They had been one evening to a musical comedy which by some fortunate chance was well written, well sung, and well done. And they were in excellent spirits as they left the theatre and stood waiting for his small limousine car, she in her pretty furs held close to her throat, humming under her breath a refrain from the delightful finale, he smoking a cigarette and watching the numbers being flashed for the long line of carriages and motors which moved up continually through the lamp-lit darkness.
“Athalie,” he said, “suppose we side-step the Regina and try Broadway. Are you in the humour for it?”
She laughed and her eyes sparkled in the electric glow: “Are you, Clive?”
“Yes, I am. I feel very devilish.”
“So do I, — devilishly hungry.”
“That’s fine. Where shall we go?”
“The Café Arabesque?... The name sounds exciting.”
“All right—” as his car drew up and the gold-capped porter opened the door; — so he directed his chauffeur to drive them to the Café Arabesque.
“If you don’t like it,” he added to Athalie, drawing the fur robe over her knees and his, “we can go somewhere else.”
“That’s very nice of you. I don’t have to suffer for my mistakes.”
“Nobody ever ought to suffer for mistakes because nobody would ever make mistakes on purpose,” he said, laughing.
“Such a delightful philosophy! Please remind me of it when I’m in agony over something I’m sorry I did.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to remind me too,” he said, still laughing. “Is it a bargain?”
“Certainly.”
The car stopped; he sprang out and aided her to the icy sidewalk.
“I don’t think I ever saw you as pretty as you are to-night,” he whispered, slipping his arm under hers.
“Are you really growing more beautiful or do I merely think so?”
“I don’t know,” she said, happily; “I’ll tell you a secret, shall I?”
He inclined his ear toward her, and she said in a laughing whisper: “Clive, I feel beautiful to-night. Do you know how it feels to feel beautiful?”
“Not personally,” he admitted; and they separated still laughing like two children, the focus of sympathetic, amused, or envious glances from the brilliantly dressed throng clustering at the two cloak rooms.
She came to him presently where he was waiting, and, instinctively the groups around the doors made a lane for the fair young girl who came forward with the ghost of a smile on her lips as though entirely unconscious of herself and of everybody except the man who moved out to meet her.
“It’s true,” he murmured; “you are the most beautiful thing in this beauty-ridden town.”
“You’ll spoil me, Clive.”
“Is that possible?”
“I don’t know. Don’t try. There is a great deal in me that has never been disturbed, never been brought out. Maybe much of it is evil,” she added lightly.
He turned; she met his eyes half seriously, half mockingly, and they laughed. But what she had said so lightly in jest remained for a few moments in his mind to occupy and slightly trouble it.
From their table beside the bronze-railed gallery, they could overlook the main floor where a wide lane for dancing had been cleared and marked out with crimson-tasselled ropes of silk.
A noisy orchestra played imbecile dance music, and a number of male and female imbeciles took advantage of it to exercise the only portions of their anatomy in which any trace of intellect had ever lodged.
Athalie, resting one dimpled elbow on the velvet cushioned rail, watched the dancers for a while, then her unamused and almost expressionless gaze swept the tables below with a leisurely absence of interest which might have been mistaken for insolence — and envied as such by a servile world which secretly adores it.
“Well, Lady Greensleeves?” he said, watching her.
“Some remarkable Poiret and Lucille gowns, Clive.... And a great deal of paint.” She remained a moment in the same attitude — leisurely inspecting the throng below, then turned to him, her calm preoccupation changing to a shyly engaging smile.
“Are you still of the same mind concerning my personal attractiveness?”
“I have spoiled you!” he concluded, pretending chagrin.
“Is that spoiling me — to hear you say you approve of me?”
“Of course not, you dear girl! Nothing could ever spoil you.”
She lifted her Clover Club, looking across the frosty glass at him; and the usual rite was silently completed. They were hungry; her appetite was always a natural and healthy one, and his sometimes matched it, as happened that night.
“Now, this is wonderful,” he said, lighting a cigarette between courses and leaning forward, elbows on the cloth, and his hands clasped under his chin; “a good show, a good dinner, and good company. What surfeited monarch could ask more?”
“Why mention the company last, Clive?”
“I’ve certainly spoiled you,” he said with a groan; “you’ve tasted adulation; you prefer it to your dinner.”
“The question is do you prefer my company to the dinner and the show? Do you! If so why mention me last in the catalogue of your blessings?”
“I always mention you last in my prayers — so that whoever listens will more easily remember,” he said gaily.
The laughter still made the dark blue eyes brilliant but they grew more serious when she said: “You don’t really ever pray for me, Clive. Do you?”
“Yes. Why not?”
The smile faded in her eyes and in his.
“I didn’t know you prayed at all,” she remarked, looking down at her wine glass.
“It’s one of those things I happen to do,” he said with a slight shrug.
They mused for a while in silence, her mind pursuing its trend back to childhood, his idly considering the subject of prayer and wondering whether the habit had become too mechanical with him, or whether his less selfish petitions might possibly carry to the Source of All Things.
Then having drifted clear of this nebulous zone of thought, and coffee having been served, they came back to earth and to each other with slight smiles of recognition — delicate salutes acknowledging each other’s presence and paramount importance in a world which was going very gaily.
They discussed the play; she hummed snatches of its melodies below her breath at intervals, her dark blue eyes always fixed on him and her ears listening to him alone. Particularly now; for his mood had changed and he was drifting back toward something she had said earlier in the evening — something about her own possible capacity for good and evil. It was a question, only partly serious; and she responded in the same vein:
“How should I know what capabilities I possess? Of course I have capabilities. No doubt, dormant within me lies every besetting sin, every human failing. Perhaps also the cardinal, corresponding, and antidotic virtues to all of these.”
“I suppose,” he said, “every sin has its antithesis. It’s like a chess board — the human mind — with the black men ranged on one side and the white on the other, ready to move, to advance, skirmish, threaten, manœuvre, attack, and check each other, and the intervening squares represent the checkered battlefield of contending desires.”
The simile striking her as original and clever, she made him a pretty compliment. She was very young in her affections.
“If,” she nodded, “a sin, represented by a black piece, dares to stir or intrude or threaten, then there is always the better thought, represented by a white piece, ready to block and check the black one. Is that it?”
“Exactly,” he said, secretly well pleased with himself. And as for Athalie, she admired his elastic and eloquent imagination beyond words.
“Do you know,” she said, “you have never yet told me anything about your business. Is it all right for me to ask, Clive?”
“Certainly. It’s real estate — Bailey, Reeve, and Willis. Willis is dead, Reeve out of it, and
my father and I are the whole show.”
“Reeve?” she repeated, interested.
“Yes, he lives in Paris, permanently. He has a son here, in the banking business.”
“Cecil Reeve?”
“Yes. Do you know him?”
“No. My sister Catharine does.”
Clive seemed interested and curious: “Cecil Reeve and I were at Harvard together. I haven’t seen much of him since.”
“What sort is he, Clive?”
“Nice — Oh, very nice. A good sport; — a good deal of a sport.... Which sister did you say?”
“Catharine.”
“That’s the cunning little one with the baby stare and brown curls?”
“Yes.”
There was a silence. Clive sat absently fidgeting with his glass, and Athalie watched him. Presently without looking up he said: “Yes, Cecil Reeve is a very decent sport.... Rather gay. Good-looking chap. Nice sort.... But rather a sport, you know.”
The girl nodded.
“Catharine mustn’t believe all he says,” he added with a laugh. “Cecil has a way — I’m not knocking him, you understand — but a young — inexperienced girl — might take him a little bit too seriously.... Of course your sister wouldn’t.”
“No, I don’t think so.... Are you that way, too?”
He raised his eyes: “Do you think I am, Athalie?”
“No.... But I can’t help wondering — a little uneasily at times — how you can find me as — as companionable as you say you do.... I can’t help wondering how long it will last.”
“It will last as long as you do.”
“But you are sure to find me out sooner or later, Clive.”
“Find you out?”
“Yes — discover my limits, exhaust my capacity for entertaining you, extract the last atom of amusement out of me. And — what then?”
“Athalie! What nonsense!”
“Is it?”
“Certainly it’s nonsense. How can I possibly tire of such a girl as you? I scarcely even know you yet. I don’t begin to know you. Why you are a perfectly unexplored, undiscovered girl to me, yet!”
“Am I?” she asked, laughing. “I supposed you had discovered about all there is to me.”
He shook his head, looking at her curiously perplexed: “Every time we meet you are different. You always have interesting views on any subject. You stimulate my imagination. How could I tire?
“Besides, somehow I am always aware of reserved and hidden forces in you — of a character which I only partly know and admire — capabilities, capacities of which I am ignorant except that, intuitively, I seem to know they are part of you.”
“Am I as complex as that to you?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted. “You are just now for example. But usually you are only a wonderfully interesting and charming girl who brings out the best side of me and keeps me amused and happy every moment that I am with you.”
“There really is not much more to me than that,” she said in a low voice. “You sum me up — a gay source of amusement: nothing more.”
“Athalie, you know you are more vital than that to me.”
“No, I don’t know it.”
“You do! You know it in your own heart. You know that it is a straight, clean, ardent friendship that inspires me and—” she looked up, serious, and very quiet.
— “You know,” he continued impulsively, “that it is not only your beauty, your loveliness and grace and that inexplicable charm you seem to radiate, that brings me to seek you every time that I have a moment to do so.
“Why, if it were that alone, it would all have been merely a matter of sentiment. Have I ever been sentimental with you?”
“No.”
“Have I ever made love to you?”
She did not reply. Her eyes were fixed on her glass.
“Have I, Athalie?” he repeated.
“No, Clive,” she said gently.
“Well then; is there not on my part a very deep, solidly founded, and vital friendship for you? Is there not a—”
“Don’t let’s talk about it,” she interrupted in a low voice. “You always make me very happy; you say I please you — interest and amuse you. That is enough — more than enough — more than I ever hoped or asked—”
“I said you make me happy; — happier than I have ever been,” he explained with emphasis. “Do you suppose for a moment that your regard for me is warmer, deeper, more enduring, than is mine for you? Do you, Athalie?”
She lifted her eyes to his. But she had nothing more to say on the subject.
However, he began to insist, — a little impatiently, — on a direct answer. And finally she said:
“Clive, you came into a rather empty life when you came into mine. Judge how completely you have filled it.... And what it would be if you went out of it. Your own life has always been full. If I should disappear from it—” she ceased.
The quiet, accentless, almost listless dignity of the words surprised and impressed him for a moment; then the reaction came in a faint glow through every vein and a sudden impulse to respond to her with an assurance of devotion a little out of key with the somewhat stately and reserved measure of their duet called friendship.
“You also fill my life,” he said. “You give me what I never had — an intimacy and an understanding that satisfies. Had I my way I would be with you all the time. No other woman interests me as you do. There is no other woman.”
“Oh, Clive! And all the charming people you know—”
“I know many. None like you, Athalie.”
“That is very sweet of you.... I’m trying to believe it.... I want to.... There are many days to fill in when I am not with you. To fill them with such a belief would be to shorten them.... I don’t know. I often wonder where you are; what you are doing; with what stately and beautiful creature you are talking, laughing, walking, dancing.” — She shrugged her shoulders and gazed down at the dancers below. “The days are very long, sometimes,” she added, half to herself.
When again, calmly, she turned to him there was an odd expression on his face, and the next second he reddened and shifted his gaze. Neither spoke for a few moments.
Presently she began to draw on her gloves, but he continued staring into space, not noticing her, and finally she bent forward and rested her slim gloved fingers on his hand, lightly, interrogatively.
“Yes; all right,” he muttered.
“I have to go to business in the morning,” she pleaded. He turned almost impatiently:
“If I had my way you wouldn’t go to business at all.”
“If I had my way I wouldn’t either,” she rejoined, smilingly. But his youthful visage remained sober and flushed. And when they were seated in the limousine and the fur rug enveloped them both, he said abruptly:
“I’m getting tired of this business.”
“What business, Clive?”
“Everything — the way you live — your inadequate quarters — your having to work all day long in that stuffy office, day after day, year after year!”
She said, surprised and perplexed: “But it can’t be helped, Clive! I have to work.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean — what good am I to you — what’s the use of me, if I can’t make things easier for you?”
“The use of you? Did you think I ever had any idea of using you?”
“But I want you to.”
“How?” she asked, still uneasily perplexed, her eyes fixed on him.
But he had no definite idea, no plan fixed, nothing further to say on a subject that had so suddenly taken shape within his mind.
She asked him again for an explanation, but, receiving none, settled back thoughtfully in her furs. Only once did he break the silence.
“You know,” he said indifferently, “that row of houses, of which yours is one, belongs to me. I mean to me, personally.”
“No, I didn’t know it.”
/> “Well it does. It’s my own investment.... I’ve reduced rents — pending improvements.”
She looked up at him.
“The rent of your apartment has been reduced fifty per cent.,” he said carelessly; “so your rent is now paid until the new term begins next October.”
“Clive! That is perfectly ridiculous!” she began, hotly; but he swung around, silencing her:
“Are you criticising my business methods?” he demanded.
“But that is too silly—”
“Will you mind your business!” he exclaimed, turning and taking her by both shoulders. She looked into his eyes, searching them in silence. Then:
“You’re such a dear,” she sighed; “why do you want to do a thing like that when my sisters and I can afford to pay the present rent. You are always doing such things, Clive; you have simply covered my dressing-table with silver; my bureau is full of pretty things, all gifts from you; you’ve given me the loveliest furniture of my own, and books and desk-set and — and everything. And now you are asking me to live rent-free.... And what have I to offer you in return?”
“The happiness of being with you now and then.”
“Oh, Clive! You know that isn’t very much to offer you. You know that our being together is far more to me than it is to you! I dare not even consider what I’d do without you, now. You mould me, alter my thoughts, make me such a delightfully different girl, take entire charge and possession of me.... I don’t want you to give me anything more — do anything more for me.... When you first began to give me beautiful things I didn’t want to take them. Do you remember how awkward and shy I was — how I blushed. But I always end by doing everything you wish.... And it seems to give us both so much pleasure — all you do for me.... But please don’t ask me to live without paying rent—”
The limousine drew up by the curb; Clive jumped out, aided Athalie to descend; and started for the grilled door where a light glimmered.
“This is not the house!” exclaimed Athalie, stopping short. “Where are you taking me, Clive?”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 780