Chambers Robert William
Athalie

CHAPTER XXVI

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 and tranquillising 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-cruiser Bon Homme Richard in 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 subdued background, – 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.

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 see him bending 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 faint perfume 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.

CHAPTER XXVII

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 Athalie instantly 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 stalk or 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.

"Do you notice that the grapes on the trellis are turning dark? And the peaches are becoming so big and heavy and rosy. They will be ripe before very long."

"You must have a greenhouse," he said.

"We must," she admitted demurely.

He turned toward her with much of his old gaiety, laughing: "Do you know," he said, "I believe you are pretending to be in love with me!"

"That's all it is, Clive, just pretence, and the natural depravity of a flirt. When I go back to town I'll forget you ever existed – unless you go with me."

"I'm wondering," he said, "what we had better do in town."

"I'm not wondering; I know."

He looked at her questioningly. Then she told him about her visit to Michael and the apartment.

"There is no other place in the world that I care to live in – excepting this," she said. "Couldn't we live there, Clive, when we go to town?"

After a moment he said: "Yes."

"Would you care to?" she asked wistfully. Then smiled as she met his eyes.

"So I shall give up business," she said, "and that tower apartment. There's a letter here now asking if I desire to sublet it; and as I had to renew my lease last June, that is what I shall do – if you'll let me live in the place you made for me so long ago."

He answered, smilingly, that he might be induced to permit it.

Hafiz appeared, inquisitive, urbane, waving his snowy tail; but he was shy of further demonstrations toward the man who was seated beside his beloved mistress, and he pretended that he saw something in the obscurity of the flowering thickets, and stalked it with every symptom of sincerity.

"That cat must be about six years old," said Clive, watching him.

"He plays like a kitten, still."

"Do you remember how he used to pat your thread with his paws when you were sewing."

"I remember," she said, smiling.

A little later Hafiz regained confidence in Clive and came up to rub against his legs and permit caresses.

"Such a united family," remarked Athalie, amused by the mutual demonstrations.

"How is Henry?" he asked.

"Fatter and slower than ever, dear. He suits my unenterprising disposition to perfection. Now and then he condescends to be harnessed and to carry me about the landscape. But mostly he drags the cruel burden of Connor's lawn-mower. Do you think the place looks well kept?"

"I knew you wanted to be flattered," he laughed.

"I do. Flatter me please."

"It's one of the best things I do, Athalie! For example – the lawn, the cat, and the girl are all beautifully groomed; the credit is yours; and you're a celestial dream too exquisite to be real."

"I am becoming real – as real as you are," she said with a faint smile.

"Yes," he admitted, "you and I are the only real things in the world after all. The rest – woven scenes that come and go moving across a loom."

She quoted:

 
"Sun and Moon illume the Room
Where the ceiling is the sky:
Night and day the Weavers ply
Colour, shadow, hue, and dye,
Where the rushing shuttles fly,
Weaving dreams across the Loom,
Picturing a common doom!
 
 
"How, Beloved, can we die —
We Immortals, Thou and I?"
 

He smiled: "Death seems very far away," he said.

"Nothing dies… If only this world could understand… Did I tell you that mother has been with me often while you were away?"

"No."

"It was wonderfully sweet to see her in the room. One night I fell asleep across her knees."

"Does she ever speak to you, Athalie?"

"Yes, sometimes we talk."

"At night?"

"By day, too… I was sitting in the living-room the other morning, and she came up behind me and took both my hands. We talked, I lying back in the rocking chair and looking up at her… Mrs. Connor came in. I am quite sure she was frightened when she heard my voice in there conversing with nobody she could see."

Athalie smiled to herself as at some amusing memory evoked.

"If Mrs. Connor ever knew how she is followed about by so many purring pussies and little wagging dogs – I mean dogs and pussies who are no longer what we call 'alive,' – I don't know what she'd think. Sometimes the place is full of them, Clive – such darling little creatures. Hafiz sees them; and watches and watches, but never moves."

Clive was staring a trifle hard; Athalie, lazily stretching her arms, glanced at him with that humorous expression which hinted of gentlest mockery.

"Don't worry; nothing follows you, Clive, except an idle girl who finds no time for anything else, so busy are her thoughts with you."

He bent forward and kissed her; and she clasped both hands behind his head, drawing it nearer.

"Have you missed me, Athalie?"

"You could never understand how much."

"Did you find me in your crystal?"

"No; I saw only the sea and on the horizon a stain of smoke, and a gull flying."

He drew her closely into his arms: "God," he breathed, "if anything ever should happen to you! – and I – alone on earth – and blind – "

"Yes. That is the only anxiety I ever knew … because you are blind."

"If you came to me I could not see you. If you spoke to me I could not hear. Could anything more awful happen?"

"Do you care for me so much?"

In his eyes she read her answer, and thrilled to it, closer in his arms; and rested so, her cheek against his, gazing at the sunset out of dreamy eyes.

They had been slowly pacing the garden paths, arm within arm, when Mrs. Connor came to summon them to dinner. The small dining-room was flooded with sunset light; rosy bars of it lay across cloth and fruit and flowers, and striped the wall and ceiling.

And when dinner was ended the pale fire still burned on the thin silk curtains and struck across the garden, gilding the coping of the wall where clustering peaches hung all turned to gold like fabled fruit that ripens in Hesperides.

Hafiz followed them out under the evening sky and seated himself upon the grass. And he seemed mildly to enjoy the robins' evening carolling, blinking benevolently up at the little vesper choristers, high singing in the sunset's lingering glow.

Whenever light puffs of wind set blossoms swaying, the jet from the fountain basin swerved, and a mellow raining sound of drops swept the still pool. The lilac twilight deepened to mauve; upon the surface of the pool a primrose tint grew duller. Then the first bat zig-zagged across the sky; and every clove-pink border became misty with the wings of dusk-moths.

On Athalie's frail white gown one alighted, – a little grey thing wearing a pair of peacock-tinted diamonds on its forewings; and as it sat there, quivering, the iridescent incrustations changed from burnished gold to green.

"Wonders, wonders, under the moon," murmured the girl – "thronging miracles that fill the day and night, always, everywhere. And so few to see them… Sometimes, to me the blindness of the world to all the loveliness that I 'see clearly' is like my own blindness to the hidden wonders of the night – where uncounted myriads of little rainbow spirits fly. And nobody sees and knows the living splendour of them except when some grey-winged phantom strays indoors from the outer shadows. And it astonishes us to see, under the drab forewings, a blaze of scarlet, gold, or orange."

"I suppose," he said, "that the unseen night world all around us is no more wonderful than what, in the day-world, the vast majority of us never see, never suspect."

"I think it must be so, Clive. Being accustomed to a more densely populated world than are many people, I believe that if I could see only what they see, – merely that small portion of activity and life which the world calls 'living things,' I should find the sunlit world rather empty, and the night but a silent desolation under the stars."

After a few minutes' thought he asked in a low voice whether at that moment there was anybody in the garden except themselves.

"Some people were here a little while ago, looking at the flowers. I think they must have lived here many, many years ago; perhaps when this old house was new."

"Could you not ask them who they were?"

"No, dear."

"Why?"

"If they were what you would call 'alive' I could not intrude upon them, could I? The laws of reticence, the respect for privacy, remain the same. I am conscious of no more impertinent curiosity concerning them than I am concerning any passer in the city streets."

"Have they gone?"

"Yes. But all the evening I have been hearing children at play just beyond the garden wall… And, when I was a child, somebody killed a little dog down by the causeway. He is here in the garden, now, trotting gaily about the lawn – such a happy little dog! – and Hafiz has folded his forepaws under his ruff and has settled down to watch him. Don't you see how Hafiz watches, how his head turns following every movement of the little visitor?"

He nodded; then: "Do you still hear the children outside the wall?"

She sat listening, the smile brooding in her eyes.

"Can you still hear them?" he repeated, wistfully.

"Yes, dear."

"What are they saying?"

"I can't make out. They are having a happy time somewhere on the outer lawns."

"How many are there?"

"Oh, I don't know. Their voices make a sweet, confused sound like bird music before dawn. I couldn't even guess how many children are playing there."

"Are any among them those children you once saw here? – the children who pleaded with you – "

She did not answer. He tightened his arm around her waist, drawing her nearer; and she laid her cheek against his shoulder.

"Yes," she said, "they are there."

"You know their voices?"

"Yes, dearest."

"Will they come again into the garden?"

Her face flushed deeply:

"Not unless we call them."

"Call them," he said. And, after a silence: "Dearest, will you not call them to us?"

"Oh, Clive! I have been calling. Now it remains with you."

"I did not hear you call them."

"They heard."

"Will they come?"

"I – think so."

"When?"

"Very soon – if you truly desire them," she whispered against his shoulder.

Somewhere within the house the hour struck. After a long while they rose, moving slowly, her head still lying on his shoulder. Hafiz watched them until the door closed, then settled down again to gaze on things invisible to men.

Hours of the night in dim processional passed the old house unlighted save by the stars. Toward dawn a sea-wind stirred the trees; the fountain jet rained on the surface of the pool or, caught by a sudden breeze, drifted in whispering spray across the grass. Everywhere the darkness grew murmurous with sounds, vague as wind-blown voices; sweet as the call of children from some hill-top where the stars are very near, and the new moon's sickle flashes through the grass.

Athalie stirred where she lay, turned her head sideways with infinite precaution, and lay listening.

Through the open window beside her she saw a dark sky set with stars; heard the sea-wind in the leaves and the falling water of the fountain. And very far away a sweet confused murmuring grew upon her ears.

Silently her soul answered the far hail; her heart, responding, echoed a voiceless welcome till she became fearful lest it beat too loudly.

Then, with infinite precaution, noiselessly, and scarcely stirring, she turned and laid her lips again where they had rested all night long and, lying so, dreamed of miracles ineffable.