Athalie

"The use of you? Did you think I ever had any idea of using you?"

"But I want you to."

"How?" she asked, still uneasily perplexed, her eyes fixed on him.

But he had no definite idea, no plan fixed, nothing further to say on a subject that had so suddenly taken shape within his mind.

She asked him again for an explanation, but, receiving none, settled back thoughtfully in her furs. Only once did he break the silence.

"You know," he said indifferently, "that row of houses, of which yours is one, belongs to me. I mean to me, personally."

"No, I didn't know it."

"Well it does. It's my own investment… I've reduced rents – pending improvements."

She looked up at him.

"The rent of your apartment has been reduced fifty per cent.," he said carelessly; "so your rent is now paid until the new term begins next October."

"Clive! That is perfectly ridiculous!" she began, hotly; but he swung around, silencing her:

"Are you criticising my business methods?" he demanded.

"But that is too silly – "

"Will you mind your business!" he exclaimed, turning and taking her by both shoulders. She looked into his eyes, searching them in silence. Then:

"You're such a dear," she sighed; "why do you want to do a thing like that when my sisters and I can afford to pay the present rent. You are always doing such things, Clive; you have simply covered my dressing-table with silver; my bureau is full of pretty things, all gifts from you; you've given me the loveliest furniture of my own, and books and desk-set and – and everything. And now you are asking me to live rent-free… And what have I to offer you in return?"

"The happiness of being with you now and then."

"Oh, Clive! You know that isn't very much to offer you. You know that our being together is far more to me than it is to you! I dare not even consider what I'd do without you, now. You mould me, alter my thoughts, make me such a delightfully different girl, take entire charge and possession of me… I don't want you to give me anything more – do anything more for me… When you first began to give me beautiful things I didn't want to take them. Do you remember how awkward and shy I was – how I blushed. But I always end by doing everything you wish… And it seems to give us both so much pleasure – all you do for me… But please don't ask me to live without paying rent – "

The limousine drew up by the curb; Clive jumped out, aided Athalie to descend; and started for the grilled door where a light glimmered.

"This is not the house!" exclaimed Athalie, stopping short. "Where are you taking me, Clive?"

"Come on," he said, "I merely want to show you how I've had the new apartment house built – "

"But – it's too late! What an odd idea, taking me to inspect a new apartment house at two in the morning! Are you really serious?"

He nodded and rang. A sleepy night porter opened, recognised Clive, and touched his hat.

"Take us to the top, Mike," he said.

"Have you the keys, sorr?"

"Yes."

They entered the cage and it shot up to the top floor.

"Wait for us, Mike."… And to Athalie: "This is Michael Daly who will do anything you ask of him – won't you, Mike?"

"I will that, sorr," said the big Irishman, tipping his hat to Athalie.

"But, Clive," she persisted, bewildered, still clinging to his arm, "I don't understand why – "

"Little goose, hush!" he replied, subduing the excitement in his voice and fitting the key into the door.

"One moment, Athalie," he added, "until I light up. Now!"

She entered the lighted hallway, walking on a soft green carpet, and turned, obeying the guiding pressure of his arm, into a big square room which sprang into brilliant illumination as he found the switch.

Green and gold were the hangings and prevailing colours; there were rugs, wide, comfortable chairs and lounges, bookcases, a picture or two in deep glowing colours, a baby-grand piano, and an open fire loaded for business.

"Is it done in good taste, Athalie?" he asked.

"It is charming. Is it yours, Clive?"

He laughed, slipped his arm under hers and led her along the hallway, opening door after door; and first she was invited to observe a very modern and glistening bathroom, then a bedroom all done in grey and rose with dainty white furniture and a white-bear rug beside the bed.

"Why this is a woman's room!" she exclaimed, puzzled.

He only laughed and drew her along the hall, showing her another bedroom with twin beds, a maid's room, a big clothes press, and finally, a completely furnished kitchen, very modern with its porcelain baseboard and tiled walls.

"What do you think of all this, Athalie?" he insisted.

"Why it's exquisite, Clive. Whose is it?"

They walked back to the square living-room. He said, teasingly: "Do you remember, the first time I saw you after those four years, – that first evening when I came in to surprise you and found you sitting by the radiator – in your nightie, Athalie?"

"Yes," she said, laughing and blushing as she always did when he tormented her with that souvenir.

"And I said that you ought to have an open fire. And a cat. Didn't I?"

"Yes."

"There's your fire, Athalie;" he drew a match from his tiny flat gold case, struck it, and lighted the nest of pine shavings under the logs; – "and Michael has the cat when you want it."

He drew a big soft arm-chair to the mounting blaze. Athalie stood motionless, staring at the flames, then with a sudden, nervous gesture she sank down on the arm-chair and covered her face with her gloved hands.

He stood waiting, happy and excited, and finally he went over and touched her; and the girl caught his hand convulsively in both of hers and looked up at him with wet eyes.

"How can I do this, Clive? How can I?" she whispered.

"Any brother would do as much for his sister – "

"Oh, Clive! You are different! You are more than that. You know you are. How can I take all this? Will you tell me? How can I live here – this way – "

"Your sisters will be here. You saw their room just now – "

"But what can I tell them? How can I explain? They know we cannot afford such luxury as this?"

"Tell them the rent is the same."

"They won't believe it. They couldn't. They don't understand even now how it is with you and me – that you are so dear and generous and kind just because you are my friend – and no more than my friend… Not that they really believe – anything – unpleasant – of me– but – but – "

"What do you care – as long as it isn't so?" he said, coolly.

"I don't care. Except that it weakens my authority over them… Catharine is very impulsive, and she dearly loves a good time – and she is becoming sullen with me when I try to advise her or curb her… And it's so with Doris, too… I'd like to keep my influence… But if they ever really began to believe that between you and me there was – more – than friendship, I – I don't know what they might feel free to think – or do – "

"They're older than you."

"Yes. But I seem to have the authority, – or I did have."

They looked into the leaping flames; he threw open his fur coat and seated himself on the padded arm of her chair.

"All I know is," he said, "that it gives me the deepest and most enduring happiness to do things for you. When the architect planned this house I had him design a place for you. Ultimately all the row of old houses are to be torn down and replaced by modern apartments with moderate rentals. So you will have to move anyway sooner or later. Why not come here now?"

Half unconsciously she had rested her cheek against the fur lining of his coat where it fell against his arm. He looked down at her, touched her hair – a thing he had never thought of doing before.

"Why not come here, Athalie?" he said caressingly.

"I don't know. It would be heavenly. Do you want me to, Clive?"

"Yes. And I want you to begin to put away part of your salary, too. You might as well begin, now. You will be free from the burden of rent, free from – various burdens – "

"I – can't – let you – "

"I want to!"

"Why?"

"Because it gives me pleasure – "

"No; because you desire to give me pleasure! That is the reason!" she exclaimed with partly restrained passion – "because you are you– and there is nobody like you in all the world – in all the world, Clive! – "

To her emotion his own flashed a quick, warm response. He looked down at her, deeply touched, his pride gratified, his boyish vanity satisfied. Always had the simplicity and candour of her quick and ardent gratitude corroborated and satisfied whatever was in him of youthful self-esteem. Everything about her seemed to minister to it – her attention in public places was undisguisedly for him alone; her beauty, her superb youth and health, the admiring envy of other people – all these flattered him.

Why should he not find pleasure in giving to such a girl as this? – giving without scruple – unscrupulous too, perhaps, concerning the effect his generosity might have on a cynical world which looked on out of wearied and incredulous eyes; unscrupulous, perhaps, concerning the effect his too lavish kindness might have on a young girl unaccustomed to men and the ways of men.

But there was no harm in him; he was very much self-assured of that. He had been too carefully brought up – far too carefully reared. And had people ventured to question him, and had they escaped alive his righteous violence, they would have learned that there really was not the remotest chance that his mother was in danger of becoming what she most dreaded in all the world.

The fire burned lower; they sat watching it together, her flushed cheek against the fur of his coat, his arm extended along the back of the chair behind her.

"Well," he said, "this has been another happy evening."

She stirred in assent, and he felt the lightest possible pressure against him.

"Are you contented, Athalie?"

"Yes."

After a moment he glanced at his watch. It was three o'clock. So he rose, placed the screen over the fireplace, and then came back to where she now stood, looking very intently at the opposite wall. And he turned to see what interested her. But there seemed to be nothing in particular just there.

"What are you staring at, little ghost-seer?" he asked, passing his hand under her arm; and stepped back, surprised, as she freed herself with a quick, nervous movement, looked at him, then averted her head.

"What is the matter, Athalie?" he inquired.

"Nothing… Don't touch me, Clive."

"No, of course not… But what in the world – "

"Nothing… Don't ask me." Presently he saw her very slowly move her head and look back at the empty corner of the room; and remain so, motionless for a moment. Then she turned with a sigh, came quietly to him; and he drew her hand through his arm.

"Of what were you thinking, Athalie?"

"Of nothing."

"Did you think you saw something over there?"

She was silent.

"What were you looking at?" he insisted.

"Nothing… I don't care to talk just now – "

"Tell me, Athalie!"

"No… No, I don't want to, Clive – "

"I wish to know!"

"I can't – there is nothing to tell you – " she laid one hand on his coat, almost pleadingly, and looked up at him out of eyes so dark that only the starry light in them betrayed that they were blue and not velvet black.

"That same thing has happened before," he said, looking at her, deeply perplexed. "Several times since I have known you the same expression has come into your face – as though you were looking at something which – "

"Please don't, Clive! – "

" – Which," he insisted, "I did not see… Could not see!"

"Clive!"

He stared at her rather blankly: "Why don't you tell me?"

"I – can't!"

"Is there anything – "

"Don't! Don't!" she begged; but he went on, still staring at her:

"Is there any reason for you to – not to be frank with me? Is there, Athalie?"

"No; no reason… I'll tell you … if you will understand. Must I tell you?"

"Yes."

Her head fell; she stood plucking nervously at his fur coat for a while in silence. Then:

"Clive, I – I see clearly."

"What?"

"I mean that I see a – a little more clearly than – some do. Do you understand?"

"No."

She sighed, stood twisting her white-gloved fingers, looking away from him.

"I am clairvoyant," she breathed.

"Athalie! You?"

She nodded.

For a second or two he stood silent in his astonishment; then, taking her hand, he drew her around facing the light, and she looked up at him in her lovely abashed way, yet so honestly, that anybody who could recognise truth and candour, could never have mistaken such eyes as hers.

"Who told you that you are clairvoyant?" he asked.

"My mother."

"Then – "

"It was not necessary for anybody to tell me that I saw – more clearly – than other people… Mother knew it… She merely explained and gave a name to this – this – whatever it is – this quality – this ability to see clearly… That is all, Clive."

He was evidently trying to comprehend and digest what she had said. She watched him, saw surprise and incredulity in conflict with uneasiness and with the belief he could not avoid from lips that were not fashioned for lies, and from eyes never made to even look untruths.

"I had never supposed there was such a thing as real clairvoyance," he said at last.

She remained silent, her candid gaze on him.

"I believe that you believe it, of course."

She smiled, then sighed:

"There is no pleasure in it to me. I wish it were not so."

"But, if it is so, you ought to find it – interesting – "

"No."

"Why not? I should think you would! – if you can see – things – that other people cannot."

"I don't care to see them."

"Why?"

"They – I see them so often – and I seldom know who they are – "

"They?"

"The – people – I see."

"Don't they ever speak to you?"

"Seldom."

"Could you find out who they are?"

"I don't know… Yes, I think so; – if I made an effort."

"Don't you ever use any effort to evoke – "

"Oh, Clive! No! When I tell you I had rather not see so – so clearly – "

"You dear girl!" he exclaimed, half smiling, half serious, "why should it distress you?"

"It doesn't – except to talk about it."

"Let me ask one more question. May I?"

She nodded.

"Then – did you recognise whoever it was you saw a few moments ago?"

"Yes."

"Who was it, Athalie?"

"My mother."

CHAPTER X

EARLY in April C. Bailey, Jr., overdrew his account, was politely notified of that oversight by the bank. He hunted about, casually, for stray funds, but to his intense surprise discovered nothing immediately available.

Which annoyed him, and he explained the situation to his father; who demanded further and sordidly searching explanations concerning the expenditure on his son's part of an income more than adequate for any unmarried young man.

They undertook this interesting line of research together, but there came a time in the proceedings when C. Bailey, Jr., betrayed violent inclinations toward reticence, non-communication, and finally secrecy; in fact he declined to proceed any further or to throw any more light upon his reasons for not proceeding, which symptoms were characteristic and perfectly familiar to his father.

"The trouble is," concluded Bailey, Sr., "you have been throwing away your income on that Greensleeve girl! What is she – your private property?"

"No."

The two men looked at each other, steadily enough. Bailey, Sr., said: "If that's the case – why in the name of common sense do you spend so much money on her?" Naïve logic on the part of Bailey, Sr., Clive replied:

"I didn't suppose I was spending very much. I like her. I like her better than any other girl. She is really wonderful, father. You won't believe it if I say she is charming, well-bred, clever – "

"I believe that!"

– "And," continued Clive – "absolutely unselfish and non-mercenary."

"If she's all that, too, it certainly seems to pay her – materially speaking."

"You don't understand," said his son patiently. "From the very beginning of our friendship it has been very difficult for me to make her accept anything – even when she was in actual need. Our friendship is not on that basis. She doesn't care for me because of what I do for her. It may surprise you to hear me – "

"My son, nothing surprises me any more, not even virtue and honesty. This girl may be all you think her. Personally I never met any like her, but I've read about them in sentimental fiction. No doubt there's a basis for such popular heroines. There may have been such paragons. There may be yet. Perhaps you've collided with one of these feminine curiosities."

"I have."

"All right, Clive. Only, why linger longer in the side-show than the price of admission warrants? The main tent awaits you. In more modern metaphor; it's the same film every hour, every day, the same orchestrion, the same environment. You've seen enough. There's nothing more – if I clearly understand your immaculate intentions. Do I?"

"Yes," said Clive, reddening.

"All right; there's nothing more, then. It's time to retire. You've had your amusement, and you've paid for it like a gentleman – very much like a gentleman – rather exorbitantly. That's the way a gentleman always pays. So now suppose you return to your own sort and coyly reappear amid certain circles recently neglected, and which, at one period of your career, you permitted yourself to embellish and adorn with your own surpassing personality."

They both laughed; there had been, always, a very tolerant understanding between them.

Then Clive's face grew graver.

"Father," he said, "I've tried remaining away. It doesn't do any good. The longer I stay away from her, the more anxious I am to go back… It's really friendship I tell you."

"You're not in love with her, are you, Clive?"

The son hesitated: "No!.. No, I can't be. I'm very certain that I am not."

"What would you do if you were?"

"But – "

"What would you do about it?"

"I don't know."

"Marry her?"

"I couldn't do that!" muttered Clive, startled. Then he remained silent, his mind crowded with the component parts of that vague sum-total which had so startled him at the idea of marrying Athalie Greensleeve.

Partly his father's blunt question had jarred him, partly the idea of marrying anybody at all. Also the mere idea of the storm such a proceeding would raise in the world he inhabited, his mother being the storm-centre, dispensing anathema, thunder, and lightning, appalled him.

"What!"

"I couldn't do that," he repeated, gazing rather blankly at his father.

"You could if you had to," said his father, curtly. "But I take your word it couldn't come to that."

The boy flushed hotly, but said nothing. He shrank from comprehending such an impossible situation, ashamed for himself, ashamed for Athalie, resenting even the exaggerated and grotesque possibility of such a thing – such a monstrous and horrible thing playing any part in her life or in his.

The frankness and cynicism of Bailey, Sr., had possibly been pushed too far. Clive became restless; and the calm entente cordiale ended for a while.

Ended also his visits to Athalie for a while, the paternal conversation having, somehow, chilled his desire to see her and spoiled, for the time anyway, any pleasure in being with her.

Also his father offered to help him out financially; and, somehow, he felt as though Bailey, Sr., was paying for his own gifts to Athalie. Which idea mortified him, and he resolved to remain away from her until he recovered his self-respect – which would be duly recovered, he felt certain, when the next coupons fell due and he could detach them and extinguish the parental loan.

For a week or two he did not even wish to see her, so ashamed and sullied did he feel after the way his father had handled and bruised the delicate situation, and the name of the young girl who so innocently adorned it.

No, something had been spoiled for him, temporarily. He felt it. Something of the sweetness, the innocence, the candour of this blameless friendship had been marred. The bloom was rubbed off; the piquant freshness and fragrance gone for the present.

It is true that an unexpected boom in his business kept him and his father almost feverishly active and left them both fatigued at night. This lasted for a week or two – long enough to excite all real estate men with a hope for future prosperity not yet entirely dead. But at the end of two or three weeks that hope began to die its usual, lingering death.

Dulness set in; the talk was of Harlem, Westchester, and the Bronx: a private bank failed, then three commercial houses went to the wall; and a seat was sold for $25,000 on the Exchange. Business resumed its normal and unexaggerated course. The days of boom were surely ended; and vacant lots on Fifth Avenue threatened to remain vacant for a while longer.

Clive began to drop in at his clubs again. One was a Whipper-Snapper Club to which young Manhattan aspired when freshly released from college; the others were of the fashionable and semi-fashionable sort, tedious, monotonous, full of the aimless, the idle, or of that bustling and showy smartness which is perhaps even less admirable and less easy to endure.

Men destitute of mental resources and dependent upon others for their amusement, disillusioned men, lazy men, socially ambitious men, men gluttonously or alcoholically predisposed haunted these clubs. To one of them repaired those who were inclined to racquettes, squash, tennis, and the swimming tank. It was a sort of social clearing house for other clubs.

But The Geyser was the least harmless of the clubs affected by C. Bailey, Jr., – it being an all-night resort and the haunt of the hopeless sport. Here dissipation, futile, aimless, meaningless, was on its native heath. Here, on his own stamping ground, prowled the youthful scion of many a dissipated race – nouveau riche and Knickerbocker alike. All that was required of anybody was money and a depthless capacity.

It was in this place that Clive encountered Cecil Reeve one stormy midnight.

"You don't come here often, do you?" said the latter.

Clive said he didn't.

"Neither do I. But when I do there's a few doing. Will you have a high one, Clive? In deference to our late and revered university?"

Clive would so far consent to degrade himself for the honour of Alma Mater.

There was much honour done her that evening.

Toward the beginning of the end Clive said: "I can't sit up all night, Cecil. What do you do for a living, anyway?"

"Bank a bit."

"Oh, that's just amusement. What do you work at?"

"I didn't mean that kind of bank!" said Reeve, annoyed. All sense of humour fled him when hammerlocked with Bacchus. At such psychological moments, too, he became indiscreet. And now he proposed to Clive an excursion amid what he termed the "high lights of Olympus," which the latter discouraged.

"All right then. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give a Byzantine party! I know a little girl – "

"Oh, shut up!"

"She's a fine little girl, Clive – "

"This is no hour to send out invitations."

"Why not? Her name is Catharine – "

"Dry up!"

"Catharine Greensleeve – "

"What!"

"Certainly. She's a model at Winton's joint. She's a peach. Appropriately crowned with roses she might have presided for Lucullus."

Clive said: "By that you mean she's all right, don't you? You'd better mean it anyway!"

"Is that so?"

"Yes, that's so. I know her sister. She's a charming girl. All of them are all right. You understand, don't you?"

"I understand numerous things. One of 'em's Catharine Greensleeve. And she's some plum, believe me!"

"That's all right, too, so stop talking about it!" retorted Clive sharply.

"Sure it's all right. Don't worry, just because you know her sister, will you?"

Clive shrugged. Reeve was in a troublesome mood, and he left him and went home feeling vaguely irritated and even less inclined than ever to see Athalie; which state of mind perplexed and irritated him still further.