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.
"I couldn't. I was only a kid, you see. My mother wouldn't let me go there that summer. And father and I joined a club down South so we did not go back for the duck-shooting. That is how it happened."
She nodded, gravely, but said nothing to him about her faith in his return, how confidently, how patiently she had waited through that long, long summer for the boy who never returned.
"I did think of you often," he volunteered, smiling at her.
"I thought of you, too. I hoped you would come and let me teach you to sail a boat."
"That's so! I remember now. You were going to show me how."
"Have you learned to sail a boat?"
"No. I'll tell you what I'll do, Athalie, I'll come down this summer "
"But I don't live there any more."
"That's so. Where do you live?"
She hesitated, and his eyes fell for the first time from her youthful and engaging face to the clothes she wore black clothes that seemed cheap even to a boy who had no knowledge of feminine clothing. She was all in rusty black, hat, gloves, jacket and skirt; and the austere and slightly mean setting made the contrast of her hair and skin the more fresh and vivid.
"I live," she replied diffidently, "with my two sisters in West Fifty-fourth Street. I am stenographer and typewriter in the offices of a department store."
"I'd like to come to see you," he said impulsively. "Shall I when vacation begins?"
"Are you still at school?"
He laughed: "I'm at Harvard. I'm down for Easter just now. Tell me, Athalie, would you care to have me come to see you when I return?"
"If you would care to come."
"I surely would!" he said cordially, offering his hand in adieu "I want to ask you a lot of questions and we can talk over all those jolly old times," as though years of comradeship lay behind them instead of an hour or two. Then his glance fell on the slim hand he was shaking, and he saw the strap-watch which he had given her still clasped around her wrist.
"You wear that yet? that old shooting-watch of mine!" he laughed.
She smiled.
"I'll give you a better one than that next Christmas," he said, taking out a little notebook and pencil. "I'll write it down 'strap-watch for Athalie Greensleeve next Christmas' there it is! And will you give me your address?"
She gave it; he noted it, closed his little Russia-leather book with a snap, and pocketed it.
"I'm glad I saw you," said the girl; "I hope you won't forget me. I am late; I must go I suppose "
"Indeed I won't forget you," he assured her warmly, shaking the slender black-gloved hand again.
He meant it when he said it. Besides she was so pretty and frank and honest with him. Few girls he knew in his own caste were as attractive; none as simple, as direct.
He really meant to call on her some day and talk things over. But days, and weeks, and finally months slipped away. And somehow, in thinking of her and of his promise, there now seemed very little left for them to talk about. After all they had said to each other nearly all there was to be said, there on the Elevated platform that April morning. Besides he had so many, many things to do; so many pleasures promised and accepted, visits to college friends, a fishing trip with his father, really there seemed to be no hour in the long vacation unengaged.
He always wanted to see her when he thought of her; he really meant to find a moment to do it, too. But there seemed to be no moment suitable.
Even when he was back in Cambridge he thought about her occasionally, and planned, vaguely, a trip to New York so that he might redeem his promise to her.
He took it out in thinking.
At Christmas, however, he sent her a wrist-watch, a dainty French affair of gold and enamel; and a contrite note excusing himself for the summer delinquencies and renewing his promise to call on her.
The Dead Letter Office returned watch and letter.
CHAPTER V
THERE was a suffocating stench of cabbage in hallway and corridor as usual when Athalie came in that evening. She paused to rest a tired foot on the first step of the stairway, for a moment or two, quietly breathing her fatigue, then addressed herself to the monotonous labour before her, which was to climb five flights of unventilated stairs, let herself into the tiny apartment with her latch-key, and immediately begin her part in preparing the evening meal for three.
Doris, now twenty-one, sprawled on a lounge in her faded wrapper reading an evening paper. Catharine, a year younger, stood by a bureau, some drawers of which had been pulled out, sorting over odds and ends of crumpled finery.
"Well," remarked Doris to Athalie, as she came in, "what do you know?"
"Nothing," said Athalie listlessly.
Doris rattled the evening paper: "Gee!" she commented, "it's getting to be something fierce all these young girls disappearing! Here's another they can't account for it; her parents say she had no love affair " And she began to read the account aloud while Catharine continued to sort ribbons and Athalie dropped into a big, shabby chair, legs extended, arms pendant.
When Doris finished reading she tossed the paper over to Athalie who let it slide from her knees to the floor.
"Her picture is there," said Doris. "She isn't pretty."
"Isn't she?" yawned Athalie.
Catharine jerked open another drawer: "It's always a man's doing. You bet they'll find that some fellow had her on a string. What idiots girls are!"
"I should worry," remarked Doris. "Any fresh young man who tries to get me jingled will wish he hadn't."
"Don't talk that way," remonstrated Athalie.
"What way?"
"That slangy way you think is smart. What's the use of letting down when you know better."
"What's the use of keeping up on fifteen per? I could do the Gladys to any Percy on fifty. My talk suits my wages and it suits me, too God! I suppose it's fried ham again to-night," she added, jumping up and walking into the kitchenette. And, pausing to look back at her sisters: "If any Johnny asks me to-night I'll go! I'm that hungry for real food."
"Don't be a fool," snapped Catharine.
Athalie glanced at the alarm clock, passed her hands wearily across her eyes, and rose: "It's after six, Doris. You haven't time for anything very much." And she went into the kitchenette.
Once or twice during the preparation of the meal Doris swore in her soft girlish voice, which made the contrast peculiarly shocking; and finally Athalie said bluntly: "If I didn't know you were straight I wouldn't think so from the way you behave."
Doris turned on her a flushed and angry face: "Will you kindly stop knocking me?"
"I'm not. I'm only saying that your talk is loose. And so it is."
"What's the difference as long as I'm not on the loose myself?"
"The difference is that men will think you are; that's all."
"Men mistake any girl who works for a living."
"Then see that the mistake is their fault not yours. I don't understand why a girl can't keep her self-respect even if she's a stenographer, as I am, or works in a shop as Catharine does, or in the theatre as you do. And if a girl talks loosely, she'll think loosely, sooner or later."
"Hurry up that supper!" called Catharine. "I'm going to a show with Genevieve, and I want time to dress."
Athalie, scrambling the eggs, which same eggs would endure no other mode of preparation, leaned over sideways and kissed Doris on her lovely neck.
"Darling," she said, "I'm not trying to be disagreeable; I only want us all to keep up."
"I know it, ducky. I guess you're right. I'll cut out that rough stuff if you like."
Athalie said: "It's only too easy to let down when you're thrown with careless and uneducated people as we are. I have to struggle against it all the while. For, somehow I seem to know that a girl who keeps up her grammar keeps up her self-respect, too. If you slouch mentally you slouch physically. And then it's not so difficult to slouch morally."
Doris laughed: "You funny thing! You certainly have educated yourself a lot since school, you use such dandy English."
"I read good English."
"I know you do. I can't. If somebody would only write a rattling story in good English! but I've got to have the story first of all or I can't read it. All those branch-library books you lug in are too slow for me. If it wasn't for hearing you talk every day I'd be talking like the rest of the chorus at the Egyptian Garden; 'Sa-ay, ain't you done with my make-up box? Yaas, you did swipe it! I seen you. Who's a liar? All right, if you want to mix it '"
"Don't!" pleaded Athalie. "Oh, Doris, I don't see why you can't find some other business "
Doris began to strut about the kitchenette.
"Please don't! It makes me actually ill!"
"When I learn how to use my voice and my legs you'll see me playing leads. Here, ducky, I'll take the eggs "
Athalie, her arms also full, followed her out to the table which Catharine had set very carelessly.
They drank Croton water and strong tea, and gravely discussed how, from their several limited wardrobes sufficient finery might be extracted to clothe Catharine suitably for her evening's entertainment.
"It's rotten to be poor," remarked the latter. "You're only young once, and this gosh-dinged poverty spoils everything for me."
"Quit kicking," said Doris. "I don't like these eggs but I'm eating them. If I were wealthy I'd be eating terrapin, wouldn't I?"
"Genevieve has a new gown for to-night," pouted Catharine. "How can I help feeling shabby and unhappy?"
"Genevieve seems to have a number of unaccountable things," remarked Doris, partly closing her velvet eyes. "She has a fur coat, too."
"Doris! That isn't square of you!"
"That isn't the question. Is Genevieve on the square? That's what worries me, Kit!"
"What a perfectly rotten thing to say!" insisted Catharine resentfully. "You know she's on the level!"
"Well then, where does she get it? You know what her salary is?"
Athalie said, coolly: "Every girl ought to believe every other girl on the square until the contrary is proven. It's shameful not to."
"Come over to the Egyptian Garden and try it!" laughed Doris. "If you can believe that bunch of pet cats is on the square you can believe anything, Athalie."
Catharine, still very deeply offended, rose and went into the bedroom which she shared with Doris. Presently she called for somebody to assist her in dressing.
Doris, being due at the theatre by seven o'clock, put on her rusty coat and hat, and, nodding to Athalie, walked out; and the latter went away to aid Catharine.
"You do look pretty," she insisted after Catharine had powdered her face and neck and had wiped off her silky skin with the chamois rag.
The girl gazed at her comely, regular features in the mirror, patted her hair, moistened her red lips, then turned her profile and gazed at it with the aid of a hand-glass.
"Who else is going?" inquired Athalie.
"Some friends of Genevieve's."
"Men?"
"I believe so."
"Two, I suppose."
Catharine nodded.
"Don't you know their names?"
"No. Genevieve says that one of them is crazy to meet me."
"Where did he see you?"
"At Winton's. I put on some evening gowns for his sister."
Athalie watched her pin on her hat, then held her coat for her. "They'll all bear watching," she remarked quietly. "If it's merely society they want you know as well as I that they seek it in their own circles, not in ours."
Catharine made no audible response. She began to re-pin her hat, then, pettishly: "I wish I had a taxi to call for me so I needn't wear a hat!"
"Why not wish for an automobile?" suggested Athalie, laughing. "Women who have them don't wear hats to the theatre."
"It is tough to be poor!" insisted Catharine fiercely. "It drives me almost frantic to see what I see in all those limousines, and then walk home, or take a car if I'm flush."
"How are you going to help it, dear?" inquired Athalie in that gently humorous voice which usually subdued and shamed her sisters.
But Catharine only mumbled something rebellious, turned, stared at herself in the glass, and walked quickly toward the door.
"As for me," she muttered. "I don't blame any girl "
"What?"
But Catharine marched out with a twitch of her narrow skirts, still muttering incoherencies.
Athalie, thoughtful, but not really disturbed, went into the empty sitting-room, picked up the evening paper, glanced absently at the head-lines, dropped it, and stood motionless in the centre of the room, one narrow hand bracketed on her hip, the other pinching her under lip.
For a few minutes she mused, then sighing, she walked into the kitchenette, unhooked a blue-checked apron, rolled up her sleeves as far as her white, rounded arms permitted, and started in on the dishes.