Athalie

CHAPTER XXII

THE following day Clive replied to his wife by cable: "As it seems to make no unpleasant difference to you I have concluded to remain in New York. Please take whatever steps you may find most convenient and agreeable for yourself."

And, following this he wrote her:

"I am inexpressibly sorry to cause you any new annoyance and to arouse once more your just impatience and resentment. But I see no use in a recapitulation of my shortcomings and of your own many disappointments in the man you married.

"Please remember that I have always assumed all blame for our marriage; and that I shall always charge myself with it. I have no reply to make to your reproaches, – no defence; I was not in love with you when I married you – which is as serious an offence as any man can perpetrate toward any woman. And I do not now blame you for a very natural refusal to tolerate anything approaching the sympathy and intimacy that ought to exist between husband and wife.

"I did entertain a hazy idea that affection and perhaps love might be ultimately possible even under the circumstances of such a marriage as ours; and in a youthful, ignorant, and inexperienced way I attempted to bring it about. My notions of our mutual obligations were very vague and indefinite.

"Please believe I did not realise how utterly distasteful any such ideas were to you, and how deep was your personal disinclination for the man you married.

"I understand now how many mistakes I made before I finally rid you of myself, and gave you a chance to live your life in your own way unharassed by the interference of a young, ignorant, and probably aggressive man.

"Your aversion to motherhood was, after all, your own affair. Man has no right to demand that of woman. I took a very bullying and intolerant attitude toward you – not, as I now realise, from any real conviction on the subject, but because I liked and wanted children, and also because I was influenced by the cant of the hour – the fashion being to demand of woman, on ethical grounds, quantitative reproduction as a marriage offering to the Almighty. As though indiscriminate and wholesale addition to humanity were an admirable and religious duty. Nothing, even in the Old Testament, is more stupid than such a doctrine; no child should ever be born unwelcome to both parents.

"I am sorry I could not find your circle of friends interesting. I sometimes think I might have, had you and I been mutually sympathetic. But the situation was impossible; our ideas, interests, convictions, tastes, were radically at variance; we had absolutely nothing in common to build on. What marriage ties could endure the strain of such conditions? The fault was mine, Winifred; I am sorry for you.

"I don't know much about anything, but, thinking as clearly and as impersonally as it is in me to think, I begin to believe that divorce, far from deserving the stigma attached to it, is a step forward in civilisation.

"Perhaps it may be only a temporary substitute for something better – say for more wholesome and more honest social conditions where the proposition for mating and the selection of a mate may lie as freely with your sex as with mine.

"Until then I know of nothing more honest and more sensible than to undo the wrong that ignorance and inexperience has accomplished. No woman's moral or spiritual salvation is dependent upon her wearing the fetters of a marriage abhorred. Such a stupid sacrifice is unthinkable to modesty and decency, and is repulsive to common sense. And any god who is supposed to demand that of humanity is not the true God, but is as grotesque and false as any African idol or any deity ever worshipped by Puritan or Pagan or by any orthodox assassin of free minds since the first murder was perpetrated on account of creed.

"You are entitled to divorce. I don't know whether I am or not, having done this thing. Nobody likes to endure unhappy consequences. I don't. But it was my own doing and I have no ground for complaint.

"You, however, have. You ought to be free of me. Of course, I'd be very glad to have my freedom; I shall not lie about it; but the difference is that you deserve yours and I don't. But I'll be very grateful if you care to give it to me.

"Don't write any more bitterly than you can help. I don't believe it really affords you any satisfaction; and it depresses me more than you could realise. I know only too well what I have been and wherein I have failed so miserably. Let me forget it whenever I can, Winifred. And if, for me, there remains any chance, any outlook, be generous enough to let me try to take it.

    "Your husband,
    "C. Bailey."

The consequences of this letter did not seem to be very fortunate. There came a letter from her so bitter and menacing that a cleverer man might have read in it enough of menace between the lines to forearm him with caution at least.

But Clive merely read it once and destroyed it and tried to forget it.

It was not until some time afterward that, gradually, some instinct in him awoke suspicion. But for a long while he was not perfectly sure that he was being followed.

However, when he could no longer doubt it, and when the lurking figures and faces of at least two of the men who dogged him everywhere had become sufficiently familiar to him, he wrote a short note to his wife asking for an explanation.

But he got none – principally because his wife had already sailed.

The effect of Winifred's letters on an impressionable, sensitive, and self-distrustful character, was never very quickly effaced.

Whatever was morbid in the man became apparent after he had received such letters, and took the form of a quiet withdrawal from the circles which he affected, until such time as mortification and shame had subsided.

He had written briefly to Athalie saying that business would take him out of town for a few weeks. Which it did as a matter of fact, landing him at Spring Pond, Long Island, where he completed the purchase of the Greensleeve tavern and took title in his own name.

Old Ledlie had died; his only heir appeared to be glad enough to sell; the title was free and clear; the possibilities of the place fascinating.

Clive prowled around the place in two minds whether he might venture to call in a local builder and have him strip the protuberances from the house, which was all that was necessary to restore it to its original form; or whether he ought to leave that for Athalie to manage.

But there remained considerable to be done; May was in full bud and blossom already; and if Athalie was to enjoy the place at all that summer it ought to be made livable.

So Clive summoned several people to his aid with the following quick results: A New York general contractor took over the entire job guaranteeing quick results or forfeiture. A local nurseryman and an emergency gang started in. They hedged the entire front with privet for immediate effect, cleared, relocated, and restored the ancient flower garden on its quaint original lines; planted its borders thickly with old time perennials, peonies, larkspurs, hollyhocks, clove pinks, irises, and lilies; replanted the rose beds with old-fashioned roses, set the wall beds with fruit trees and gay annuals, sodded, trimmed, raked, levelled, cleaned up, and pruned, until the garden was a charming and logical thing.

Fortunately the newness was not apparent because the old stucco walls remained laden with wistaria and honeysuckle, and the alley of ancient box trees required clipping only.

In the centre of the lawn he built a circular pool and piped the water from Spring Brook. It fell in a slender jet, icy cold, powdering pool, basin and grass with spray.

Where half-dead locust and cedar trees had to be felled Clive set tall arbor vitæ and soft maples. He was an expensive young man where Athalie's pleasure was concerned; and as he worked there in the lovely May weather his interest and enthusiasm grew with every fresh fragrant spadeful of brown earth turned.

The local building genius repainted the aged house after bay window and gingerbread had been stripped from its otherwise dignified facade; replaced broken slates on the roof, mended the great fat chimneys, matched the traces of pale bluish-green that remained on the window shutters, filled in the sashes with small, square panes, instituted modern plumbing, drainage, sewage, and electric lights – all of which was emergency work and not too difficult as the city improvements had now been extended as far as the village a mile to the eastward. But it was expensive.

At first Clive had decided to leave the interior to Athalie, but he finally made up his mind to restore the place on its original lines with the exception of her mother's room. This room he recognised from her frequent description of it; and he locked it, pocketed the key, and turned loose his men.

All that they did was to plaster where it was needed, re-kalsomine all walls and ceilings, scrape, clean, mend, and re-enamel the ancient woodwork. Trim, casings, wainscot, and stairs were restored to their original design and finish; dark hardwood floors replaced the painted boards which had rotted; wherever a scrap of early wall-paper remained he matched it as closely as possible, having an expert from New York to do the business; and the fixtures he chose were simple and graceful and reflected the period as nearly as electric light fixtures can simulate an era of candle-sticks and tallow dips.

He was tremendously tempted to go ahead, so fascinating had the work become to him, but he realised that it was not fair to Athalie. All that he could reasonably do he had done; the place was clean and fresh, and restored to its original condition outside and in, except for the modern necessities of lighting, heating, plumbing, and running water in pantry, laundry, kitchen, and bathrooms. Two of the latter had replaced two clothes-presses; the ancient cellar had been cemented and whitewashed, and heavily stocked with furnace and kitchen coal and kindling.

Also there were fire-dogs for the three fine old-fashioned fireplaces in the house which had been disinterred from under bricked-in and plastered surfaces where only the aged mantel shelves and a hole for a stove pipe revealed their probable presence.

The carpets were too ragged and soiled to retain; the furniture too awful. But he replaced the latter, leaving its disposition and the pleasure of choosing new furniture and new floor coverings to Athalie.

Hers also was to be the pleasure of re-stocking the house with linen; of selecting upholstery and curtains and the requisites for pantry, kitchen, and dining-room.

Once she told him what she had meant to do with the bar. And he took the liberty of doing it, turning the place into a charming sun-parlour, where, in a stone basin, gold-fish swam and a forest of feathery and flowering semi-tropical plants spread a fretwork of blue shadows over the cool stone floor.

But he left the big stove as it had been; and the rather quaint old chairs with their rush-bottoms renovated and their lustrous wood stained and polished by years of use.

Every other day he went to Spring Pond from his office in New York to watch the progress of the work. The contractor was under penalty; Clive had not balked at the expense; and the work was put through with a rush.

In the meanwhile he called on Athalie occasionally, pretending always whenever she spoke of it, that negotiations were still under way concerning the property in question, and that such transactions required patience and time.

One matter, too, was gradually effaced from his mind. The tall man and the short man who had been following him so persistently had utterly disappeared. And nobody else seemed to have taken their places. Eventually he forgot it altogether.

Two months was the period agreed upon for the completion of Athalie's house and garden, and the first week in July found the work done.

It had promised to be a hot week in the city: Athalie, who had been nowhere except for an evening at some suburban restaurant, had begun to feel fagged and listless and in need of a vacation.

And that morning she had decided to go away for a month to some quiet place in the mountains, and she was already consulting various folders and advertisements which she had accumulated since early spring, when the telephone in her bedroom rang.

She had never heard Clive's voice so gay over the wire. She told him so; and she could hear his quick and rather excited laugh.

"Are you very busy to-day?" he asked.

"No; I'm going to close up shop for a month, Clive. I'm hot and tired and dying for a glimpse of something green. I was just looking over a lot of advertisements – cottages and hotels. Come up and help me."