Complete weird tales of.., p.834
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 834
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 ... was very quiet, very considerate, very attentive.”
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.
* * *
A few days later, for the first time in her experience there, Mr. Wahlbaum was not at the office.
Mr. Grossman came in, leered at her, said that Mr. Wahlbaum would be down next day, lingered furtively as long as he quite dared, then took himself off, still leering.
In the afternoon Athalie was notified that her salary had been raised. She went home, elated and deeply touched by the generosity of Mr. Wahlbaum, scarcely able to wait for the morrow to express her gratitude to this good, kind man.
But on the morrow Mr. Wahlbaum was not there; nor did he come the day after, nor the day after that.
The following Tuesday she was seated in the office and generally occupied with business provided for her by the thrifty Mr. Grossman, when that same gentleman came into the office on tiptoe.
“Mr. Wahlbaum has just died,” he said.
In the sudden shock and consternation she had risen from her chair, and stood there, one hand resting on her desk top for support.
“Pneumonia,” nodded Mr. Grossman. “Sam he smoked too much all the time. That is what done it, Miss Greensleeve.”
Her hands crept to her eyes, covered them convulsively. “Oh!” she breathed— “Oh!”
And, for a moment was not aware of the arm of Mr. Grossman around her waist, — until it tightened unctuously.
“Dearie,” he murmured, “don’t you take on so hard. You ain’t goin’ to lose your job, because I’m a-goin’ to be your best friend same like he was—”
With a shudder she stepped clear of him; he caught her by the waist again and kissed her; and she wrenched herself free and turned fiercely on him as he advanced again, smirking, watery of eye, arms outstretched.
Then in the overwhelming revulsion and horror of the act and of the moment chosen for it when death’s shadow already lay dark upon this vast and busy monument to her dead friend, she turned on him her dark blue eyes ablaze; and to her twisted, outraged lips flew, unbidden, the furious anathema of her ragged childhood:
“Damn you!” she stammered,— “damn you!” And struck him across the face.
* * *
Which impulsive and unconsidered proceeding left two at home out of work, herself and Doris. Also there was very little more for Catharine to do, the dull season at Winton’s having arrived.
“Any honest job,” repeated Doris when she and Athalie and Catharine met at evening after an all-day’s profitless search for that sort of work; but honest jobs did not seem to be very plentiful in June, although any number of the other sort were to be had almost without the asking.
Doris continued to haunt agencies and theatrical offices, dawdling all day from one to the next, sitting for hours in company with other aspirants to histrionic honours and wages, gossiping, listening to stage talk, professional patter, and theatrical scandal until her pretty ears were buzzing with everything that ought not to concern her and her moral fastidiousness gradually became less delicate. Repetition is the great leveller, the great persuader. The greatest power on earth, for good or evil, is incessant reiteration.
Catharine lost her position, worked at a cheap milliner’s for a week, addressed envelopes for another week, and was again left unemployed.
Athalie accepted several offers; at one place they didn’t pay her for two weeks and then suggested she take half the salary agreed upon; at another her employer became offensively familiar; at another the manager made her position unendurable.
By July the financial outlook in the Greensleeve family was becoming rather serious: Doris threatened gloomily to go into burlesque; Catharine at first tearful and discouraged, finally grew careless and made few real efforts to find employment. Also she began to go out almost every evening, admitting very frankly that the home larder had become too lean and unattractive to suit her.
“Doris continued to haunt agencies and theatrical offices.”
Doris always went out more or less; and what troubled Athalie was not that the girl had opportunities for the decent nourishment she needed, but that her reticence concerning the people she dined with was steadily increasing.
“Oh, shut up! I can look out for myself,” she always repeated sullenly. “Anyway, Athalie, you are not the one to bully me. Nobody ever presented me with a cosy flat and—”
“Doris!”
“Didn’t your young man give you this flat?”
“Don’t speak of him or of me in that manner,” said Athalie, flushing scarlet.
“Why are you so particular? It’s the truth. He’s given you about everything a man can offer a girl, hasn’t he? — jewellery, furniture, clothing — cats—”
“Will you please not say anything more!”
But Doris was still smarting under recent admonition, and she meant to make an end of Athalie’s daily interference: “I will say what I like when it’s the truth,” she retorted. “You are very free with your unsolicited advice. And I’ll say this, and it’s true, that not one girl in a thousand who accepts what you have accepted from Clive Bailey, is straight!”
Athalie’s tightening lips quivered: “Do you intimate that I am not straight?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You implied it.”
There was a silence; Catharine lounged on the sofa, watching and listening with interest. After a moment Doris shrugged her young shoulders.
“Does it matter so much, anyway?” she said with a short, unpleasant laugh.
“Does what matter — you little ninny!”
“Whether a girl is straight.”
“Is that the philosophy you learn in your theatrical agencies?” demanded Athalie fiercely. “What nauseating rot you do talk, Doris!”
“Very well. It may be nauseating. But what is a girl to do in a world run entirely by men?”
“You know well enough what a girl is not to do, don’t you? All right then, — leave that undone and do what’s left.”
“What is left?” demanded Doris with a mirthless laugh. “There’s scarcely a job that a girl can hold unless she squares some man to keep it — and keep — her!”
“Shame on you! I held mine for over five years,” said Athalie with hot contempt.
“Yes, and then along came the junior partner. You wouldn’t square him: you lost your job! There’s always a junior partner in every business — when there isn’t a senior. There’s nothing to it if you stand in with the firm. If you don’t — good night!”
“You managed to remain at the Egyptian Garden during the entire season.”
“But the fights I had, my dear, and the tricks I employed and the lies I told and the promises I made! Oh, it’s sickening — sickening! But—” she shrugged— “what are you to do? Thousands of girls go queer because they’re forced to by starvation—”
“Nonsense!” cried Athalie hotly, “that is all stage twaddle and exaggerated sentimentalism! I don’t believe that one girl in a thousand is forced into a dishonourable life!”
“Then why do girls go queer?”
“Because they want to; that’s why! When they don’t want to they don’t!”
Catharine, very wide-eyed, said solemnly: “But think of all the white slaves—”
“They’d be that if they had been born to millions!” retorted Athalie. “Ignorance and aptitude, that is white slavery. It’s absolutely nothing else. And in cases where the ignorance is absent, the aptitude is there. If a girl has an aptitude for becoming some man’s mistress she’ll probably do it whether she’s ignorant or educated.”
Doris, who had taken to chewing-gum furtively and in private, discreetly rolled a morsel under her tongue.
“All I know is that your salary is advanced and you’re given a part at the Egyptian Garden if you stand in with Lewenbein or go to supper with Shemsky. Of course,” she added, “there are theatres where you don’t have to be horrid in order to succeed.”
“Then,” said Athalie drily, “you’d better find work in those theatres.”
Doris glanced sideways at Catharine, who silently returned her glance as though an understanding and sympathy existed between them not suspected or shared in by Athalie.
It was not very much of a secret. Some prowling genius of the agencies whom Doris had met had offered to write a vaudeville act for her and himself if she could find two other girls. And she had persuaded Catharine and Genevieve Hunting to try it; and Cecil Reeve and Francis Hargrave had gaily offered to back it. They were rehearsing in Reeve’s apartments — between a continuous series of dinners and suppers.
And it had been her sister’s going to Reeve’s apartments to which Athalie had seriously objected, — not knowing why she went there.
* * *
This was one of many scenes that torrid summer in New York, when Athalie intuitively felt that the year which had begun so happily for her with the entrance of Clive into her life, was growing duller and greyer; and that each succeeding day seemed to be swinging her into a tide of anxiety and mischance, — a current as yet merely perceptible, but already increasing in speed toward something swifter and more stormy.
Already, to her, the future had become overcast, obscure, disquieting.
Steer as she might toward any promising harbour, always she seemed to be aware of some subtle resistance impeding her.
Every small economy attempted, every retrenchment planned, came to nothing. Always she was met at some corner by an unlooked-for necessity entailing further expense.
No money was coming in; her own and her sister’s savings were going steadily, every day, every week.
There seemed no further way to check expenditure. Athalie had dismissed their servant as soon as she had lost her position at Wahlbaum and Grossman’s. Table expenses were reduced to Spartan limits, much to the disgust of them all. No clothes were bought, no luxuries, no trifles. They did their own marketing, their own cooking, their own housework and laundry. And had it not been that the apartment entailed no outlay for light, heat, and rent, they would have been sorely perplexed that spring and summer in New York.
Athalie permitted herself only one luxury, Hafiz. And one necessity; stamps and letter paper for foreign correspondence.
The latter was costing her less and less recently. Clive wrote seldom now. And always very sensitive where he was concerned, she permitted herself the happiness of writing only after he had taken the initiative, and a reply from her was due him.
No, matters were not going very well with Athalie. Also she was frequently physically tired. Perhaps it was the lassitude consequent on the heat. But at times she had an odd idea that she lacked courage; and sometimes when lonely, she tried to reason with herself, tried to teach her heart bravery — particularly during the long interims which elapsed between Clive’s letters.
As for her attitude toward him — whether or not she was in love with him — she was too busy thinking about him to bother her head about attitudes or degrees of affection. All the girl knew — when she permitted herself to think of herself — was that she missed him dreadfully. Otherwise her concern was chiefly for him, for his happiness and well-being. Also she was concerned regarding the promise she had made him — and to which he usually referred in his letters, — the promise to try to learn more about this faculty of hers for clear vision, and, if possible, to employ it for his sake and in his unhappy service.
This often preoccupied her, troubled her. She did not know how to go about it; she hesitated to seek those who advertised their alleged occult powers for sale, — trance-mediums, mind-readers, palmists — all the heterogeneous riffraff lurking always in metropolitan purlieus, and always with a sly weather-eye on the police.
As usual in her career since the time she could first remember, she continued to “see clearly” where others saw and heard nothing.
Faint voices in the dusk, a whisper in darkness; perhaps in her bedroom the subtle intuition of another presence. And sometimes a touch on her arm, a breath on her cheek, delicate, exquisite — sometimes the haunting sweetness of some distant harmony, half heard, half divined. And now and then a form, usually unknown, almost always smiling and friendly, visible for a few moments — the space of a fire-fly’s incandescence — then fading — entering her orbit out of nothing and, going into nothing, out of it.
Of these episodes she had never entertained any fear. Sometimes they interested her, sometimes even slightly amused her. But they had never saddened her, not even when they had been the flash-lit harbingers of death. For only a sense of calmness and serenity accompanied them: and to her they had always been part of the world and of life, nothing to wonder at, nothing to fear, and certainly nothing to intrude on — merely incidents not concerning her, not remarkable, but natural and requiring no explanation.
But she herself did not know and could not explain why, even as a child, she had been always reticent regarding these occurrences, — why she had always been disinclined to discuss them. Unless it were a natural embarrassment and a hesitation to discuss strangers, as though comment were a species of indelicacy, — even of unwarranted intrusion.
One night while reading — she had been scanning a newspaper column of advertisements hoping to find a chance for herself or Catharine — glancing up she again saw Clive’s father seated near her. At the same moment he lifted his head, which had been resting on one hand, and looked across the hearthstone at her, smiling faintly.
Entirely unembarrassed, conscious of that atmosphere of serenity which always was present when such visitors arrived, the girl sat looking at what her eyes told her she perceived, a slight and friendly smile curving her lips in silent response.
Presently she became aware that Hafiz, too, saw the visitor, and was watching him. But this fact she had noticed before, and it did not surprise her.
And that was all there was to the incident. He rose, walked to the window, stood there. And after a little while he was not there. That ended it. And Hafiz went to sleep again.
* * *
CHAPTER XIII
IN SEPTEMBER ATHALIE Greensleeve wrote her last letter to Clive Bailey. It began with a page or two of shyly solicitous inquiries concerning his well-being, his happiness, his plans; did not refer to his long silence; did refer to his anticipated return; did not mention her own accumulating domestic and financial embarrassments and the successive strokes of misfortune dealt her by those twin and formidable bravos, Fate and Chance; but did mention and enumerate everything that had occurred in her life which bore the slightest resemblance to a blessing.
Her letter continued:
“My sisters Doris and Catharine have gone into vaudeville with a very pretty act called ‘April Rain.’
