Athalie Part 62

The journey downtown and across the Queensboro Bridge was the usual uncomfortable and exasperating progress familiar to all who pilot cars to Long Island. Brooklyn was negotiated prayerfully; they swung into the great turnpike, through the ugliest suburbs this humiliated world ever endured, on through the shabby, filthy, sordid environment of the gigantic Burrough, past ign.o.ble villages, desolate wastes, networks of railway tracks where grade crossings menaced them, and on along the purlieus of suburban deserts until the flat green Long Island country spread away on either side dotted with woods and greenhouses and quaint farm-houses and old-time spires.

"It is pretty when you get here," he said, "but it's like climbing over a mile of garbage to get out of one's front door. No European city would endure being isolated by such a desert of squalor and abominable desolation."

But Athalie merely smiled. She had been far too excited to notice the familiar ugliness and filth of the dirty city's soiled and ragged outskirts.

And now the car sped on amid the flat, endless acres of cultivated land, and already her dainty nose was sniffing familiar but half-forgotten odours--the faintest hint of ocean, the sun-warmed scent of freshly cut salt hay; perfumes from woodlands in heavy foliage, and the more homely smell from barn-yard and compost-heap; from the sunny, dusty village streets through which they rolled; from village lanes heavy with honeysuckle.

"I seem to be speeding back toward my childhood," she said. "Every breath of this air, every breeze, every odour is making it more real to me.... I wonder whatever became of my ragged red hood and cloak. I can't remember."

"I'd like to have them," he said. "I'd fold them and lay them away for--"

He checked himself, sobered, suddenly and painfully aware that the magic of the moment had opened for him an unreal vista where, in the false dawn, the phantom of Hope stood smiling. Her happy smile had altered, too; and her gloved hand stole out and rested on his own for a moment in silence. Neither said anything for a while, and yet the sky was so blue, the wind so soft and aromatic, and the sun's splendour was turning the very earth to powdered gold. And maybe the G.o.ds would yet be kind. Maybe, one day, others, with Athalie's hair and eyes, might smooth the faded scarlet hood and cloak with softly inquiring fingers.

He spoke almost harshly from his brief dream: "There is the Bay!"

But she had turned to look back at the quiet little cemetery already behind them, and a moment or two pa.s.sed before she lifted her eyes and looked out across the familiar stretch of water. Azure and silver it glimmered there in the sun. Red-shouldered blackbirds hovered, fluttered, dropped back into the tall reeds; meadow larks whistled sweetly, persistently; a slow mouse-hawk sailed low over the fields, his broad wings tipped up like a j.a.panese kite, the silver full-moon flas.h.i.+ng on his back as he swerved. And then the old tavern came into sight behind its new hedge of privet.

Athalie caught sight of it,--of the tall hedge, the new posts of stone through which a private road now curved into the grounds and around a circle before the porch; saw the new stone wall inclosing it ablaze with nasturtiums, the brilliant loveliness of the old and long neglected garden beyond; saw the ancient house in all its quaint and charming simplicity bereft of bow-window, spindle, and gingerbread fretwork,--saw the white front of it, the green shutters, the big, thick chimneys, the sunlight sparkling on small square panes, and on the gla.s.s of the sun parlour.

The girl was trembling when he stopped the car at the front door, sprang out, and aided her to descend.

A man in overalls came up, diffidently, and touched his broad straw hat. To him Clive gave a low-voiced order or two, then stepped forward to where the girl was standing.

"It is too beautiful--" she began, but her voice failed, and he saw the sensitive lips tremulous in their silence and the eyes brilliant with the menace of tears.

He drew her arm through his and they went in, moving slowly and in silence from room to room. Only the almost convulsive pressure of her arm on his told him of a happiness too deep for expression.

On the landing above he offered her the key to her mother's room.

"Nothing is changed there," he said; and, fitting the key, unlocked the door, and turned away.

But the girl caught his hand in hers and drew him with her into the faded, shabby room where her mother's chair stood in its accustomed place, and the faded ha.s.sock lay beside it.

"Sit here," she said. And when he was seated she dropped on the ha.s.sock at his feet and laid her cheek on his knees.

The room was very still and sunny; her lover remained silent and unstirring; and the girl's eyes wandered from carpet to ceiling and from wall to wall, resting on familiar objects; then, pa.s.sing dreamily, remained fixed on s.p.a.ce--sweet, brooding eyes, dim with the deepest emotion she had ever known.

A new, profound, and thrilling peace possessed her--a heavenly sense of tranquillity and security, as though, somehow, all problems had been solved for her and for him.

Presently in a low, hushed, happy voice she began to speak about her mother. Little unimportant, unconnected incidents came to her mind--brief moments, episodes as ephemeral as they had been insignificant.

Sitting on the faded ha.s.sock at his feet she lifted her head and rested both arms across his knees.

"It is all so perfect now," she said,--"you here in mother's room, and I at your feet: and the sunny world waiting for us outside. How mellow is this light! Always in the demi-dusk of this house there seemed to me to linger a golden tint--even on dark days--even at night--as though somewhere a ray of sun had been lost and had not entirely faded out."

"It came from your own heart, Athalie--that wonderful and golden heart of yours where light and warmth can never die.... Dear, are you contented with what I have ventured to do?"

She looked silently into his eyes, then with a little sigh dropped her head on his knees again.

Far away somewhere in the depths of the house somebody was moving. And presently she asked him who it was.

"Connor, the man of all work. I sent him to Spring Pond village to buy bed linen and bath towels. I ventured to install a bra.s.s bed or two in case you had thought of coming here with your maid. You see,"

he added, smiling, "it was fortunate that I did."

"You are the most wonderful man in the world, Clive," she murmured, her eyes fixed dreamily on his face. "Always you have been making life delightful for me; smoothing my path, helping me where the road is rough."... She sighed: "Clive, you are very wonderful to me."

Mrs. Jim Connor had come to help; and now, at high noon, she sought them where they were standing in the garden,--Athalie in ecstasy before the scented thickets of old-fas.h.i.+oned rockets ma.s.sed in a long, broad border against a background of trees.

So they went in to luncheon, which was more of a dinner; and Mrs.

Connor served them with apology, bustle, and not too garrulously for the humour they were in.

High spirits had returned to them when they stepped out of doors; and they came back to the house for luncheon in the gayest of humour, Athalie chattering away blithe as a linnet in a thorn bush, and Clive not a whit more reticent.

"Hafiz is going to adore this!" exclaimed the girl. "My angel p.u.s.s.y!--why was I mean enough to leave you in the city!... I'll have a dog, too--a soft, roly-poly puppy, who shall grow up with a wholesome respect for Hafiz. And, Clive! I shall have a nice fat horse, a safe and sane old Dobbin--so I can poke about the countryside at my leisure, through byways and lanes and disused roads."

"You need a car, too."

"No, no, I really don't. Anyway," she said airily, "your car is sufficient, isn't it?"

"Of course," he smiled.

"I think so, too. I shall not require or desire a car unless you also are to be in it. But I'd love to possess a Dobbin and a double buckboard. Also I shall, in due time, purchase a sail-boat--" She checked herself, laughed at the sudden memory, and said with delightful malice: "I suppose you have not yet learned to sail a boat, have you?"

He laughed, too: "How you scorned me for my ignorance, didn't you? Oh, but I've learned a great many things since those days, Athalie."

"To sail a boat, too?"

"Oh, yes. I had to learn. There's a lot of water in the world; and I've been very far afield."

"I know," she said. There was a subtle sympathy in her voice,--an exquisite recognition of the lonely years which now seemed to lie far, far behind them both.

She glanced down at her fresh plate which Mrs. Connor had just placed before her.

"Clive!" she exclaimed, enchanted, "do you see! Peach turnovers!"

"Certainly. Do you suppose this housewarming could be a proper one without peach turnovers?" And to Mrs. Connor he said: "That is all, thank you. Miss Greensleeve and I will eat our turnovers by the stove in the sun-parlour."

And there they ate their peach turnovers, seated on the old-time rush-bottomed chairs beside the stove--just as they had sat so many years ago when Athalie was a child of twelve and wore a ragged cloak and hood of red.

Sometimes, leisurely consuming her pastry, she glanced demurely at her lover, sometimes her blue eyes wandered to the sunny picture outside where roses grew and honeysuckle trailed and the blessed green gra.s.s enchanted the tired eyes of those who dwelt in the monstrous and arid city.

Presently she went away to the room he had prepared for her; and he lay back lazily in his chair and lighted a cigarette, and watched the thin spirals of smoke mounting through the suns.h.i.+ne. When she returned to him she was clad in white from crown to toe, and he told her she was enchanting, which made her eyes sparkle and the dimples come.

"Mrs. Connor is going to remain and help me," she said. "All my things are unpacked, and the bed is made very nicely, and it is all going to be too heavenly for words. Oh, I _wish_ you could stay!"

"To-night?"