"Clive nodded: 'Keep them off the place, Connor.'""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, Iamso 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 getanysleep?"
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."
"Whatisit?" he repeated, reddening.
"MustItellyou, Clive?"
"I think you had better."
"Youshould have toldme, dear.... Don't everfear 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."
"'Sure I was that worritted,' burst out Mrs. Connor.""'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 exactlyhow 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 anddragged 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 robbingher, 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. Shehas 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 myotherself 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 whatsheand 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 finallyunderstood 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 stayherewith 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 forceme to become your mistress, malice and law may answer for it; not I!"
"Ishall 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 causemeany 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—"
WINIFRED had grown stout, which, on a slim, small-boned woman is quickly apparent; and, to Clive, her sleepy, uncertain grey eyes seemed even nearer together than he remembered them.
She was seated in the yellow and white living-room of her apartment at the Regina, still holding the card he had sent up; and she made no movement to rise when her maid announced him and ushered him in, or to greet him at all except with a slight nod and a slighter gesture indicating a chair across the room.
He said: "I did not know until this morning that you were in this country."
"Was it necessary to inform you?"
"No, not necessary," he said, "unless you have come to some definite decision concerning our future relations."
Her eyes seemed to grow sleepier and nearer together than ever.
"Why," he asked, wearily, "have you employed an agency to have me followed?"
She lifted her drooping lids and finely pencilled brows. "Have you been followed?"
"At intervals, as you know. Would you mind saying why? Because you have always been welcome to divorce."
She sat silent, slowly tearing into tiny squares the card he had sent up. Presently, as at an afterthought, she collected all the fragments and placed them in a heap on the table beside her.
"Well?" she inquired, glancing up at him. "Is that all you have to say?"
"I don't know what to say until you tell me why you have had me followed and why you yourself are here."
Her gaze remained fixed on the heap of little pasteboard squares which she shifted across the polished table-top from one position to another. She said:
"The case against you was complete enough before last night. I fancy even you will admit that."
"You are wrong," he replied wearily. "Somehow or other I believe you know that you are wrong. But I suppose a jury might not think so."
"Would you care to tell a jury that this trance-medium is not your mistress?"
"I should not care to defend her on such a charge before a jury or before anybody. There are various ways of damning a woman; and to defend her from that accusation is one of them."
"And another way?"
"To admit the charge. Either ruin her in the eyes of the truly virtuous."
"What do you expect to do about it then? Keep silent?"
"That is still a third way of destroying a woman."
"Really? Then what are you going to do?"
"Whatever you wish," he said in a low voice, "aslong as you do not bring such a charge against Athalie Greensleeve."
"Would you set your signature to a paper?"
"I have given you my word. I have never lied to you."
She looked up at him out of narrowing eyes:
"You might this time. I prefer your signature."
He reddened and sat twirling the silver crook of his walking-stick between restless hands.
"Very well," he said quietly; "I will sign what you wish, with the understanding that Miss Greensleeve is to remain immune from any lying accusation.... And I'll tell you now that any accusation questioning her chastity is a falsehood."
His wife smiled: "You see," she said, "your signaturewillbe necessary."
"Do you think I am lying?"
"What do I care whether you are or not? Do you suppose the alleged chastity of a common fortune-teller interests me? All I know is that you have found your level, and that I need protection. If you choose to concede it to me without a public scandal, I shall permit you to do so. If not, I shall begin an action against you and name the woman with whom you spent last night!"
There was, in the thin, flute-like, and mincingly fastidious voice something so subtly vicious that her words left him silent.
Still leisurely arranging and re-arranging her little heap of pasteboard, her near-set eyes intent on its symmetry, she spoke again:
"I could marry Innisbrae or any one of several others! But I do not care to; I am comfortable. And that is where you have made your mistake. I do not desire a divorce! But,"—she lifted her narrow eyes—"if you force me to a separation I shall not shrink from it. And I shall name that woman."
"Then—what is it you want?" he asked with a sinking heart.
"Not a divorce; not even a separation; merely respectability. I wish you to give up business in New York and present yourself in England at decent intervals of—say once every year. What you do in the interludes is of no interest to me. As long as you do not establish a business and a residence anywhere I don't care what you do. You may come back and live with this woman if you choose."
After a silence he said: "Is that what you propose?"
"It is."
"And you came over here to collect sufficient evidence to force me?"
"I had no other choice."
He nodded: "By your own confession, then, you believe either in her chastity and my sense of honour, or that, even guilty, I care so much for her that any threat against her happiness can effectually coerce me."
"Your language is becoming a trifle involved."
"No;Iam involved. I realise it. And if I am not absolutely honourable and unselfish in this matter I shall involve the woman I had hoped to marry."
"I thought so," she said, reverting to her heap of pasteboard.
"If you think so," he continued, "could you not be a little generous?"
"How?"
"Divorce me—not by naming her—and give me a chance in life."
"No," she said coolly, "I don't care for a divorce. I am comfortable enough. Why should I inconvenience myself because you wish to marry your mistress?"
"In decency and in—charity—to me. It will cost you little. You yourself admit that it is a matter of personal indifference to you whether or not you are entirely and legally free of me."
"Did you ever do anything to deserve my generosity?" she inquired coldly.
"I don't know. I have tried."
"I have never noticed it," she retorted with a slight sneer.
He said: "Since my first offence against you—and against myself—which was marrying you—I have attempted in every way I knew to repair the offence, and to render the mistake endurable to you. And when I finally learned that there was only one way acceptable to you, I followed that way and kept myself out of your sight.
"My behaviour, perhaps, entitles me to no claim upon your generosity, yet I did my best, Winifred, as unselfishly as I knew how. Could you not; in your turn, be a little unselfish now?... Because I have a chance for happiness—if you would let me take it."
She glanced at him out of her close-set, sleepy eyes:
"I would not lift a finger to oblige you," she said. "You have inconvenienced me, annoyed me, disarranged my tranquil, orderly, and blameless mode of living, causing me social annoyance and personal irritation by coming here and engaging in business, and living openly with a common and notorious woman who practises a fraudulent and vulgar business.
"Why should I show you any consideration? And if you really have fallen so low that you are ready to marry her, do you suppose it would be very flattering for me to have it known that your second wife, my successor, was such a woman?"
He sat thinking for a while, his white, care-worn face framed between his gloved hands.
"Your friends," he said in a low voice, "know you as a devout woman. You adhere very strictly to your creed. Is there nothing in it that teaches forbearance?"
"There is nothing in it that teaches me to compromise with evil," she retorted; and her small cupid-bow mouth, grew pinched.
"If you honestly believe that this young girl is really my mistress," he said, "would it not be decent of you, if it lies within your power, to permit me to regularise my position—and hers?"
"Is it any longer my affair if you and she have publicly damned yourselves?"
"Yet if you do believe me guilty, you can scarcely deny me the chance of atonement, if it is within your power."
She lifted her eyes and coolly inspected him: "And suppose I donotbelieve you guilty of breaking your marriage vows?" she inquired.
He was silent.
"Am I to understand," she continued, "that you consider it my duty to suffer the inconvenience of divorcing you in order that you may further advertise this woman by marrying her?"
He looked into her close-set eyes; and hope died. She said: "If you care to affix your signature to the agreement which my attorneys have already drawn up, then matters may remain as they are, provided you carry out your part of the contract. If you don't, I shall begin action immediately and I shall name the woman on whose account you seem to entertain such touching anxiety."
"Is that your threat?"
"It is my purpose, dictated by every precept of decency, morality, religion, and the inviolable sanctity of marriage."
He laughed and gathered up his hat and stick:
"Your moral suasion, I am afraid, slightly resembles a sort of sanctimonious blackmail, Winifred. The combination of morality, religion, and yourself is too powerful for me to combat.... So if my choice must be between permitting morality to publicly besmirch this young girl's reputation, and affixing my signature to the agreement you suggest, I have no choice but to sign my name."
"Is that your decision?"
He nodded.
"Very well. My attorneys and a notary are in the next room with the papers necessary. If you would be good enough to step in a moment—"
He looked at her and laughed again: "Is there," he said, "anything lower than a woman?—or anything higher?"
ATHALIE was having a wonderful summer. House and garden continued to enchant her. She brought down Hafiz, who, being a city cat, instantly fled indoors with every symptom of astonishment and terror the first time Athalie placed him on the lawn.
But within a week the dainty Angora had undergone a change of heart. Boldly, now he marched into the garden all by himself; fearlessly he pounced upon such dangerous game as crickets and grasshoppers and the little night moths which drifted among the flowers at twilight,—the favourite prowling hour of Hafiz, the Beautiful.
Also, early in July, Athalie had acquired a fat bay horse and a double buckboard; and, in the seventh heaven now, she jogged about the country through leafy lanes and thistle-bordered by-roads long familiar to her childhood, sometimes with basket, trowel, and garden gloves, intent on the digging and transplanting of ferns, sometimes with field-glasses and books, on ornithological information bent. More often she started out with only a bag of feed for Henry the horse and some luncheon for herself, to picnic all alone in a familiar woodland, haunted by childish memories,and lie there listening to the bees and to the midsummer wind in softly modulated conversation with the little tree-top leaves.
She had brought her maid from the city; Mrs. Connor continued to rule laundry and kitchen. Connor himself decorated the landscape with his straw hat and overalls, weeding, spraying, rolling, driving the lawn-mower, raking bed and path, cutting and training vines, clipping hedges,—a sober, bucolic, agreeable figure to the youthful chatelaine of the house of Greensleeve.
Clive had come once more from town to say that he was sailing for England the following day; that he would be away a month all told, and that he would return by the middle of August.
They had spent the morning driving together in her buckboard—the happiest morning perhaps in their lives.
It promised to be a perfect day; and she was so carefree, so contented, so certain of the world's kindness, so shyly tender with him, so engagingly humorous at his expense, that the prospect of a month's separation ceased for the time to appal him.
Concerning his interview with his wife she had asked him nothing; nor even why he was going abroad. Whether she guessed the truth; whether she had come to understand the situation through other and occult agencies, he could not surmise. But one thing was plain enough; nothing that had happened or that threatened to happen was now disturbing her. And her gaiety and high spirits were reassuring him andtranquillising his mind to a degree for which, on reflection, he could scarcely account, knowing the ultimate hopelessness of their situation.
Yet her sheer good spirits carried him with her, heart and mind, that morning. And when it was time for him to go she said good-bye to him with a smile as tenderly gay and as happy and confident as though he were to return on the morrow. And went back to her magic house of dreams and her fairy garden, knowing that, except for him, their rainbow magic must vanish and the tinted spell fade, and the soft enchantment dissolve forever leaving at her feet only a sunlit ruin amid the stillness of desolation.
But the magic held. Every day she wrote him. Wireless messages came to her from him for a while; ceased; then re-commenced, followed presently by cablegrams and finally by letters.
So the magic held through the long sunny summer days. And Athalie worked in her garden and strayed far afield, both driving and afoot. And she studied and practised piano, and made curtains, and purchased furniture.
Also she wrote letters to her sisters, long since wedded to husbands, babies, and homes in the West. Her brother Jack, she learned, had joined the Navy at Puget Sound, and had now become a petty officer aboard the new battle-cruiserBon Homme Richardin Asiatic waters. She wrote to him, also, and sent him a money order, gaily suggesting that he use it to educate himself as a good sailor should, and that he save his pay for a future wife and baby—the latter, as she wrote,"being doubtless the most desirable attainment this side of Heaven."
In her bedroom were photographs of Catharine's children and of the little boy which Doris had brought into the world; and sometimes, in the hot midsummer afternoons, she would lie on her pillow and look at these photographs until the little faces faded to a glimmer as slumber dulled her eyes.
Captain Dane came once or twice to spend the day with her; and it was pleasant, afterward, for her to remember this big, blond, sunburnt man as part of all that she most cared for. Together they drove and walked and idled through house and garden: and when he went away, to sail the following day for those eternal forests which conceal the hearthstone of the Western World, he knew from her own lips about her love for Clive. He was the only person she ever told.
A few of her friends she asked to the house for quiet week-ends; the impression their visits made upon her was pleasant but colourless.
And it seemed singular, as she thought it over, how subordinate, how unaccented had always been all these people who came into her life, lingered, and faded out of it, leaving only the impressions of backgrounds and accessories against which only one figure stood clear and distinct—her lover's.
Yes, of all men she had ever known, only Clive seemed real; and he dominated every scene of her girlhood and her womanhood as her mother had been the only really living centre of her childhood.
All else seemed to her like a moving and subduedbackground,—an endless series of grey scenes vaguely painted through which figures came and went, some shadowy and colourless as phantoms, some soberly outlined, some delicately tinted—but all more or less subordinate, more or less monochromatic, unimportant except for balance and composition, as painters use indefinite shapes and shades so that the eyes may more perfectly concentrate on the centre of their inspiration.
And the centre of all, for her, was Clive. Since her mother's death there had been no other point of view for her, no other focus for the forces of her mind, no other real desire, no other content. He had entered her child's life and had become, instantly, all that the child-world held for her. And it was so through the years of her girlhood. Absent, or during his brief reappearances, the central focus of her heart and mind was Clive. And, in womanhood, all forces in her mind and spirit and, now, of body, centred in this man who stood out against the faded tapestry of the world all alone for her, the only living thing on earth with which her heart had mated as a child, and in which now her mind and spirit had found Nirvana.
All men, all women, seemed to have their shadowy being only to make this man more real to her.
Friends came, remained, and went,—Cecil Reeve, gay, charmed with everything, and, as always, mischievously ready to pay court to her; Francis Hargrave, politely surprised but full of courteous admiration for her good taste; John Lyndhurst, Grismer, Harry Ferris, Young Welter, Arthur Ensart, and James Allys,—all were bidden for the day; all came,marvelled in the several manners characteristic of them, and finally went their various ways, serving only, as always, to make clearer to her the fadeless memory of an absent man. For, to her, the merest thought of him was more real, more warm and vivid, than all of these, even while their eager eyes sought hers and their voices were sounding in her ears.
Nina Grey came with Anne Randolph for a week-end; and then came Jeanne Delauny, and Adele Millis. The memory of their visits lingered with Athalie as long, perhaps, as the scent of roses hangs in a dim, still room before the windows are open in the morning to the outer air.
The first of August a cicada droned from the hill-top woods and all her garden became saturated with the homely and bewitching odour of old-fashioned rockets.
On the grey wall nasturtiums blazed; long stretches of brilliant portulaca edged the herbaceous borders; clusters of auratum lilies hung in the transparent shadow of Cydonia and Spirea; and the first great dahlias faced her in maroon splendour from the spiked thickets along the wall.
Once or twice she went to town on shopping bent, and on one of these occasions impulse took her to the apartment furnished for her so long ago by Clive.
She had not meant to go in, merely intended to pass the house, speak to Michael, perhaps, if indeed, he still presided over door and elevator.
And there he was, outside the door on a chair, smoking his clay pipe and surveying the hot and silent street, where not even a sparrow stirred.
"Michael," she said, smiling.
For a moment he did not know her, then: "God's glory!" he said huskily, getting to his feet—"is it the sweet face o' Miss Greensleeve or the angel in her come back f'r to bless us all?"
She gave him her hand, and he held it and looked at her, earnestly, wistfully; then, with the flashing change of his race, the grin broke out:
"I'm that proud to be remembered by the likes o' you, Miss Athalie! Are ye well, now?—an' happy? I thank God for that! I am substantial—with my respects, ma'am, f'r the kind inquiry. And Hafiz? Glory be, was there ever such a cat now? D'ye mind the day we tuk him in a bashket?—an' the sufferin' yowls of the poor, dear creature. Sure I'm that glad to hear he's well;—and manny mice to him, Miss Athalie!"
Athalie laughed: "I suppose all your tenants are away in the country," she ventured.
"Barrin' wan or two, Miss. Ye know the young Master will suffer no one in your own apartment."
"Is it still unoccupied, Michael?"
"Deed it is, Miss. Would ye care f'r to look around. There is nothing changed there. I dust it meself."
"Yes," said the girl in a low voice, "I will look at it."
So Michael took her up in the lift, unlocked the door for her, and then with the fine instinct of his race, forbore to follow her.
The shades in the square living-room were lowered; she raised one. And the dim, golden past took shadowy shape again before her eyes.
"'Michael,' she said, smiling.""'Michael,' she said, smiling."
She moved slowly from one object to another, touching caressingly where memory was tenderest. She looked at the furniture, the pictures,—at the fireplace where in her mind's eye she could seehimbending to light the first fire that had ever blazed there.
For a little while she sat on the big lounge, her dreamy eyes fixed on the spot where Clive's father had stood and she remembered Jacques Renouf, too, and the lost city of Yhdunez.... And, somehow her memories receded still further toward earlier years; and she thought of the sunny office where Mr. Wahlbaum used to sit; and she seemed to see the curtains stirring in the wind.
After a while she rose and walked slowly along the hall to her own room.
Everything was there as she had left it; the toilet silver, evidently kept clean and bright by Michael, the little Dresden cupids on the mantel, the dainty clock, still running—further confirmation of Michael's ministrations—the fresh linen on the bed. Nothing had been changed through all these changing years. She softly opened the clothes-press door; there hung her gowns—silent witnesses of her youth, strangely and daintily grotesque in fashion. One by one she examined them, a smile edging her lips, and, in her eyes, tears.
All revery is tinged with melancholy; and it was so with her when she stood among the forgotten gowns of years ago.
It was so, too, when, one by one she unlocked and opened the drawers of dresser and bureau. From soft, ordered heaps of silk and lace and sheerest linen a faintperfume mounted; and it was as though she subtly renewed an exquisite and secret intimacy with a youth and innocence half-forgotten in the sadder wisdom of later days.
From the still and scented twilight of a vanished year, to her own apartment perched high above the sun-smitten city she went, merely to find herself again, and look around upon what fortune had brought to her through her own endeavour.
But, somehow, the old prejudices had gone; the old instincts of pride and independence had been obliterated, merged in a serene and tranquil unity of mind and will and spirit with the man in whom every atom of her belief and faith was now centred.
It mattered no longer to her what material portion of her possessions and environment was due to her own efforts, or to his. Nothing that might be called hers could remain conceivable as hers unless he shared it. Their rights in each other included everything temporal and spiritual; everything of mind and matter alike. Of what consequence, then, might be the origin of possessions that could not exist for her unless possession were mutual?
Nothing would be real to her, nothing of value, unless so marked by his interest and his approval. And now she knew that even the world itself must become but a shadow, were he not living to make it real.
It was a fearfully hot day in town, and she waited until evening to go back to Spring Pond.
When she arrived, Mrs. Connor had a cablegram for her from Clive saying that he was sailing and would see her before the month ended.
Late into the night she looked for him in her crystal but could see nothing save a blue and tranquil sea and gulls flying, and always on the curved world's edge a far stain of smoke against the sky.
Her mother was in her room that night, seated near the window as though to keep the vigil that her daughter kept, brooding above the crystal.
It was Friday, the twenty-first, and a new moon. The starlight was magnificent in the August skies: once or twice meteors fell. But in the depths of her crystal she saw always a sunlit sea and a gull's wings flashing.
Toward morning when the world had grown its darkest and stillest, she went over to where her mother was sitting beside the window, and knelt down beside her chair.
And so in voiceless and tender communion she nestled close, her golden head resting against her mother's knees.
Dawn found her there asleep beside an empty chair.
ONE day toward the end of August, Athalie, standing at the pier's end, saw the huge incoming liner slowly warping to her berth; waited amid the throngs in the vast sheds by the gangway, caught a glimpse of Clive, lost him to view, then saw him again, very near, making his way toward her. And then her hands were in his and she was looking into his beloved eyes once more.
There were a few quick words of greeting spoken, tender, low-voiced; the swift light of happiness made her blue eyes brilliant:
"You tall, sun-bronzed, lazy thing," she said; "I never told you what a distinguished looking man you are, did I? Well I'll spoil you by telling you now. No wonder everything feminine glances at you," she added as he lifted his hat to fellow passengers who were passing.
And during the customs' examination she stood beside him, amused, interested, gently bantering him when he declared everything; for even in Athalie were apparently the ineradicable seeds of that original sin—which is in all femininity—the paramount necessity for smuggling.
Once or twice he spoke aside to the customs' officer; and Athalieinstantly and gaily accused him of attempted bribery.
But when they were on their way to Spring Pond in a hired touring car with his steamer trunk and suit-cases strapped behind, he drew from his pockets the articles he had declared and paid for; and Athalie grew silent in delight as she looked down at the single and lovely strand of pearls.
All the way to Spring Pond she held them so, and her enchanted eyes reverted to them whenever she could bring herself to look anywhere except at him.
"I wondered," she said, "whether you would come to the country or whether you might think it better to remain in town."
"I shall go back to town only when you go."
"Dear, does that mean that you will stay with me at our own house?"
"If you want me."
"Oh, Clive! I was wondering—only it seemed too heavenly to hope for."
His face grew sombre for a moment. He said: "There is no other future for us. And even our comradeship will be misunderstood. But—if you are willing—"
"Is there any question in your mind as to the limit of my willingness?"
He said: "You know it will mark us for life. And if we remain guiltless, and our lives blameless, nevertheless this comradeship of ours will mark us for life."
"Do you mean, brand us?"
"Yes, dear."
"Does that cause you any real apprehension?" she laughed.
"I am thinking of you."
"Think of me, then," she said gaily, "and know that I am happy and content. The world is turning into such a wonderful friend to me; fate is becoming so gentle and so kind. Happiness may brand me; nothing else can leave a mark. So be at ease concerning me. All shall go well with me, only when with you, my darling, all goes well."
He smiled in sympathy with her gaiety of heart, but the slight shadow returned to his face again. Watching it she said:
"All things shall come to us, Clive."
"All things," he said, gravely,—"except fulfilment."
"That, too," she murmured.
"No, Athalie."
"Yes," she said under her breath.
He only lifted her ringless hand to his lips in hopeless silence; but she looked up at the cloudless sky and out over sunlit harvest fields and where grain and fruit were ripening, and she smiled, closing her white hand and pressing it gently against his lips.
Connor met them at the door and shouldered Clive's trunk and other luggage; then Athalie slipped her arm through his and took him into the autumn glow of her garden.
"Miracle after miracle, Clive—from the enchantment of July roses to the splendour of dahlia, calendula, and gladioluses. Such a wonder-house no man ever before gave to any woman.... There is not one stalkor leaf or blossom or blade of grass that is not my intimate and tender friend, my confidant, my dear preceptor, my companion beloved and adored.