Chambers Robert William
Athalie

CHAPTER XXIV

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, sor. 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.

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."

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 – "

CHAPTER XXV

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, "as long 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 signature will be 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; I am 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 do not believe 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?"