Robert Chambers - Athalie

He planted his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, his head on his hands, apparently buried in thought.

After a little while: "C. Bailey, Junior," she ventured, "you must not let me keep you too long."

"What?" He lifted his head.

"You are on your way to the opera, aren't you?"

"Am I? That's so… I'd rather stay here if you'll let me."

"But the opera !" she protested with emphasis.

"What do I care for the opera?"

"Don't you?"

He laughed: "No; do you?"

"I'm mad about it."

Still laughing he said: "Then, in my place, you wouldn't give up the opera for me , would you, Athalie?"

She started to say "No!" very decidedly; but checked herself. Then, deliberately honest:

"If," she began, "I were going to the opera, and you came in here – after four years of not seeing you – and if I had to choose – I don't believe I'd go to the opera. But it would be a dreadful wrench, C. Bailey, Junior!"

"It's no wrench to me."

"Because you often go."

"Because, even if I seldom went there could be no question of choice between the opera and Athalie Greensleeve."

"C. Bailey, Junior, you are not honest."

"Yes, I am. Why do you say so?"

"I judge by past performances," she said, her humorous eyes on him.

"Are you going to throw past performances in my face every time I come to see you?"

"Are you coming again?"

"That isn't generous of you, Athalie – "

"I really mean it," said the girl. "Are you?"

"Coming here? Of course I am if you'll let me!"

The last time he had said, "If you want me." Now it was modified to "If you'll let me," – a development and a new footing to which neither were yet accustomed, perhaps not even conscious of.

"C. Bailey, Junior, do you want to come?"

"I do indeed. It is so bully of you to be nice to me after – everything. And it's so jolly to talk over – things – with you."

She leaned forward in her chair, her pretty hands joined between her knees.

"Please," she said, "don't say you'll come if you are not coming."

"But I am – "

"I know you said so twice before… I don't mean to be horrid or to reproach you, but – I am going to tell you – I was disappointed – even a – a little – unhappy. And it – lasted – some time… So, if you are not coming, tell me so now… It is hard to wait – too long."

"Athalie," he said, completely surprised by the girl's frank avowal and by the unsuspected emotion in himself which was responding, "I am – I had no idea – I don't deserve your kindness to me – your loyalty – I'm a – I'm a – a pup! That's what I am – an undeserving, ungrateful, irresponsible, and asinine pup! That's what all boys in college are – but it's no excuse for not keeping my word – for making you unhappy – "

"C. Bailey, Junior, you were just a boy. And I was a child… I am still, in spite of my nineteen years – nearly twenty at that – not much different, not enough changed to know that I'm a woman. I feel exactly as I did toward you – not grown up, – or that you have grown up… Only I know, somehow, I'd have a harder time of it now, if you tell me you'll come, and then – "

"I will come, Athalie! I want to," he said impetuously. "You're more interesting, – a lot jollier, – than any girl I know. I always suspected it, too – the bigger fool I to lose all that time we might have had together – "

She, surprised for a moment, lifted her pretty head and laughed outright, checking his somewhat impulsive monologue. And he looked at her, disturbed.

"I'm only laughing because you speak of all those years we might have had together, as though – " And suddenly she checked herself in her turn, on the brink of saying something that was not so funny after all.

Probably he understood what impulse had prompted her to terminate abruptly both laughter and discourse, for he reddened and gazed rather fixedly at the radiator which was now clanking and clinking in a very noisy manner.

"You ought to have a fireplace and an open fire," he said. "It's the cosiest thing on earth – with a cat on the hearth and a big chair and a good book… Athalie, do you remember that stove? And how I sat there in wet shooting clothes and stockinged feet?"

"Yes," she said, drawing her own bare ones further under her chair.

"Do you know what you looked like to me when you came in so silently, dressed in your red hood and cloak?"

"What did I look like?"

"A little fairy princess."

" I? In that ragged cloak?"

" I didn't see the rags. All I saw was your lithe little fairy figure and your yellow hair and your wonderful dark eyes in the ruddy light from the stove. I tell you, Athalie, I was enchanted."

"How odd! I never dreamed you thought that of me when I stood there looking at you, utterly lost in admiration – "

"Oh, come, Athalie!" he laughed; "you are getting back at me!"

"It's true. I thought you the most wonderful boy I had ever seen."

"Until I disillusioned you," he said.

"You never did, C. Bailey, Junior."

"What! Not when I proved a piker?"

But she only smiled into his amused and challenging eyes and slowly shook her head.

Once or twice, mechanically, he had slipped a flat gold cigarette case from his pocket, and then, mechanically still, had put it back. Not accustomed to modern men of his caste she had not paid much attention to the unconscious hint of habit. Now as he did it again it occurred to her to ask him why he did not smoke.

"May I?"

"Yes. I like it."

"Do you smoke?"

"No – now and then when I'm troubled."

"Is that often?" he asked lightly.

"Very seldom," she replied, amused; "and the proof is that I never smoked more than half a dozen cigarettes in all my life."

"Will you try one now?" he asked mischievously.

"I'm not in trouble, am I?"

"I don't know. I am."

"What troubles you, C. Bailey, Junior?" she asked, humorously.

"My disinclination to leave. And it's after eleven."

"If you never get into any more serious trouble than that," she said, "I shall not worry about you."

"Would you worry if I were in trouble?"

"Naturally."

"Why?"

"Why? Because you are my friend. Why shouldn't I worry?"

"Do you really take our friendship as seriously as that?"

"Don't you ?"

He changed countenance, hesitated, flicked the ashes from his cigarette. Suddenly he looked her straight in the face:

"Yes. I do take it seriously," he said in a voice so quietly and perhaps unnecessarily emphatic that, for a few moments, she found nothing to say in response.

Then, smilingly: "I am glad you look at it that way. It means that you will come back some day."

"I will come to-morrow if you'll let me."

Which left her surprised and silent but not at all disquieted.

"Shall I, Athalie?"

"Yes – if you wish."

"Why not?" he said with more unnecessary emphasis and as though addressing himself, and perhaps others not present. "I see no reason why I shouldn't if you'll let me. Do you?"

"No."

"May I take you to dinner and to the theatre?"

A quick glow shot through her, leaving a sort of whispering confusion in her brain which seemed full of distant voices.

"Yes, I'd like to go with you."

"That's fine! And we'll have supper afterward."

She smiled at him through the ringing confusion in her brain.

"Do you mind taking supper with me after the play?"

"No."

"Where then?"

"Anywhere – with you, C. Bailey, Junior."

Things began to seem to her a trifle unreal; she saw him a little vaguely: vaguely, too, she was conscious that to whatever she said he was responding with something more subtly vital than mere words. Faintly within her the instinct stirred to ignore, to repress something in him – in herself – she was not clear about just what she ought to repress, or which of them harboured it.