Athalie Part 34

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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. n.o.body 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, flus.h.i.+ng 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 apt.i.tude, that is white slavery. It's absolutely nothing else. And in cases where the ignorance is absent, the apt.i.tude is there. If a girl has an apt.i.tude 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 la.s.situde 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 att.i.tude toward him--whether or not she was in love with him--she was too busy thinking about him to bother her head about att.i.tudes 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 s.p.a.ce of a fire-fly's incandescence--then fading--entering her orbit out of nothing and, going into nothing, out of it.