Athalie

Fiercely she resented it, – the more bitterly because for the first time in her life she had condescended to any voluntary effort toward clairvoyance.

Wearily she sat up on the floor and gathered her knees into her arms, staring at nothing there in the darkness while the slow tears fell.

Never before had she known loneliness. A man had made her understand it. Never before had she known bitterness. A man had taught it to her. Never again should any man do what this man had done to her! She was learning resentment.

All men should be the same to her hereafter. All men should stand already condemned. Never again should one among them betray her mind to reveal itself, persuade her heart to response, her lips to sacrifice their sweetness and their pride, her soul to stir in its sleep, awake, and answer. And for what the minds and hearts of men might bring upon themselves, let men be responsible. Their inclinations, offers, protests, promises as far as they regarded herself could never again affect her. Let man look to himself; his desires no longer concerned her. Let him keep his distance – or take his chances. And there were no chances.

Athalie was learning resentment.

Somebody was knocking. Athalie rose from the floor, turned on the lights, dried her eyes, went slowly to the door, and opened it.

A large, fat, pallid woman stood in the hallway. Her eyes were as washed out as her faded, yellowish hair; and her kimono needed washing.

"Good evening," she said cordially, coming in without any encouragement from Athalie and settling her uncorseted bulk in the arm-chair. "My name is Grace Bellmore, – Mrs. Grace Bellmore. I have the rear rooms under yours. If you're ever lonely come down and talk it over. Neighbours are not what they might be in this house. Look out for the Meehan, too. I'd call her a cat only I like cats. Say, that's a fine one on your bed there. Persian? Oh, Angora – " here she fished out a cigarette from the pocket of her wrapper, found a match, scratched it on the sole of her ample slipper, and lighted her cigarette.

"Have one?" she inquired. "No? Don't like them? Oh, well, you'll come to 'em. Everything comes easy when you're lonely. I know. You don't have to tell me. God! I get so sick of my own company sometimes – "

She turned her head to gaze about her, twisting her heavy, creased neck as far as the folds of fat permitted: "You had your nerve with you when you took this place. I knew Mrs. Del Garmo. I warned her, too. But she was a bone-head. A woman can't be careless in this town. And when it comes to men – say, Miss Greensleeve, I want to know their names before they ask me to dinner and start in calling me Grace. It's Grace after meat with me!" And she laughed and laughed, slapping her fat knee with a pudgy, ring-laden hand.

Athalie, secretly dismayed, forced a polite smile. Mrs. Bellmore blew a few smoke rings toward the ceiling.

"Are you in business, Miss Greensleeve?"

"Yes… I am looking for a position."

"What a pretty voice – and refined way of speaking!" exclaimed Mrs. Bellmore frankly. "I guess you've seen better days. Most people have. Tell you the truth, though, I haven't. I'm better off than I ever was before. Of course this is the dull season, but things are picking up. What is your line, Miss Greensleeve?"

"Stenographer."

"Oh! Well, I don't suppose I could do anything for you, could I?"

"I don't know what your business is," ventured Athalie, who, heretofore had not dared even to surmise what might be the vocation of this very large and faded woman who wore a pink kimono and a dozen rings on her nicotine-stained fingers, and who smoked incessantly.

The woman seemed to be a trifle surprised: "Haven't you ever heard of Grace Bellmore?" she asked.

"I don't think so," said Athalie with increasing diffidence.

"Well, maybe you wouldn't, not being in the profession. The managers all know me. I run an Emergency Agency on Broadway."

"I don't think I understand," said the girl.

"No? Then it's like this: a show gets stuck and needs a quick study. They call me up and I throw them what they want at an hour's notice. They can always count on me for anything from wardrobe mistress to prima donna. That's how I get mine," she concluded with a jolly laugh.

Athalie, feeling a little more confidence in her visitor, smiled at her.

"Say – you're a beauty!" exclaimed Mrs. Bellmore, gazing at her. "You're all there, too. I could place you easy if you ever need it. You don't sing, do you?"

"No."

"Ever had your voice tried?"

"No."

"Dance?"

"I dance – whatever is being danced – rather easily."

"No stage experience?"

"No."

"Well – what do you say, Miss Greensleeve?"

Athalie coloured and laughed: "Thank you, but I had rather work at stenography."

Mrs. Bellmore said: "I certainly hate to admit it, and knock my own profession, but any good stenographer in a year makes more than many a star you read about… Unless there's men putting up for her."

Athalie nodded gravely.

"All the same you'd make a peach of a show-girl," added Mrs. Bellmore regretfully. And, after a rather intent interval of silent scrutiny: "You're a good girl, too… Say, you do get pretty lonely sometimes, don't you, dear?"

Athalie flushed and shook her head. Mrs. Bellmore lighted another cigarette from the smouldering remnant of the previous one, and flung the gilt-tipped remains through the window.

"Ten to one it hits a crook if it hits anybody," she remarked. "This is a fierce neighbourhood, – all sorts of joints, and then some. But I like my rooms. I don't guess you'll be bothered. A girl is more likely to get spoken to in the swell part of town. Well, – " she struggled to her fat feet – "I'll be going. If you're lonely, drop in during the evening. I'm at the office all day except Sundays and holidays."

They stood, confronted, looking at each other for a moment. Then, impulsively the fat woman offered her hand:

"Don't be afraid of me," she said. "I may look crooked, but I'm not. Your mother wouldn't mind my knowing you."

She held Athalie's narrow hand for a moment, and the girl looked into the faded eyes.

"Thank you for coming," she said. "I was lonely."

"Good girls usually are. It's a hell of an alternative, isn't it? I don't mean to be profane; hell is the word. It's hell either way for a girl alone."

Athalie nodded silently. Mrs. Bellmore looked at her, then glanced around the room, curiously.

"Hello," she said abruptly, "what's that?"

Athalie's eyes followed hers: "Do you mean the crystal?"

"Yes… Say – " she turned to Athalie, nodding profound emphasis on every word she uttered: – "Say, I thought there was something else to you – something I couldn't quite get next to. Now I know what's been bothering me about you. You're clairvoyant!"

Athalie's cheeks grew warm: "I am not a medium," she said. "That crystal is not my own."

"That may be. Maybe you don't think you are a medium. But you are, Miss Greensleeve. I know. I'm a little that way, too, – just a very little. Oh, I could go into the business and fake it of course, – like all the others – or most of them. But you are the real thing. Why," she exclaimed in vexation, "didn't I know it as soon as I laid eyes on you? I certainly was subconscious of something. Why you could do anything you pleased with the power you have if you'd care to learn the business. There's money in it – take it from me!"

Athalie said, after a few moments of silence: "I don't think I understand. Is there a way of – of developing clear vision?"

"Haven't you ever tried?"

"Never… Except when a little while ago I went over to the crystal and – and tried to find – somebody."

"Did you find – that person?"

"No."

Mrs. Bellmore shook her fat head: "You needn't tell me any more. You can't ever do yourself any good by crystal gazing – you poor child."

Athalie's head dropped.

"No, it's no use," said the other. "If you go into the business and play square you can sometimes help others. But I guess the crystal is mostly fake. Mrs. Del Garmo had one like yours. She admitted to me that she never saw anything in it until she hypnotised herself. And she could do that by looking steadily at a brass knob on a bed-post; and see as much in it as in her crystal."

The fat woman lighted another cigarette and blew a contemplative whiff toward the crystal: "No: at best the game is a crooked one, even for the few who have really any occult power."

"Why?" asked the girl, surprised.

"Because they are usually clever, nimble-witted, full of intuition. Deduction is an instinct with them. And it is very easy to elaborate from a basis of truth; – it's more than a temptation to intelligence to complete a story desired and already paid for by a client. Because almost invariably the client is as stupid as the medium is intelligent. And, take it from me, it's impossible not to use your intelligence when a partly finished business deal requires it."

Athalie was silent.

"I'd do it," laughed Mrs. Bellmore.

Athalie said nothing.

"Say, on the level," said the older woman, "do you see a lot that we others can't see, Miss Greensleeve?"

"I have seen – some things."

"Plenty, too, I'll bet! Oh, it's in your pretty face, in your eyes! – it's in you, all about you. I'm not much in that line but I can feel it in the air. Why I felt it as soon as I came into your room, but I was that stupid – thinking of Mrs. Del Garmo – and never associating it with you!.. Do you do any trance work?"

"No… I have never cultivated – anything of that sort."

"I know. The really gifted don't cultivate the power as a rule. Only one now and then, and here and there. The others are pure frauds – almost every one of them. But – " she looked searchingly at the girl, – "you're no fraud! Why you're full of it! – full – saturated – alive with – with vitality – psychical and physical! – You're a glorious thing – half spiritual, half human – a superb combination of vitality, sacred and profane!" – She checked herself and turned on the girl almost savagely: "Who was the fool of a man you were looking for in the crystal?.. Very well; don't tell then. I didn't suppose you would. Only – God help him for the fool he is – and forgive him for what he has done to you!.. And may I never enter this room again and find you with the tears freshly scrubbed out of the most honest eyes God ever gave a woman!.. Good night, Miss Greensleeve!"

"Good night," said Athalie.

After she had closed the door and locked it she turned back into the empty room, moving uncertainly as though scarcely knowing what she was about. And then, suddenly, the terror of utter desolation seized her, and for the first time she realised what Clive had been to her, and what he had not been– understood for the first time in her life the complex miracle called love, its synthesis, its every element, every molecule, every atom, and flung herself across the bed, half strangled, sobbing out her passion and her grief.

Dawn found her lying there; but the ravage of that night had stripped her of much that she had been, and never again would be. And what had been taken from her was slowly being replaced by what she had never yet been. Night stripped her; the red dawn clothed her.

She sat up, dry-eyed, unbound her hair, flung from her the crumpled negligée. Presently the first golden-pink ray of the rising sun fell across her snowy body, and she flung out her lovely arms to it as though to draw it into her empty heart.

Hafiz, blinking his jewelled eyes, watched her lazily from his pillow.

CHAPTER XVI

AS she came, pensively, from her morning bath into the sunny front room Athalie noticed the corner of an envelope projecting from beneath her door.

For one heavenly moment the old delight surprised her at sight of Clive's handwriting, – for one moment only, before an overwhelming reaction scoured her heart of tenderness and joy; and the terrible resurgence of pain and grief wrung a low cry from her: "Why couldn't he let me alone!" And she crumpled the letter fiercely in her clenched hand.

Minute after minute she stood there, her white hand tightening as though to strangle the speech written there on those crushed sheets – perhaps to throttle and silence the faint, persistent cry of her own heart pleading a hearing for the man who had written to her at last.

And after a while her nerveless hand relaxed; she looked down at the crushed thing in her palm for a long time before she smoothed it out and finally opened it.

He wrote:

"It is too long a story to go into in detail. I couldn't, anyway. My mother had desired it for a long time. I have nothing to say about it except this: I would not for all the world have had you receive the first information from the columns of a newspaper. Of that part of it I have a right to speak, because the announcement was made without my knowledge or consent. And I'll say more: it was made even before I myself was aware that an engagement existed.

"Don't mistake what I write you, Athalie. I am not trying to escape any responsibility excepting that of premature publicity. Whatever else has happened I am fully responsible for.

"And so – what can I have to say to you, Athalie? Silence were decenter perhaps – God knows! – and He knows, too, that in me he fashioned but an irresolute character, void of the initial courage of conviction, without deep and sturdy belief, unsteady to a true course set, and lacking in rugged purpose.

"It is not stupidity: in the bottom of my own heart I know! Custom, habit, acquired and inculcated acquiescence in unanalysed beliefs – these require more than irresolution and a negative disposition to fight them and overcome them.

"Athalie, the news you must have read in the newspapers should first have come from me. Among many, many debts I must ever owe you, that one at least was due you. And I defaulted; but not through any fault of mine.

"I could not rest until you knew this. Whatever you may think about me now – however lightly you weigh me – remember this – if you ever remember me at all in the years to come: I was aware of my paramount debt: I should have paid it had the opportunity not been taken out of my own hands. And that debt paramount was to inform you first of anybody concerning what you read in a public newspaper.

"Now there remains nothing more for me to say that you would care to hear. You would no longer care to know, – would probably not believe me if I should tell you what you have been to me – and still are – and still are, Athalie! Athalie! – "

The letter ended there with her name. She kept it all day; but that night she destroyed it. And it was a week before she wrote him:

" – Thank you for your letter, Clive. I hope all is well with you and yours. I wish you happiness; I desire for you all things good. And also – for her. Surely I may say this much without offence – when I am saying good-bye forever.

"Athalie."

In due time, to this came his answer, tragic in its brevity, terrible in its attempt to say nothing – so that its stiff cerement of formality seemed to crack with every written word and its platitudes split open under the fierce straining of the living and unwritten words beneath them.

And to this she made no answer. And destroyed it after the sun had set.

Her money was now about gone. Indian summer brought no prospect of employment. Never had she believed that so many stenographers existed in the world; never had she supposed that vacant positions could be so pitifully few.

During October her means had not afforded her proper nourishment.

The vigour of young womanhood demands more than milk and crackers and a rare slab from some delicatessen shop.

As for Hafiz, to his astonishment he had been introduced to chuck-steak; and the pleasure was anything but unmitigated. But chuck-steak was more than his mistress had.

Mrs. Bellmore was inclined to eat largely of late suppers prepared on an oil stove by her own fair and very fat hands.

Athalie accepted one or two invitations, and then accepted no more, being unable to return anybody's hospitality.

Captain Dane called persistently without being received, until she wrote him not to come again until she sent for him.

Nobody else knew where she was except her sisters. Doris wrote from Los Angeles complaining of slack business. Later Catharine wrote asking for money. And Athalie was obliged to answer that she had none.

Now "none" means not any at all. And the time had now arrived when that was the truth. The chuck-steak cut up on Hafiz's plate in the bathroom had been purchased with postage stamps – the last of a sheet bought by Athalie in days of affluence for foreign correspondence.

There was no more foreign correspondence. Hence the chuck-steak, and a bottle of milk in the sink and a packet of biscuits on the shelf. And a rather pale, young girl lying flat on the lounge in the front room, her blue eyes wide, staring up at the fading sun-beams on the ceiling.

If she was desperate she was quiet about it – perhaps even at moments a little incredulous that there actually could be nothing left for her to live on. It was one of those grotesque episodes that did not seem to belong in her life – something which ought not – that could not happen to her. At moments, however, she realised that it had happened – realised that part of the nightmare had been happening for some time – that for a good while now, she had always been more or less hungry, even after a rather reckless orgy on crackers and milk.

Except that she felt a little fatigued there was in her no tendency to accept the chose arrivée, no acquiescence in the fait accompli, nothing resembling any bowing of the head, any meek desire to kiss the rod; only a still resentment, a quiet but steady anger, the new and cool opportunism that hatches recklessness.

What channel should she choose? That was all that chance had left for her to decide, – merely what form her recklessness should take.

Whatever of morality had been instinct in the girl now seemed to be in absolute abeyance. In the extremity of dire necessity, cornered at last, face to face with a world that threatened her, and watching it now out of cool, intelligent eyes, she had, without realising it, slipped back into her ragged childhood.

There was nothing else to slip back to, no training, no discipline, no foundation other than her companionship with a mother whom she had loved but who had scarcely done more for her than to respond vaguely to the frankness of inquiring childhood.

Her childhood had been always a battle – a happy series of conflicts as she remembered – always a fight among strenuous children to maintain her feet in her little tattered shoes against rough aggression and ruthless competition.

And now, under savage pressure, she slipped back again in spirit to the school-yard, and became a watchful, agile, unmoral thing again – a creature bent on its own salvation, dedicated to its own survival, atrociously ready for any emergency, undismayed by anything that might offer itself, and ready to consider, weigh, and determine any chance for existence.

Almost every classic alternative in turn presented itself to her as she lay there considering. She could go out and sell herself. But, oddly enough, the "easiest way" was not easy for her. And, as a child, also, a fastidious purity had been instinctive in her, both in body and mind.

There were other and easier alternatives; she could go on the stage, or into domestic service, or she could call up Captain Dane and tell him she was hungry. Or she could let any one of several young men understand that she was now permanently receptive to dinner invitations. And she could, if she chose, live on her personal popularity, – be to one man or to several une maitresse vierge– manage, contrive, accept, give nothing of consequence.

For she was a girl to flatter the vanity of men; and she knew that if ever she coolly addressed her mind to it she could rule them, entangle them, hold them sufficiently long, and flourish without the ultimate concession, because there were so many, many men in the world, and it took each man a long, long time to relinquish hope; and always there was another ready to try his fortune, happy in his vanity to attempt where all so far had failed.

Something she had to do; that was certain. And it happened, while she was pondering the problem, that the only thing she had not considered, – had not even thought of – was now abruptly presented to her.

For, as she lay there thinking, there came the sound of footsteps outside her door, and presently somebody knocked. And Athalie rose in the dusk of the room, switched on a single light, went to the door and opened it. And opportunity walked in wearing the shape of an elderly gentleman of substance, clothed as befitted a respectable dweller in any American city except New York.

"Good evening," he said, looking at her pleasantly but inquiringly. "Is Mrs. Del Garmo in?"

"Mrs. Del Garmo?" repeated Athalie, surprised. "Why, Mrs. Del Garmo is dead!"

"God bless us!" he exclaimed in a shocked voice. "Is that so? Well, I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. Well – well – well! Mrs. Del Garmo! I certainly am sorry."

He looked curiously about him, shaking his head, and an absent expression came into his white-bearded face – which changed to lively interest when his eyes fell on the table where the crystal stood mounted between the prongs of the bronze tripod.

"No doubt," he said, looking at Athalie, "you are Mrs. Del Garmo's successor in the occult profession. I notice a crystal on the table."

And in that instant the inspiration came to the girl, and she took it with the coolness and ruthlessness of last resort.

"What is it you wish?" she asked calmly, "a reading?"

He hesitated, looking at her out of aged but very honest eyes; and in a moment she was at his mercy, and the game had gone against her. She said, while the hot colour slowly stained her face: "I have never read a crystal. I had not thought of succeeding Mrs. Del Garmo until now – this moment."

"What is your name, child?" he asked in a gently curious voice.

"Athalie Greensleeve."

"You are not a trance-medium?"

"No. I am a stenographer."

"Then you are not psychical?"

"Yes, I am."

"What?"

"I am naturally clairvoyant."

He seemed surprised at first; but after he had looked at her for a moment or two he seemed less surprised.

"I believe you are," he said half to himself.

"I really am… If you wish I could try. But – I don't know how to go about it," she said with flushed embarrassment.

He gazed at her it seemed rather solemnly and wistfully. "There is one thing very certain," he said; "you are honest. And few mediums are. I think Mrs. Del Garmo was. I believed in her. She was the means of giving me very great consolation."

Athalie's face flushed with the shame and pity of her knowledge of the late Mrs. Del Garmo; and the thought of the secret cupboard with its nest of wires made her blush again.

The old gentleman looked all around the room and then asked if he might seat himself.

Athalie also sat down in the stiff arm-chair by the table where her crystal stood on its tripod.

"I wonder," he ventured, "whether you could help me. Do you think so?"

"I don't know," replied the girl. "All I know about it is that I cannot help myself through crystal gazing. I never looked into a crystal but once. And what I searched for was not there."

The old gentleman considered her earnestly for a few moments. "Child," he said, "you are very honest. Perhaps you could help me. It would be a great consolation to me if you could. Would you try?"

"I don't know how," murmured Athalie.

"Maybe I can aid you to try by telling you a little about myself."

The girl lifted her flushed face from the crystal:

"Don't do that, please. If you wish me to try I will. But don't tell me anything."

"Why not?"

"Because – I am – intelligent and quick – imaginative – discerning. I might unconsciously – or otherwise – be unfair. So don't tell me anything. Let me see if there really is in me any ability."

He met her candid gaze mildly but unsmilingly; and she folded her slim hands in her lap and sat looking at him very intently.