Athalie Part 47

"Three years."

"Three years," mused Dane, gazing into s.p.a.ce 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 aqui_!... Here is the Putumayo district. h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d.

Actus Dei nemini facit injuriam.

CHAPTER XIX

There was a slight fragrance of tobacco in the room mingling with the fresh, spring-like scent of lilacs--great pale cl.u.s.ters of them decorated mantel and table, and the desk where Athalie sat writing to Captain Dane in the semi-dusk of a May evening.

Here and there dim figures loomed in the big square room; the graceful shape of a young girl at the piano detached itself from the gloom; a man or two dawdled by the window, vaguely silhouetted against the lilac-tinted sky.

Athalie wrote on: "I had not supposed you had landed until Cecil Reeve told me this evening. If you are not too tired to come, please do so.

Do you realise that you have been away over a year? Do you realise that I am now twenty-four years old, and that I am growing older every minute? You had better hasten, then, because very soon I shall be too old to believe your magic fairy tales of field and flood and all your wonder lore of travel in those distant golden lands I dream of.

"Who was your white companion? Cecil tells me that you said you had one. Bring him with you this evening; you'll need corroboration, I fear. And mostly I desire to know if you are well, and next I wish to hear whether you did really find the lost city of Yhdunez."

A maid came to take the note to Dane's hotel, the Great Eastern, and Cecil Reeve looked up and laid aside his cigarette.

"Come on, Athalie," he said, "tell Peg to turn on one of those Peruvian dances."

Peggy Brooks at the piano struck a soft sensuous chord or two, but Francis Hargrave would not have it, and he pulled out the proper phonographic record and cranked the machine while Cecil rolled up the Beluch rugs.

The somewhat m.u.f.fled air that exuded from the machine was the lovely Miraflores, gay, lively, languorous, sad by turns--and much danced at the moment in New York.

A new spring moon looked into the room from the west where like elegant and graceful phantoms the dancers moved, swayed, glided, swung back again with sinuous grace into the suavely delicate courtship of the dance.

The slender feet and swaying figure of Athalie seemed presently to bewitch the other couple, for they drew aside and stood together watching that exquisite incarnation of youth itself, gliding, bending, floating in the lilac-scented, lilac-tinted dusk under the young moon.

The machine ran down in the course of time, and Hargrave went over to re-wind it, but Peggy Brooks waved him aside and seated herself at the piano, saying she had enough of Hargrave.

She was still playing the quaint, sweet dance called "The Orchid," and Hargrave was leaning on the piano beside her watching Cecil and Athalie drifting through the dusk to the music's rhythm, when the door opened and somebody came in.

Athalie, in Cecil's arms, turned her head, looking back over her shoulder. Dane loomed tall in the twilight.

"Oh!" she exclaimed; "I am so glad!"--slipping out of Cecil's arms and wheeling on Dane, both hands outstretched.

The others came up, also, with quick, gay greetings, and after a moment or two of general and animated chatter Athalie drew Dane into a corner and made room for him beside her on the sofa. Peggy had turned on the music machine again and, snubbing Hargrave, was already beginning the Miraflores with Cecil Reeve.

Athalie said: "_Are_ you well? That's the first question."

He said he was well.

"And did you find your lost city?"

He said, quietly: "We found Yhdunez."

"We?"

"I and my white companion."

"Why didn't you bring him with you this evening?" she asked. "Did you tell him I invited him?"

"Yes."

"Oh.... Couldn't he come?"

And, as he made no answer: "Couldn't he?" she repeated. "Who is he, anyway--"

"Clive Bailey."

She sat motionless, looking at him, the question still parting her lips. Dully in her ears the music sounded. The pallor which had stricken her face faded, grew again, then waned in the faint return of colour.

Dane, who was looking away from her rather fixedly, spoke first, still not looking at her: "Yes," he said in even, agreeable tones, "Clive was my white companion.... I gave him your note to read.... He did not seem to think that he ought to come."

"Why?" Her lips scarcely formed the word.

"--As long as you were not aware of whom you were inviting.... There had been some misunderstanding between you and him--or so I gathered--from his att.i.tude."

A few moments more of silence; then she was fairly prepared.

"Is he well?" she asked coolly.

"Yes. He had one of those nameless fevers, down there. He's coming out of it all right."

"Is he--his appearance--changed?"

"He's changed a lot, judging from the photographs he showed me taken three or four years ago. He's changed in other ways, too, I fancy."

"How?"

"Oh, I only surmise it. One hears about people--and their characteristics.... Clive is a good deal of a man.... I never had a better companion.... There were hardships--tight corners--we had a bad time of it for a while, along the Andes.... And the natives are treacherous--every one of them.... He was a good comrade. No man can say more than that, Miss Greensleeve. That includes about everything I ever heard of--when a man proves to be a good comrade. And there is no place on earth where a man can be so thoroughly tried out as in that sunless wilderness."