Athalie - Page 77/222

Athalie ventured to send some Madonna lilies with no card attached;

but even the thought of her white flowers crossing the threshold of

Clive's world--although it was because of her devotion to him alone

that she dared salute his dead--left her sensitively concerned,

wondering whether it had been a proper thing for her to do.

However, the day following she wrote him.

"CLIVE DEAR, "I do not mean to intrude on your grief at such a time. This

is merely a line to say that you are never absent from my

mind.

"And Clive, nothing really dies. This is quite true. I am not

speaking of what faith teaches us. Faith is faith. But those

who 'see clearly' know. Nothing dies, Clive. Nothing.

That is even more than faith teaches us. Yet it, also, is

true.

"Dear little boy of my childhood, dear lad of my girlhood,

and, of my womanhood, dearest of men, I pray that God will

comfort you and yours.

"I was twelve years old the only time I ever saw your father.

He spoke so sweetly to me--put his arm around my

shoulders--asked me if I were Red Riding Hood or the Princess

Far Away.

"And, to obey him, I went to find my father. And found him

dead. Or what the world calls dead.

"Later, as I stood there outside the door, stunned by what

had happened, back through the doorway came running a boy.

Clive, if you have forgotten what you said to that child

there by the darkened doorway of life, the girl who writes

this has never forgotten.

"And now, since sorrow has come to you, in my turn I seek you

where you stand by a darkened door alone, and I send to you

my very soul in this poor, inky letter,--all I can

offer--Clive--all that I believe--all that I am.

"ATHALIE."

So much for tribute and condolence as far as she could be concerned

where she remained among the other millions outside the sacred

threshold across which her letter and her flowers had gone, across

which the girl herself might never go.

After a few days he wrote and thanked her for her letter, not of

course knowing about the lilies: "It is the first time death has ever come very near me. I had

been told and had always thought that we were a long-lived

race.

"I am still dazed by it. I suppose the sharper grief will

come when this dull, unreal sense of stupefaction wears away.

"We were very close together, my father and I. Oh, but we

might have been closer, Athalie!--I might have been with him

oftener, seen more of him, spent less time away from him.