A fine lace-work of mist lay over the salt meadows; the fairy trilling
of the little owl had ceased. Marsh-fowl were sleepily astir; the last
firefly floated low into the shrouded bushes and its lamp glimmered a
moment and went out.
Where the east was growing grey long lines of wild-ducks went
stringing out to sea; a few birds sang loudly in meadows still
obscure; cattle in foggy upland pastures were awake.
When the first cock-crow rang, cow-bells had been clanking for an hour
or more; the rising sun turned land and sea to palest gold; every
hedge and thicket became noisy with birds; bay-men stepped spars and
hoisted sail, and their long sweeps dripped liquid fire as they pulled
away into the blinding glory of the east.
And Clive rose wearily from his window chair, care-worn and haggard,
with nothing determined, nothing solved of this new and imminent peril
which was already menacing Athalie with disgrace and threatening him
with that unwholesome notoriety which men usually survive but under
which a woman droops and perishes.
He bathed, dressed again, dully uneasy in the garments of yesterday,
uncomfortable for lack of fresh linen and toilet requisites; little
things indeed to add such undue weight to his depression. And only
yesterday he had laughed at inconvenience and had still found charm to
thrill him in the happy unconventionality of that day and night.
Connor was already weeding in the garden when he went out; and the
dull surprise in the Irishman's sunburnt visage sent a swift and
painful colour into his own pallid face.
"Miss Greensleeve was kind enough to put me up last night," he said
briefly.
Connor stood silent, slowly combing the soil from the claw of his
weeder with work-worn fingers.
Clive said: "Since I have been coming down here to watch the progress
on Miss Greensleeve's house have you happened to notice any strangers
hanging about the grounds?"
Connor's grey eyes narrowed and became fixed on nothing.
Presently he nodded to himself:
"There was inquiries made, sorr, I'm minded now that ye mention it."
"About me?"
"Yes, sorr. There was strangers askin' f'r to know was it you that owns
the house or what."
"What was said?"
"I axed them would they chase themselves,--it being none o' their
business. 'Twas no satisfaction they had of me, Misther Bailey, sorr."
"Who were they, Connor?"
"I just disremember now. Maybe there was a big wan and a little
wan.... Yes, sorr; there was two of them hangin' about on and off
these six weeks past, like they was minded to take a job and then
again not minded. Sure there was the two o' thim, now I think of it.
Wan was big and thin and wan was a little scutt wid a big nose."
Clive nodded: "Keep them off the place, Connor. Keep all strangers
outside. Miss Greensleeve will be here for several days alone and she
must not be annoyed."
"Divil a bit, sorr."
"I want you and Mrs. Connor to sleep in the house for the present. And
I do not wish you to answer any questions from anybody concerning
either Miss Greensleeve or myself. Can I depend on you?"
"You can, sorr."
"I'm sure of it. Now, I'd like to have you go to the village and buy
me something to shave with and to comb my hair with. I had not
intended to remain here over night, but I did not care to leave Miss
Greensleeve entirely alone in the house."
"Sure, sorr, Jenny was fixed f'r to stay--"
"I know. Miss Greensleeve told her she might go home. It was a
misunderstanding. But I want her to remain hereafter until Miss
Greensleeve's servants come from New York."
So Connor went away to the village and Clive seated himself on a
garden bench to wait.
Nothing stirred inside the house; the shades in Athalie's room
remained lowered.
He watched the chimney swifts soaring and darting above the house. A
faint dun-coloured haze crowned the kitchen chimney. Mrs. Connor was
already busy over their breakfast.
[Illustration: "Clive nodded: 'Keep them off the place, Connor.'"]
When the gardener returned with the purchases Clive went to his room
again and remained there busy until a knock on the door and Mrs.
Connor's hearty voice announced breakfast.
As he stepped out into the passage-way he met Athalie coming from her
room in a soft morning negligée, and still yawning.
She bade him good morning in a sweet, sleepy voice, linked her white,
lace-clouded arm in his, glanced sideways at him, humorously ashamed:
"I'm a disgrace," she said; "I could have slain Mrs. Connor when she
woke me. Oh, Clive, I _am_ so sleepy!"
"Why did you get up?"
"My dear, I'm also hungry; that is why. I could scent the coffee from
afar. And you know, Clive, if you ever wish to hopelessly alienate my
affections, you have only to deprive me of my breakfast. Tell me, did
you get _any_ sleep?"
He forced a smile: "I had sufficient."
"I wonder," she mused, looking at his somewhat haggard features.
They found the table prepared for them in the sun-parlour; Athalie
presided at the coffee urn, but became a trifle flushed and shy when
Mrs. Connor came in bearing a smoking cereal.
"I made a mistake in allowing you to go home," said the girl, "so I
thought it best for Mr. Bailey to remain."
"Sure I was that worritted," burst out Mrs. Connor, "I was minded to
come back--what with all the thramps and Dagoes hereabout, and no dog
on the place, and you alone; so I sez to my man Cornelius,--'Neil,'
sez I, 'it's not right,' sez I, 'f'r to be lavin' th' young lady--'"
"Certainly," interrupted Clive quietly, "and you and Neil are to sleep
in the house hereafter until Miss Greensleeve's servants arrive."
"I'm not afraid," murmured Athalie, looking at him with lazy amusement
over the big, juicy peach she was preparing. But when Mrs. Connor
retired her expression changed.
"You dear fellow," she said, "You need not ever be worried about me."
"I'm not, Athalie--"
"Oh, Clive! Aren't you always going to be honest with me?"
"Why do you think I am anxious concerning you when Connor and his
wife--"
"Dearest!"
"What?" He looked across at her where she was serenely preparing his
coffee; and when she had handed the cup to him she shook her head,
gravely, as though in gentle disapproval of some inward thought of
his.
"What is it?" he asked uneasily.
"You know already."
"What _is_ it?" he repeated, reddening.
"Must _I_ tell _you_, Clive?"
"I think you had better."
"_You_ should have told _me_, dear.... Don't ever fear to tell me
what concerns us both. Don't think that leaving me in ignorance of
unpleasant facts is any kindness to me. If anything happens to cause
you anxiety, I should feel humiliated if you were left to endure it
all alone."
[Illustration: "'Sure I was that worritted,' burst out Mrs. Connor."]
He remained silent, troubled, uncertain as yet, how much she knew of
what had happened in the garden the night before.
"Clive, dear, don't let this thing spoil anything for us. I know about
it. Don't let any shadow fall upon this house of ours."
"You saw me last night in the garden."
Between diffidence and the candour that characterised her, she
hesitated; then:
"Dear, a very strange thing has happened. Until last night never in
all my life, try as I might, could I ever 'see clearly' anything that
concerned you. Never have I been able to 'find' you anywhere--even
when my need was desperate--when my heart seemed breaking--"
She checked herself, smiled at him; then her eyes grew dark and
thoughtful, and a deeper colour burned in her cheeks.
"I'll try to tell you," she said. "Last night, after I left you, I lay
thinking about--love. And the--the new knowledge of myself
disconcerted me.... There remained a vague sense of dismay
and--humiliation--" She bent her head over her folded hands, silent
until the deepening colour subsided.
Still with lowered eyes she went on, steadily enough: "My instinct was
to escape--I don't know exactly how to tell this to you, dear,--but
the impulse to escape possessed me--and I felt that I must rise from
the lower planes and free myself from a--a lesser passion--slip from
the menace of its control--become clean again of everything that is
not of the spirit.... Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"So I rose and knelt down and said my prayers.... And asked to be
instructed because of my inexperience with--with these new and
deep--emotions. And then I lay down, very tranquil again, leaving the
burden with God.... All concern left me,--and the restless sense of
shame. I turned my head on the pillow and looked out into the
moonlight.... And, gently, naturally, without any sense of effort, I
left my body where it lay in the moonlight, and--and found myself in
the garden. Mother was there. You, also, were there; and two men with
you."
His eyes never left her face; and now she looked up at him with a
ghost of a smile:
"Mother spoke of the loveliness of the flowers. I heard her, but I was
listening to you. Then I followed you where you were driving the two
men from the grounds. I understood what had happened. After you went
into the house again my mother and I saw you watching by your window.
I was sorry that you were so deeply disturbed.
"Because what had occurred did not cause me any anxiety whatever."
"Do you mean," he said hoarsely, "that the probability of your name
being coupled with mine and dragged through the public mire does not
disconcert you?"
"No."
"Why not? Is it because your clairvoyance reassures you as to the
outcome of all this?"
"Dear," she said, gently, "I know no more of the outcome than you do.
I know nothing more concerning our future than do you--excepting,
only, that we shall journey toward it together, and through it to the
end, accomplishing the destiny which links us each to the other.... I
know no more than that."
"Then why are you so serene under the menace of this miserable affair?
For myself I care nothing; I'd thank God for a divorce on any terms.
But you--dearest--dearest!--I cannot endure the thought of you
entangled in such a shameful--"
"Where is the shame, Clive? The real shame, I mean. In me there are
two selves; neither have, as yet, been disgraced by any disobedience
of any law framed by men for women. Nor shall I break men's
laws--under which women are governed without their own consent--unless
no other road to our common destiny presents itself for me to
follow."... She smiled, watching his intent and sombre face:
"Don't fear for me, dear. I have come to understand what life is, and
I mean to live it, wholesomely, gloriously, uncrippled in body and
mind, unmaimed by folk-ways and by laws as ephemeral--" she turned
toward the open windows--"as those frail-winged things that float in
the sunshine above Spring Pond, yonder, born at sunrise, and at
sundown dead."
She laughed, leaning there on her dimpled elbows, stripping a peach of
its velvet skin:
"The judges of the earth,--and the power of them!--What is it, dear,
compared to the authority of love! To-day men have their human will of
men, judging, condemning, imprisoning, slaying, as the moral fashion
of the hour dictates. To-morrow folk-ways change; judge and victim
vanish along with fashions obsolete--both alike, their brief reign
ended.
"For judge and victim are awake at last; and in the twinkling of an
eye, the old world has become a memory or a shrine for those tranquil
pilgrims who return to worship for a while where love lies
sleeping.... And then return no more."
She rose, signed him to remain seated, came around to where he sat,
and perched herself on the arm of his chair.
"If you don't mind," she said, "I shall smooth out that troubled
crease between your eyebrows." And she encircled his head with both
arms, and laid her smooth hands across his forehead. Then she touched
his hair lightly, with her lips.
"We are great sinners," she murmured, "are we not, my darling?"
And drew his head against her breast.
"Of what am I robbing _her_, Clive? Of the power to humiliate you,
make you unhappy. It is an honest theft.
"What else am I stealing from her? Not love, not gratitude, not duty,
nothing of tenderness, nor of pride nor sympathy. I take nothing,
then, from her. She has nothing for me to steal--unless it be the
plain gold ring she never wears.... And I prefer a new one--if,
indeed, I am to wear one."
He said, deeply troubled, "How do you know she never wears a ring?"
And he turned and looked up at her over his shoulder. The clear azure
of her eyes was like a wintry sky.
"Clive, I know more than that. I know that your wife is in New York."
"What!" he exclaimed, astonished.
"I have been aware of it for weeks," she said tranquilly.
He remained silent; she continued to caress his hair:
"Your wife," she went on thoughtfully, "will learn much when she dies.
There is a compulsory university course which awaits us all,--a school
with many forms and many grades and many, many pupils. But we must die
before we can be admitted.... I have never before spoken to you as I
have spoken to-day.... Perhaps I never shall again.... The world is a
blind place--lovely but blind.
"As for the woman who wears your name but wears no ring of yours she
has been moving through my crystal for many days;--I would have made
no effort to intrude on her had she not persisted in the crystal,
haunted it,--I cannot tell you why--only that she is always there,
now.... And last night I knew that she was in New York, and why she
had come here.... Shall you see her to-day?"
"Where is she?"
"At the Regina."
"Are you sure?"
The girl calmly closed her eyes for a moment. After a brief silence
she opened them: "She is still there.... She will awake in a little
while and ring for her breakfast. The two men you drove out of the
garden last night are waiting to see her. There is another man there.
I think he is your wife's attorney.... Have you decided to see her?"
"Yes."
"You won't let what she may say about me trouble you, will you?"
"What will she say?" he asked with the naïve confidence of absolute
and childish faith.
Athalie laughed: "Darling! I don't know. I'm not a witch or a
sorceress. Did you think I was?--just because I can see a little more
clearly than you?"
"I didn't know what your limit might be," he answered, smiling
slightly, in spite of his deep anxiety.
"Then let me inform you at once. My eyes are better than many
people's. Also my _other_ self can see. And with so clear a vision,
and with intelligence--and with a very true love and reverence for
God--somehow I seem to visualise what clairvoyance, logic, and reason
combine to depict for me.
"I used to be afraid that a picturesque and vivid imagination coupled
with a certain amount of clairvoyance might seduce me to trickery and
charlatanism.
"But if it be charlatanism for a paleontologist to construct a fish
out of a single fossil scale, then there may be something of that
ability in me. For truly, Clive, I am often at a loss where to draw
the line between what I see and what I reason out--between my
clairvoyance and my deductions. And if I made mistakes I certainly
should be deeply alarmed. But--I don't," she added, laughing. "And so,
in regard to those two men last night, and in regard to what _she_ and
they may be about, I feel not the least concern. And you must not.
Promise me, dear."
But he rose, anxious and depressed, and stood silent for a few
moments, her hands clasped tightly in his.
For he could see no way out of it, now. His wife, once merely
indifferent, was beginning to evince malice. And what further form
that malice might take he could not imagine; for hitherto, she had not
desired divorce, and had not concerned herself with him or his
behaviour.
As for Athalie, it was now too late for him to step out of her life.
He might have been capable of the sacrifice if the pain and
unhappiness were to be borne by him alone--or even if he could bring
himself to believe or even hope that it might be merely a temporary
sorrow to Athalie.
But he could not mistake her, now; their cords of love and life were
irrevocably braided together; and to cut one was to sever both. There
could be no recovery from such a measure for either, now.
What was he to do? The woman he had married had rejected his loyalty
from the very first, suffered none of his ideas of duty to move her
from her aloofness. She cared nothing for him, and she let him know
it; his notions of marriage, its duties and obligations merely aroused
in her contempt. And when he finally understood that the only
kindness he could do her was to keep his distance, he had kept it. And
what was he to do now? Granted that he had brought it all upon
himself, how was he to combat what was threatening Athalie?
His wife had so far desired nothing of him, not even divorce. He could
not leave Athalie and he could not marry her. And now, on her young
head he had, somehow, loosened this avalanche, whatever it was--a suit
for separation, probably--which, if granted, would leave him without
his liberty, and Athalie disgraced. And even suppose his wife desired
divorce for some new and unknown reason. The sinister advent of those
men meant that Athalie would be shamefully named in any such
proceedings.
What was he to do? An ugly, hunted look came into his face and he
swung around and faced the girl beside him:
"Athalie," he said, "will you go away with me and let them howl?"
"Dearest, how silly. I'll stay _here_ with you and let them howl."
"I don't want you to face it--"
"I shall not turn my back on it. Oh, Clive, there are so many more
important things than what people may say about us!"
"You can't defy the world!"
"I'm not going to, darling. But I may possibly shock a few of the more
orthodox parasites that infest it."
"No girl can maintain that attitude."
"A girl can try.... And, if law and malice force me to become your
mistress, malice and law may answer for it; not I!"
"_I_ shall have to answer for it."
"Dearest," she said with smiling tenderness, "you are still very, very
orthodox in your faith in folk-ways. That need not cause _me_ any
concern, however. But, Clive, of the two pictures which seems
reasonable--your wife who is no wife; your mistress who is more and is
considered less?
"Don't think that I am speaking lightly of wifehood.... I desire it as
I desire motherhood. I was made for both. If the world will let me I
shall be both wife and mother. But if the world interferes to stultify
me, then, nevertheless I shall still be both, and the law can keep the
title it refuses me. I deny the right of man to cripple, mar, render
sterile my youth and womanhood. I deny the right of the world to
forbid me love, and its expression, as long as I harm no one by
loving. Clive, it would take a diviner law than man's notions of
divinity, to kill in me the right to live and love and bring the
living into life. And if I am forbidden to do it in the name of the
law, then I dare do it in the name of One who never turned his back on
little children--"
She ceased abruptly; and he saw her eyes suddenly blinded by tears:
"Oh, Clive--if you only could have seen them--the little flower-like
faces and pleading arms around--my--neck--warm--Oh, sweet!--sweet
against my breast--"