Athalie Part 68

"Then why are you so serene under the menace of this miserable affair?

For myself I care nothing; I'd thank G.o.d for a divorce on any terms.

But you--dearest--dearest!--I cannot endure the thought of you entangled in such a shameful--"

"Where is the shame, Clive? The real shame, I mean. In me there are two selves; neither have, as yet, been disgraced by any disobedience of any law framed by men for women. Nor shall I break men's laws--under which women are governed without their own consent--unless no other road to our common destiny presents itself for me to follow."... She smiled, watching his intent and sombre face:

"Don't fear for me, dear. I have come to understand what life is, and I mean to live it, wholesomely, gloriously, uncrippled in body and mind, unmaimed by folk-ways and by laws as ephemeral--" she turned toward the open windows--"as those frail-winged things that float in the sunshine above Spring Pond, yonder, born at sunrise, and at sundown dead."

She laughed, leaning there on her dimpled elbows, stripping a peach of its velvet skin:

"The judges of the earth,--and the power of them!--What is it, dear, compared to the authority of love! To-day men have their human will of men, judging, condemning, imprisoning, slaying, as the moral fashion of the hour dictates. To-morrow folk-ways change; judge and victim vanish along with fashions obsolete--both alike, their brief reign ended.

"For judge and victim are awake at last; and in the twinkling of an eye, the old world has become a memory or a shrine for those tranquil pilgrims who return to worship for a while where love lies sleeping.... And then return no more."

She rose, signed him to remain seated, came around to where he sat, and perched herself on the arm of his chair.

"If you don't mind," she said, "I shall smooth out that troubled crease between your eyebrows." And she encircled his head with both arms, and laid her smooth hands across his forehead. Then she touched his hair lightly, with her lips.

"We are great sinners," she murmured, "are we not, my darling?"

And drew his head against her breast.

"Of what am I robbing _her_, Clive? Of the power to humiliate you, make you unhappy. It is an honest theft.

"What else am I stealing from her? Not love, not grat.i.tude, not duty, nothing of tenderness, nor of pride nor sympathy. I take nothing, then, from her. She has nothing for me to steal--unless it be the plain gold ring she never wears.... And I prefer a new one--if, indeed, I am to wear one."

He said, deeply troubled, "How do you know she never wears a ring?"

And he turned and looked up at her over his shoulder. The clear azure of her eyes was like a wintry sky.

"Clive, I know more than that. I know that your wife is in New York."

"What!" he exclaimed, astonished.

"I have been aware of it for weeks," she said tranquilly.

He remained silent; she continued to caress his hair:

"Your wife," she went on thoughtfully, "will learn much when she dies.

There is a compulsory university course which awaits us all,--a school with many forms and many grades and many, many pupils. But we must die before we can be admitted.... I have never before spoken to you as I have spoken to-day.... Perhaps I never shall again.... The world is a blind place--lovely but blind.

"As for the woman who wears your name but wears no ring of yours she has been moving through my crystal for many days;--I would have made no effort to intrude on her had she not persisted in the crystal, haunted it,--I cannot tell you why--only that she is always there, now.... And last night I knew that she was in New York, and why she had come here.... Shall you see her to-day?"

"Where is she?"

"At the Regina."

"Are you sure?"

The girl calmly closed her eyes for a moment. After a brief silence she opened them: "She is still there.... She will awake in a little while and ring for her breakfast. The two men you drove out of the garden last night are waiting to see her. There is another man there.

I think he is your wife's attorney.... Have you decided to see her?"

"Yes."

"You won't let what she may say about me trouble you, will you?"

"What will she say?" he asked with the nave confidence of absolute and childish faith.

Athalie laughed: "Darling! I don't know. I'm not a witch or a sorceress. Did you think I was?--just because I can see a little more clearly than you?"

"I didn't know what your limit might be," he answered, smiling slightly, in spite of his deep anxiety.

"Then let me inform you at once. My eyes are better than many people's. Also my _other_ self can see. And with so clear a vision, and with intelligence--and with a very true love and reverence for G.o.d--somehow I seem to visualise what clairvoyance, logic, and reason combine to depict for me.

"I used to be afraid that a picturesque and vivid imagination coupled with a certain amount of clairvoyance might seduce me to trickery and charlatanism.

"But if it be charlatanism for a paleontologist to construct a fish out of a single fossil scale, then there may be something of that ability in me. For truly, Clive, I am often at a loss where to draw the line between what I see and what I reason out--between my clairvoyance and my deductions. And if I made mistakes I certainly should be deeply alarmed. But--I don't," she added, laughing. "And so, in regard to those two men last night, and in regard to what _she_ and they may be about, I feel not the least concern. And you must not.

Promise me, dear."

But he rose, anxious and depressed, and stood silent for a few moments, her hands clasped tightly in his.

For he could see no way out of it, now. His wife, once merely indifferent, was beginning to evince malice. And what further form that malice might take he could not imagine; for hitherto, she had not desired divorce, and had not concerned herself with him or his behaviour.

As for Athalie, it was now too late for him to step out of her life.

He might have been capable of the sacrifice if the pain and unhappiness were to be borne by him alone--or even if he could bring himself to believe or even hope that it might be merely a temporary sorrow to Athalie.

But he could not mistake her, now; their cords of love and life were irrevocably braided together; and to cut one was to sever both. There could be no recovery from such a measure for either, now.

What was he to do? The woman he had married had rejected his loyalty from the very first, suffered none of his ideas of duty to move her from her aloofness. She cared nothing for him, and she let him know it; his notions of marriage, its duties and obligations merely aroused in her contempt. And when he finally understood that the only kindness he could do her was to keep his distance, he had kept it. And what was he to do now? Granted that he had brought it all upon himself, how was he to combat what was threatening Athalie?

His wife had so far desired nothing of him, not even divorce. He could not leave Athalie and he could not marry her. And now, on her young head he had, somehow, loosened this avalanche, whatever it was--a suit for separation, probably--which, if granted, would leave him without his liberty, and Athalie disgraced. And even suppose his wife desired divorce for some new and unknown reason. The sinister advent of those men meant that Athalie would be shamefully named in any such proceedings.

What was he to do? An ugly, hunted look came into his face and he swung around and faced the girl beside him:

"Athalie," he said, "will you go away with me and let them howl?"

"Dearest, how silly. I'll stay _here_ with you and let them howl."

"I don't want you to face it--"

"I shall not turn my back on it. Oh, Clive, there are so many more important things than what people may say about us!"

"You can't defy the world!"

"I'm not going to, darling. But I may possibly shock a few of the more orthodox parasites that infest it."

"No girl can maintain that att.i.tude."

"A girl can try.... And, if law and malice force me to become your mistress, malice and law may answer for it; not I!"

"_I_ shall have to answer for it."