Athalie. Robert W. Chambers
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"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.
The ex-"professor" of penmanship had been always prone to dream. No dull and sordid reality, no hopeless sorrow had yet awakened him. Nor had his wife's death been more real than the half-strangled anguish of a dreamer, tossing in darkness. As for the children, they paid no more attention to Ledlie than they might have to a querulous but superannuated dog.
Jack, now fifteen, still dawdled at school, where his record was not good. Perhaps it was partly because he had no spending money, no clothing to maintain his boyish self-respect, no prospects of any sort, that he had become sullen, uncommunicative, and almost loutish.
Nobody governed him; his father was unqualified to control anybody or anything; his mother was dead.
With her death went the last vestige