“You are — quite the same,” he said; “no more beautiful, no less. Time is not the essence of your contract with Venus.”
“Oh, Clive! And I am twenty-four! Tell me — are you a trifle grey! — just above the temples? — or is it the light?”
“He’s grey,” said Cecil; “don’t flatter him, Athalie. And Oh, Lord, what a thinness!”
Peggy Brooks, professionally curious, said naïvely: “Are you still rather full of bacilli, Mr. Bailey? And would you mind if I took a drop of blood from you some day?”
“Not at all,” said Clive, laughing away the strain that still fettered his speech a little. “You may have quarts if you like, Dr. Brooks.”
“How was the shooting?” inquired Welter, bustling up like a judge at a bench-show when the awards are applauded.
“Oh — there was shooting — of course,” said Clive with an involuntary and half-humorous glance at Captain Dane.
“Good nigger hunting,” nodded Dane. “Unknown angles, Welter. You ought to run down there.”
“Any incomparable Indian maidens wearing nothing but ornaments of gold?” inquired Cecil.
“That is partly true,” said Clive, laughing.
“If you put a period after ‘nothing,’ I suppose,” suggested Peggy.
“About that.”
He turned to Athalie; but her silent, smiling gaze confused him so that he forgot what he had meant to say, and stood without a word amid the chatter that rose and ebbed about him.
Anne Randolph and Arthur Ensart had joined hands, their restless feet sketching the first steps of the Miraflores; and presently somebody cranked the machine.
“Come on!” said Peggy imperiously to Dane; “you’ve been too long in the jungle dancing with Indian maidens!”
Other people dropped in — Adele Millis, young Grismer, John Lyndhurst, Jeanne Delauny.
When Clive saw Rosalie Faithorn saunter in with James Allys he stared, but that young seceder from his own set greeted him without embarrassment and lighted a cigarette.
“Where’s Winifred?” she asked nonchalantly. “Still on the outs? Yes? Why not shuffle and draw again? Winifred was always a pig.”
Clive flushed at the girl’s frankness although he could have expected nothing less from her.
Rosalie continued to smoke and to inspect him critically: “You’re a bit seedy and a bit weedy, Clive, but you’ll come around with feeding. You’re really all right. I’d have you myself if I was marrying young men these days.”
“That’s nice of you, Rosalie.... But I’m full of rare bacilli.”
“The rarer the better — if you must have them. Give me the unusual, whether it’s a disease or a gown. I believe I will take you, Clive — if you are not expected to live long.”
“That’s the trouble. Nothing seems to be able to get me.”
Dane said as he passed with Peggy: “He’s immune, Miss Faithorn. The prettiest woman I ever saw, he side-stepped in Lima. And even then every man wanted to shoot him up because she made eyes at him.”
“I think I’ll go there,” said Cecil. “Her name and quality if you please, Dane.”
“Ask Clive,” he called back.
Athalie, still smiling, said: “Shall I ask you, Clive?”
“Don’t ask that South American adventurer anything,” interrupted Cecil, “but come and dance this Miraflores with me, Athalie—”
“No, I don’t wish to—”
“Come on! You must!”
“Oh, Cecil — please—”
But he had his way; and, as usual, everybody watched her while the charming music lasted, — Clive among the others, standing a little apart, lean, erect, his dark gaze fixed.
She came back to him after the dance, delicately flushed and a trifle breathless.
“Do you dance that in England?” she asked.
“It’s danced — not at Court functions, I believe.”
“You never did care to dance, did you?”
“No—” he shrugged, “I used to mess about some.”
“And what do you do to amuse yourself in these days?”
“Nothing — much.”
“You must do something, Clive!”
“Oh, yes ... I travel, — go about.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s about all.”
She had stepped aside to let the dancers pass; he moved with her.
She said in a low, even voice: “Is it pleasant to be back, Clive?”
He nodded in silence.
“Nothing has changed very much since you went away. There’s a new administration at the City Hall, a number of new sky-scrapers in town; people danced the Tango day before yesterday, the Maxixe yesterday, the Miraflores to-day, the Orchid to-morrow. That’s about all, Clive.”
And as he merely acquiesced in silence, she glanced up sideways at him, and remained watching this new, sun-browned, lean-visaged version of the boy she had first known and the boyish man who had gone out of her life four years before.
“Would you like to see Hafiz?” she asked.
He turned quickly toward her: “Yes,” he said, the ghost of a smile lining the corners of his eyes.
“He’s on my bed, asleep. Will you come?”
Slipping along the edges of the dancing floor and stepping daintily over the rolled rugs, she led the way through the passage to her rose and ivory bedroom, Clive following.
Hafiz opened his eyes and looked across at them from the pillow, stood up, his back rounding into a furry arch; yawned, stretched first one hind leg and then the other, and finally stood, flexing his forepaws and uttering soft little mews of recognition and greeting.
“I wonder,” she said, smilingly, “if you have any idea how much Hafiz has meant to me?”
He made no reply; but his face grew sombre and he laid a lean, muscular hand on the cat’s head.
Neither spoke again for a little while. Finally his hand fell from the appreciative head of Hafiz, dropping inert by his side, and he stood looking at the floor. Then there was the slightest touch on his arm, and he turned to go; but she did not move; and they confronted each other, alone, and after many years.
Suddenly she stretched out both hands, looking him full in the eyes, her own brilliant with tears:
“I’ve got you back — haven’t I?” she said unsteadily. But he could not speak, and stood savagely controlling his quivering lip with his teeth.
“I just want you as I had you, Clive — my first boy friend — who turned aside from the bright highway of life to speak to a ragged child.... I have had the boy; I have had the youth; I want the man, Clive, — honestly, in perfect innocence.
“Would you care what might be said of us — as long as we know our friendship is blameless? I am not taking you from her, am I? I am not taking anything away from her, am I?
“I have not always played squarely with men. I don’t think it is possible. They have hoped for — various eventualities. I have not encouraged them; I have merely let them hope. Which is not square.
“But I wish always to play square with women. Unless a woman does, nobody will.... And that is why I ask you, Clive — am I robbing her — if you come back to me — as you were? — nothing more — nothing less, Clive, but just exactly as you were.”
It was impossible for him to control his voice or his words or even his thoughts just yet; he stood with his lean head turned partly from her, motionless as a rock, in the desperate grip of self-mastery, crushing the slender hands that alternately yielded and clasped his own.
“Oh, Clive,” she said, “Clive! You don’t know — you never can know what loneliness means to such a woman as I am.... I thought once — many times — that I could never again speak to you — that I never again could care to hear about you.... But I was wrong, pitifully wrong.
“It was not jealousy of her, Clive; you know that, don’t you? There had never been any question of such sentiment between you and me — excepting once — one night — that last night whe
n you said good-bye — and you were very much overwrought.
“So it was not jealousy.... It was loneliness. I wanted you, even if you had fallen in love. That sort of love had nothing to do with us!
“There was nothing in it that ought to have come between you and me?... Besides, if such an ephemeral thought ever drifted through my idle mind, I knew on reflection that you and I could never be destined to marry, even if such sentiment ever inclined us. I knew it and accepted it without troubling to analyse the reasons. I had no desire to invade your world — less desire now that I have penetrated it professionally and know a little about it.
“It was not jealousy, Clive.”
He swung around, bent swiftly and pressed his lips to her hands. And she abandoned them to him with all her heart and soul in an overwhelming passion of purest emotion.
“I couldn’t stand it, Clive,” she said, “when I heard you were at your hotel alone.... And all the unhappiness I had heard of — your married life — I — I couldn’t stand it; I couldn’t let you remain there all alone!
“And when you came here to-night, and I saw in your face how these four years had altered you — how it had been with you — I wanted you back — to let you know I am sorry — to let you know I care for the man who has known unhappiness, as I cared for the boy who had known only happiness.
“Do you understand, Clive? Do you, dear? Don’t you see what I see? — a man standing all alone by a closed door behind which his hopes lie dead.
“Clive, that is where you came to me, offering sympathy and friendship. That is where I come to you in my turn, offering whatever you care to take of me — if there is in me anything that may comfort you.”
He bent and laid his lips to her hands again, remaining so, curbed before her; and she looked down at his lean and powerful head and shoulders, and saw the hint of grey edging the crisp, dark hair, and the dark stain of tropic suns, that never could be effaced.
So far no passion, other than innocent, had she ever known for any man, — nothing of lesser emotion, nothing physical. And, had she thought of it at all she must have believed that it was that way with her still. For no thought concerning it disturbed her tender, tremulous happiness with this man beside her who still held her hands imprisoned against his breast.
And presently they were seated on the couch at the foot of her bed, excited, garrulous, exchanging gossip, confidences, ideas long unuttered, desires long unexpressed.
Under the sweeping flashlight of her intelligence the four years of his absence were illuminated, and passed swiftly in review for his inspection. Of loneliness, perplexity, grief, deprivation, she made light, laughingly, shrugging her smooth young shoulders.
“All that was yesterday,” she said. “There is only to-day, now — until to-morrow becomes to-day. You won’t go away, will you, Clive?”
“No.”
“There is no need of your going, is there? — no reason for you to go — no duty — moral obligation — is there, Clive?”
“None.”
“You wouldn’t say so just because I wish you to, would you?”
“I wouldn’t be here at all if there were any reason for me to be — there.”
“Then I am not robbing her of you? — I am not depriving her of the tiniest atom of anything that you owe to her? Am I, Clive?”
“I can’t see how. There is only one thing I can do for — my wife. And that is to keep away from her.”
“Oh, Clive! How desperately sad! And, she is young and beautiful, isn’t she? Oh, I am so sorry for you — for you both. Don’t you see, dear, that I am not jealous? If you could be happy with her, and if she could understand me and let me be your friend, — that would be wonderful, Clive!”
He remained silent, thinking of Winifred and of her quality of “understanding”; and of the miserable matter of business which had made her his wife — and of his own complacent and smug indifference, and his contemptible weakness under pressure.
Always in the still and secret depths of him he had remained conscious that he had never cared for any woman except Athalie. All else had been but a vague realisation of axioms and theorems, — of premises that had rusted into his mind, — of facts which he accepted as self-evident, — such as the immutable fact that he couldn’t marry Athalie, couldn’t mortify his family, couldn’t defy his friends, couldn’t affront his circle with impunity.
To invite disaster would be to bring an avalanche upon himself which, if it wounded, isolated, even marooned him, would certainly bury Athalie out of sight forever.
His parents had so reasoned with him; his mother continued the inculcation after his father’s death. And then Winifred and her mother came floating into his cosmic ken like two familiar planets.
For a while, far away in interstellar space, Athalie glimmered like a fading comet. Then orbits narrowed; adhesion and cohesion followed collision; the bi-maternal pressure never lessened. And he gave up.
Of this he was thinking now as he sat there in her rose and ivory room, gazing at the grey silk carpet underfoot; and all the while exquisitely, vitally conscious of Athalie — of her nearness to him — to tears at moments — to that happiness akin to tears.
“Clive, do you remember—” and she breathlessly recalled some gay and long forgotten incident of that never to be forgotten winter together when the theatres and restaurants knew them so well, and the day-world and night-world both credited them with being to each other everything that they had never been.
“Where will you live?” she asked.
He said: “You know I have sold our old house.... I don’t know—” He looked at her gravely and ashamed: “I think I will take your old apartment.”
She blushed to her hair: “Were you annoyed with me because I left it?”
“It hurt.”
“But Clive! — I couldn’t remain, — after you had become engaged to marry.”
“Did you need to leave everything you owned?”
“They were not mine,” she said in a low, embarrassed voice.
“Whose then?”
“Yours. I never considered them mine.... As though I were a girl of little consideration ... who paid herself, philosophically, for what she had lost.... Like a man’s mistress after the inevitable break has come—”
“Don’t say that!”
She shrugged her pretty shoulders: “I am a woman old enough to know what the world is, and what women do in it sometimes; and what men do.... And I am this sort of woman, Clive: I can give, I can receive, too, but only because of the happiness it bestows on the giver. And when the sympathy which must exist between giver and receiver ends, then also possession ends, for me.... Why do you look at me so seriously?”
But he dared not say. And presently she went on, happily, and at random: “Of course I kept Hafiz and the first thing you ever gave me — the gun-metal wrist-watch. Here it is—” leaning across him and pulling out a drawer in her dresser. “I wear it every day when I am out. It keeps excellent time. Isn’t it a darling, Clive?”
He examined it in silence, nodded, and returned it to her. And she laid it away again, saying:
“So you think of taking my old apartment? How odd! And how very sentimental of you, Clive.”
He said, forcing a light tone: “Nothing has ever been disturbed there. It’s all as it was when you left. Even your gowns are hanging in the closets—”
“Clive!”
“We’ll go around if you like. Would you care to see it again?”
“Y — yes.”
“Then we’ll go together, and you can investigate closets and bureaus and dressers—”
“Clive! Why did you let those things remain?”
“I didn’t care to have anybody else take that place.”
“Do you know that what you have done is absurdly and frightfully sentimental?”
“Is it?” he said, trying to laugh. “Well that snivelling and false sort of sentiment is about the best that such men as I know how to comfort
themselves with — when it’s too late for the real thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I am saying. Cheap minds are fed with false sentiment; and are comforted.... I made out of that place a smug little monument to you — while you were living alone and almost penniless in a shabby rooming house on—”
“Oh, Clive! You didn’t know that! And anyway it would not have altered things for me.”
“I suppose not.... Well, Athalie; you are very wonderful to me — merciful, forgiving, nobly blind — God!” he muttered under his breath, “I don’t understand how you can be so generous and gentle with me, — I don’t, indeed.”
“If you only knew how easy it is to care for you,” she said with that sweet fearlessness so characteristic of her.
He bit his lips in silence.
Presently she said: “I suppose there’ll be gossip in the other room. Rosalie and Cecil will be cynical and they also will try to be witty at our expense. But I don’t care. Do you?”
“Shall we go in?”
“No.... I haven’t had you for four years. If you don’t care what is said about us, I don’t.” And she looked up at him with the most engaging candour.
“I’m only thinking about you, Athalie—”
“Don’t bother to, Clive. Pretty nearly everything has been said about me, I fancy. And, unless it might damage you I’ll go anywhere with you, do anything with you. I know that I’m all right; and I care no longer what others say or think.”
“But you know,” he said, “that is a theory which will not work—”
“You are wrong, Clive. Nobody cares what sort of character a popular actress may have. Her friends are not disturbed by her reputation; the public crowds to see her. And it’s about that way with me, I imagine. Because I don’t suppose many people believe me to be respectable. Only — there is no man alive who can say of his own knowledge that I am not, — whatever he and his brothers and sisters may imagine.”
“So why should I care? — as long as the public affords me an honest living! I know what I am, and have been. And the knowledge, so far, does not keep me awake at night.”
She laughed — the sweet, fresh, unembarrassed laugh of innocence, — not that ignorance and stupidity which is called innocence, but innocence based on a worldly wisdom which neither her intelligence nor her experience permitted her to escape.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 792
