Athalie

"Who was it, Athalie?"

"My mother."

CHAPTER X

EARLY in April C. Bailey, Jr., overdrew his account, was politely notified of that oversight by the bank. He hunted about, casually, for stray funds, but to his intense surprise discovered nothing immediately available.

Which annoyed him, and he explained the situation to his father; who demanded further and sordidly searching explanations concerning the expenditure on his son's part of an income more than adequate for any unmarried young man.

They undertook this interesting line of research together, but there came a time in the proceedings when C. Bailey, Jr., betrayed violent inclinations toward reticence, non-communication, and finally secrecy; in fact he declined to proceed any further or to throw any more light upon his reasons for not proceeding, which symptoms were characteristic and perfectly familiar to his father.

"The trouble is," concluded Bailey, Sr., "you have been throwing away your income on that Greensleeve girl! What is she – your private property?"

"No."

The two men looked at each other, steadily enough. Bailey, Sr., said: "If that's the case – why in the name of common sense do you spend so much money on her?" Naïve logic on the part of Bailey, Sr., Clive replied:

"I didn't suppose I was spending very much. I like her. I like her better than any other girl. She is really wonderful, father. You won't believe it if I say she is charming, well-bred, clever – "

"I believe that!"

– "And," continued Clive – "absolutely unselfish and non-mercenary."

"If she's all that, too, it certainly seems to pay her – materially speaking."

"You don't understand," said his son patiently. "From the very beginning of our friendship it has been very difficult for me to make her accept anything – even when she was in actual need. Our friendship is not on that basis. She doesn't care for me because of what I do for her. It may surprise you to hear me – "

"My son, nothing surprises me any more, not even virtue and honesty. This girl may be all you think her. Personally I never met any like her, but I've read about them in sentimental fiction. No doubt there's a basis for such popular heroines. There may have been such paragons. There may be yet. Perhaps you've collided with one of these feminine curiosities."

"I have."

"All right, Clive. Only, why linger longer in the side-show than the price of admission warrants? The main tent awaits you. In more modern metaphor; it's the same film every hour, every day, the same orchestrion, the same environment. You've seen enough. There's nothing more – if I clearly understand your immaculate intentions. Do I?"

"Yes," said Clive, reddening.

"All right; there's nothing more, then. It's time to retire. You've had your amusement, and you've paid for it like a gentleman – very much like a gentleman – rather exorbitantly. That's the way a gentleman always pays. So now suppose you return to your own sort and coyly reappear amid certain circles recently neglected, and which, at one period of your career, you permitted yourself to embellish and adorn with your own surpassing personality."

They both laughed; there had been, always, a very tolerant understanding between them.

Then Clive's face grew graver.

"Father," he said, "I've tried remaining away. It doesn't do any good. The longer I stay away from her, the more anxious I am to go back… It's really friendship I tell you."

"You're not in love with her, are you, Clive?"

The son hesitated: "No!.. No, I can't be. I'm very certain that I am not."

"What would you do if you were?"

"But – "

"What would you do about it?"

"I don't know."

"Marry her?"

"I couldn't do that!" muttered Clive, startled. Then he remained silent, his mind crowded with the component parts of that vague sum-total which had so startled him at the idea of marrying Athalie Greensleeve.

Partly his father's blunt question had jarred him, partly the idea of marrying anybody at all. Also the mere idea of the storm such a proceeding would raise in the world he inhabited, his mother being the storm-centre, dispensing anathema, thunder, and lightning, appalled him.

"What!"

"I couldn't do that," he repeated, gazing rather blankly at his father.

"You could if you had to," said his father, curtly. "But I take your word it couldn't come to that."

The boy flushed hotly, but said nothing. He shrank from comprehending such an impossible situation, ashamed for himself, ashamed for Athalie, resenting even the exaggerated and grotesque possibility of such a thing – such a monstrous and horrible thing playing any part in her life or in his.

The frankness and cynicism of Bailey, Sr., had possibly been pushed too far. Clive became restless; and the calm entente cordiale ended for a while.

Ended also his visits to Athalie for a while, the paternal conversation having, somehow, chilled his desire to see her and spoiled, for the time anyway, any pleasure in being with her.

Also his father offered to help him out financially; and, somehow, he felt as though Bailey, Sr., was paying for his own gifts to Athalie. Which idea mortified him, and he resolved to remain away from her until he recovered his self-respect – which would be duly recovered, he felt certain, when the next coupons fell due and he could detach them and extinguish the parental loan.

For a week or two he did not even wish to see her, so ashamed and sullied did he feel after the way his father had handled and bruised the delicate situation, and the name of the young girl who so innocently adorned it.

No, something had been spoiled for him, temporarily. He felt it. Something of the sweetness, the innocence, the candour of this blameless friendship had been marred. The bloom was rubbed off; the piquant freshness and fragrance gone for the present.

It is true that an unexpected boom in his business kept him and his father almost feverishly active and left them both fatigued at night. This lasted for a week or two – long enough to excite all real estate men with a hope for future prosperity not yet entirely dead. But at the end of two or three weeks that hope began to die its usual, lingering death.

Dulness set in; the talk was of Harlem, Westchester, and the Bronx: a private bank failed, then three commercial houses went to the wall; and a seat was sold for $25,000 on the Exchange. Business resumed its normal and unexaggerated course. The days of boom were surely ended; and vacant lots on Fifth Avenue threatened to remain vacant for a while longer.

Clive began to drop in at his clubs again. One was a Whipper-Snapper Club to which young Manhattan aspired when freshly released from college; the others were of the fashionable and semi-fashionable sort, tedious, monotonous, full of the aimless, the idle, or of that bustling and showy smartness which is perhaps even less admirable and less easy to endure.

Men destitute of mental resources and dependent upon others for their amusement, disillusioned men, lazy men, socially ambitious men, men gluttonously or alcoholically predisposed haunted these clubs. To one of them repaired those who were inclined to racquettes, squash, tennis, and the swimming tank. It was a sort of social clearing house for other clubs.

But The Geyser was the least harmless of the clubs affected by C. Bailey, Jr., – it being an all-night resort and the haunt of the hopeless sport. Here dissipation, futile, aimless, meaningless, was on its native heath. Here, on his own stamping ground, prowled the youthful scion of many a dissipated race – nouveau riche and Knickerbocker alike. All that was required of anybody was money and a depthless capacity.

It was in this place that Clive encountered Cecil Reeve one stormy midnight.

"You don't come here often, do you?" said the latter.

Clive said he didn't.

"Neither do I. But when I do there's a few doing. Will you have a high one, Clive? In deference to our late and revered university?"

Clive would so far consent to degrade himself for the honour of Alma Mater.