Читать книгу Athalie - Chambers Robert William - Страница 10

THE course of irresponsible amusement which C. Bailey, Jr., continued to pursue at intervals with the fair scion of the house – road-house – of Greensleeve, did not run as smoothly as it might have, and was not unmixed with carping reflections and sordid care on his part, and with an increasing number of interruptions, admonitions, and warnings on the part of his mother.

That pretty lady, flint-hardened in the igneous social lava-pot, continued to hear disquieting tales of her son's doings. They came to her right and left, from dance and card-table, opera-box and supper party, tea and bazaar and fashionable reception.

One grim-visaged old harridan of whom Manhattan stood in fawning fear, bluntly informed her that she'd better look out for her boy if she didn't want to become a grandmother.

Which infuriated and terrified Mrs. Bailey and set her thinking with all the implacable concentration of which she was capable.

So far in life she had accomplished whatever she set out to do… And of all things on earth she dreaded most to become a grandmother of any description whatever.

But between Athalie and Clive, if there had been any doubts concerning the propriety or expediency of their companionship neither he nor she had, so far, expressed them.

Their comradeship, in fact, had now become an intimacy – the sort that permits long silences without excuse or embarrassment on either side. She continued to charm and surprise him; and to discover, daily, in him new traits to admire in a character which perhaps he did not really possess.

In this girl he seemed to find an infinite variety. Moods, impulsive or deliberate, and capricious or logical, continued to stimulate his interest in her every time they met. On no two days was she exactly the same – or so he seemed to think. And yet her basic qualities were, it appeared to him, characteristic and unvarying, – directness, loyalty, generosity, freedom from ulterior motive and a gay confidence in a world which, for the first time in her life, she had begun to find unexpectedly exciting.

They had been one evening to a musical comedy which by some fortunate chance was well written, well sung, and well done. And they were in excellent spirits as they left the theatre and stood waiting for his small limousine car, she in her pretty furs held close to her throat, humming under her breath a refrain from the delightful finale, he smoking a cigarette and watching the numbers being flashed for the long line of carriages and motors which moved up continually through the lamp-lit darkness.

"Athalie," he said, "suppose we side-step the Regina and try Broadway. Are you in the humour for it?"

She laughed and her eyes sparkled in the electric glow: "Are you, Clive?"

"Yes, I am. I feel very devilish."

"So do I, – devilishly hungry."

"That's fine. Where shall we go?"

"The Café Arabesque?.. The name sounds exciting."

"All right – " as his car drew up and the gold-capped porter opened the door; – so he directed his chauffeur to drive them to the Café Arabesque.

"If you don't like it," he added to Athalie, drawing the fur robe over her knees and his, "we can go somewhere else."

"That's very nice of you. I don't have to suffer for my mistakes."

"Nobody ever ought to suffer for mistakes because nobody would ever make mistakes on purpose," he said, laughing.

"Such a delightful philosophy! Please remind me of it when I'm in agony over something I'm sorry I did."

"I'm afraid you'll have to remind me too," he said, still laughing. "Is it a bargain?"

"Certainly."

The car stopped; he sprang out and aided her to the icy sidewalk.

"I don't think I ever saw you as pretty as you are to-night," he whispered, slipping his arm under hers.

"Are you really growing more beautiful or do I merely think so?"

"I don't know," she said, happily; "I'll tell you a secret, shall I?"

He inclined his ear toward her, and she said in a laughing whisper: "Clive, I feel beautiful to-night. Do you know how it feels to feel beautiful?"

"Not personally," he admitted; and they separated still laughing like two children, the focus of sympathetic, amused, or envious glances from the brilliantly dressed throng clustering at the two cloak rooms.

She came to him presently where he was waiting, and, instinctively the groups around the doors made a lane for the fair young girl who came forward with the ghost of a smile on her lips as though entirely unconscious of herself and of everybody except the man who moved out to meet her.

"It's true," he murmured; "you are the most beautiful thing in this beauty-ridden town."

"You'll spoil me, Clive."

"Is that possible?"

"I don't know. Don't try. There is a great deal in me that has never been disturbed, never been brought out. Maybe much of it is evil," she added lightly.

He turned; she met his eyes half seriously, half mockingly, and they laughed. But what she had said so lightly in jest remained for a few moments in his mind to occupy and slightly trouble it.

From their table beside the bronze-railed gallery, they could overlook the main floor where a wide lane for dancing had been cleared and marked out with crimson-tasselled ropes of silk.

A noisy orchestra played imbecile dance music, and a number of male and female imbeciles took advantage of it to exercise the only portions of their anatomy in which any trace of intellect had ever lodged.

Athalie, resting one dimpled elbow on the velvet cushioned rail, watched the dancers for a while, then her unamused and almost expressionless gaze swept the tables below with a leisurely absence of interest which might have been mistaken for insolence – and envied as such by a servile world which secretly adores it.

"Well, Lady Greensleeves?" he said, watching her.

"Some remarkable Poiret and Lucille gowns, Clive… And a great deal of paint." She remained a moment in the same attitude – leisurely inspecting the throng below, then turned to him, her calm preoccupation changing to a shyly engaging smile.

"Are you still of the same mind concerning my personal attractiveness?"

"I have spoiled you!" he concluded, pretending chagrin.

"Is that spoiling me – to hear you say you approve of me?"

"Of course not, you dear girl! Nothing could ever spoil you."

She lifted her Clover Club, looking across the frosty glass at him; and the usual rite was silently completed. They were hungry; her appetite was always a natural and healthy one, and his sometimes matched it, as happened that night.

"Now, this is wonderful," he said, lighting a cigarette between courses and leaning forward, elbows on the cloth, and his hands clasped under his chin; "a good show, a good dinner, and good company. What surfeited monarch could ask more?"

"Why mention the company last, Clive?"

"I've certainly spoiled you," he said with a groan; "you've tasted adulation; you prefer it to your dinner."

"The question is do you prefer my company to the dinner and the show? Do you! If so why mention me last in the catalogue of your blessings?"

"I always mention you last in my prayers – so that whoever listens will more easily remember," he said gaily.

The laughter still made the dark blue eyes brilliant but they grew more serious when she said: "You don't really ever pray for me, Clive. Do you?"

"Yes. Why not?"

The smile faded in her eyes and in his.

"I didn't know you prayed at all," she remarked, looking down at her wine glass.

"It's one of those things I happen to do," he said with a slight shrug.

They mused for a while in silence, her mind pursuing its trend back to childhood, his idly considering the subject of prayer and wondering whether the habit had become too mechanical with him, or whether his less selfish petitions might possibly carry to the Source of All Things.

Then having drifted clear of this nebulous zone of thought, and coffee having been served, they came back to earth and to each other with slight smiles of recognition – delicate salutes acknowledging each other's presence and paramount importance in a world which was going very gaily.

They discussed the play; she hummed snatches of its melodies below her breath at intervals, her dark blue eyes always fixed on him and her ears listening to him alone. Particularly now; for his mood had changed and he was drifting back toward something she had said earlier in the evening – something about her own possible capacity for good and evil. It was a question, only partly serious; and she responded in the same vein:

"How should I know what capabilities I possess? Of course I have capabilities. No doubt, dormant within me lies every besetting sin, every human failing. Perhaps also the cardinal, corresponding, and antidotic virtues to all of these."

"I suppose," he said, "every sin has its antithesis. It's like a chess board – the human mind – with the black men ranged on one side and the white on the other, ready to move, to advance, skirmish, threaten, manœuvre, attack, and check each other, and the intervening squares represent the checkered battlefield of contending desires."

The simile striking her as original and clever, she made him a pretty compliment. She was very young in her affections.

"If," she nodded, "a sin, represented by a black piece, dares to stir or intrude or threaten, then there is always the better thought, represented by a white piece, ready to block and check the black one. Is that it?"

"Exactly," he said, secretly well pleased with himself. And as for Athalie, she admired his elastic and eloquent imagination beyond words.

"Do you know," she said, "you have never yet told me anything about your business. Is it all right for me to ask, Clive?"

"Certainly. It's real estate – Bailey, Reeve, and Willis. Willis is dead, Reeve out of it, and my father and I are the whole show."

"Reeve?" she repeated, interested.

"Yes, he lives in Paris, permanently. He has a son here, in the banking business."

"Cecil Reeve?"

"Yes. Do you know him?"

"No. My sister Catharine does."

Clive seemed interested and curious: "Cecil Reeve and I were at Harvard together. I haven't seen much of him since."

"What sort is he, Clive?"

"Nice – Oh, very nice. A good sport; – a good deal of a sport… Which sister did you say?"

"Catharine."

"That's the cunning little one with the baby stare and brown curls?"

"Yes."

There was a silence. Clive sat absently fidgeting with his glass, and Athalie watched him. Presently without looking up he said: "Yes, Cecil Reeve is a very decent sport… Rather gay. Good-looking chap. Nice sort… But rather a sport, you know."

The girl nodded.

"Catharine mustn't believe all he says," he added with a laugh. "Cecil has a way – I'm not knocking him, you understand – but a young – inexperienced girl – might take him a little bit too seriously… Of course your sister wouldn't."

"No, I don't think so… Are you that way, too?"

He raised his eyes: "Do you think I am, Athalie?"

"No… But I can't help wondering – a little uneasily at times – how you can find me as – as companionable as you say you do… I can't help wondering how long it will last."

"It will last as long as you do."

"But you are sure to find me out sooner or later, Clive."

"Find you out?"

"Yes – discover my limits, exhaust my capacity for entertaining you, extract the last atom of amusement out of me. And – what then?"

"Athalie! What nonsense!"

"Is it?"

"Certainly it's nonsense. How can I possibly tire of such a girl as you? I scarcely even know you yet. I don't begin to know you. Why you are a perfectly unexplored, undiscovered girl to me, yet!"

"Am I?" she asked, laughing. "I supposed you had discovered about all there is to me."

He shook his head, looking at her curiously perplexed: "Every time we meet you are different. You always have interesting views on any subject. You stimulate my imagination. How could I tire?

"Besides, somehow I am always aware of reserved and hidden forces in you – of a character which I only partly know and admire – capabilities, capacities of which I am ignorant except that, intuitively, I seem to know they are part of you."

"Am I as complex as that to you?"

"Sometimes," he admitted. "You are just now for example. But usually you are only a wonderfully interesting and charming girl who brings out the best side of me and keeps me amused and happy every moment that I am with you."

"There really is not much more to me than that," she said in a low voice. "You sum me up – a gay source of amusement: nothing more."

"Athalie, you know you are more vital than that to me."

"No, I don't know it."

"You do! You know it in your own heart. You know that it is a straight, clean, ardent friendship that inspires me and – " she looked up, serious, and very quiet.

– "You know," he continued impulsively, "that it is not only your beauty, your loveliness and grace and that inexplicable charm you seem to radiate, that brings me to seek you every time that I have a moment to do so.

"Why, if it were that alone, it would all have been merely a matter of sentiment. Have I ever been sentimental with you?"

"No."

"Have I ever made love to you?"

She did not reply. Her eyes were fixed on her glass.

"Have I, Athalie?" he repeated.

"No, Clive," she said gently.

"Well then; is there not on my part a very deep, solidly founded, and vital friendship for you? Is there not a – "

"Don't let's talk about it," she interrupted in a low voice. "You always make me very happy; you say I please you – interest and amuse you. That is enough – more than enough – more than I ever hoped or asked – "

"I said you make me happy; – happier than I have ever been," he explained with emphasis. "Do you suppose for a moment that your regard for me is warmer, deeper, more enduring, than is mine for you? Do you, Athalie?"

She lifted her eyes to his. But she had nothing more to say on the subject.

However, he began to insist, – a little impatiently, – on a direct answer. And finally she said:

"Clive, you came into a rather empty life when you came into mine. Judge how completely you have filled it… And what it would be if you went out of it. Your own life has always been full. If I should disappear from it – " she ceased.

The quiet, accentless, almost listless dignity of the words surprised and impressed him for a moment; then the reaction came in a faint glow through every vein and a sudden impulse to respond to her with an assurance of devotion a little out of key with the somewhat stately and reserved measure of their duet called friendship.

"You also fill my life," he said. "You give me what I never had – an intimacy and an understanding that satisfies. Had I my way I would be with you all the time. No other woman interests me as you do. There is no other woman."

"Oh, Clive! And all the charming people you know – "

"I know many. None like you, Athalie."

"That is very sweet of you… I'm trying to believe it… I want to… There are many days to fill in when I am not with you. To fill them with such a belief would be to shorten them… I don't know. I often wonder where you are; what you are doing; with what stately and beautiful creature you are talking, laughing, walking, dancing." – She shrugged her shoulders and gazed down at the dancers below. "The days are very long, sometimes," she added, half to herself.

When again, calmly, she turned to him there was an odd expression on his face, and the next second he reddened and shifted his gaze. Neither spoke for a few moments.

Presently she began to draw on her gloves, but he continued staring into space, not noticing her, and finally she bent forward and rested her slim gloved fingers on his hand, lightly, interrogatively.

"Yes; all right," he muttered.

"I have to go to business in the morning," she pleaded. He turned almost impatiently:

"If I had my way you wouldn't go to business at all."

"If I had my way I wouldn't either," she rejoined, smilingly. But his youthful visage remained sober and flushed. And when they were seated in the limousine and the fur rug enveloped them both, he said abruptly:

"I'm getting tired of this business."

"What business, Clive?"

"Everything – the way you live – your inadequate quarters – your having to work all day long in that stuffy office, day after day, year after year!"

She said, surprised and perplexed: "But it can't be helped, Clive! I have to work."

"Why?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean – what good am I to you – what's the use of me, if I can't make things easier for you?"

"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.