Athalie

"As long as I can remember."

"And you have never tried to cultivate the power?"

"I had rather you did not call it that."

"But it is a power… Well, call it faculty, then. Have you?"

"No. I told you once that I did not wish to see more clearly than others. It is all involuntary with me."

"Would you try to cultivate it because I ask you to?"

"Clive!"

"Will you, Athalie?"

The painful colour mantled her face and neck and she turned and looked away from him as though he had said a shameful thing.

He continued, impatiently: "Why do you feel that way about it? Why should you not cultivate such a delicate and wonderful sense of perception? Why are you reluctant? What reason is there for you to be ashamed?"

"I don't know why."

"There is no reason! If in you there happen to be faculties sensitive beyond ours, senses more complex, more exquisitely attuned to what others are blind and deaf to, intuitions that to us seem miraculous, a spirituality, perhaps, more highly developed, what is there in that to cause you either embarrassment or concern? That in certain individualities such is the case is now generally understood and recognised. You happen to be one of them."

She looked up at him very quietly, but still flushed.

"Why do you wish me to try – make any effort to develop this – thing?"

"So that – if you could see him again – and if, perhaps, he had anything to say to me – "

"I understand."

"Will you try, Athalie?"

"I'll try – if you wish it. And if I can learn how to try."

Had he asked her to strip her gown from her shoulders under his steady gaze, it had been easier than the promise she gave him.

And now the hour had come for him to bid her good-bye. He said that he and his mother would not remain abroad for more than the summer. He said he would write often; spoke a little more vaguely of seeing her as soon as he returned; drew her cool, white hands together and kissed them, laid his cheek against them for a moment, eyes closed wearily.

The door remained ajar behind him after he had gone. Lingering, her hand heavy on the knob, she listened to the last echo of the elevator as it dropped into lighted depths below.

Then, very far away, an iron grille clanged. And that ended it.

But she still lingered. There was one more shape to pass through the door which she yet held open; – the phantom of her girlhood. And when at last, it had passed across the threshold, never to return, she shut the door softly, sinking to her knees there, her pale cheek resting against the closed panels, her eyes fixed on vacancy.

So departed those twain out of the room and out of her life, together – her lover by brevet, and her lingering girlhood, – leaving behind them a woman in a world of men suddenly strange and menacing and very still.

But Clive went back into a familiar world – marred, obscured, distorted for the moment by shock and sorrow – but still a familiar world. Because neither his grief nor his love – as he had termed it – had made of him more than he had been, – not yet a man, yet no longer a boy, but something with all the infirmities of both and the saving graces of neither.

In that borderland where he still lingered, morally and spiritually, the development of character ceases for a while until such time as the occult frontier be crossed. What is born in the cradle is lowered into the grave, but always either in nobler or less noble degrees. For none may linger in that borderland too long because the unseen boundary moves for him who will not stir when his time is up – moves slowly, inexorably nearer, nearer, passing beneath his feet, until it is lost far in the misty years behind him.

He wrote her from the steamer twice, the letters being mailed from Plymouth; then he wrote once from London, once from Paris; later again from Switzerland, where he had found it cooler, he said, than anywhere else during that torrid summer.

Winifred Stuart and her mother had joined them for a motor trip through Dalmatia. He mentioned it in a letter to Athalie, but after that he did not refer to them again. In fact he did not write again for a month or two.

It proved to be a scorching summer in New York. May ended in a blast of unseasonable weather, cooling off for a week or two in June, but the furnace heat of July was terrible for the poor and for the horses – both of which we have always with us.

Also, for Athalie, it seemed to be turning into one of those curious, threatening years which begin with every promise but which end without fulfilment, and in perplexity and care. She had known such years; she already recognised the symptoms of changing weather. She seemed to be conscious of premonitions in everybody and everything. Little vexations and slight disappointments increased; simple plans miscarried for no reason at all apparently.

Like one who still feels a fair wind blowing yet looking aloft, sees the uneasy weather-cock veer and veer in varying flaws, so she, sensitive and fine in mind and body, gradually became aware of the trend of things; felt the premonition of the distant change in the atmosphere – sensed it gathering vaguely, indefinitely disquieting.

One lovely morning in May she arose early in order to write to Clive. Then, her long letter accomplished and safely mailed, she went downtown to business, still delicately aglow, exhilarated as always by her hour of communion with him.

Mr. Wahlbaum, as usual, received her with the jolly and kindly humour which always characterised him, and they had their usual friendly, half bantering chat while she was arranging the papers which his secretary had laid on her desk.

All the morning she took dictation; the soft wind fluttered the curtains; sparrows chirped noisily; the sky was very blue; Mr. Wahlbaum smoked steadily.

And when the lunch hour arrived he did a thing which he had never before done; he asked Athalie to lunch with him.

Which so completely astonished her that she found herself going down in the private lift with him before she realised that she was going at all.

The luncheon proved to be very simple but very good. There were a number of other women in the ladies' annex of the Department Club, – nice looking people, quiet, and well dressed. Mr. Wahlbaum also was very quiet, very considerate, very attentive, and almost gravely courteous. Their conversation concerned business. He offered Athalie no cocktail and no wine, but a jug of chilled cider was set at her elbow and she found it delicious. Mr. Wahlbaum drank tea, very weak.

When they returned to the office, Athalie began to transcribe her stenographic notes. It occupied most of the afternoon although she was wonderfully rapid and accurate and her slim white fingers hovered mistily over the keys like the vibrating wings of a snowy moth.

Mr. Wahlbaum, always smoking, watched her toward the finish in placid silence. And for a few moments, also, after she had finished and had turned to him with a light smile and a lighter sigh of relief.

"Miss Greensleeve," he said quietly, "I have now been here in the same office with you, day after day – excepting our summer vacations – for more than five years."

A trifle surprised and sobered by his gravity and deliberation she nodded silent acquiescence and waited, wondering a little what else was to come.

It came without preamble: "I have the honour," he said, "to ask you to marry me."

Still as a stone she sat, gazing at him. And for a long while his keen eyes sustained her gaze. But presently a slow, deep colour began to gather on his face. And after a moment he said: "I am sorry that the verdict is against me."

Tears filled her eyes; she tried to speak, could not, turned on her pivot-chair, rested her arms on the back, and dropped her face in them.

It was a long while before she was able to efface the traces of emotion. She did all she could before she forced herself to look at him again and say what she must say.

"If I could – I would, Mr. Wahlbaum," she faltered. "No man has ever been kinder to me, none more courteous, none more gentle."

He looked at her wistfully for a moment, and she thought he was going to speak. But he was wise in the ways of the world. He had lost. He understood it. Speech was superfluous. He was a quaint combination of good sportsman and philosophic economist.

He held his peace.

When she left that evening after saying good night to him she paused at the door, irresolutely, and then came back to his desk where he was still standing. For he had never failed to rise when she entered in the morning or took her leave at night.

In silence, now, she offered him her hand, the quick tears springing to her eyes again; and he took it, bent, and touched the gloved fingers with his lips, gravely, in silence.