Athalie Part 39

I guess it was part of her game. I ain't never seen nothing into that gla.s.s ball, and I've looked, too. You can have it if you want it. It's kind of cute to set on the mantel."

She began to paw and grub and rummage in the big paper parcel, scratching about in the glittering mess of silk and embroidery with a pertinacity entirely gallinaceous.

"You can have these, too," she said to Athalie--"if you want 'em.

They're heathen I guess--" holding up some tawdry j.a.panese and home-made Chinese finery.

But Athalie declined the dead woman's robes of office and Mrs. Meehan rolled them up in the wrapping paper and took them and herself off, very profuse in her grat.i.tude to Athalie for consenting to occupy the apartment and thereby remove the "jinx" that had inhabited it since the tragedy of the month before.

A very soft and melancholy mew from the basket informed the girl that Hafiz desired his liberty. So she let him out and he trotted at her heels as she walked about inspecting the apartment. Also he did considerable inspecting on his own account, sniffing at every door-sill and crack, jumping up on chairs to look out of windows, prowling in and out of closets, his plumy tail jerking with dubiousness and indecision.

The apartment was certainly clean. Evidently the house had been a good one in its day, for the trim was dark old mahogany, rich and beautiful in colour; and the fireplace was rather pretty with its acanthus leaves and roses deeply carved in marble which time had toned to an ivory tint.

The darkly stained floor of hardwood was, of course, modern. So were the new and very hideous oriental rugs made in Hoboken, and the aniline pink wall-paper, and the brand new furniture still smelling of department store varnish. Hideous, too, were the electric fixtures, the gas-log in the old-time fireplace, and the bargain counter bric-a-brac geometrically s.p.a.ced upon the handsome old mantel.

But there were possibilities in the big, square room facing south and in the two smaller bed chambers fronting the north. A modern bathroom connected these.

To find an entire top floor in New York at such a price was as amazing as it was comfortable to the girl who had not expected to be able to afford more than a small bedroom.

She had a little money left, enough to purchase food and a few pots and pans to cook it over the gas range in one of the smaller rooms.

And here she and Hafiz had their first meal on the long world-trail stretching away before her. After which she sat for a while by the window in a stiff arm-chair, thinking of Clive and of his silence, and of the young girl he was one day to marry.

Southward, the lights of the city began to break out and sparkle through the autumn haze; tall towers, hitherto invisible, suddenly glimmered against the sky-line. A double vista of lighted street lamps stretched east and west below her.

The dusty-violet light of evening softened the shabby street below, veiling ugliness and squalor and subtly trans.m.u.ting meanness and poverty to picturesqueness--as artists, using only the flattering simplicity of essentials, show us in etching and aquarelle the romance of the commonplace. And so the rusty iron balconies of a chop suey across the street became quaint and curious: dragon and swinging gilded sign, banner and garish fretwork grew mellow and mysterious under the ruddy Hunter's Moon sailing aloft out of the city's haze like a great Chinese lantern.

From an unseen steeple or two chimes sounded the hour. Farther away in the city a bell answered. It is not a city of belfries and chimes; only locally and by hazard are bell notes distinguishable above the interminable rolling monotone of the streets.

And now, the haze thickening, distant reverberations, deep, mellow, melancholy, grew in the night air: fog horns from the two rivers and the bay.

Leaning both elbows on the sill of the opened window Athalie gazed wearily into the street where noisy children shrilled at one another and dodged vehicles like those quick tiny creatures whirling on ponds.

Here and there, the flare of petroleum torches lighted push-carts piled with fruit or laden with bowls of lemonade and hokey-pokey.

Sidewalks were crowded with shabby people gossiping in groups or pa.s.sing east and west--about what squalid business only they could know.

On the stoops of all the dwellings, brick or brownstone, people sat; the men in shirt-sleeves, the young girls bare-headed, and in light summer gowns. Pianos sounded through open parlour windows; there was dancing going on somewhere in the block.

Eastward where the street intersected the glare of the dingy avenue, a policeman stood on fixed post, the electric lights guttering on his metal-work when he turned. Athalie had laid her cheek on her arms and closed her eyes, from fatigue, perhaps; perhaps to force back the tears which, nevertheless, glimmered on her lashes where they lay close to the curved white cheeks.

Little by little the girl was taking degree after degree in her post-graduate course, the study of which was man.

And for the first time in her life a new reaction in the laboratory of experience had revealed to her a new element in her a.n.a.lysis; bitterness.

Which is akin to resentment. And to these it is easy to ally recklessness.

There came to her a moment, as she sat huddled there at the window, when endurance suddenly flashed into a white anger; and she found herself on her feet, pacing the room as caged things pace, with a sort of blindly fixed purpose, seeing everything yet looking at nothing that she pa.s.sed.

But after this had lasted long enough she halted, gazing about her as though for something that might aid her. But there was only the room and the furniture, and Hafiz asleep on a chair; only these and the crystal sphere on its slim bronze tripod. And suddenly she found herself on her knees beside it, staring into its dusky transparent depths, fixing her mind, concentrating every thought, straining every faculty, every nerve in the one desperate and imperative desire.

But through the crystal's depths there is no aid for those who "see clearly," no comfort, no answer. She could not find there the man she searched for--the man for whom her soul cried out in fear, in anger, in despair. As in a gla.s.s, darkly, only her own face she saw, fire-edged with a light like that which burns deep in black opals.

p.r.o.ne on the floor at last, her white face framed by her hands, her eyes wide open in the dark, she finally understood that her clear vision was of no avail where she herself was concerned; that they who see clearly can never use that vision to help themselves.

Fiercely she resented it,--the more bitterly because for the first time in her life she had condescended to any voluntary effort toward clairvoyance.

Wearily she sat up on the floor and gathered her knees into her arms, staring at nothing there in the darkness while the slow tears fell.

Never before had she known loneliness. A man had made her understand it. Never before had she known bitterness. A man had taught it to her.

Never again should any man do what this man had done to her! She was learning resentment.

All men should be the same to her hereafter. All men should stand already condemned. Never again should one among them betray her mind to reveal itself, persuade her heart to response, her lips to sacrifice their sweetness and their pride, her soul to stir in its sleep, awake, and answer. And for what the minds and hearts of men might bring upon themselves, let men be responsible. Their inclinations, offers, protests, promises as far as they regarded herself could never again affect her. Let man look to himself; his desires no longer concerned her. Let him keep his distance--or take his chances. And there were no chances.

Athalie was learning resentment.

Somebody was knocking. Athalie rose from the floor, turned on the lights, dried her eyes, went slowly to the door, and opened it.

A large, fat, pallid woman stood in the hallway. Her eyes were as washed out as her faded, yellowish hair; and her kimono needed washing.

"Good evening," she said cordially, coming in without any encouragement from Athalie and settling her uncorseted bulk in the arm-chair. "My name is Grace Bellmore,--Mrs. Grace Bellmore. I have the rear rooms under yours. If you're ever lonely come down and talk it over. Neighbours are not what they might be in this house. Look out for the Meehan, too. I'd call her a cat only I like cats. Say, that's a fine one on your bed there. Persian? Oh, Angora--" here she fished out a cigarette from the pocket of her wrapper, found a match, scratched it on the sole of her ample slipper, and lighted her cigarette.

"Have one?" she inquired. "No? Don't like them? Oh, well, you'll come to 'em. Everything comes easy when you're lonely. _I_ know. You don't have to tell me. G.o.d! I get so sick of my own company sometimes--"

She turned her head to gaze about her, twisting her heavy, creased neck as far as the folds of fat permitted: "You had your nerve with you when you took this place. I knew Mrs. Del Garmo. I warned her, too. But she was a bone-head. A woman can't be careless in this town.

And when it comes to men--say, Miss Greensleeve, I want to know their names before they ask me to dinner and start in calling me Grace. It's Grace _after_ meat with _me_!" And she laughed and laughed, slapping her fat knee with a pudgy, ring-laden hand.

Athalie, secretly dismayed, forced a polite smile. Mrs. Bellmore blew a few smoke rings toward the ceiling.

"Are you in business, Miss Greensleeve?"

"Yes.... I am looking for a position."

"What a pretty voice--and refined way of speaking!" exclaimed Mrs.

Bellmore frankly. "I guess you've seen better days. Most people have.

Tell you the truth, though, I haven't. I'm better off than I ever was before. Of course this is the dull season, but things are picking up.

What is your line, Miss Greensleeve?"

"Stenographer."

"Oh! Well, I don't suppose I could do anything for you, could I?"

"I don't know what your business is," ventured Athalie, who, heretofore had not dared even to surmise what might be the vocation of this very large and faded woman who wore a pink kimono and a dozen rings on her nicotine-stained fingers, and who smoked incessantly.

The woman seemed to be a trifle surprised: "Haven't you ever heard of Grace Bellmore?" she asked.