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.