Athalie

"C. Bailey, Junior."

"What is the C for?"

"Clive."

"Do you go to school?"

"Yes, but I'm back for the holidays."

"Holidays," she repeated vaguely. "Oh, that's so. Christmas will come day after to-morrow."

He nodded. "I think I'm going to have a new pair of guns, some books, and a horse. What do you expect?"

"Nothing," said Athalie.

"What? Isn't there anything you want?" And then, too late, some glimmer of the real state of affairs illuminated his boyish brain. And he grew red with embarrassment.

They had finished their pastry; Athalie wiped her hands on a soiled and ragged and crumpled handkerchief, then scrubbed her scarlet mouth.

"I'd like to come down here for the summer vacation," said the boy, awkwardly. "I don't know whether my mother would like it."

"Why? It is pleasant."

He glanced instinctively around him at the dark and shabby bar-room, but offered no reason why his mother might not care for the Hotel Greensleeve. One thing he knew; he meant to urge his mother to come, or to let him come.

A few minutes later the outer door banged open and into the bar came stamping four men and two bay-men, their oil-skins shining with salt-spray, guns glistening. Thud! went the strings of dead ducks on the floor; somebody scratched a match and lighted the ceiling lamp.

"Hello, Junior!" cried one of the men in oil-skins, – "how did you make out on Silver Shoals?"

"All right, father," he began; but his father had caught sight of Athalie who had risen to retreat.

"Who are you, young lady?" he inquired with a jolly smile, – "are you little Red-Riding Hood or the Princess Far Away, or perhaps the Sleeping Beauty recently awakened?"

"I'm Athalie Greensleeve."

"Lady Greensleeves! I knew you were somebody quite as distinguished as you are beautiful. Would you mind saying to Mr. Greensleeve that there is much moaning on the bar, and that it will still continue until he arrives to instil the stillness of the still – "

"What?"

"We merely want a drink, my child. Don't look so seriously and distractingly pretty. I was joking, that's all. Please tell your father how very thirsty we are."

As the child turned to obey, C. Bailey, Sr., put one big arm around her shoulders: "I didn't mean to tease you on such short acquaintance," he whispered. "Are you offended, little Lady Greensleeves?"

Athalie looked up at him in puzzled silence.

"Smile, just once, so I shall know I am forgiven," he said. "Will you?"

The child smiled confusedly, caught the boy's eye, and smiled again, most engagingly, at C. Bailey, Sr.'s, son.

"Oho!" exclaimed the senior Bailey laughingly and looking at his son, "I'm forgiven for your sake, am I?"

"For heaven's sake, Clive," protested one of the gunners, "let the little girl go and find her father. If I ever needed a drink it's now!"

So Athalie went away to summon her father. She found him as she had last noticed him, sitting asleep on the big leather office chair. Ledlie, behind the desk, was still reading his soiled newspaper, which he continued to do until Athalie cried out something in a frightened voice. Then he laid aside his paper, blinked at her, got up leisurely and shuffled over to where his partner was sitting dead on his leather chair.

The duck-hunters left that night. One after another the four gentlemen came over to speak to Athalie and to her sisters. There was some confusion and crowding in the hallway, what with the doctor, the undertaker's assistants, neighbours, and the New York duck-hunters.

Ledlie ventured to overcharge them on the bill. As nobody objected he regretted his moderation. However, the taking off of Greensleeve helped business in the bar where sooner or later everybody drifted.

When the four-seated livery wagon drove up to take the gunning party to the train, the boy lingered behind the others and then hurried back to where Athalie was standing, white-faced, tearless, staring at the closed door of the room where they had taken her father.

Bailey Junior's touch on her arm made her turn: "I am sorry," he said. "I hope you will not be very unhappy… And – here is a Christmas present – "

He took the dazed child's icy little hand in his, and, fumbling the business rather awkwardly, he finally contrived to snap a strap-watch over the delicate wrist. It was the one he had been wearing.

"Good-bye, Athalie," he murmured, very red.

The girl gazed at him out of her lovely confused eyes for a moment. But when she tried to speak no sound came.

"Good-bye," he said again, choking slightly. "I'll surely, surely come back to see you. Don't be unhappy. I'll come."

But it was many years before he returned to the Hotel Greensleeve.

CHAPTER IV

SHE was fifteen years old before she saw him again. His strap-watch was still on her wrist; his memory, unfaded, still enshrined in her heart of a child, for she was as yet no more than that at fifteen. And the moment she saw him she recognised him.

It was on the Sixth Avenue Elevated Station at Twenty-third Street one sunny day in April; he stood waiting for the downtown train which she stepped out of when it stopped.

He did not notice her, so she went over to him and called him by name; and the tall, good-looking, fashionably dressed young fellow turned to her without recognition.

But the next instant his smooth, youthful face lighted up, and off came his hat with the gay college band adorning it:

"Athalie Greensleeve!" he exclaimed, showing his pleasure unmistakably.

"C. Bailey, Junior," she rejoined as steadily as she could, for her heart was beating wildly with the excitement of meeting him and her emotions were not under full control.

"You have grown so," he said with the easy, boyish cordiality of his caste, "I didn't recognise you for a moment. Tell me, do you still live down – er – down there?"

She said:

"I knew you as soon as I set eyes on you. You are very much taller, too… No, we went away from Spring Pond the year after my father died."

"I see," he said sympathetically. And back into his memory flashed that scene with her by the stove in the dusky bar. And then he remembered her as she stood in her red hood and cloak staring at the closed door of the room where her dead father lay. And he remembered touching her frosty little hand, and the incident of the watch.

"I never went back there," he mused, half to himself, looking curiously at the girl before him. "I wanted to go – but I never did."

"No, you never came back," she said slowly.