Athalie

"Do you know," she ventured with a faint smile, "that you are really quite as psychically endowed as I am?"

His handsome, sanguine features flushed deeply, but he smiled in appreciation.

"Not in the manner you so saucily imply, Miss Greensleeve," he said gaily. "My work is sound, logical, reasonable, and based on fundamental truths capable of being proven. I never saw an apparition in my life – and believed that it was really there!"

"Oh! So you have seen an apparition?"

"None that could have really existed independently of my own vision. In other words it wouldn't have been there at all if I hadn't supposed I had seen it."

"You did suppose so?"

"I knew perfectly well that I didn't see it. I didn't even think I saw it."

"But you saw it?"

"I imagined I did, and at the same time I knew I didn't."

"Yes," she said quietly, "you did see it, Dr. Westland. You have seen it more than once. You will see it again."

A heavier colour dyed his face; he started impatiently as though to check her – as though to speak; and did not.

She said: "If what I say is distasteful to you, please stop me." She waited a moment; then, as he evinced no desire to check or interrupt her: "I am very diffident about saying this to you – to a man so justly celebrated – pre-eminent in the greatest of all professions. I am so insignificant in comparison, so unimportant, so ignorant where you are experienced and learned.

"But may I say to you that nothing dies? I am not referring to a possible spiritual world inhabited perhaps by souls. I mean that here, on this earth, all around us, nothing that has ever lived really dies… Is what I say distasteful to you?"

He offered no reply.

"Because," she said in a low voice, "if I say anything more it would concern you. And what you saw… For what you saw was alive, and real – as truly living as you and I are. It is nothing to wonder at, nothing to trouble or perplex you, to see clearly – anybody – you have ever —loved."

He looked up at her in a silence so strained, so longing, so intense, that she felt the terrific tension.

"Yes," she said, "you saw clearly and truly when you saw – her."

"Who? in God's name!"

"Need I tell you, Dr. Westland?"

No, she had no need to tell him. His wife was dead. But it was not his wife he had seen so often in his latter years.

No, she had no need to tell him.

Athalie had never been inclined to care for companions of her own sex. As a child she had played with boys, preferring them. Few women appealed to her as qualified for her friendship – only one or two here and there and at rare intervals seemed to her sufficiently interesting to cultivate. And to the girl's sensitive and shy advances, here and there, some woman responded.

Thus she came to know and to exchange occasional social amenities with Adele Millis, a youthful actress, with Rosalie Faithorn, a handsome girl born to a formal social environment, but sufficiently independent to explore outside of it and snap her fingers at the opinions of those peeping over the bulwarks to see what she was doing.

Also there was Peggy Brooks, a fascinating, breezy, capable young creature who was Dr. Brooks to many, and Peggy to very few. And there were one or two others, like Nina Grey and Jeanne Delauny and Anne Randolph.

But of men there would have been no limit and no end had Athalie not learned very early in the game how to check them gently but firmly; how to test, pick, discriminate, sift, winnow, and choose those to be admitted to her rooms after the hours of business had ended.

Of these the standards differed, so that she herself scarcely knew why such and such a one had been chosen – men, for instance, like Cecil Reeve and Arthur Ensart – perhaps even such a man as James Allys, 3rd. Captain Dane, of course, had been a foregone conclusion, and John Lyndhurst was logical enough; also W. Grismer, and the jaunty, obese Mr. Welter, known in sporting circles as Helter Skelter Welter, and more briefly and profanely as Hel. His running mate, Harry Ferris had been included. And there was a number of others privileged to drift into the rooms of Athalie Greensleeve when she chose to be at home to anybody.

From Clive she heard nothing: and she wrote to him no more. Of him she did hear from time to time – mere scraps of conversation caught, a word or two volunteered, some careless reference, perhaps, perhaps some scrap of intentional information or some comment deliberate if not a trifle malicious.

But to all who mentioned him in her presence she turned a serene face and unclouded eyes. On the surface she was not to be read concerning what she thought of Clive Bailey – if indeed she thought about him at all.

Meanwhile he had married Winifred Stuart in London, where, it appeared, they had taken a house for the season. All sorts of honourables and notables and nobles as well as the resident and visiting specimens of a free and sovereign people had been bidden to the wedding. And had joyously repaired thither – the bride being fabulously wealthy and duly presented at Court.

The American Ambassador was there with the entire staff of the Embassy; also a king in exile, several famished but receptive dukes and counts and various warriors out of jobs – all magnetised by the subtle radiations from the world's most powerful loadstone, money.

They said that Mrs. Bailey, Sr., was very beautiful and impressive in a gown that hypnotised the peeresses – or infuriated them – nobody seemed to know exactly which.

Cecil Reeve, lounging on the balcony by the open window one May evening, said to Hargrave – and probably really unconscious that Athalie could hear him if she cared to: "Well, he got her all right – or rather his mother got her. When he wakes up he'll be sick enough of her millions."

Hargrave said: "She's a cold-blooded little proposition. I've known Winifred Stuart all my life, and I never knew her to have any impulse except a fishy one."

"Cold as a cod," nodded Cecil. "Merry times ahead for Clive."

And on another occasion, later in the summer, somebody said in the cool dusk of the room:

"It's true that the Bailey Juniors are living permanently in England. I saw Clive in Scotland when I was fishing out Banff way. He says they're remaining abroad indefinitely."

Some man's voice asked how Clive was looking.

"Not very fit; thin and old. I was with him several times that month and I never saw him crack a smile. That's not like him, you know."

"What is it? His wife?"

"Well, I fancy it lies somewhere between his mother and his wife – this pre-glacial freeze-up that's made a bally mummy of him."

And still again, and in the tobacco-scented dusk of Athalie's room, and once more from a man who had just returned from abroad:

"I kept running into Clive everywhere. He seems to haunt the continent, turning up like a ghost here and there; and believe me he looks the part of the lonely spook."

"Where's his Missis?"

"They've chucked the domestic. Didn't you know?"

"Divorced?"

"No. But they don't get on. What man could with that girl? So poor old Clive is dawdling around the world all alone, and his wife's entertainments are the talk of London, and his mother has become pious and is building a chapel for herself to repose in some day when the cards go against her in the jolly game."

The cards went against her in the game that autumn.

Athalie had been writing to her sister Catharine, and had risen from her desk to find a stick of sealing-wax, when, as she turned to go toward her bedroom, she saw Clive's mother coming toward her.

Never but once before had she seen Mrs. Bailey – that night at the Regina – and, for the first time in her life, she recoiled before such a visitor. A hot, proud colour flared in her cheeks as she drew quietly aside and stood with averted head to let her pass.

But Clive's mother gazed at her gently, wistfully, lingering as she passed the girl in the passage-way. And Athalie, turning her head slowly to look after her, saw a quiet smile on her lips as she went her silent way; and presently was no longer there. Then the girl continued on her own way in search of the sealing-wax; but she was moving uncertainly now, one arm outstretched, feeling along the familiar walls and furniture, half-blinded with her tears.

So the chapel fulfilled its functions.

It was a very ornamental private chapel. Mrs. Bailey, Sr., had had it pretty well peppered with family crests and quarterings, authentic and imaginary.

Mrs. Bailey, Jr., looked pale and pretty sitting there, the English sunlight filtered through stained glass; the glass also was thoroughly peppered with insignia of the House of Bailey. Rich carving, rich colouring, rich people! – what more could sticklers demand for any exclusive sanctuary where only the best people received the Body of Christ, and where God would meet nobody socially unknown.

Clive arrived from Italy after the funeral. The meeting between him and his wife was faultless. He hung about the splendid country place for a while, and spent much time inside the chapel, and also outside, where he directed the planting of some American evergreens, hemlock, spruce, and white pine.

But the aromatic perfume of familiar trees was subtly tearing him to tatters; and there came a day when he could no longer endure it.

His young wife was playing billiards with Lord Innisbrae, known intimately as Cinders, such a languid and burnt out young man was he, with his hair already white, and every lineament seared with the fires of revels long since sunken into ashes.

He watched them for a while, his hands clenched where they rested in his coat pockets, the lean muscles in his cheeks twitching at intervals.

When Innisbrae took himself off, Winifred still lounged gracefully along the billiard table taking shots with any ball that lay for her. And Clive looked on, absent-eyed, the flat jaw muscles working at intervals.

"Well?" she asked carelessly, laying her cue across the table.

"Nothing… I think I'll clear out to-morrow."

"Oh."

She did not even inquire where he was going. For that matter he did not know, except that there was one place he could not go – home; the only place he cared to go.

He had already offered her divorce – thinking of Innisbrae, or of some of the others. But she did not want it. It was, perhaps, not in her to care enough for any man to go through that amount of trouble. Besides, Their Majesties disapproved divorce. And for this reason alone nothing would have induced her to figure in proceedings certain to exclude her from one or two sets.

"Anything I can do for you before I leave?" he asked, dully.

It appeared that there was nothing he could do for his young wife before he wandered on in the jolly autumn sunshine.

So the next morning he cleared out. Which proceeding languidly interested Innisbrae that evening in the billiard-room.

That winter Clive got hurt while pig-sticking in Morocco, being but an indifferent spear. During convalescence he read "Under Two Flags," and approved the idea; but when he learned that the Spahi cavalry was not recruiting Americans, and when, a month later, he discovered how much romance did not exist in either the First or Second Foreign Legions, he no longer desired dangers incognito under the tri-colour or under the standard bearing the open hand.

Some casual wanderer through the purlieus of science whom he met in Brindisi, induced him to go to Sumatra where orchids and ornithoptera are the game. But he acquired only a perfectly new species of fever, which took six months to get over.

He convalesced at leisure all the way from Australia to Cape Town; and would have been all right; but somebody shot at somebody else one evening, and got Clive. So it was several months more before he arrived in India, and the next year before he had enough of China.

But Clive had seen many things in those two years and had learned fairly well the lesson of his own unimportance in a world which misses no man, neither king nor clown, after the dark curtain falls and satiated humanity shuffles home to bed.

He saw a massacre – or the remains of it – where fifteen thousand yellow men and one white priest lay dead. He saw Republican China, 40,000 strong, move out after the banditti, shouldering its modern rifles, while its regimental music played "Rosie O'Grady" in quick march time. He saw the railway between Hankow and Pekin swarming with White Wolf's bloody pack, limping westward from the Honan-Anhui border with dripping fangs. He peered into the stinking wells of Honan where women were cutting their own throats. He witnessed the levity of Lhasa priests and saw their grimy out-thrust hands clutching for tips beside their prayer-wheels.

In India he gazed upon the degradation of woman and the unspeakable bestiality of man till that vile and dusty hell had sickened him to the soul.

Back into Europe he drifted; and instantly and everywhere appeared the awful Yankee – shooting wells in Hungary, shooting craps in Monaco, digging antiques in Greece, digging tunnels in Servia, – everywhere the Yankee, drilling, bridging, constructing, exploring, pushing, arguing, quarrelling, insisting, telegraphing, gambling, touring, over-running older and better civilisations than his own crude Empire where he has nothing to learn from anybody but the Almighty – and then only when he condescends to ask for advice on Sunday.

And Clive, nevertheless, longed with a longing that made him sick, for "God's country" where all that is worst and best on earth still boils in the vast and seething cauldron of a continent in the making. There bubbles the elemental broth, dregs, scum, skimmings, residue, by-products, tailings, smoking corruption above the slowly forming and incorruptible matrix in its depths where lies imbedded, and ever growing, the Immam, the Hope of the World – gem indestructible, pearl beyond price. Difficilia quae pulchra.

And once, Clive had almost set out for home; and then, grimly, turned away toward the southern continent of the hemisphere.

In Lima he heard of an expedition fitting out to search for the lost Americans, Cromer and Page, and for the Hungarian Seljan. And that same evening he met Captain Dane.

They looked at each other very carefully, and then shook hands. Clive said: "If you want a handy man in camp, I'd like to go."

"Come on," said Dane, briefly.

Later, looking over together some maps in Dane's rooms, the big blond soldier of fortune glanced up at the younger man, and saw a lean, bronzed visage clamped mute by a lean bronzed jaw; but he also saw two dark eyes fixed on him in the fierce silence of unuttered inquiry. After a moment Dane said very quietly:

"Yes, she was well, and I think happy, when I left New York… How long is it since you have heard from her?"

"Three years."

"Three years," mused Dane, gazing into space out of his slitted eyes of arctic blue; "yes, that's some little time. Bailey… She is well – I think I said that… And very prosperous, and greatly admired … and happy – I believe."

The other waited.

Dane picked up a linen map, looked at it, fiddled with the corner. Then, carelessly: "She is not married," he said… "Here's the Huallaga River as I located it four years ago. Seljan and O'Higgins were making for it, I believe… That red crayon circle over there marks the habitat of the Uta fly. It's worse than the Tsetse. If anybody is hunting death —esta aquí!.. Here is the Putumayo district. Hell lies up here, just above it… Here's Iquitos, and here lies Para, three thousand miles away… Were you going to say something?"

But if Clive had anything to say he seemed to find no words to say it. And he only folded his arms on the table's edge and looked down at the stained and crumpled map.

"It will take us about a year," remarked Dane.

Clive nodded, but his eye involuntarily sought the irregular red circle where trouble of all sorts might be conveniently ended by a perfectly respectable Act of God.

Actus Dei nemini facit injuriam.