Athalie - Page 116/222

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boobs in this out-of-date old town.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.