Complete weird tales of.., p.831
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 831
“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.
There was much honour done her that evening.
Toward the beginning of the end Clive said: “I can’t sit up all night, Cecil. What do you do for a living, anyway?”
“Bank a bit.”
“It was in this place that Clive encountered Cecil Reeve one stormy midnight.”
“Oh, that’s just amusement. What do you work at?”
“I didn’t mean that kind of bank!” said Reeve, annoyed. All sense of humour fled him when hammerlocked with Bacchus. At such psychological moments, too, he became indiscreet. And now he proposed to Clive an excursion amid what he termed the “high lights of Olympus,” which the latter discouraged.
“All right then. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give a Byzantine party! I know a little girl—”
“Oh, shut up!”
“She’s a fine little girl, Clive—”
“This is no hour to send out invitations.”
“Why not? Her name is Catharine—”
“Dry up!”
“Catharine Greensleeve—”
“What!”
“Certainly. She’s a model at Winton’s joint. She’s a peach. Appropriately crowned with roses she might have presided for Lucullus.”
Clive said: “By that you mean she’s all right, don’t you? You’d better mean it anyway!”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, that’s so. I know her sister. She’s a charming girl. All of them are all right. You understand, don’t you?”
“I understand numerous things. One of ‘em’s Catharine Greensleeve. And she’s some plum, believe me!”
“That’s all right, too, so stop talking about it!” retorted Clive sharply.
“Sure it’s all right. Don’t worry, just because you know her sister, will you?”
Clive shrugged. Reeve was in a troublesome mood, and he left him and went home feeling vaguely irritated and even less inclined than ever to see Athalie; which state of mind perplexed and irritated him still further.
* * *
He went to one or two dances during the week — a thing he had not done lately. Then he went to several more; also to a number of débutante theatre parties and to several suppers. He rather liked being with his own sort again; the comfortable sense of home-coming, of conventionalism, of a pleasant social security, appealed to him after several months’ irresponsible straying from familiar paths. And he began to go about the sheep-walks and enjoy it, slipping back rather easily into accustomed places and relations with men and women who belonged in a world never entered, never seen by Athalie Greensleeve, and of the existence of which she was aware only through the daily papers.
He wrote to her now and then. Always she answered his letter the following day.
About the end of April he wrote:
“Dear Athalie,
“About everything seems to conspire to keep me from seeing you; business — in a measure, — social duties; and, to tell the truth, a mistaken but strenuous opposition on my mother’s part.
“She doesn’t know you, and refuses to. But she knows me, and ought to infer everything delightful in the girl who has become my friend. Because she knows that I don’t, and never did affect the other sort.
“He rather liked being with his own sort again.”
“Every day, recently, she has asked me whether I have seen you. To avoid unpleasant discussions I haven’t gone to see you. But I am going to as soon as this unreasonable alarm concerning us blows over.
“It seems very deplorable to me that two young people cannot enjoy an absolutely honest friendship unsuspected and undisturbed.
“I miss you a lot. Is the apartment comfortable? Does Michael do everything you wish? Did the cat prove a good one? I sent for the best Angora to be had from the Silver Cloud Cattery.
“Now tell me, Athalie, what can I do for you? Please! What is it you need; what is it you would like to have? Are you saving part of your salary?
“Tell me also what you do with yourself after business hours. Have you seen any shows? I suppose you go out with your sisters now and then.
“As for me I go about more or less. For a while I didn’t: business seemed to revive and everybody in real estate became greatly excited. But it all simmered down again to the usual routine. So I’ve been going about to various affairs, dances and things. And, consequently, there’s peace and quiet at home for me.
“Always yours,
“C Bailey, Jr.”
“P.S. As I sit here writing you the desire seizes me to drop my pen, put on my hat and coat and go to see you. But I can’t. There’s a dinner on here, and I’ve got to stay for it. Good night, dear Athalie!
“Clive.”
His answer came by return mail as usual:
“Dear Clive,
“Your letter has troubled me so much. If your mother feels that way about me, what are we to do? Is it right for us to see each other?
“It is true that I am not conscious of any wrong in seeing you and in being your friend. I know that I never had an unworthy thought concerning you. And I feel confident that your thoughts regarding our friendship and me are blameless. Where lies the wrong?
“Some aspects of the affair have troubled me lately. Please do not be sensitive and take offence, Clive, if I admit to you that I never have quite reconciled myself to accepting anything from you.
“What I have accepted has been for your own sake — for the pleasure you found in giving, not for my own sake.
“I wanted only your friendship. That was enough — more than enough to make me happy and contented.
“I was not in want; I had sufficient; I lived better than I had ever lived; I was self-reliant, self-supporting, and — forgive and understand me, Clive — a little more self-respecting than I now am.
“It is true I had saved very little; but I am young and life is before me.
“This seems very ungrateful of me, very ungenerous after all you have done for me — all I have taken from you.
“But, Clive, it is the truth, and I think it ought to be told. Because this is, and has always been, a source of self-reproach to me, whether rightly or wrongly, I don’t know. I am a novice at confession, but I feel that, if I am to make a clean breast to you, partial confession is not worth while, not really honest, not worthy of the very sacred friendship that inspires it.
“So I shall shrive myself as well as I know how and continue to admit to you my further doubts and misgivings. They are these: my sisters do not understand your friendship for me even if they understand mine for you — which they say they do.
“I don’t think they believe me dishonest; but they cannot see any reason for your generosity to me unless you ultimately expect me to be dishonest.
“This has weakened my influence with them. I know I am the youngest, yet until recently I had a certain authority in matters regarding the common welfare and the common policy. But this is nearly gone. They point out with perfect truth that I myself do, with you, the very things for which I criticise them and against which I warn them.
“Of course the radical difference is that I do these things with you; but they can’t understand why you are any better, any finer, any more admirable, any further to be trusted than the men they go about with alone.
“It is quite in vain that I explain to them what sort of man you are. They retort that I merely think so.
“There is a man who takes Catharine out more frequently, and keeps her out much later than I like. I mean Cecil Reeve. But what I say only makes my sister sullen. She knows he is a friend of yours.... And, Clive, I am rather afraid she is beginning to care more for him than is quite safe for her to ever care for any man of that class.
“And Doris has met other men of the same kind — I don’t know who they are, for she won’t tell me. But after the theatre she goes out with them; and it is doing her no good.
“There is only one more item in my confession, then I’m done.
“It is this: I have heard recently from various sources that my being seen with you so frequently is causing much gossip concerning you among your friends.
“Is this true? And if it is, will it damage you? I don’t care about myself. I know very few people and it doesn’t matter. Besides I care enough about our companionship to continue it, whatever untruths are said or thought about me. But how about you, Clive? Because I also care enough for you to give you up if my being seen with you is going to disgrace you.
“This is my confession. I have told you all. Now, could you tell me what it is best for us to do?
“Think clearly; act wisely; don’t even dream of sacrificing yourself with your usual generosity — if it is indeed to be a case for self-sacrifice. Let me do that by giving you up. I shall do it anyway if ever I am convinced that my companionship is hurting your reputation.
“Be just to us both by being frank with me. Your decision shall be my law.
“This is a long, long letter. I can’t seem to let it go to you — as though when I mail it I am snapping one more bond that still seems to hold us together.
“My daily life is agreeable if a trifle monotonous. I have been out two or three times, once to see the Morgan Collection at the Metropolitan Museum — very dazzling and wonderful. What strange thoughts it evoked in me — thrilling, delightful, exhilarating — as though inspiring me to some blind effort or other. Isn’t it ridiculous? — as though I had it in me to do anything or be anybody! I’m merely telling you how all that exquisite art affected me — me — a working girl. And Oh, Clive! I don’t think anything ever gave me as much pleasure as did the paintings by the French masters, Lancret, Drouais, and Fragonard! (You see I had a catalogue!)
“Another evening I went out with Catharine. Mr. Reeve asked us, and another man. We went to see ‘Once Upon a Time’ at the Half-Moon Theatre, and afterward we went to supper at the Café Columbine.
“Another evening the other man, Mr. Reeve’s friend, a Mr. Hargrave, asked me to see ‘Under the Sun’ at the Zig-Zag Theatre. It was a tiresome show. We went to supper afterward to meet Catharine and Mr. Reeve.
“That is all except that I’ve dined out once or twice with Mr. Hargrave. And, somehow or other I felt queer and even conspicuous going to the Regina with him and to other places where you and I have been so often together...Also I felt a little depressed. Everything always reminded me of you and of happy evenings with you. I can’t seem to get used to going about with other men. But they seem to be very nice, very kind, and very amusing.
“And a girl ought to be thankful to almost anybody who will take her out of her monotony.
“I’m afraid you’ve given me a taste for luxury and amusement. You have spoiled me I fear. I am certainly an ungrateful little beast, am I not, to lay the blame on you! But it is dull, Clive, after working all day to sit every evening reading alone, or lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling, waiting for the others to come home.
“If it were not for that darling cat you gave me I’d perish of sheer solitude. But he is such a comfort, Hafiz; and his eyes are the bluest blue and his long, winter fur the snowiest white, and his ruff is wonderful and his tail magnificent. Also he is very affectionate to me. For which, with perfect reverence, I venture to thank God.
“Good night, Clive. If you’ve struggled through this letter so far you won’t mind reading that I am faithfully and always your friend,
“Athalie Greensleeve.”
Her letter thoroughly aroused Clive and he was all for going straight to her — only he couldn’t go that evening because he dared not break a dinner engagement or fail to appear with his mother at the opera. In fact he was already involved in a mess of social obligations for two weeks ahead, — not an evening free — and Athalie worked during the day.
It gave him an odd, restless sensation to hear of her going about with Francis Hargrave — dining alone with him. He felt almost hurt as though she had done him a personal injustice, yet he knew that it was absurd for him to resent anything of that sort. His monopoly of her happened to be one merely because she, at that time, knew no other man of his sort, and would not go out with any other kind of man.
