She said very sweetly and pitifully: “Dear, I know what people suffer — what lonely hearts endure. I think I understand what you have been through.”
“I know you understand! Fool that I am who enlightened you. But yours was the injury of bruised faith — the suffering caused by outrage. No hell of self-contempt set you crawling about the world in agony; no despicable self-knowledge drove you out into the waste places. Yours was the sorrow of a self-respecting victim; mine the grief of the damned fool who has done to death all that he ever loved for the love of expediency and of self!”
“Clive!—”
“That’s what I am!” he interrupted fiercely, “a damned fool! I don’t know what else I am, but I can’t live without you, and I won’t!”
She said: “You told me that being in love with me would not make you unhappy. So I told you to love me. I was wrong to let you do it.”
“You darling! I am more than happy!”
“It was a dreadful mistake, Clive! I shouldn’t have let you.”
“Do you think you could have stopped me?”
“I don’t know. Couldn’t I? I’ve stopped other men.... I shouldn’t have let you. But it was so delightful — to be really loved by you! All my pride responded. It seemed to dignify everything; it seemed to make me really a woman, with a place among other women — to be loved by such a man as you ... and I was not selfish about it; I did ask you whether it would make you unhappy to be in love with me. Oh, I see now that I was very wrong, Clive — very foolish, very wrong! Because it is making you restless and unhappy—”
“If you could only love me a little in return!”
“I don’t know how to love you except the way I am doing—”
“There is a more vital emotion—”
“It seems impossible that I could care for you more deeply than I do.”
“If you could only respond with a little tenderness—”
“I do respond — as well as I know how,” she said piteously.
He drew her nearer and touched her cheek with his lips:
“I know, dear. I don’t mean to complain.”
“Oh, Clive! I have let you fall in love with me and it is making you miserable! And now it’s making me miserable, too, because you are disappointed in me.”
“No—”
“You are! I’m not what you expected — not what you wanted—”
“You are everything I want! — if I could only wake your heart!” he said in a low tense voice.
“It isn’t my heart that is asleep.... I know what you miss in me.... And I can’t help it. I — I don’t wish to help it — or to be different.”
She dropped her head against his shoulder. After a few moments she spoke from there in a muffled, childish voice:
“What can I do about it? I don’t want to be your mistress, Clive.... I never wanted to do — anything — like that.”
A deeper colour burnt his face. He said: “Could you love me enough to marry me if I managed to free myself?”
“I have never thought of marrying you, Clive. It isn’t that I couldn’t love you — that way. I suppose I could. Probably I could. Only — I don’t know anything about it—”
“Let me try to free myself, anyway.”
“How is it possible?”
He said, exasperated: “Do you suppose I can endure this sort of existence forever?”
The swift tears sprang to her eyes. “I don’t know — I don’t know,” she faltered. “I thought this existence of ours ideal. I thought you were going to be happy; I supposed that our being together again would bring happiness to us both. It doesn’t! It is making us wretched. You are not contented with our friendship!” She turned on him passionately: “I don’t wish to be your mistress. I don’t want you to make me wish to be. No girl naturally desires less than she is entitled to, or more than the law permits — unless some man teaches her to wish for it. Don’t make such a girl of me, Clive! You — you are beginning to do it. And I don’t wish it! Truly I don’t!”
In that fierce flash of candour, — of guiltless passion, she had revealed herself. Never, until that moment, had he supposed himself so absolutely dominant, invested with such power for good or evil. That he could sway her one way or the other through her pure loyalty, devotion, and sympathy he had not understood.
To do him justice he desired no such responsibility. He had meant to be honest and generous and unselfish even when the outlook seemed most hopeless, — when he was convinced that he had no chance of freedom.
But a man with the girl he loves in his arms might as well set a net to catch the wind as to set boundaries to his desires. Perhaps he could not so ardently have desired his freedom to marry her had he not as ardently desired her love.
Love he had of her, but it was an affection utterly innocent of passion. He knew it; she realised it; realised too that the capacity for passion was in her. And had asked him not awaken her to it, instinctively recoiling from it. Generous, unsullied, proudly ignorant, she desired to remain so. Yet knew her peril; and candidly revealed it to him in the most honest appeal ever made to him.
For if the girl herself suspected and dreaded whither her loyalty and deep devotion to him might lead her, he had realised very suddenly what his leadership meant in such a companionship.
Now it sobered him, awed him, — and chilled him a trifle.
Himself, his own love for her, his own passion he could control and in a measure subdue. But, once awakened, could he control such an ally as she might be to his own lesser, impatient and hot-headed self?
Where her disposition was to deny, he could still fetter self and acquiesce. But he began to understand that half his strength lay in her unwillingness; half of their safety in her inexperience, her undisturbed tranquillity, her aloofness from physical emotion and her ignorance of the mastery of the lesser passions.
The girl had builded wholesomely and wisely for herself. Instinct had led her truly and well as far as that tangled moment in her life. Instinct still would lead her safely if she were let alone, — instinct and the intelligence she herself had developed. For the ethical view of the question remained only as a vague memory of precepts mechanical and meaningless to a healthy child. She had lost her mother too early to have understood the casual morals so gently inculcated. And nobody else had told her anything.
Also intelligence is often a foe to instinct. She might, with little persuasion accept an unconventional view of life; with a little emotional awakening she might more easily still be persuaded to a logic builded on false foundations. Add to these her ardent devotion to this man, and her deep and tender concern lest he be unhappy, and Athalie’s chances for remaining her own mistress were slim enough.
Something of this Clive seemed to understand; and the understanding left him very serious and silent where he stood in the soft glow of the lamp with this young girl in his arms and her warm, sweet head on his breast.
He said after a long silence: “You are right, Athalie. It is better, safer, not to respond to me. I’m just in love with you and I want to marry you — that’s all. I shall not be unhappy about it. I am not, now. If I marry you, you’ll fall in love, too, in your own way. That will be as it should be. I could desire no more than that. I do desire nothing more.”
He looked down at her, smiled, releasing her gently. But she clung to him for a moment.
“You are so wonderful, Clive — so dear! I do love you. I will marry you if I can. I want to make up everything to you — the lonely years, your deep unhappiness — even,” she added shyly, “your little disappointment in me—”
“You don’t understand, Athalie. I am not disappointed—”
“I do understand. And I am thinking of what will happen if you fail to free yourself.... Because I realize now that I don’t propose to leave you to grow old all alone.... I shall live with you when you’re old whatever people may think. I tell you, Clive, I’m the same child, the same girl that you once knew, only grown into a woman. I
know right from wrong. I had rather not do wrong. But if I’ve got to — I won’t whimper. And I’ll do it thoroughly!”
“You won’t do it at all,” he said, smiling at her threat to the little tin gods.
“I don’t know. If they won’t give you your freedom, and if—”
“Nonsense, Athalie,” he said, laughing, coolly master of himself once more. “We mustn’t be unwholesomely romantic, you and I. I’ll marry you if I can; if I can’t, God help us, that’s all.”
But she had become very grave: “God help us,” she repeated slowly. “Because I believe that, rightly or wrongly, I shall one day belong to you.”
He said: “It can be only in one way. The right way.” Perhaps he had awakened too late to a realisation of his power over her, for the girl made no response, no longer even looked at him.
“Only one way,” he repeated, uneasily;— “the right way, Athalie.”
But into her dark blue eyes had come a vague and brooding beauty which he had never before seen. In it was tenderness, and a new wisdom, alas! and a faint and shadowy something, profound, starlike, inscrutable.
“As for love,” he said, forcing a lighter tone, “there are fifty-seven different varieties, Athalie; and only one is poisonous, — unless taken with the other fifty-six, and in small doses.”
She smiled faintly and walked to the window. Rain beat there in the darkness spattering the little iron balcony. Below, the bleared lights of the city stretched away to the sky-line.
He followed, and slipped his arm through hers; and she bent her wrist, interlacing her slim fingers with his.
“You know,” he said, “that when I often speak with apparent authority I am wrong. In the final analysis you are the real leader, Athalie. Your instincts are the right ones; your convictions honest, your conclusions just. Mine are too often confused with selfishness and indecision. For mine is an irresolute character; — or it was. I’m trying to make it firmer.”
She pressed his hand lightly, her eyes still fixed on the light-smeared darkness.
He went on more gravely: “Candour and the intuition born of common sense, — that is where you are so admirable, dear. Add to that the tenderest heart that ever beat, and a proud ignorance of the lesser, baser emotions — and, who am I to interfere, — to come into the sweet order of your life with demands that confuse you — with complaints against the very destiny I brought upon us both — with the clamour of a selfish and ignoble philosophy which your every instinct rejects, and which your heart entertains only because it is your heart, and its heavenly sympathy has never failed me yet.... Oh, Athalie, Athalie, it would be a shameful day for me and a bitter day for you if my selfishness and irresolution ever swerved you. What I have lost — if I have indeed lost it — is lost irrevocably. And I’ve got to learn to face it.”
She said, still gazing absently into the darkness: “Yes. But I am just beginning to wonder what it is that I may have lost, — what it is that I have never known.”
“Don’t think of it! Don’t permit anything I have said or done to trouble you or stir you toward such an awakening.... I don’t want to stand charged with that. You are tranquil, now—”
“I — was.”
“You are still!” he said in quick concern. “Listen, Athalie — the majority of men lose their grip at moments; men as irresolute as I lose it oftener. Don’t waste sympathy on me; it was nothing but a whine born of a lesser impulse — born of emotions less decent than you could comprehend—”
“Maybe I am beginning to comprehend.”
“You shall not! You shall remain as you are! Dear, don’t you realise that I can’t steady myself unless I can look up to you? You’ve raised yourself to where you stand; you’ve made your own pedestal. Look down at me from it; don’t ever step down; don’t ever condescend; don’t ever let me think you mortal. You are not, now. Don’t ever descend entirely to my level — even if we marry.”
She turned, smiling too wisely, yet adorably: “What endless romance there is in that boy’s heart of yours! There always was, — when you came running back to me where I stood alone by the closed door, — when you found me living as all women who work live, and made a beautiful home for me and gave me more than I wished to take, asking nothing of me in return. Oh, Clive, you were chivalrous and romantic, too, when you listened to your mother’s wishes and gave me up. I understand it so much better, now. I know how it was — with your father dead and your beautiful mother, broken, desolate, confiding to your keeping all her hope and pride and future happiness, — all the traditions of the family, and its dignity and honour!
“In the light of a clearer knowledge, do you suppose I blame you now? Do you suppose I blame you for anything? — for your long and broken-hearted and bitter silence? — for the quick resurgence of your affection for me — for your love — Oh, Clive! — for your passion?
“Do you suppose I think less of you because you love me — care for me in the many and inexplicable ways that a man cares for a woman? — because you want me as a man wants the woman he loves, as his wife if it may be so, as his own, anyhow?”
She let her eyes rest on him in a new and fearless comprehension, tender, curious, sad by turns.
“It is the romance of passion in you that has been fighting to awaken the Sleeping Princess of a legend,” she said with a slight smile; “it is the same illogical, impulsive romance that draws back just as her closed lids tremble, fearing to awaken her to the sorrows and temptations of a world which, after all, God made for us to wake in.”
“Athalie! I am a scoundrel if I have—”
“Oh, Clive!” she laughed, mocking the solemn measure of her own words; “adorable boy of impulse and romance, never to outgrow its magic armour, destined always to be ruled by dreams through the sweetest and most generous of hearts, you need not fear for me. I am already awake — at least I am sufficiently aroused to understand you — and something, too, of my own self which I have never hitherto understood.”
For a second, lightly, she rested her warm, fresh cheek against his. When it was burning she disengaged her fingers from his and leaned aside against the rain-swept window.
“You see?” she said calmly but with heightened colour.... “I am very human after all.... But it is still my mind that rules, not my emotions.”
She turned to him in her old sweetly humorous and mocking manner:
“That is all the romance of which I am capable, Clive — if there be any real romance in a very clear mind. For it is my intellect that must lead me to salvation or to destruction. If I am to come crashing down at your feet, I shall have already planned the fall. If I am to be destroyed, it will not be by any accident of romantic emotion, of unconsidered impulse, or sudden blindness of passion; it will be because my intelligence coolly courted destruction, and accepted every chance, every hazard.”
So spoke Athalie, smiling, in the full confidence and pride of her superb youth, certain of the mind’s autocracy over matter, lightly defying within herself the latent tempest, of which she as yet divined no more than the first exquisitely disturbing breeze; — deriding, too, the as yet unloosened bolts of the old gods themselves, — the white lightning of desire.
“Come,” she said, half mockingly, half seriously, passing her arm through Clive’s;— “we are quite safe together in this safe and sane old world — unless I choose — otherwise.”
She turned and touched her lips lightly to his hair:
“So you may safely behave as irrationally, irresponsibly, and romantically as you choose.... As long as I now am wide awake.”
And then, for the first time, he realised his utter responsibility to this girl who so gaily and audaciously relieved him of it. And he understood how pitifully unarmed she really stood, and how imminent the necessity for him to forge for himself the armour of character, and to wear it eternally for his own safety as well as hers.
“Good night, dear,” he said.
In her new and magnificent self-confidence she turn
ed and put both arms around his neck, drawing his lips against hers.
But after he had gone she leaned against the closed door, less confident, her heart beating too fast and hard to entirely justify this new enfranchisement of the body, or her overwhelming faith in its wise and trusted guardian, the mind.
And he went soberly on his way through the rain to his hotel, troubled but determined upon his new rôle as his own soul’s armourer. All that was in him of romance and of chivalry was responding passionately to the girl’s unconscious revelation of her new need.
For now he realised that her boasted armour was of gauze; he could see her naked heart beating behind it; he beheld, through the shield she lifted on high to protect them both, the moon shining with its false, reflected light.
Never did Athalie stand in such dire need of the armour she supposed that she was wearing.
And he must put on his own, rapidly, and rivet it fast — the inflexible mail of character which alone can shield such souls as his — and hers.
When he came into his own room, a thick letter from his wife lay on the table. Before he broke the seal he laid aside his wet garments, being in no haste to read any more of the now incessant reproaches and complaints with which Winifred had recently deluged him.
“Finally ... he cut the envelope and seated himself beside the lamp.”
Finally, when he was ready, he cut the envelope and seated himself beside the lamp. She wrote from the house in Kent:
“It was a very different matter when you were travelling about and I could say that you were off on another exploring expedition. But your return from South America was mentioned in the London papers; and the fact that you are now not only in New York but that you have also gone into business there is known and is the subject of comment.
“I shall be, as usual, perfectly frank with you; I do not care whether you are here or not; in fact I infinitely prefer your absence to your presence. But your engaging in business in New York is a very different matter, and creates a different situation for me.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 795
