Athalie by Robert W. Chambers

Author:Robert W. Chambers [Chambers, Robert W. (Robert William)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

"She said in a low voice, still watching intently: 'Blue sky, green trees, a snowy shore, and little azure wavelets....'"

CHAPTER XVII

IT was about five months later that Cecil Reeve wrote his long reply to a dozen letters from Clive Bailey which heretofore had remained unanswered and neglected:

"—For Heaven's sake, do you think I've nothing to do except to write you letters? I never write letters; and here's the exception to prove it. And if I were not at the Geyser Club, and if I had not dined incautiously, I would not write this!

"But first permit me the indiscretion of asking you why an engaged man is so charitably interested in the welfare of a young girl who is not engaged to him? And if he is interested, why doesn't he write to her himself and find out how she is? Or has she turned you down?

"But you need not incriminate and degrade yourself by answering this question.

"Seriously, Clive, you'd better get all thoughts of Athalie Greensleeve out of your head as long as you intend to get married. I knew, of course, that you'd been hard hit. Everybody was gossiping last winter. But this is rather raw, isn't it?—asking me to find out how Athalie is and what she is doing; and to write you in detail? Well anyway I'll tell you once for all what I hear and know about her and her family—her family first, as I happen to have had dealings with them. And hereafter you can do your own philanthropic news gathering.

"Doris and Catharine were in a rotten show I backed. And when I couldn't afford to back it any longer Doris was ungrateful enough to marry a man who cultivated dates, figs, and pecan nuts out in lower California, and Catharine has just written me a most impertinent letter saying that real men grew only west of the Mississippi, and that she is about to marry one of them who knows more in half a minute than anybody could ever learn during a lifetime in New York, meaning me and Hargrave. I guess she meant me; and I guess it's so—about Hargrave. Except for myself, we certainly are a bunch of boobs in this out-of-date old town.

"Now about Athalie,—she dropped out of sight after you went abroad. Nobody seemed to know where she was or what she was doing. Nobody ever saw her at restaurants or theatres except during the first few weeks after your departure. And then she was usually with that Dane chap—you know—the explorer. I wrote to her sisters making inquiries in behalf of myself and Francis Hargrave; but they either didn't know or wouldn't tell us where she was living. Neither would Dane. I didn't suppose he knew at the time; but he did.

"Well, what do you think has happened? Athalie Greensleeve is the most talked about girl in town! She has become the fashion, Clive. You hear her discussed at dinners, at dances, everywhere.

"Some bespectacled guy from Columbia University had an article about her in one of the recent magazines.

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