Here on the faded carpet at her mother's feet, full in the lamplight she sat her down and ate in hungry silence while her mother sewed.
Athalie seldom studied. A glance at her books seemed to be enough for her. And she passed examinations without effort under circumstances where plodders would have courted disaster.
Rare questions from her mother, brief replies marked the meal. When she had satisfied her hunger she jumped up, ran downstairs with the empty dishes, and came slowly back again, a slender, supple figure with tangled hair curling below her shoulders, dirty shirt-waist, soiled features and hands, and the ragged blue skirt of a sailor suit hanging to her knees.
"Your other sailor suit is washed and mended," said her mother, smiling at her child in tatters.
Athalie, her gaze remote, nodded absently. After a moment she lifted her steady dark blue eyes:
"A boy kissed me, mamma," she remarked, dropping cross-legged at her mother's feet.
"Don't kiss strange boys," said her mother quietly.
"I didn't. But why not?"
"It is not considered proper."
"Why?"
Her mother said: "Kissing is a common and vulgar practice except in the intimacy of one's own family."
"I thought so," nodded Athalie; "I soaked him for doing it."
"Who was he?"
"Oh, it was that fresh Harry Eldon. I told him if he ever tried to get fresh with me again I'd kill him Mamma?"
"Yes?"
"All that about poor old Mr. Manners isn't true, is it?"
Her mother smiled. The children had been taught to leave a morsel on their plates "for manners"; and to impress it upon them their mother had invented a story about a poor old man named Manners who depended upon what they left, and who crept in to eat it after they had retired from table.
So leaving something "for Manners" had been thoroughly and successfully inculcated, until the habit was formed. And now Athalie was the last of the children to discover the gentle fraud practised upon her.
"I'm glad, anyway," concluded the child. "I never thought we left him enough to eat."
Her mother said: "I shall tell you only truths after this. You are old enough to understand reason, now, and to reason a little yourself."
"I do But I am not yet perfectly sure where babies come from. You said you would tell me that some day. I'd really like to know, mamma."
Her mother continued to sew for a while, then, passing the needle through the hem she looked down at her daughter.
"Have you formed any opinion of your own?"
"Yes," said the child honestly.
"Then I'd better tell you the truth," said her mother tranquilly, "because the truth is very wonderful and beautiful and interesting."
So she related to the child, very simply and clearly all that need be told concerning the mystery of life in its beginnings; and Athalie listened, enchanted.
And mostly it thrilled the child to realise that in her, too, lay latent a capability for the creation of life.
Another hour with her mother she remembered in after years.
Mrs. Greensleeve had not been as well: the doctor came oftener. Frequently Athalie returning from school discovered her mother lying on the bed. That evening the child was sitting on the floor at her mother's feet as usual, just inside the circle of lamplight, playing solitaire with an ancient pack of cards.
Presently something near the door attracted her attention and she lifted her head and sat looking at it, mildly interested, until, suddenly, she felt her mother's eyes on her, flushed hotly, and turned her head away.
"What were you looking at?" asked her mother in a low voice.
"Nothing, mamma."
"Athalie!"
"What, mamma?"
"What were you looking at?"
The child hung her head: "Nothing " she began; but her mother checked her: "Don't lie, Athalie. I'll try to understand you. Now tell me what you were what you thought you were looking at over there near the door."
The child turned and glanced back at the door over her shoulder.
"There is nothing there now," she muttered.
"Was there anything?"
Athalie sat silent for a while, then she laid her clasped hands across her mother's knees and rested her cheek on them.
"There was a woman there," she said.
"Where?"
"Over by the door."
"You saw her, Athalie?"
"Yes, mamma."
"Did she open the door and come in and then close it behind her?"
"No."
"How did she come in?"
"I don't know. She just came in."
"Was she a young woman?"
"No, old."
"Very old?"
"Not very. There was grey in her hair a little."
"How was she dressed?"
"She wore a night-gown, mamma. There were spots on it like medicine."
"Had you ever seen her before?"
"I think so."
"Who was she?"
"Mrs. Allen."
Her mother sat very still but her clasped hands tightened and a little of the colour faded from her cheeks. There was a Mrs. Allen who had been suffering from an illness which she herself was afraid she had.
"Do you mean Mrs. James Allen who lives on the old Allen farm?" she asked quietly.
"Yes, mamma."
In the morning they heard of Mrs. Allen's death. And it was several months before Mrs. Greensleeve again spoke to her daughter on the one subject about which Athalie was inclined to be most reticent. But that subject now held a deadly fascination for her mother.
They had been sitting together in Mrs. Greensleeve's bedroom; the mother knitting, in bed propped up upon the pillows. Athalie, cross-legged on a hassock beside her, was doing a little mending on her own account, when her mother said abruptly but very quietly:
"I have always known that you possess a power which others cannot understand."
The child's face flushed deeply and she bent closer over her mending.
"I knew it when they first brought you to me, a baby just born I don't know how I knew it, but I did."
Athalie, sewing steadily, said nothing.
"I think," said her mother, "you are, in some degree, what is called clairvoyant."
"What?"
"Clairvoyant," repeated her mother quietly. "It comes from the French, clair, clear; the verb voir, to see; clair-voyant, seeing clearly. That is all, Athalie Nothing to be ashamed of if it is true, " for the child had dropped her work and had hidden her face in her hands.
"Dear, are you afraid to talk about it to your mother?"
"N-no. What is there to say about it?"
"Nothing very much. Perhaps the less said the better I don't know, little daughter. I don't understand it comprehend it. If it's so, it's so I see you sometimes looking at things I cannot see; I know sometimes you hear sounds which I cannot hear Things happen which perplex the rest of us; and, somehow I seem to know that they do not perplex you. What to us seems unnatural to you is natural, even a commonplace matter of course."
"That's it, mamma. I have never seen anything that did not seem quite natural to me."
"Did you know that Mrs. Allen had died when you thought you saw her?"
"I did see her."
"Yes Did you know she had died?"
"Not until I saw her."
"Did you know it then?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"I don't know how I knew it. I seemed to know it."
"Did you know she had been ill?"
"No, mamma."
"Did it in any way frighten you make you uneasy when you saw her standing there?"
"Why, no," said Athalie, surprised.
"Not even when you knew she was dead?"
"No. Why should it? Why should I be afraid?"
Her mother was silent.
"Why?" asked Athalie, curiously. "Is there anything to be afraid of with God and all his angels watching us? Is there?"
"Not even when you knew she was dead?"
"No. Why should it? Why should I be afraid?"
Her mother was silent.
"Why?" asked Athalie, curiously. "Is there anything to be afraid of with God and all his angels watching us? Is there?"
"No."
"Then," said the child with some slight impatience, "why is it that other people seem to be a little afraid of me and of what they say I can hear and see? I have good eyesight; I see clearly; that is all, isn't it? And there is nothing to frighten anybody in seeing clearly, is there?"
"No, dear."
"People make me so cross," continued Athalie, "and so ashamed when they ask so many questions. What is there to be surprised at if sometimes I see things inside my mind. They are just as real as when I see them outside. They are no different."
Her mother nodded, encouragingly.
"When papa was in New York," went on Athalie, "and I saw him talking to some men in a hotel there, why should it be surprising just because papa was in New York and I was here when I saw him?"
"It surprises others, dear, because they cannot see what is beyond the vision of their physical senses."
Athalie said: "They tease me in school because they say I can see around corners. It makes me very cross and unhappy, and I don't want anybody to know that I see what they can't see. I'm ashamed to have them know it."
"Perhaps it is just as well you feel that way. People are odd. What they do not understand they ridicule. A dog that would not notice a horse-drawn vehicle will bark at an automobile."
"Mamma?"
"Yes, dear."
"Do you know that dogs, and I think cats, too, see many things that I do; and that other people do not see."
"Why do you think so?"
"I have noticed it The other evening when the white cat was dozing on your bed, and I was down here on the floor, sewing, I saw something. And the cat looked up suddenly and saw it, too."
"Athalie!"
"She did, mamma. I knew perfectly well that she saw what I saw."
"What was it you saw?"
"Only a young man. He walked over to the window "
"And then?"
"I don't know, mamma. I don't know where they go. They go, that's all I know."
"Who was he?"
"I don't know."
"Did he look at us?"
"Yes He seemed to be thinking of something pleasant."
"Did he smile?"
"He had a pleasant look And once, it was last Sunday over by the bed I saw a little boy. He was kneeling down beside the bed. And Mr. Ledlie's dog was lying here beside me Don't you remember how he suddenly lifted his head and barked?"
"Yes, I remember. But you didn't tell me why at the time."
"I didn't like to I never like to speak about these people I see."
"Had you ever before seen the little boy?"
"No, mamma."
"Was he alive do you think?"
"Why, yes. They all are alive."
"Mrs. Allen was not alive when you saw her over by the door."
The child looked puzzled. "Yes," she said, "but that was a little different. Not very different. They are all perfectly alive, mamma."
"Even the ones we call dead? Are you sure of it?"
"Yes Yes, I'm sure of it. They are not dead Nothing seems to die. Nothing stays dead."
"What! Why do you believe that?"
Athalie said slowly: "Somebody shot and killed a poor little dog, once, just across the causeway bridge And the dog came into the garden afterward and ran all around, smelling, and wagging his tail."
"Athalie! Athalie! Be careful to control your imagination."
"Yes," said the child, thoughtfully, "I must be careful to control it. I can imagine almost anything if I try."
"How hard have you ever tried to imagine some of the things you see or think you see?"
"Mamma, I never try. I I don't care to see them. I'd rather not. Those things come. I haven't anything to do with it. I don't know these people, and I am not interested. I did try to see papa in New York if you call that imagination."
But her mother did not know what to call it because at the hour when Athalie had seen him, that mild and utterly unimaginative man was actually saying and doing what his daughter had seen and heard.
"Also," said Athalie, "I was thinking about that poor little yellow dog and wondering whether he was past all suffering, when he came gaily trotting into the garden, waving his tail quite happily. There was no dust or blood on him. He rolled on the grass, too, and barked and barked. But nobody seemed to hear him or notice him excepting I."
For a long while silence reigned in the lamp-lit room. When the other children came in to say good night to their mother she received them with an unusual tenderness. They went away; Athalie rose, yawning the yawn of healthy fatigue:
"Good night, mamma."
"Good night, little daughter."
They kissed: the mother drew her into a sudden and almost convulsive embrace.
"Darling, are you sure that nothing really dies?"
"I have never seen anything really dead, mamma. Even the 'dead' birds, why, the evening sky is full of them the little 'dead' ones I mean flock after flock, twittering and singing "
"Dear!"
"Yes, mamma."
"When you see me that way will you speak?"
"Yes."
"Promise, darling."
"Yes I'll kiss you, too if it is possible"
"Would it be possible?"
The child gazed at her, perplexed and troubled: "I don't know," she said slowly. Then, all in a moment her childish face paled and she clung to her mother and began to cry.
And her mother soothed her, tenderly, smilingly, kissing the tears from the child's eyes.
The next morning after the children had gone to school Mrs. Greensleeve was operated on without success.
CHAPTER III
THE black dresses of the children had become very rusty by spring, but business had been bad at the Hotel Greensleeve, and Athalie, Doris, and Catharine continued to wear their shabby mourning.
Greensleeve haunted the house all day long, roaming from bar to office, from one room to another, silently opening doors of unoccupied chambers to peer about in the dusty obscurity, then noiselessly closing them, he would slink away down the dim corridor to his late wife's room and sit there through the long sunny afternoon, his weak face buried in his hands.
Ledlie had grown fatter, redder of visage, whiter of hair and beard. When a rare guest arrived, or when local loafers wandered into the bar with the faint stench of fertilizer clinging to their boots, he shuffled ponderously from office to bar, serving as economically as he dared whoever desired to be served.
Always a sprig of something green protruded from his small tight mouth. His pale eyes, now faded almost colourless, had become weak and red-rimmed, and he blinked continually except in the stale semi-darkness of the house.
Always, now, he was muttering and grumbling his disapproval of the children "Eatin' their heads off I tell you, Pete! What good is all this here schoolin' doin' 'em when they ought to git out some'rs an' earn their vittles?"
But if Greensleeve's attitude was one of passive acquiescence, he made no effort to withdraw the children from school. Once, when life was younger, and Jack, his first baby, came, he had dreamed of college for him, and of a career in letters perhaps something dignified, leisurely, profound beyond his own limits. And of a modest corner somewhere within the lustre of his son's environment where he and his wife, grey-haired, might dream and admire, finding there surcease from care and perhaps the peace which passes all understanding.