days
are very long, sometimes," she added, half to herself.
When again, calmly, she turned to him there was an odd expression on
his face, and the next second he reddened and shifted his gaze.
Neither spoke for a few moments.
Presently she began to draw on her gloves, but he continued staring
into space, not noticing her, and finally she bent forward and rested
her slim gloved fingers on his hand, lightly, interrogatively.
"Yes; all right," he muttered.
"I have to go to business in the morning," she pleaded. He turned
almost impatiently:
"If I had my way you wouldn't go to business at all."
"If I had my way I wouldn't either," she rejoined, smilingly. But his
youthful visage remained sober and flushed. And when they were seated
in the limousine and the fur rug enveloped them both, he said
abruptly:
"I'm getting tired of this business."
"What business, Clive?"
"Everything--the way you live--your inadequate quarters--your having
to work all day long in that stuffy office, day after day, year after
year!"
She said, surprised and perplexed: "But it can't be helped, Clive! I
have to work."
"Why?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean--what good am I to you--what's the use of me, if I can't make
things easier for you?"
"The _use_ of you? Did you think I ever had any idea of using you?"
"But I want you to."
"How?" she asked, still uneasily perplexed, her eyes fixed on him.
But he had no definite idea, no plan fixed, nothing further to say on
a subject that had so suddenly taken shape within his mind.
She asked him again for an explanation, but, receiving none, settled
back thoughtfully in her furs. Only once did he break the silence.
"You know," he said indifferently, "that row of houses, of which
yours is one, belongs to me. I mean to me, personally."
"No, I didn't know it."
"Well it does. It's my own investment.... I've reduced rents--pending
improvements."
She looked up at him.
"The rent of your apartment has been reduced fifty per cent.," he said
carelessly; "so your rent is now paid until the new term begins next
October."
"Clive! That is perfectly ridiculous!" she began, hotly; but he swung
around, silencing her:
"Are you criticising my business methods?" he demanded.
"But that is too silly--"
"Will you mind your business!" he exclaimed, turning and taking her by
both shoulders. She looked into his eyes, searching them in silence.
Then:
"You're such a dear," she sighed; "why do you want to do a thing like
that when my sisters and I can afford to pay the present rent. You are
always doing such things, Clive; you have simply covered my
dressing-table with silver; my bureau is full of pretty things, all
gifts from you; you've given me the loveliest furniture of my own, and
books and desk-set and--and everything. And now you are asking me to
live rent-free.... And what have I to offer you in return?"
"The happiness of being with you now and then."
"Oh, Clive! You know that isn't very much to offer you. You know that
our being together is far more to me than it is to you! I dare not
even consider what I'd do without you, now. You mould me, alter my
thoughts, make me such a delightfully different girl, take entire
charge and possession of me.... I don't want you to give me anything
more--do anything more for me.... When you first began to give me
beautiful things I didn't want to take them. Do you remember how
awkward and shy I was--how I blushed. But I always end by doing
everything you wish.... And it seems to give us both so much
pleasure--all you do for me.... But please _don't_ ask me to live
without paying rent--"
The limousine drew up by the curb; Clive jumped out, aided Athalie to
descend; and started for the grilled door where a light glimmered.
"This is not the house!" exclaimed Athalie, stopping short. "Where are
you taking me, Clive?"
"Come on," he said, "I merely want to show you how I've had the new
apartment house built--"
"But--it's too late! What an odd idea, taking me to inspect a new
apartment house at two in the morning! Are you really serious?"
He nodded and rang. A sleepy night porter opened, recognised Clive,
and touched his hat.
"Take us to the top, Mike," he said.
"Have you the keys, sorr?"
"Yes."
They entered the cage and it shot up to the top floor.
"Wait for us, Mike."... And to Athalie: "This is Michael Daly who will
do anything you ask of him--won't you, Mike?"
"I will that, sorr," said the big Irishman, tipping his hat to
Athalie.
"But, Clive," she persisted, bewildered, still clinging to his arm, "I
don't understand why--"
"Little goose, hush!" he replied, subduing the excitement in his voice
and fitting the key into the door.
"One moment, Athalie," he added, "until I light up. Now!"
She entered the lighted hallway, walking on a soft green carpet, and
turned, obeying the guiding pressure of his arm, into a big square
room which sprang into brilliant illumination as he found the switch.
Green and gold were the hangings and prevailing colours; there were
rugs, wide, comfortable chairs and lounges, bookcases, a picture or
two in deep glowing colours, a baby-grand piano, and an open fire
loaded for business.
"Is it done in good taste, Athalie?" he asked.
"It is charming. Is it yours, Clive?"
He laughed, slipped his arm under hers and led her along the hallway,
opening door after door; and first she was invited to observe a very
modern and glistening bathroom, then a bedroom all done in grey and
rose with dainty white furniture and a white-bear rug beside the bed.
"Why this is a woman's room!" she exclaimed, puzzled.
He only laughed and drew her along the hall, showing her another
bedroom with twin beds, a maid's room, a big clothes press, and
finally, a completely furnished kitchen, very modern with its
porcelain baseboard and tiled walls.
"What do you think of all this, Athalie?" he insisted.
"Why it's exquisite, Clive. Whose is it?"
They walked back to the square living-room. He said, teasingly: "Do
you remember, the first time I saw you after those four years,--that
first evening when I came in to surprise you and found you sitting by
the radiator--in your nightie, Athalie?"
"Yes," she said, laughing and blushing as she always did when he
tormented her with that souvenir.
"And I said that you ought to have an open fire. And a cat. Didn't I?"
"Yes."
"There's your fire, Athalie;" he drew a match from his tiny flat gold
case, struck it, and lighted the nest of pine shavings under the
logs;--"and Michael has the cat when you want it."
He drew a big soft arm-chair to the mounting blaze. Athalie stood
motionless, staring at the flames, then with a sudden, nervous gesture
she sank down on the arm-chair and covered her face with her gloved
hands.
He stood waiting, happy and excited, and finally he went over and
touched her; and the girl caught his hand convulsively in both of hers
and looked up at him with wet eyes.
"How can I do this, Clive? How _can_ I?" she whispered.
"Any brother would do as much for his sister--"
"Oh, Clive! You are different! You are _more_ than that. You know you
are. How can I take all this? Will you tell me? How can I live
here--this way--"
"Your sisters will be here. You saw their room just now--"
"But what can I _tell_ them? How can I explain? They know we cannot
afford such luxury as this?"
"Tell them the rent is the same."
"They won't believe it. They couldn't. They don't understand even now
how it is with you and me--that you are so dear and generous and kind
just because you are my friend--and no more than my friend.... Not
that they really believe--anything--unpleasant--of _me_--but--but--"
"What do you care--as long as it isn't so?" he said, coolly.
"I don't care. Except that it weakens my authority over them....
Catharine is very impulsive, and she dearly loves a good time--and she
is becoming sullen with me when I try to advise her or curb her....
And it's so with Doris, too.... I'd like to keep my influence.... But
if they ever really began to believe that between you and me there
was--more--than friendship, I--I don't know what they might feel free
to think--or do--"
"They're older than you."
"Yes. But I seem to have the authority,--or I did have."
They looked into the leaping flames; he threw open his fur coat and
seated himself on the padded arm of her chair.
"All I know is," he said, "that it gives me the deepest and most
enduring happiness to do things for you. When the architect planned
this house I had him design a place for you. Ultimately all the row of
old houses are to be torn down and replaced by modern apartments with
moderate rentals. So you will have to move anyway sooner or later. Why
not come here _now_?"
Half unconsciously she had rested her cheek against the fur lining of
his coat where it fell against his arm. He looked down at her, touched
her hair--a thing he had never thought of doing before.
"Why not come here, Athalie?" he said caressingly.
"I don't know. It would be heavenly. Do you want me to, Clive?"
"Yes. And I want you to begin to put away part of your salary, too.
You might as well begin, now. You will be free from the burden of
rent, free from--various burdens--"
"I--can't--let you--"
"I want to!"
"Why?"
"Because it gives me pleasure--"
"No; because you desire to give _me_ pleasure! _That_ is the reason!"
she exclaimed with partly restrained passion--"because you are
_you_--and there is nobody like you in all the world--in all the
world, Clive!--"
To her emotion his own flashed a quick, warm response. He looked down
at her, deeply touched, his pride gratified, his boyish vanity
satisfied. Always had the simplicity and candour of her quick and
ardent gratitude corroborated and satisfied whatever was in him of
youthful self-esteem. Everything about her seemed to minister to
it--her attention in public places was undisguisedly for him alone;
her beauty, her superb youth and health, the admiring envy of other
people--all these flattered him.
Why should he not find pleasure in giving to such a girl as
this?--giving without scruple--unscrupulous too, perhaps, concerning
the effect his generosity might have on a cynical world which looked
on out of wearied and incredulous eyes; unscrupulous, perhaps,
concerning the effect his too lavish kindness might have on a young
girl unaccustomed to men and the ways of men.
But there was no harm in him; he was very much self-assured of that.
He had been too carefully brought up--far too carefully reared. And
had people ventured to question him, and had they escaped alive his
righteous violence, they would have learned that there really was not
the remotest chance that his mother was in danger of becoming what she
most dreaded in all the world.
* * * * *
The fire burned lower; they sat watching it together, her flushed
cheek against the fur of his coat, his arm extended along the back of
the chair behind her.
"Well," he said, "this has been another happy evening."
She stirred in assent, and he felt the lightest possible pressure
against him.
"Are you contented, Athalie?"
"Yes."
After a moment he glanced at his watch. It was three o'clock. So he
rose, placed the screen over the fireplace, and then came back to
where she now stood, looking very intently at the opposite wall. And
he turned to see what interested her. But there seemed to be nothing
in particular just there.
"What are you staring at, little ghost-seer?" he asked, passing his
hand under her arm; and stepped back, surprised, as she freed herself
with a quick, nervous movement, looked at him, then averted her head.
"What is the matter, Athalie?" he inquired.
"Nothing.... Don't touch me, Clive."
"No, of course not.... But what in the world--"
"Nothing.... Don't ask me." Presently he saw her very slowly move her
head and look back at the empty corner of the room; and remain so,
motionless for a moment. Then she turned with a sigh, came quietly to
him; and he drew her hand through his arm.
"Of what were you thinking, Athalie?"
"Of nothing."
"Did you think you saw something over there?"
She was silent.
"What were you looking at?" he insisted.
"Nothing.... I don't care to talk just now--"
"Tell me, Athalie!"
"No.... No, I don't want to, Clive--"
"I wish to know!"
"I can't--there is nothing to tell you--" she laid one hand on his
coat, almost pleadingly, and looked up at him out of eyes so dark
that only the starry light in them betrayed that they were blue and
not velvet black.
"That same thing has happened before," he said, looking at her, deeply
perplexed. "Several times since I have known you the same expression
has come into your face--as though you were looking at something
which--"
"Please don't, Clive!--"
"--Which," he insisted, "I did not see.... _Could_ not see!"
"Clive!"
He stared at her rather blankly: "Why don't you tell me?"
"I--can't!"
"_Is_ there anything--"
"Don't! Don't!" she begged; but he went on, still staring at her:
"Is there any reason for you to--not to be frank with me? _Is_ there,
Athalie?"
"No; no reason.... I'll tell you ... if you will understand. _Must_ I
tell you?"
"Yes."
Her head fell; she stood plucking nervously at his fur coat for a
while in silence. Then:
"Clive, I--I _see clearly_."
"What?"
"I mean that I see a--a little more clearly than--some do. Do you
understand?"
"No."
She sighed, stood twisting her white-gloved fingers, looking away from
him.
"I am clairvoyant," she breathed.
"Athalie! _You?_"
She nodded.
For a second or two he stood silent in his astonishment; then, taking
her hand, he drew her around facing the light, and she looked up at
him in her lovely abashed way, yet so honestly, that anybody who could
recognise truth and candour, could never have mistaken such eyes as
hers.
"Who told you that you are clairvoyant?" he asked.
"My mother."
"Then--"
"It was not necessary for anybody to tell me that I saw--more
clearly--than other people.... Mother knew it.... She merely explained
and gave a name to this--this--whatever it is--this quality--this
ability to see clearly.... That is all, Clive."
He was evidently trying to comprehend and digest what she had said.
She watched him, saw surprise and incredulity in conflict with
uneasiness and with the belief he could not avoid from lips that were
not fashioned for lies, and from eyes never made to even look
untruths.
"I had never supposed there was such a thing as real clairvoyance," he
said at last.
She remained silent, her candid gaze on him.
"I believe that _you_ believe it, of course."
She smiled, then sighed:
"There is no pleasure in it to me. I wish it were not so."
"But, if it is so, you ought to find it--interesting--"
"No."
"Why not? I should think you would!--if you can see--things--that
other people cannot."
"I don't care to see them."
"Why?"
"They--I see them so often--and I seldom know who they are--"
"They?"
"The--people--I see."
"Don't they ever speak to you?"
"Seldom."
"Could you find out who they are?"
"I don't know.... Yes, I think so;--if I made an effort."
"Don't you ever use any effort to evoke--"
"Oh, Clive! _No!_ When I tell you I had rather not see so--so
clearly--"
"You dear girl!" he exclaimed, half smiling, half serious, "why should
it distress you?"
"It doesn't--except to talk about it."
"Let me ask one more question. May I?"
She nodded.
"Then--did you recognise whoever it was you saw a few moments ago?"
"Yes."
"Who was it, Athalie?"
"My mother."
CHAPTER X
Early in April C. Bailey, Jr., overdrew his account, was politely
notified of that oversight by the bank. He hunted about, casually, for
stray funds, but to his intense surprise discovered nothing
immediately available.
Which annoyed him, and he explained the situation to his father; who
demanded further and sordidly searching explanations concerning the
expenditure on his son's part of an income more than adequate for any
unmarried young man.
They undertook this interesting line of research together, but there
came a time in the proceedings when C. Bailey, Jr., betrayed violent
inclinations toward reticence, non-communication, and finally secrecy;
in fact he declined to proceed any further or to throw any more light
upon his reasons for not proceeding, which symptoms were
characteristic and perfectly familiar to his father.
"The trouble is," concluded Bailey, Sr., "you have been throwing away
your income on that Greensleeve girl! What is she--your private
property?"
"No."
The two men looked at each other, steadily enough. Bailey, Sr., said:
"If _that's_ the case--why in the name of common sense do you spend so
much money on her?" Naïve logic on the part of Bailey, Sr., Clive
replied:
"I didn't suppose I was spending very much. I like her. I like her
better than any other girl. She is really wonderful, father. You won't
believe it if I say she is charming, well-bred, clever--"
"I believe _that_!"
--"And," continued Clive--"absolutely unselfish and non-mercenary."
"If she's all that, too, it certainly seems to pay her--materially
speaking."
"You don't understand," said his son patiently. "From the very
beginning of our friendship it has been very difficult for me to make
her accept anything--even when she was in actual need. Our friendship
is not on _that_ basis. She doesn't care for me because of what I do
for her. It may surprise you to hear me--"
"My son, nothing surprises me any more, not even virtue and honesty.
This girl may be all you think her. Personally I never met any like
her, but I've read about them in sentimental fiction. No doubt there's
a basis for such popular heroines. There may have been such paragons.
There may be yet. Perhaps you've collided with one of these feminine
curiosities."
"I have."
"All right, Clive. Only, why linger longer in the side-show than the
price of admission warrants? The main tent awaits you. In more modern
metaphor; it's the same film every hour, every day, the same
orchestrion, the same environment. You've seen enough. There's nothing
more--if I clearly understand your immaculate intentions. Do I?"
"Yes," said Clive, reddening.
"All right; there's nothing more, then. It's time to retire. You've
had your amusement, and you've paid for it like a gentleman--very much
like a gentleman--rather exorbitantly. That's the way a gentleman
always pays. So now suppose you return to your own sort and coyly
reappear amid certain circles recently neglected, and which, at one
period of your career, you permitted yourself to embellish and adorn
with your own surpassing personality."
They both laughed; there had been, always, a very tolerant
understanding between them.
Then Clive's face grew graver.
"Father," he said, "I've tried remaining away. It doesn't do any good.
The longer I stay away from her, the more anxious I am to go back....
It's really friendship I tell you."
"You're not in love with her, are you, Clive?"
The son hesitated: "No!... No, I can't be. I'm very certain that I am
not."
"What would you do if you were?"
"But--"
"What would you _do_ about it?"
"I don't know."
"Marry her?"
"I couldn't do that!" muttered Clive, startled. Then he remained
silent, his mind crowded with the component parts of that vague
sum-total which had so startled him at the idea of marrying Athalie
Greensleeve.
Partly his father's blunt question had jarred him, partly the idea of
marrying anybody at all. Also the mere idea of the storm such a
proceeding would raise in the world he inhabited, his mother being the
storm-centre, dispensing anathema, thunder, and lightning, appalled
him.
"What!"
"I couldn't do _that_," he repeated, gazing rather blankly at his
father.
"You could if you _had_ to," said his father, curtly. "But I take your
word it couldn't come to that."
The boy flushed hotly, but said nothing. He shrank from comprehending
such an impossible situation, ashamed for himself, ashamed for
Athalie, resenting even the exaggerated and grotesque possibility of
such a thing--such a monstrous and horrible thing playing any part in
her life or in his.
The frankness and cynicism of Bailey, Sr., had possibly been pushed
too far. Clive became restless; and the calm entente cordiale ended
for a while.
Ended also his visits to Athalie for a while, the paternal
conversation having, somehow, chilled his desire to see her and
spoiled, for the time anyway, any pleasure in being with her.
Also his father offered to help him out financially; and, somehow, he
felt as though Bailey, Sr., was paying for his own gifts to Athalie.
Which idea mortified him, and he resolved to remain away from her
until he recovered his self-respect--which would be duly recovered,
he felt certain, when the next coupons fell due and he could detach
them and extinguish the parental loan.
For a week or two he did not even wish to see her, so ashamed and
sullied did he feel after the way his father had handled and bruised
the delicate situation, and the name of the young girl who so
innocently adorned it.
No, something had been spoiled for him, temporarily. He felt it.
Something of the sweetness, the innocence, the candour of this
blameless friendship had been marred. The bloom was rubbed off; the
piquant freshness and fragrance gone for the present.
It is true that an unexpected boom in his business kept him and his
father almost feverishly active and left them both fatigued at night.
This lasted for a week or two--long enough to excite all real estate
men with a hope for future prosperity not yet entirely dead. But at
the end of two or three weeks that hope began to die its usual,
lingering death.
Dulness set in; the talk was of Harlem, Westchester, and the Bronx: a
private bank failed, then three commercial houses went to the wall;
and a seat was sold for $25,000 on the Exchange. Business resumed its
normal and unexaggerated course. The days of boom were surely ended;
and vacant lots on Fifth Avenue threatened to remain vacant for a
while longer.
Clive began to drop in at his clubs again. One was a Whipper-Snapper
Club to which young Manhattan aspired when freshly released from
college; the others were of the fashionable and semi-fashionable sort,
tedious, monotonous, full of the aimless, the idle, or of that
bustling and showy smartness which is perhaps even less admirable and
less easy to endure.
Men destitute of mental resources and dependent upon others for their
amusement, disillusioned men, lazy men, socially ambitious men, men
gluttonously or alcoholically predisposed haunted these clubs. To one
of them repaired those who were inclined to racquettes, squash,
tennis, and the swimming tank. It was a sort of social clearing house
for other clubs.
But The Geyser was the least harmless of the clubs affected by C.
Bailey, Jr.,--it being an all-night resort and the haunt of the
hopeless sport. Here dissipation, futile, aimless, meaningless, was on
its native heath. Here, on his own stamping ground, prowled the
youthful scion of many a dissipated race--nouveau riche and
Knickerbocker alike. All that was required of anybody was money and a
depthless capacity.
It was in this place that Clive encountered Cecil Reeve one stormy
midnight.
"You don't come here often, do you?" said the latter.
Clive said he didn't.
"Neither do I. But when I do there's a few doing. Will you have a high
one, Clive? In deference to our late and revered university?"
Clive would so far consent to degrade himself for the honour of Alma
Mater.
There was much honour done her that evening.
Toward the beginning of the end Clive said: "I can't sit up all night,
Cecil. What do you do for a living, anyway?"
"Bank a bit."
[Illustration: "It was in this place that Clive encountered Cecil
Reeve one stormy midnight."]
"Oh, that's just amusement. What do you work at?"
"I didn't mean that kind of bank!" said Reeve, annoyed. All sense of
humour fled him when hammerlocked with Bacchus. At such psychological
moments, too, he became indiscreet. And now he proposed to Clive an
excursion amid what he termed the "high lights of Olympus," which the
latter discouraged.
"All right then. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give a Byzantine
party! I know a little girl--"
"Oh, shut up!"
"She's a fine little girl, Clive--"
"This is no hour to send out invitations."
"Why not? Her name is Catharine--"
"Dry up!"
"Catharine Greensleeve--"
"What!"
"Certainly. She's a model at Winton's joint. She's a peach.
Appropriately crowned with roses she might have presided for
Lucullus."
Clive said: "By that you mean she's all right, don't you? You'd better
mean it anyway!"
"Is that so?"
"Yes, that's so. I know her sister. She's a charming girl. All of them
are all right. You understand, don't you?"
"I understand numerous things. One of 'em's Catharine Greensleeve. And
she's some plum, believe _me_!"
"That's all right, too, so stop talking about it!" retorted Clive
sharply.
"Sure it's all right. Don't worry, just because you know her sister,
will you?"
Clive shrugged. Reeve was in a troublesome mood, and he left him and
went home feeling vaguely irritated and even less inclined than ever
to see Athalie; which state of mind perplexed and irritated him still
further.
* * * * *
He went to one or two dances during the week--a thing he had not done
lately. Then he went to several more; also to a number of débutante
theatre parties and to several suppers. He rather liked being with his
own sort again; the comfortable sense of home-coming, of
conventionalism, of a pleasant social security, appealed to him after
several months' irresponsible straying from familiar paths. And he
began to go about the sheep-walks and enjoy it, slipping back rather
easily into accustomed places and relations with men and women who
belonged in a world never entered, never seen by Athalie Greensleeve,
and of the existence of which she was aware only through the daily
papers.
He wrote to her now and then. Always she answered his letter the
following day.
About the end of April he wrote:
"DEAR ATHALIE,
"About everything seems to conspire to keep me from seeing
you; business--in a measure,--social duties; and, to tell the
truth, a mistaken but strenuous opposition on my mother's
part.
"She doesn't know you, and refuses to. But she knows me,
and ought to infer everything delightful in the girl who has
become my friend. Because she knows that I don't, and never
did affect the other sort.
[Illustration: "He rather liked being with his own sort again."]
"Every day, recently, she has asked me whether I have seen
you. To avoid unpleasant discussions I haven't gone to see
you. But I am going to as soon as this unreasonable alarm
concerning us blows over.
"It seems very deplorable to me that two young people cannot
enjoy an absolutely honest friendship unsuspected and
undisturbed.
"I miss you a lot. Is the apartment comfortable? Does Michael
do everything you wish? Did the cat prove a good one? I sent
for the best Angora to be had from the Silver Cloud Cattery.
"Now tell me, Athalie, what can I do for you? _Please!_ What
is it you need; what is it you would like to have? Are you
saving part of your salary?
"Tell me also what you do with yourself after business hours.
Have you seen any shows? I suppose you go out with your
sisters now and then.
"As for me I go about more or less. For a while I didn't:
business seemed to revive and everybody in real estate became
greatly excited. But it all simmered down again to the usual
routine. So I've been going about to various affairs, dances
and things. And, consequently, there's peace and quiet at
home for me.
"Always yours,
"C BAILEY, JR."
"P.S. As I sit here writing you the desire seizes me to drop
my pen, put on my hat and coat and go to see you. But I
can't. There's a dinner on here, and I've got to stay for it.
Good night, dear Athalie!
"CLIVE."
His answer came by return mail as usual:
"DEAR CLIVE,
"Your letter has troubled me so much. If your mother feels
that way about me, what are we to do? Is it right for us to
see each other?
"It is true that I am not conscious of any wrong in seeing
you and in being your friend. I know that I never had an
unworthy thought concerning you. And I feel confident that
your thoughts regarding our friendship and me are blameless.
Where lies the wrong?
"_Some_ aspects of the affair _have_ troubled me lately.
Please do not be sensitive and take offence, Clive, if I
admit to you that I never have quite reconciled myself to
accepting anything from you.
"What I have accepted has been for your own sake--for the
pleasure you found in giving, not for my own sake.
"I wanted only your friendship. That was enough--more than
enough to make me happy and contented.
"I was not in want; I had sufficient; I lived better than I
had ever lived; I was self-reliant, self-supporting,
and--forgive and understand me, Clive--a little more
self-respecting than I now am.
"It is true I had saved very little; but I am young and life
is before me.
"This seems very ungrateful of me, very ungenerous after all
you have done for me--all I have taken from you.
"But, Clive, it is the truth, and I think it ought to be
told. Because this is, and has always been, a source of
self-reproach to me, whether rightly or wrongly, I don't
know. I am a novice at confession, but I feel that, if I am
to make a clean breast to you, partial confession is not
worth while, not really honest, not worthy of the very sacred
friendship that inspires it.
"So I shall shrive myself as well as I know how and continue
to admit to you my further doubts and misgivings. They are
these: my sisters do not understand your friendship for me
even if they understand mine for you--which they say they do.
"I don't think they believe me dishonest; but they cannot see
any reason for your generosity to me unless you ultimately
expect me to be dishonest.
"This has weakened my influence with them. I know I am the
youngest, yet until recently I had a certain authority in
matters regarding the common welfare and the common policy.
But this is nearly gone. They point out with perfect truth
that I myself do, with you, the very things for which I
criticise them and against which I warn them.
"Of course the radical difference is that I do these things
with _you_; but they can't understand why you are any better,
any finer, any more admirable, any further to be trusted than
the men they go about with alone.
"It is quite in vain that I explain to them what sort of man
you are. They retort that I merely _think_ so.
"There is a man who takes Catharine out more frequently, and
keeps her out much later than I like. I mean Cecil Reeve. But
what I say only makes my sister sullen. She knows he is a
friend of yours.... And, Clive, I am rather afraid she is
beginning to care more for him than is quite safe for her to
ever care for any man of that class.
"And Doris has met other men of the same kind--I don't know
who they are, for she won't tell me. But after the theatre
she goes out with them; and it is doing her no good.
"There is only one more item in my confession, then I'm done.
"It is this: I have heard recently from various sources that
my being seen with you so frequently is causing much gossip
concerning you among your friends.
"Is this true? And if it is, will it damage you? I don't care
about myself. I know very few people and it doesn't matter.
Besides I care enough about our companionship to continue it,
whatever untruths are said or thought about me. But how about
_you_, Clive? Because I also care enough for you to give you
up if my being seen with you is going to disgrace you.
"This is my confession. I have told you all. Now, could you
tell me what it is best for us to do?
"Think clearly; act wisely; don't even dream of sacrificing
yourself with your usual generosity--if it is indeed to be a
case for self-sacrifice. Let me do that by giving you up. I
shall do it anyway if ever I am convinced that my
companionship is hurting your reputation.
"Be just to us both by being frank with me. Your decision
shall be my law.
"This is a long, long letter. I can't seem to let it go to
you--as though when I mail it I am snapping one more bond
that still seems to hold us together.
"My daily life is agreeable if a trifle monotonous. I have
been out two or three times, once to see the Morgan
Collection at the Metropolitan Museum--very dazzling and
wonderful. What strange thoughts it evoked in me--thrilling,
delightful, exhilarating--as though inspiring me to some
blind effort or other. Isn't it ridiculous?--as though _I_
had it in me to do anything or be anybody! I'm merely telling
you how all that exquisite art affected me--_me_--a working
girl. And Oh, Clive! I don't think anything ever gave me as
much pleasure as did the paintings by the French masters,
Lancret, Drouais, and Fragonard! (You see I had a catalogue!)
"Another evening I went out with Catharine. Mr. Reeve asked
us, and another man. We went to see 'Once Upon a Time' at the
Half-Moon Theatre, and afterward we went to supper at the
Café Columbine.
"Another evening the other man, Mr. Reeve's friend, a Mr.
Hargrave, asked me to see 'Under the Sun' at the Zig-Zag
Theatre. It was a tiresome show. We went to supper afterward
to meet Catharine and Mr. Reeve.
"That is all except that I've dined out once or twice with
Mr. Hargrave. And, somehow or other I felt queer and even
conspicuous going to the Regina with him and to other places
where you and I have been so often together...Also I felt a
little depressed. Everything always reminded me of you and of
happy evenings with you. I can't seem to get used to going
about with other men. But they seem to be very nice, very
kind, and very amusing.
"And a girl ought to be thankful to almost anybody who will
take her out of her monotony.
"I'm afraid you've given me a taste for luxury and amusement.
You _have_ spoiled me I fear. I am certainly an ungrateful
little beast, am I not, to lay the blame on you! But it is
dull, Clive, after working all day to sit every evening
reading alone, or lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling,
waiting for the others to come home.
"If it were not for that darling cat you gave me I'd perish
of sheer solitude. But he is such a comfort, Hafiz; and his
eyes are the bluest blue and his long, winter fur the
snowiest white, and his ruff is wonderful and his tail
magnificent. Also he is _very_ affectionate to me. For which,
with perfect reverence, I venture to thank God.
"Good night, Clive. If you've struggled through this letter
so far you won't mind reading that I am faithfully and always
your friend,
"ATHALIE GREENSLEEVE."
Her letter thoroughly aroused Clive and he was all for going straight
to her--only he couldn't go that evening because he dared not break a
dinner engagement or fail to appear with his mother at the opera. In
fact he was already involved in a mess of social obligations for two
weeks ahead,--not an evening free--and Athalie worked during the day.
It gave him an odd, restless sensation to hear of her going about with
Francis Hargrave--dining alone with him. He felt almost hurt as though
she had done him a personal injustice, yet he knew that it was absurd
for him to resent anything of that sort. His monopoly of her happened
to be one merely because she, at that time, knew no other man of his
sort, and would not go out with any other kind of man.
Why should he expect her to remain eternally isolated except when he
chose to take her out? No young girl could endure that sort of thing
too long. Certainly Athalie was inevitably destined to meet other men,
be admired, admire in her turn, accept invitations. She was unusually
beautiful,--a charming, intelligent, clean-cut, healthy young girl.
She required companionship and amusement; she would be unhuman if she
didn't.
Only--men were men. And safe and sane friendships between men of his
own caste, and girls like Athalie Greensleeve, were rare.
Clive chafed and became restive and morose. In vain he repeated to
himself that what Athalie was doing was perfectly natural. But it
didn't make the idea of her going out with other men any more
attractive to him.
His clever mother, possibly aware of what ferment was working in her
son, watched him out of the tail of her ornamental eyes, but wisely
let him alone to fidget his own way out of it. She had heard that the
Greensleeve girl was raising hob with Cecil Reeve and Francis
Hargrave. They were other people's sons, however. And it might have
worked itself out of Clive--this restless ferment which soured his
mind and gave him an acid satisfaction in being anything but cordial
in his own family circle.
But there was a girl--a débutante, very desirable for Clive his mother
thought--one Winifred Stuart--and very delightful to look upon.
And Clive had seen just enough of her to like her exceedingly; and, at
dances, had even wandered about to look for her, and had evinced
boredom and dissatisfaction when she had not been present.
Which inspired his mother to give a theatre party for little Miss
Stuart and two dozen other youngsters, and a supper at the Regina
afterward.
It was an excellent idea; and it went as wrong as such excellent ideas
so often go. For as Clive in company with the others sauntered into
the splendid reception room of the Regina, he saw Athalie come in with
a man whom he had never before seen.
The shock of recognition--for it was a shock--was mutual. Athalie's
dark eyes widened and a little colour left her cheeks: and Clive
reddened painfully.
It was, perhaps, scarcely the thing to do, but as she advanced he
stepped forward, and their hands met.
"I am so very glad to see you again," he said.
"I too, Clive. Are you well?"
"And you?"
"Quite," she hesitated; there was a moment's pause while the two men
looked coolly at each other.
"May I present Mr. Bailey, Captain Dane?" Further she did not account
for Captain Dane, who presently took her off somewhere leaving Clive
to return to his smiling but enraged mother.
Never had he found any supper party so noisy, so mirthless, and so
endless. Half the time he didn't know what he was saying to Winifred
Stuart or to anybody else. Nor could he seem to see anybody very
distinctly, for the mental phantoms of Athalie and Captain Dane
floated persistently before him, confusing everything at moments
except the smiling and deadly glance of his mother.
Afterward they went to their various homes in various automobiles, and
Clive was finally left with his mother in his own drawing-room.
"What you did this evening," she said to her son, "was not exactly the
thing to do under the circumstances, Clive."
"Why not?" he asked wearily as her maid relieved her of her sables and
lace hood.
"Because it was not necessary.... That girl you spoke to was the
Greensleeve girl I suppose?"
"Yes, Athalie Greensleeve."
"Who was the man?"
"I don't know--a Captain Dane I believe."
"Wasn't a civil bow enough?"
"Enough? Perhaps; I don't know, mother. I don't seem to know how much
is due her from me. She's never had anything from me so far--anything
worth having--"
"Don't be a fool, Clive."
He said, absently: "It's too late for such advice! I _am_ a fool. And
I don't quite understand how not to be one."
His mother, rather fearful of arousing in him any genuine emotion,
discreetly kissed him good night.
"You're a slightly romantic boy," she said. "There is nothing else the
matter with you."
They mounted the velvet-covered stairway together, her arm around his
neck, his encircling a slender, pliant waist that a girl of sixteen
might have envied. Her maid followed with furs and hood.
"Come into my bedroom and smoke, Clive," she smiled. "We can talk
through the dressing-room door."
"No; I think I'll turn in."
The maid continued on through the rose and ivory bedroom and into the
dressing-room. Mrs. Bailey lingered, intuition and experience
preparing her for what a boy of that age was very sure to say.
And after some fidgeting about he said it:
"Mother, honestly what did you think of her?"
His mother's smile remained unaltered: "Do you mean the Greensleeve
girl?"
"I mean Athalie Greensleeve."
"She is pretty in a rather common way."
"Common!"
"Did you think she is not?"
"Common," he repeated in boyish astonishment. "What is there common
about her?"
"If _you_ can't see it any woman of your own class can."
[Illustration: "'Wasn't a civil bow enough?'"]
Which remark aroused all that was dramatic and poetic in the boy, and
he spoke with a slightly exaggerated phraseology:
"What is there common about this very beautiful girl? Surely not her
features. Her head, her figure, her hands, her feet are delicate and
very exquisitely formed; in her bearing there is an unconscious and
sweet dignity; her voice is soft, charming, well-bred. What is there
about her that you find common?"
His mother, irritated and secretly dismayed, maintained, however, her
placid mask and her attitude of toleration.
She said: "I distinguish between a woman to the manner born, and a
woman who is not. The difference is as subtle as intuition and as wide
as the ocean. And, dear, no young man, however clever, is clever
enough to instruct his mother concerning such matters."
"I was asking you to instruct me," he said.
"Very well. If you wish to know the difference between the imitation
and the real, compare that young woman with Winifred Stuart."
Clive's gaze shifted from his mother and became fixed on space.
After a moment his pretty mother moved toward the dressing-room: "If
you will find a chair and light a cigarette, Clive, we can continue
talking."
His absent eyes reverted to her: "I think I'll go, mother. Good
night."
"Good night, dear."
He went to his own room. From the room adjoining came his father's
heavy breathing where he lay asleep.
The young fellow listened for a moment, then walked into the library
where only a dim night-light was burning. He still wore his overcoat
over his evening clothes, and carried his hat and stick.
For a while he stood in the dim library, head bent, staring at the rug
under foot.
Then he turned, went out and down the stairs, and opened the door of
the butler's pantry. The service telephone was there. He unhooked the
receiver and called. Almost immediately he got his "party."
"Yes?" came the distant voice distinctly.
"Is it you, Athalie?"
"Yes.... Oh, _Clive!_"
"Didn't you recognise my voice?"
"Not immediately."
"When did you come in?"
"Just this moment. I still have on my evening wrap."
"Did you have an agreeable evening?"
"Yes."
"Are you tired?"
"No."
"May I come around and see you for a few minutes?"
"Yes."
"All right," he said briefly.
CHAPTER XI
The door of the apartment stood ajar and he walked in. Athalie, still
in her evening gown, rose from the sofa before the fire, dropping the
white Angora, Hafiz, from her lap.
"It's so good of you, Clive," she said, offering her hand.
"It's good of _you_, Athalie, to let me come."
"_Let_ you!" There was a smile on her sensitive lips, scarcely
perceptible.
He dropped coat, hat, and walking stick across a chair; she seated
herself on the sofa, and he came over and found a place for himself
beside her.
"It's been a long time, Athalie. Has it seemed so to you?"
She nodded. Hafiz, marching to and fro, his plumy tail curling around
her knees, looked up at his mistress out of sapphire eyes.
"Jump, darling," she said invitingly. Hafiz sprang onto her lap with a
quick contented little mew, stretched his superb neck and began to rub
against her shoulder, purring ecstatically.
"He'll cover me with long white hairs," she remarked to Clive, "but I
don't care. Isn't he a beauty? Hasn't he seraphic eyes and angelic
manners?"
Clive nodded, watching the cat with sombre and detached interest.
She said, stroking Hafiz and looking down at the magnificent animal:
"Did you have a pleasant evening, Clive?"
"Not very."
"I'm sorry. Your party seemed to be such a very gay one."
"They made a lot of noise."
She laughed: "Is that a very gracious way to put it?"
"Probably not.... Where had you been before you appeared at the
Regina?"
"To see some moving pictures taken in the South American jungle. It
was really wonderful, Clive: there were parrots and monkeys and
crocodiles and wild pigs--peccaries I think they are called--and then
a big, spotted, chunky-headed jaguar stalked into view! I was so
excited, so interested--"
"Where was it?"
"On the middle fork of the upper Amazon--"
"I mean where were the films exhibited?"
"Oh! At the Berkeley. It was a private view."
"Who invited you?"
"Captain Dane."
He looked up at her, soberly:
"Who is Captain Dane?"
"Why--I don't know exactly. He is a most interesting man. I think he
has been almost everything--a naturalist, an explorer, a scout in the
Boer War, a soldier of fortune, a newspaper man. He is fascinating to
talk to, Clive."
"Where did you meet him?"
"In the office. Mr. Wahlbaum collects orchids, and Captain Dane looked
up some for him when he was on the Amazon a short time ago. He came
into the office about week before last and Mr. Wahlbaum introduced him
to me. They sat there talking for an hour. It was _so_ interesting to
me; and I think Captain Dane noticed how attentively I listened, for
very often he addressed himself to me.... And he asked Mr. Wahlbaum,
very nicely, if he might show me the orchids which are in the
Botanical Gardens, and that is how our friendship began."
"You go about with him?"
"Whenever he asks me. I went with him last Sunday to the Museum of
Natural History. Just think, Clive, I had never been. And, do you
know, he could scarcely drag me away."
"I suppose you dined with him afterward," he said coolly.
"Yes, at a funny little place--I couldn't tell you where it is--but
everybody seemed to know everybody else and it was so jolly and
informal--and such good food! I met a number of people there some of
whom have called on me since--"
"What sort of people?"
"About every interesting sort--men like Captain Dane, writers,
travellers, men engaged in unusual professions. And there were a few
delightful women present, all in some business or profession. Mlle.
Delauny of the Opera was there--so pretty and so unaffected. And there
was also that handsome suffragette who looks like Jeanne d' Arc--"
"Nina Grey."
"Yes. And there was a rather strange and fascinating woman--a
physician I believe--but I am not sure. Anyway she is associated with
the psychical research people, and she asked if she might come to see
me--"
He made an impatient movement--quite involuntary--and Hafiz who was
timid, sprang from Athalie's lap and retreated, tail waving, and ears
flattened for expected blandishments to recall him.
Athalie glanced up at the man beside her with a laugh on her lips,
which died there instantly.
"What is the matter, Clive?"
"Nothing," he said.
His sullen face remained in profile, and after a moment she laid her
hand lightly, questioningly on his sleeve.
Without turning he said: "I don't know what is the matter with me, so
don't ask me. Something seems to be wrong. _I_ am, probably.... And I
think I'll go home, now."
But he did not stir.
After a few moments she said very gently: "Are you displeased with me
for anything I have said or done? I can't imagine--"
"You can't expect me to feel very much flattered by the knowledge that
you are constantly seen with other men where you and I were once so
well known."
"Clive! Is there anything wrong in my going?"
"Wrong? No:--if your own sense of--of--" but the right word--if there
were such--eluded him.
"I know how you feel," she said in a low voice. "I wrote you that it
seemed strange, almost sad, to be with other men where you and I had
been together so often and so--so happily.
"Somehow it seemed to be an invasion of our privacy, of our
intimacy--for me to dine with other men at the same tables, be served
by the same waiters, hear the same music. But I didn't know how to
avoid it when I was taken there by other men. Could you tell me what I
should have done?"
He made no reply; his boyish face grew almost sulky, now.
Presently he rose as though to get his coat: she rose also, unhappy,
confused.
"Don't mind me. I'm a fool," he said shortly, looking away from
her--"and a very--unhappy one--"
"Clive!"
He said savagely: "I tell you I don't know what's the matter with
me--" He passed one hand brusquely across his eyes and stood so,
scowling at the hearth where Hafiz sat, staring gravely back at him.
"Clive, are you ill?"
He shrugged away the suggestion, and his arm brushed against hers. The
contact seemed to paralyse him; but when, slipping back unconsciously
into the old informalities, she laid her hands on his shoulders and
turned him toward the light, instantly and too late she was aware that
the old and innocent intimacy was ended, done for,--a thing of the
past.
Incredulous still in the very menace of new and perilous relations--of
a new intimacy, imminent, threatening, she withdrew her hands from
the shoulders of this man who had been a boy but an instant ago. And
the next moment he caught her in his arms.
"Clive! You _can't_ do this!" she whispered, deathly white.
"What am I to do?" he retorted fiercely.
"Not this, Clive!--For my sake--please--_please_--"
There was colour enough in her face, now. Breathless, still a little
frightened, she looked away from him, plucking nervously,
instinctively, at his hands clasping her waist.
"Can't you c-care for me, Athalie?" he stammered.
"Yes ... you know it. But don't touch me, Clive--"
"When I'm--in love--with you--"
She caught her breath sharply.
"--What am I to do?" he repeated between his teeth.
"Nothing! There is nothing to do about it! You know it!... What is
there to do?"
He held her closer and she strained away from him, her head still
averted.
"Let me go, Clive!" she pleaded.
"Can't you care for me!"
"Let me go!"
He said under his breath: "All right." And released her. For a moment
she did not move but her hands covered her burning face and sealed her
lids. She stood there, breathing fast and irregularly until she heard
him move. Then, lowering her hands she cast a heart-broken glance at
him. And his ashen, haggard visage terrified her.
"Clive!" she faltered: he swung on his heel and caught her to him
again.
She offered no resistance.
She was crying, now,--weeping perhaps for all that had been said--or
remained unsaid--or maybe for all that could never be said between
herself and this man in whose arms she was trembling. No need now for
any further understanding, for excuses, for regrets, for any tardy
wish expressed that things might have been different.
He offered no explanation; she expected none, would have suffered
none, crying there silently against his shoulder. But the reaction was
already invading him; the tide of self-contempt rose.
He said bitterly: "Now that I've done all the damage I could, I shall
have to go--or offer--"
"There is no damage done--yet--"
"I have made you love me."
"I--don't know. Wait."
Wet cheek against his shoulder, lips a-quiver, her tragic eyes looked
out into space seeing nothing yet except the spectre of this man's
unhappiness.
Not for herself had the tears come, the mouth quivered. The flash of
passionate emotion in him had kindled in her only a response as
blameless as it was deep.
Sorrow for him, for his passion recognised but only vaguely
understood, grief for a comradeship forever ended now--regret for the
days that now could come no more--but no thought of self as yet,
nothing of resentment, of the lesser pity, the baser pride.
If she had trembled it was for their hopeless future; if she had wept
it was because she saw his boyhood passing out of her life like a
ghost, leaving her still at heart a girl, alone beside the ashes of
their friendship.
As for marriage she knew it would never be--that neither he nor she
dared subscribe to it, dared face its penalties and its punishments;
that her fear of his unknown world was as spontaneous and abiding as
his was logical and instinctive.
There was nothing to do about it. She knew that instantly; knew it
from the first;--no balm for him, no outlook, no hope. For her--had
she thought about herself,--she could have entertained none.
She turned her head on his shoulder and looked up at him out of
pitiful, curious eyes.
"Clive, must this be?"
"I love you, Athalie."
Her gaze remained fixed on him as though she were trying to comprehend
him,--sad, candid, searching in his eyes for an understanding denied
her.
"Yes," she said vaguely, "my thoughts are full of you, too. They have
always been since I first saw you. I suppose it has been love. I
didn't know it."
"Is it love, Athalie?"
"I--think so, Clive. What else could it be--when a girl is always
thinking about a man, always happy with her memories of him.... It
_is_ love, I suppose ... only I never thought of it that way."
"Can you think of it that way now?"
"I haven't changed, Clive. If it was love in the beginning, it is
now."
"In the beginning it was only a boy and girl affair."
"It was all my heart had room for."
"And now?"
"You fill my heart and mind as always. But you know that."
"I thought--perhaps--not seeing you--"
"Clive!"
"--Other men--other interests--" he muttered obstinately, and so like
a stubborn boy that, for a moment, a pale flash from the past seemed
to light them both, and she found herself smiling:
"A girl must go on living until she is dead, Clive. Even if you went
away I'd continue to exist until something ended me. Other men are
merely other men. You are you."
"You darling!"
But she turned shy instantly, conscious now of his embrace, confused
by it and the whispered endearment.
"Please let me go, Clive."
"But I love you, dear--"
"Yes--but please--"
Again he released her and she stepped back, retreating before him,
until the lounge offered itself as refuge. But it was no refuge; she
found herself, presently, drawn close to his shoulder; her flushed
cheek rested there once more, and her lowered eyes were fixed on his
strong, firm hand which had imprisoned both of hers.
"If you can stand it I can," he said in a low voice.
"What?"
"Marrying me."
"Oh, Clive! They'd tear us to pieces! You couldn't stand it. Neither
could I."
"But if we--"
"Oh, no, no, no!" she protested, "it would utterly ruin you! There was
one woman there to-night--very handsome--I knew she was your mother.
And I saw the way she looked at me.... It's no use, Clive. Those
people _are_ different. They'd never forgive you, and it would ruin
you or you'd have to go back to them."
"But if we were once married, there _are_ friends of mine who--"
"How many? One in a thousand! Oh, Clive, Clive, I know you so
well--your family and your pride in them, your position and your
security in it, your wide circle of friends, without which circle you
would wander like a lost soul--yes, Clive, lost, forlorn, unhappy,
even with me!"
She lifted her head from his shoulder and sat up, gazing intently
straight ahead of her. In her eyes was a lovely azure light; her lips
were scarcely parted; and so intent and fixed was her gaze that for a
moment he thought she had caught sight of some concrete thing which
held her fascinated.
But it was only that she "saw clearly" at that moment--something that
had come into her field of vision--a passing shape, perhaps, which
looked at her with curious, friendly, inquiring eyes,--and went its
way between the fire and the young girl who watched it pass with
fearless and clairvoyant gaze.
"Athalie?"
"Yes," she answered as in a dream.
"Athalie! What is the matter?"
She turned, looked at him almost blindly as her remoter vision
cleared.
"Clive," she said under her breath, "go home."
"What?"
"Go home. You are wanted."
"_What!!!_"
She rose and he stood up, his fascinated eyes never leaving hers.
"What were you staring at a moment ago?" he demanded. "What did
you--think--you saw?"
Her eyes looked straight into his. She went to him and put both arms
around his neck.
"Dearest," she said "--dearest." And kissed him on the mouth. But he
dared not lay one finger on her.
The next moment she had his coat, was holding it for him. He took his
hat and stick from her, turned and walked to the door, wheeled in his
tracks, shivering.
And saw her crouched on the sofa, her head buried in her arms. And
dared not speak.
* * * * *
There was an automobile standing in the street before his own house as
he turned out of Fifth Avenue; lighted windows everywhere in the
house, and the iron grille ajar.
He could scarcely fit the latch-key his hands were so unsteady.
There were people in the hall, partly clad. He heard his own name in
frightened exclamation.
"What is it?" he managed to ask.
A servant stammered: "Mr. Clive--it's all over, sir. Mrs. Bailey is
asking for you, sir."
"Is my father--" but he could not go on.
"Yes, sir. His man heard him call--once--like he was dreamin' bad. But
when he got to him Mr. Bailey was gone.... The doctor has just
arrived, sir."
For one instant hope gleamed athwart the stunning crash of his senses:
he steadied himself on the newel post. Then, in his ear a faint voice
echoed: "Dearest--dearest!" And, knowing that hope also lay dead, he
lifted his young head, straightened up, and set his foot heavily on
the first step upward into a new and terrible world of grief.
CHAPTER XII
Athalie ventured to send some Madonna lilies with no card attached;
but even the thought of her white flowers crossing the threshold of
Clive's world--although it was because of her devotion to him alone
that she dared salute his dead--left her sensitively concerned,
wondering whether it had been a proper thing for her to do.
However, the day following she wrote him.
"CLIVE DEAR,
"I do not mean to intrude on your grief at such a time. This
is merely a line to say that you are never absent from my
mind.
"And Clive, nothing really dies. This is quite true. I am not
speaking of what faith teaches us. Faith is faith. But those
who 'see clearly' _know_. Nothing dies, Clive. _Nothing._
That is even more than faith teaches us. Yet it, also, is
true.
"Dear little boy of my childhood, dear lad of my girlhood,
and, of my womanhood, dearest of men, I pray that God will
comfort you and yours.
"I was twelve years old the only time I ever saw your father.
He spoke so sweetly to me--put his arm around my
shoulders--asked me if I were Red Riding Hood or the Princess
Far Away.
"And, to obey him, I went to find _my_ father. And found him
dead. Or what the world calls dead.
"Later, as I stood there outside the door, stunned by what
had happened, back through the doorway came running a boy.
Clive, if you have forgotten what you said to that child
there by the darkened doorway of life, the girl who writes
this has never forgotten.
"And now, since sorrow has come to you, in my turn I seek you
where you stand by a darkened door alone, and I send to you
my very soul in this poor, inky letter,--all I can
offer--Clive--all that I believe--all that I am.
"ATHALIE."
So much for tribute and condolence as far as she could be concerned
where she remained among the other millions outside the sacred
threshold across which her letter and her flowers had gone, across
which the girl herself might never go.
After a few days he wrote and thanked her for her letter, not of
course knowing about the lilies:
"It is the first time death has ever come very near me. I had
been told and had always thought that we were a long-lived
race.
"I am still dazed by it. I suppose the sharper grief will
come when this dull, unreal sense of stupefaction wears away.
"We were very close together, my father and I. Oh, but we
might have been closer, Athalie!--I might have been with him
oftener, seen more of him, spent less time away from him.
"I _did_ try to be a good son. I could have been far better.
It's a bitter thing to realise at such a time.
"And I had so much to say to him. I cannot understand that I
can never say it now.... Athalie dear, my mother wishes me to
take her abroad. I made arrangements yesterday at the Cunard
office. We sail Saturday. Could I see you for a moment before
I go?
"CLIVE."
To which she replied:
"I shall be here every evening."
He came Friday night looking very sallow and thin in his black
clothes. Catharine, who was sewing by the centre table, rose to shake
hands with him in sympathetic silence, then went away to her bedroom,
where, once or twice she caught herself whistling some gay refrain of
the moment, and was obliged to check herself.
He had taken Athalie's slender hands and was standing by the sofa,
looking intently at her.
"That night," he said with an effort, "you sent me home--saying that I
was needed."
"Yes, Clive."
"How did you know?"
"I knew."
"Did you see--anything?"
"Yes, dear," she said under her breath.
"Did you see _him_?"
"Yes."
"Tell me," he said, but his lips scarcely moved to form the words he
uttered.
"I recognised him at once. I had never forgotten him.... It is
difficult to explain how I knew that he was not--what we call living."
"But you knew?"
"Yes," she said gently.
"He--did he speak?" The young fellow turned away with a brusque,
hopeless gesture.
"God," he muttered--"and I couldn't either see or hear him!"
"He did not speak, Clive." The boy looked up at her, his haggard
features working.
She said: "When I first noticed him he was looking at you. Then he
caught my eye. Clive--it was this time as it had been before--when I
was twelve years old--his expression became so sweet and winning--like
yours when I amuse you--and you laugh at me but--like me--"
"Oh, Athalie--I can't seem to endure it! I--I can't be reconciled--"
His head fell forward; she put her arms around him and drew his face
against her breast.
"I know," she whispered. "I also have passed that way."
After a few moments he lifted his head, looked around, almost
fearfully.
"Where was it that he stood, Athalie?"
She hesitated, then took one of his hands in hers and he followed her
until she stopped between the sofa and the fireplace.
"Here?"
"Yes, Clive."
"So _near_!" he said aloud to himself. "Couldn't he have spoken to
me?--just one word--"
"Dearest--dearest!"
"God knows why you should see him and I shouldn't! I don't
understand--when I was his son--"
"I do not understand either, Clive."
He seemed not to hear her, standing there with blank gaze shifting
from object to object in the room. "I don't understand," he kept
repeating in a dull, almost querulous voice,--"I don't understand
why." And her heart responded in a passion of tenderness and grief.
But she found no further words to say to him, no explanation that
might comfort him.
"Will he ever come here--anywhere--again?" he asked suddenly.
"Oh, Clive, I don't know."
"Don't you know? Couldn't you find out?"
"How? I don't know how to find out. I never try to inquire."
"Isn't there some way?"
"I don't really know, Clive. How could I know?"
"But when you see such people--shadows--shapes--"
"Yes.... They are not shadows."
"Do they seem real?"
"Why, yes; as real as you are."
"Athalie, how _can_ they be?"
"They are to me. There is nothing ghostly about them."
For a moment it almost seemed to her as though he resented her clear
seeing; then he said: "Have you always been able to see--this way?"
"As long as I can remember."
"And you have never tried to cultivate the power?"
"I had rather you did not call it that."
"But it is a power.... Well, call it faculty, then. Have you?"
"No. I told you once that I did not wish to see more clearly than
others. It is all involuntary with me."
"Would you try to cultivate it because I ask you to?"
"Clive!"
"Will you, Athalie?"
The painful colour mantled her face and neck and she turned and looked
away from him as though he had said a shameful thing.
He continued, impatiently: "Why do you feel that way about it? Why
should you not cultivate such a delicate and wonderful sense of
perception? Why are you reluctant? What reason is there for you to be
ashamed?"
"I don't know why."
"There is no reason! If in you there happen to be faculties sensitive
beyond ours, senses more complex, more exquisitely attuned to what
others are blind and deaf to, intuitions that to us seem miraculous, a
spirituality, perhaps, more highly developed, what is there in that to
cause you either embarrassment or concern? That in certain
individualities such is the case is now generally understood and
recognised. You happen to be one of them."
She looked up at him very quietly, but still flushed.
"Why do you wish me to try--make any effort to develop this--thing?"
"So that--if you _could_ see him again--and if, perhaps, he had
anything to say to me--"
"I understand."
"Will you try, Athalie?"
"I'll try--if you wish it. And if I can learn how to try."
Had he asked her to strip her gown from her shoulders under his steady
gaze, it had been easier than the promise she gave him.
* * * * *
And now the hour had come for him to bid her good-bye. He said that he
and his mother would not remain abroad for more than the summer. He
said he would write often; spoke a little more vaguely of seeing her
as soon as he returned; drew her cool, white hands together and kissed
them, laid his cheek against them for a moment, eyes closed wearily.
The door remained ajar behind him after he had gone. Lingering, her
hand heavy on the knob, she listened to the last echo of the elevator
as it dropped into lighted depths below.
Then, very far away, an iron grille clanged. And that ended it.
But she still lingered. There was one more shape to pass through the
door which she yet held open;--the phantom of her girlhood. And when
at last, it had passed across the threshold, never to return, she
shut the door softly, sinking to her knees there, her pale cheek
resting against the closed panels, her eyes fixed on vacancy.
* * * * *
So departed those twain out of the room and out of her life,
together--her lover by brevet, and her lingering girlhood,--leaving
behind them a woman in a world of men suddenly strange and menacing
and very still.
But Clive went back into a familiar world--marred, obscured, distorted
for the moment by shock and sorrow--but still a familiar world.
Because neither his grief nor his love--as he had termed it--had made
of him more than he had been,--not yet a man, yet no longer a boy, but
something with all the infirmities of both and the saving graces of
neither.
In that borderland where he still lingered, morally and spiritually,
the development of character ceases for a while until such time as the
occult frontier be crossed. What is born in the cradle is lowered into
the grave, but always either in nobler or less noble degrees. For none
may linger in that borderland too long because the unseen boundary
moves for him who will not stir when his time is up--moves slowly,
inexorably nearer, nearer, passing beneath his feet, until it is lost
far in the misty years behind him.
* * * * *
He wrote her from the steamer twice, the letters being mailed from
Plymouth; then he wrote once from London, once from Paris; later again
from Switzerland, where he had found it cooler, he said, than
anywhere else during that torrid summer.
[Illustration: "One lovely morning in May she arose early in order to
write to Clive."]
Winifred Stuart and her mother had joined them for a motor trip
through Dalmatia. He mentioned it in a letter to Athalie, but after
that he did not refer to them again. In fact he did not write again
for a month or two.
It proved to be a scorching summer in New York. May ended in a blast
of unseasonable weather, cooling off for a week or two in June, but
the furnace heat of July was terrible for the poor and for the
horses--both of which we have always with us.
Also, for Athalie, it seemed to be turning into one of those curious,
threatening years which begin with every promise but which end without
fulfilment, and in perplexity and care. She had known such years; she
already recognised the symptoms of changing weather. She seemed to be
conscious of premonitions in everybody and everything. Little
vexations and slight disappointments increased; simple plans
miscarried for no reason at all apparently.
Like one who still feels a fair wind blowing yet looking aloft, sees
the uneasy weather-cock veer and veer in varying flaws, so she,
sensitive and fine in mind and body, gradually became aware of the
trend of things; felt the premonition of the distant change in the
atmosphere--sensed it gathering vaguely, indefinitely disquieting.
One lovely morning in May she arose early in order to write to Clive.
Then, her long letter accomplished and safely mailed, she went
downtown to business, still delicately aglow, exhilarated as always
by her hour of communion with him.
Mr. Wahlbaum, as usual, received her with the jolly and kindly humour
which always characterised him, and they had their usual friendly,
half bantering chat while she was arranging the papers which his
secretary had laid on her desk.
All the morning she took dictation; the soft wind fluttered the
curtains; sparrows chirped noisily; the sky was very blue; Mr.
Wahlbaum smoked steadily.
And when the lunch hour arrived he did a thing which he had never
before done; he asked Athalie to lunch with him.
Which so completely astonished her that she found herself going down
in the private lift with him before she realised that she was going at
all.
The luncheon proved to be very simple but very good. There were a
number of other women in the ladies' annex of the Department
Club,--nice looking people, quiet, and well dressed. Mr. Wahlbaum also
was very quiet, very considerate, very attentive, and almost gravely
courteous. Their conversation concerned business. He offered Athalie
no cocktail and no wine, but a jug of chilled cider was set at her
elbow and she found it delicious. Mr. Wahlbaum drank tea, very weak.
When they returned to the office, Athalie began to transcribe her
stenographic notes. It occupied most of the afternoon although she was
wonderfully rapid and accurate and her slim white fingers hovered
mistily over the keys like the vibrating wings of a snowy moth.
[Illustration: "Mr. Wahlbaum ... was very quiet, very considerate,
very attentive."]
Mr. Wahlbaum, always smoking, watched her toward the finish in placid
silence. And for a few moments, also, after she had finished and had
turned to him with a light smile and a lighter sigh of relief.
"Miss Greensleeve," he said quietly, "I have now been here in the same
office with you, day after day--excepting our summer vacations--for
more than five years."
A trifle surprised and sobered by his gravity and deliberation she
nodded silent acquiescence and waited, wondering a little what else
was to come.
It came without preamble: "I have the honour," he said, "to ask you to
marry me."
Still as a stone she sat, gazing at him. And for a long while his keen
eyes sustained her gaze. But presently a slow, deep colour began to
gather on his face. And after a moment he said: "I am sorry that the
verdict is against me."
Tears filled her eyes; she tried to speak, could not, turned on her
pivot-chair, rested her arms on the back, and dropped her face in
them.
It was a long while before she was able to efface the traces of
emotion. She did all she could before she forced herself to look at
him again and say what she must say.
"If I could--I would, Mr. Wahlbaum," she faltered. "No man has ever
been kinder to me, none more courteous, none more gentle."
He looked at her wistfully for a moment, and she thought he was going
to speak. But he was wise in the ways of the world. He had lost. He
understood it. Speech was superfluous. He was a quaint combination of
good sportsman and philosophic economist.
He held his peace.
When she left that evening after saying good night to him she paused
at the door, irresolutely, and then came back to his desk where he was
still standing. For he had never failed to rise when she entered in
the morning or took her leave at night.
In silence, now, she offered him her hand, the quick tears springing
to her eyes again; and he took it, bent, and touched the gloved
fingers with his lips, gravely, in silence.
* * * * *
A few days later, for the first time in her experience there, Mr.
Wahlbaum was not at the office.
Mr. Grossman came in, leered at her, said that Mr. Wahlbaum would be
down next day, lingered furtively as long as he quite dared, then took
himself off, still leering.
In the afternoon Athalie was notified that her salary had been raised.
She went home, elated and deeply touched by the generosity of Mr.
Wahlbaum, scarcely able to wait for the morrow to express her
gratitude to this good, kind man.
But on the morrow Mr. Wahlbaum was not there; nor did he come the day
after, nor the day after that.
The following Tuesday she was seated in the office and generally
occupied with business provided for her by the thrifty Mr. Grossman,
when that same gentleman came into the office on tiptoe.
"Mr. Wahlbaum has just died," he said.
In the sudden shock and consternation she had risen from her chair,
and stood there, one hand resting on her desk top for support.
"Pneumonia," nodded Mr. Grossman. "Sam he smoked too much all the
time. That is what done it, Miss Greensleeve."
Her hands crept to her eyes, covered them convulsively. "Oh!" she
breathed--"Oh!"
And, for a moment was not aware of the arm of Mr. Grossman around her
waist,--until it tightened unctuously.
"Dearie," he murmured, "don't you take on so hard. You ain't goin' to
lose your job, because I'm a-goin' to be your best friend same like he
was--"
With a shudder she stepped clear of him; he caught her by the waist
again and kissed her; and she wrenched herself free and turned
fiercely on him as he advanced again, smirking, watery of eye, arms
outstretched.
Then in the overwhelming revulsion and horror of the act and of the
moment chosen for it when death's shadow already lay dark upon this
vast and busy monument to her dead friend, she turned on him her dark
blue eyes ablaze; and to her twisted, outraged lips flew, unbidden,
the furious anathema of her ragged childhood:
"Damn you!" she stammered,--"damn you!" And struck him across the
face.
* * * * *
Which impulsive and unconsidered proceeding left two at home out of
work, herself and Doris. Also there was very little more for
Catharine to do, the dull season at Winton's having arrived.
"Any honest job," repeated Doris when she and Ath
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