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 Athalie and Catharine
met at evening after an all-day's profitless search for that sort of
work; but honest jobs did not seem to be very plentiful in June,
although any number of the other sort were to be had almost without
the asking.
Doris continued to haunt agencies and theatrical offices, dawdling all
day from one to the next, sitting for hours in company with other
aspirants to histrionic honours and wages, gossiping, listening to
stage talk, professional patter, and theatrical scandal until her
pretty ears were buzzing with everything that ought not to concern her
and her moral fastidiousness gradually became less delicate.
Repetition is the great leveller, the great persuader. The greatest
power on earth, for good or evil, is incessant reiteration.
Catharine lost her position, worked at a cheap milliner's for a week,
addressed envelopes for another week, and was again left unemployed.
Athalie accepted several offers; at one place they didn't pay her for
two weeks and then suggested she take half the salary agreed upon; at
another her employer became offensively familiar; at another the
manager made her position unendurable.
By July the financial outlook in the Greensleeve family was becoming
rather serious: Doris threatened gloomily to go into burlesque;
Catharine at first tearful and discouraged, finally grew careless and
made few real efforts to find employment. Also she began to go out
almost every evening, admitting very frankly that the home larder had
become too lean and unattractive to suit her.
[Illustration: "Doris continued to haunt agencies and theatrical
offices."]
Doris always went out more or less; and what troubled Athalie was not
that the girl had opportunities for the decent nourishment she needed,
but that her reticence concerning the people she dined with was
steadily increasing.
"Oh, shut up! I can look out for myself," she always repeated
sullenly. "Anyway, Athalie, _you_ are not the one to bully me. Nobody
ever presented me with a cosy flat and--"
"Doris!"
"Didn't your young man give you this flat?"
"Don't speak of him or of me in that manner," said Athalie, flushing
scarlet.
"Why are you so particular? It's the truth. He's given you about
everything a man can offer a girl, hasn't he?--jewellery, furniture,
clothing--cats--"
"Will you please not say anything more!"
But Doris was still smarting under recent admonition, and she meant to
make an end of Athalie's daily interference: "I will say what I like
when it's the truth," she retorted. "You are very free with your
unsolicited advice. And I'll say this, and it's true, that not one
girl in a thousand who accepts what you have accepted from Clive
Bailey, is straight!"
Athalie's tightening lips quivered: "Do you intimate that I am not
straight?"
"I didn't say that."
"You implied it."
There was a silence; Catharine lounged on the sofa, watching and
listening with interest. After a moment Doris shrugged her young
shoulders.
"Does it matter so much, anyway?" she said with a short, unpleasant
laugh.
"Does _what_ matter--you little ninny!"
"Whether a girl _is_ straight."
"Is that the philosophy you learn in your theatrical agencies?"
demanded Athalie fiercely. "What nauseating rot you do talk, Doris!"
"Very well. It may be nauseating. But what is a girl to do in a world
run entirely by men?"
"You know well enough what a girl is _not_ to do, don't you? All right
then,--leave that undone and do what's left."
"What _is_ left?" demanded Doris with a mirthless laugh. "There's
scarcely a job that a girl can hold unless she squares some man to
keep it--and keep--her!"
"Shame on you! I held mine for over five years," said Athalie with hot
contempt.
"Yes, and then along came the junior partner. You wouldn't square him:
you lost your job! There's always a junior partner in every
business--when there isn't a senior. There's nothing to it if you
stand in with the firm. If you don't--good night!"
"You managed to remain at the Egyptian Garden during the entire
season."
"But the fights I had, my dear, and the tricks I employed and the lies
I told and the promises I made! Oh, it's sickening--sickening! But--"
she shrugged--"what are you to do? Thousands of girls go queer
because they're forced to by starvation--"
"Nonsense!" cried Athalie hotly, "that is all stage twaddle and
exaggerated sentimentalism! I don't believe that one girl in a
thousand is forced into a dishonourable life!"
"Then why do girls go queer?"
"Because they want to; that's why! When they don't want to they
don't!"
Catharine, very wide-eyed, said solemnly: "But think of all the white
slaves--"
"They'd be that if they had been born to millions!" retorted Athalie.
"Ignorance and aptitude, that is white slavery. It's absolutely
nothing else. And in cases where the ignorance is absent, the aptitude
is there. If a girl has an aptitude for becoming some man's mistress
she'll probably do it whether she's ignorant or educated."
Doris, who had taken to chewing-gum furtively and in private,
discreetly rolled a morsel under her tongue.
"All I know is that your salary is advanced and you're given a part at
the Egyptian Garden if you stand in with Lewenbein or go to supper
with Shemsky. Of course," she added, "there _are_ theatres where you
don't have to be horrid in order to succeed."
"Then," said Athalie drily, "you'd better find work in those
theatres."
Doris glanced sideways at Catharine, who silently returned her glance
as though an understanding and sympathy existed between them not
suspected or shared in by Athalie.
It was not very much of a secret. Some prowling genius of the agencies
whom Doris had met had offered to write a vaudeville act for her and
himself if she could find two other girls. And she had persuaded
Catharine and Genevieve Hunting to try it; and Cecil Reeve and Francis
Hargrave had gaily offered to back it. They were rehearsing in Reeve's
apartments--between a continuous series of dinners and suppers.
And it had been her sister's going to Reeve's apartments to which
Athalie had seriously objected,--not knowing why she went there.
* * * * *
This was one of many scenes that torrid summer in New York, when
Athalie intuitively felt that the year which had begun so happily for
her with the entrance of Clive into her life, was growing duller and
greyer; and that each succeeding day seemed to be swinging her into a
tide of anxiety and mischance,--a current as yet merely perceptible,
but already increasing in speed toward something swifter and more
stormy.
Already, to her, the future had become overcast, obscure, disquieting.
Steer as she might toward any promising harbour, always she seemed to
be aware of some subtle resistance impeding her.
Every small economy attempted, every retrenchment planned, came to
nothing. Always she was met at some corner by an unlooked-for
necessity entailing further expense.
No money was coming in; her own and her sister's savings were going
steadily, every day, every week.
There seemed no further way to check expenditure. Athalie had
dismissed their servant as soon as she had lost her position at
Wahlbaum and Grossman's. Table expenses were reduced to Spartan
limits, much to the disgust of them all. No clothes were bought, no
luxuries, no trifles. They did their own marketing, their own cooking,
their own housework and laundry. And had it not been that the
apartment entailed no outlay for light, heat, and rent, they would
have been sorely perplexed that spring and summer in New York.
Athalie permitted herself only one luxury, Hafiz. And one necessity;
stamps and letter paper for foreign correspondence.
The latter was costing her less and less recently. Clive wrote seldom
now. And always very sensitive where he was concerned, she permitted
herself the happiness of writing only after he had taken the
initiative, and a reply from her was due him.
No, matters were not going very well with Athalie. Also she was
frequently physically tired. Perhaps it was the lassitude consequent
on the heat. But at times she had an odd idea that she lacked courage;
and sometimes when lonely, she tried to reason with herself, tried to
teach her heart bravery--particularly during the long interims which
elapsed between Clive's letters.
As for her attitude toward him--whether or not she was in love with
him--she was too busy thinking about him to bother her head about
attitudes or degrees of affection. All the girl knew--when she
permitted herself to think of herself--was that she missed him
dreadfully. Otherwise her concern was chiefly for him, for his
happiness and well-being. Also she was concerned regarding the promise
she had made him--and to which he usually referred in his
letters,--the promise to try to learn more about this faculty of hers
for clear vision, and, if possible, to employ it for his sake and in
his unhappy service.
This often preoccupied her, troubled her. She did not know how to go
about it; she hesitated to seek those who advertised their alleged
occult powers for sale,--trance-mediums, mind-readers, palmists--all
the heterogeneous riffraff lurking always in metropolitan purlieus,
and always with a sly weather-eye on the police.
As usual in her career since the time she could first remember, she
continued to "see clearly" where others saw and heard nothing.
Faint voices in the dusk, a whisper in darkness; perhaps in her bedroom
the subtle intuition of another presence. And sometimes a touch on her
arm, a breath on her cheek, delicate, exquisite--sometimes the haunting
sweetness of some distant harmony, half heard, half divined. And now and
then a form, usually unknown, almost always smiling and friendly, visible
for a few moments--the space of a fire-fly's incandescence--then
fading--entering her orbit out of nothing and, going into nothing,
out of it.
Of these episodes she had never entertained any fear. Sometimes they
interested her, sometimes even slightly amused her. But they had never
saddened her, not even when they had been the flash-lit harbingers of
death. For only a sense of calmness and serenity accompanied them:
and to her they had always been part of the world and of life, nothing
to wonder at, nothing to fear, and certainly nothing to intrude
on--merely incidents not concerning her, not remarkable, but natural
and requiring no explanation.
But she herself did not know and could not explain why, even as a
child, she had been always reticent regarding these occurrences,--why
she had always been disinclined to discuss them. Unless it were a
natural embarrassment and a hesitation to discuss strangers, as though
comment were a species of indelicacy,--even of unwarranted intrusion.
One night while reading--she had been scanning a newspaper column of
advertisements hoping to find a chance for herself or Catharine--glancing
up she again saw Clive's father seated near her. At the same moment he
lifted his head, which had been resting on one hand, and looked across
the hearthstone at her, smiling faintly.
Entirely unembarrassed, conscious of that atmosphere of serenity which
always was present when such visitors arrived, the girl sat looking at
what her eyes told her she perceived, a slight and friendly smile
curving her lips in silent response.
Presently she became aware that Hafiz, too, saw the visitor, and was
watching him. But this fact she had noticed before, and it did not
surprise her.
And that was all there was to the incident. He rose, walked to the
window, stood there. And after a little while he was not there. That
ended it. And Hafiz went to sleep again.