Hugh and Ariel, arriving, were met by the stillness. Hugh passed Ariel
and looked in at the library. He surveyed the unoccupied room with some
disconcertion. He hadn't asked his mother to be on hand to greet Ariel,
and Anne was probably off somewhere with Glenn and Prescott Enderly.
There was no actual cause for complaint, but he was concerned for the
impression the absence of welcome might make on the girl standing there
at his back, pale and wordless under the brilliant impersonal light of
the hall chandeliers.
"Mother's probably dressing for dinner." He spoke with assumed assurance
and liveliness. "I'll show you your room. I'm pretty sure I know which
'tis. And Anne will come straight there the minute she gets in. She's
off somewhere skylarking, or--" he looked at his watch and amended,
"probably dressing for dinner too. I'll look her up in her room."
He went ahead, carrying the suitcases up the stairs. As he passed his
mother's and Anne's doors he said something more, it didn't matter what,
in the hope that one of the doors would open and some one appear to make
Ariel feel at home. But nothing so fortuitous happened. His resentment
became actual when he had to feel for the electric-light switch in the
guest room allotted to Ariel and was conscious that she had followed him
in and was standing there in the dark as aware of the chill in the room
as was he. They might at least have told Rose, the second maid, to have
the lights turned on, and a fire blazing in the little marble fireplace.
"Now I'll go and hunt up my kid sister," he promised, when he had found
the switch. "She'll be along right away to help you unpack and settle.
Dinner's very soon. You mustn't dress for it unless you want to
particularly. All right?"
Ariel assured him that she was all right. And then, when the door closed
on his back she breathed one deep breath of satisfaction. It was good to
be alone, and to have, if only for a few minutes, a reprieve from the
ultimately unavoidable meeting with Hugh's family. It seemed days and
days ago, not a mere few hours, since Hugh had taken her arm and hurried
her through the jam of people and luggage surging under the great
swinging letter C in the customs shed.
As they had stood with the customs official whom Hugh had captured with
what had every appearance of special secret powers--since although Ariel
was almost the last person off the _Bermuda_, she was certainly the very
first person to have her baggage passed on--Hugh had turned and looked
down at her with his first concentrated attention.
"Are you warm?" he had asked almost sharply.
"No, of course not. It's very col--d in the States," she shivered out,
taken unaware.
"Yes. But you keep out the cold, you know, with warm clothes," he said.
"You don't look at all warmly enough dressed. Is there another coat, a
big overcoat, anywhere in your baggage? We'll get it out."
"But there isn't," Ariel told him. "I didn't realize how cold it would
be the beginning of March. I thought March was almost spring here. I was
stupid." She shivered again,--not with cold this time, but from sheer
nervousness at the intent way Hugh was looking down at what she guessed
were her blue lips and pinched nose.
"Look here," he was saying. "We're driving out to Wild Acres, after a
good hot tea, in my open roadster. That means a fur coat for you if we
can pick one up along the way to the 'Carnation.' That's the tearoom.
You'll need a fur coat in this climate, anyway, and you might as well
get it to-day as to-morrow. I ought to have borrowed Anne's. _My_
stupidity. They're expecting me to bring a live, real girl home this
evening, you know, not an imported icicle. An icicle from Bermuda would
be too surprising!"
But Ariel did not laugh. The tone of his humor surprised and confused
her. Sometimes thus she had heard adults banter a child. But she wasn't
a child, and even if she had been, would have been put off by such
banter. Children are.
"But it is almost spring," she protested. "And I don't think I'd better
get a coat now. I'd rather buy a spring coat, you see, a little later.
It would be more--practical."
Hugh, however, proved domineering. "This isn't your affair, it's mine,
since I neglected to bring something warm for you. Besides, I'd rather,
much, buy a pretty fur coat for you this afternoon than a handsome
coffin for you day after to-morrow."
Ariel said nothing farther. That word "coffin" which Hugh had uttered so
lightly had shut her throat tight like fingers around it. Three weeks
ago she had watched a coffin lowered into the ground.... So she went
with Hugh dumbly, numbed by the noise and the crowds of the city as much
as by the unaccustomed cold, a walk of several blocks to the place where
his roadster stood parked.
"We'll cut out to Fifth Avenue," he told her, opening the car door,
"cruise down it until we see a fur sale in some window or other, bundle
you up in the best-looking one, and be at the 'Carnation' in time for
four o'clock tea."
The seat of the roadster was swung so low and the wind-shield stood so
high that Ariel felt protected from both wind and hurrying crowds the
minute she was in. Hugh did not speak again while he picked his way out
through jostling traffic over bumpy pavements to Ariel's first sight and
experience of Fifth Avenue. She sensed that Hugh's silence had nothing
to do with the difficulties of driving. Glancing up at his profile, she
felt that he had forgotten her, and that his skillful maneuvering of the
car was automatic. He was deep in thoughts of his own, in his own inner
life.
But as they turned into the Avenue he came out of his abstraction to
say, "Watch out for fur coats now, will you, and shout the first window
you see."
"There's one there, across the street, a whole window of fur coats,"
Ariel told him.
He parked as soon as he could find a place. And when he came around the
car to open the door on Ariel's side he stood a moment, aware of her
again as he had been in the customs shed. He said, "It's going to be fun
picking out this coat for a welcoming present." He smiled to himself,
for he had resisted the pun "a warm welcome." He had noticed that she
did not like that sort of fun when he had tried to be humorous before,
and went on seriously, "It will be very sweet of you, Ariel, if you let
me please myself about this."
Ariel knew in that instant how utterly he was changed. That first sight
of him from the deck had been strangely deceiving. She was sorry for
him, without knowing why. Of course he should please himself about
buying a fur coat for her. She wanted him to be pleased and happy, as he
had been all those days in Bermuda.
Inside the shop door Hugh paused and stood looking about, while salesmen
and salesgirls hovered, watching him with eager curiosity. Then, when he
had come to his decision, he swooped, a clean swoop, seizing on the
proprietor of the shop--how he guessed he was the proprietor and would
so save time and words for them, Ariel did not know--and pointed out a
soft white coat, hanging at the end of a near rack.
"Good afternoon," he said, with a quick nod. "Will you please try this
on the lady? Thank you."
In an instant Ariel was turning herself about at the center of a fan of
long mirrors, in the beautiful coat. Its collar rolled away softly at
her neck, its girlishness offsetting the luxuriousness. The garment was
cut straight from shoulder to hem, and its cuffs, narrow and young, like
the collar, rolled softly back at the wrists. It was flexible and light.
It was like being wrapped in swansdown, not fur. Then Hugh stood behind
her and folded it back for her to take in the scarlet silk lining.
"Do you like it?" he asked, meeting her eyes in the mirror. It was
plain, in the mirror, that already the new coat was giving him pleasure,
just as he had promised her it would.
"Of course I like it! I love it," she cried, poising on her toes, almost
as tall as Hugh now, smiling at his reflected eyes, feeling as if the
coat were wings folded down her body from her shoulders,--soft, lovely
wings, making her tall, light, swift. But then suddenly she forgot the
coat, forgot her pleasure and Hugh's pleasure. She turned on Hugh Weyman
and threw her head back, meeting his eyes squarely. "But I'd much rather
have had the violets. Much, much rather!" she exclaimed.
He could not think what she meant at first. Then he remembered. Joan
Nevin had held out her hands for the violets, and he had tossed them up
to her. But they were really Ariel's violets. He had taken them to the
boat for her. _They_ were to have been his welcoming present. He slowly
flushed.
Ariel was sorry and dropped her eyes. After a second Hugh said, "My dear
girl, in a few weeks the woods at Wild Acres will be purple with
violets, banks and banks of them. Yellow violets too, and white. You
shall have your heart's full. I promise. But this is rather nice just
now. Isn't it?"
He was teasing her. But he was as sincere as was she. She jammed her
hands into the deep, soft pockets, while her fingers clenched. She had
made a fool of herself. But she didn't mind much. He was sweet, and
dear, this Hugh she had never known.
Then he moved a little away with the shopman. Ariel surmised that the
price of the coat was now under discussion. The little Jew rubbed his
hands, hesitated, smiled up almost affectionately, and named it. Ariel
did not hear his words, but she saw Hugh come very near to starting,
while his shoulders stiffened. So it was some outrageous price, and Hugh
was surprised and would not think of paying it. But he ought to have
known he was picking out the most expensive thing in the shop. It was
obviously a coat for a princess, a Russian princess in old Petersburg
when the world was kind to princesses. This scarlet lining!... The
deftly rolling, beautiful collar and cuffs! Hugh said something then,
and the shopkeeper raised his voice in replying. "But it is a most
wonderful bargain. Wonderful! And I named you my bottom price on account
of the season. I saw at once that you would buy or leave a thing. So I
did not bother to bargain by naming a price of unreasonableness. If you
do not care for the coat enough--I am sorry."
The little man was vigorously shrugging his sincerity and his sorrow.
For an instant more Ariel saw Hugh hesitate. Then his eyes narrowed ever
so slightly and he too shrugged--a whimsical submission.
He came toward Ariel. "Better keep it on," he suggested. "We'll carry
the tweed one. Excuse me a minute, please, while I go to the office and
establish my credit over their telephone." He placed a chair for her
with as much manner as if she were indeed the princess the coat made her
out to be, and went down the shop where there was a glass-encased office
booth.
First Hugh spoke into the telephone, then the bookkeeper, and finally
the shopkeeper himself. Ariel watched all that went on behind the glass
with interest but without hearing a word. It took only a very few
minutes for Hugh to prove his financial soundness and then he was back
with her. At the door which he was holding obsequiously and happily open
for them, the shopkeeper murmured, "If madam would like a hat, my
brother next door has some marvelous Parisian models. The finest in New
York. There is an artist there who makes them to one's head, while one
waits."
But Hugh shook his head, smiling at the "madam." Did the man think this
young girl was his wife?
In the car, on their way to the "Carnation," Ariel said, "I'm afraid,
Mr. Weyman, this cost a great deal. More than it ought. I am sorry."
"What?" He had forgotten already about the coat. "Oh! Why, yes, more
than I had expected, but I don't believe more than it's worth. The only
difficulty was that I thought I had enough with me, but I hadn't, and so
it meant bothering the people at my office. But it doesn't matter. And
now, Ariel, I can begin to enjoy your company, without worry." At the
end of another half block he added, "And you will call me Hugh, please,
or I shall have to Miss-Clare you."
It was not yet four o'clock when they got to the "Carnation," so they
had the place almost to themselves. Ariel poured out the tea from a
chubby carnation-painted pot, and felt, almost, that it was five years
ago and she was offering the studio's hospitality to a hawklike, rather
silent new friend of her father's. But she had only to look across the
little table at him to remember that it was not so,--to see that all was
different, really. She was noticing how Hugh's vigorous, close-cropped
hair, which had been black in Bermuda, was now hoar-frosted at temples
and ears. It startled her and made her shy again. This premature
grayness, taken together with an austere tightening of the corners of
his lips, and two deep lines rising from them, frightened Ariel a
little. She felt breathless, almost awe-struck. So much must have
happened to a person to change him like that! Where she had counted on
finding her father's friend, to-day she had not found him. Everything
had been, from the minute of their meeting on the pier, just between
this man and herself alone, as it had used to be between him and her
father. Was her father, she wondered, hovering on the edge of her
present contact with Hugh as she had hovered on the edge of theirs five
years ago? This was too poignant an idea, and she shut it out.
Hugh was smiling at her across the bouquet of carnations which decorated
the center of their table. He was exclaiming: "Imagine Mr. Schimpler
suggesting a new hat for you from his brother's shop, with a hat like
that to flaunt in his face! It's a real hat, Ariel, but I suppose you
know it. And the feather! There are no words for the feather! It has an
insistent personality all its own."
Ariel lifted her fingers searchingly, up to find the feather. She
started to say, "Father found--" and got no farther than opened lips.
But she tried her best to smile. He must be the one first to name her
father. The next piece of toast that she swallowed, forcing herself,
tasted salt.
Wild Acres, the Weymans' estate, is on the Hudson near Tarrytown--a
drive, from Forty-Second Street and the "Carnation" tearoom, of
something over an hour and a half. Ariel, snuggled back in her coat for
a princess against the cushions of the roadster's low seat, observed
alternately the flying white landscape and Hugh's intent profile. How he
dared push the car along like this over the icy, snowy road she did not
know, but since he did dare she had not even a quiver of doubt of their
safety, for all her instinct shouted confidence in the judgment of this
stranger with the incised lines at the corners of his mouth. He might
not be her father's friend, have long forgotten that, and there had not
yet been time for him to become hers, but he was a person--of this she
was calmly aware--to trust one's life to.
They had sailed along for miles before he spoke at all. Then he asked,
"Were you ever in an automobile before, Ariel? They aren't allowed in
Bermuda yet, are they?"
"No. Only government trucks. There are a few of those. But in France, of
course, Fa--we taxied quite a lot, just for the fun of it. That was
our--my first motoring. This is the first time I've seen snow, though.
But I don't feel that it is. I've imagined it so concretely, I suppose,
and then it's in so many books, of course. If I picked up a handful now,
or began walking in it, the sensation wouldn't be a new
sensation,--because of imagination. Do you see?"
"Yes. I know. It was like that when I went West years ago with my
father," Hugh responded, with sympathetic understanding. "The prairie we
found there was no more real than the prairie I'd lived on and played
over with the gang in Tarrytown the year I was ten, though we'd made
that prairie for ourselves out of reading and imagination. The very
earth had the same feel beneath my feet that it had had under my
moccasined feet when I was 'Wild Eagle,' bravest of chiefs. The
moccasins were imagined too, although the headdress was real. There's
something of a thrill in catching up with these places in our
imagination, isn't there? By the way, have you got it straight in your
mind, Ariel, about us Weymans, how many and who we all are at Wild
Acres?"
"I think so. There's your mother. And your sister and brother. Doctor
Hazzard said that your sister and brother would be at home for the
Easter vacation now. But, of course, I don't know them with my
imagination the way you knew the prairie and I knew the snow."
They both laughed. He said, "Well, I can't give you a whole literary and
imaginative background for our household. But you've left out the first
and most interesting member. Perhaps I didn't mention her in my letter
to Doctor Hazzard. It's my Grandmother Weyman. She lives above us,
literally as well as figuratively, in the attic which she had fixed over
into an exclusive apartment for herself when she returned from her last
winter in Egypt, several years ago. You may or you may not get to know
her really. Perhaps you'll hardly ever see her. She's rather
disconcertingly invisible and exclusive. I mean, she's exclusive even
toward us, the family. Her contacts are with Silence and the
Angels,--that kind of exclusiveness. She's got it down to a science, how
to be alone when she wants to be alone. You may think her--odd. People
do."
Ariel was catching a rich, almost secret note of tenderness in Hugh's
voice. "He adores his grandmother," she thought. "And he doesn't think
she's odd. He thinks she's perfect."
"Well, after Grandam, there's my mother, of course. She's perfectly
visible, from all sides. And she'll help you a lot, Ariel, in the--in
the adjustments to a new life you're in for now, I'm afraid. She's just
the sort of person to do that,--practical, sensible. Then there's my kid
sister Anne. Only she won't seem kid-sisterish to you. She's a month or
two older than you are, in fact, and you may get to be great friends.
Doctor Hazzard wrote that that was something you'd missed so far,
contemporaries. She is a sophomore at Smith.
"Glenn's the student of the family. Got it from Grandfather Weyman,
perhaps. He's older than Anne--a year--and a junior at Yale. But he
seems younger, you'll see, in spite of reading Spengler and writing
Greek sonnets that have made quite a stir--in the heart of a Greek
professor or two, the only people who can read 'em. He'll probably be
rude to you. But you mustn't mind him. He's rude to us all just now.
He's got an idea that rudeness has some sort of affinity with
intelligence. He drops the pose only for his friend, Prescott Enderly.
Ever heard of him?"
Ariel hadn't. So Hugh explained about the young man's fame and that he
was to be Ariel's fellow-guest for the present at Wild Acres. "When
college opens again, there'll be just you and mother and I at Wild
Acres, unless you count Grandam, my grandmother, which you probably
won't. We're not going to make it before dark, I'm afraid." The time had
come to switch on the headlights. Gray, cobwebby dusk was settling over
the snowy world.
Ariel, comforted by Hugh's friendly explanations, warm and at home in
her fur coat, was relaxed and confident at last. She asked, "And those
children, Nicky and Persis? They aren't related? 'Uncle' was only a
manner of speaking?"
The car picked up speed appallingly and Ariel's confidence in Hugh as a
safe keeper for any life was shattered. The road was icy under the snow
and he was not slowing even for the curves. But when he answered her,
his words came evenly and a little drawled, a strange tempo to speak in
when one is driving at fifty miles an hour on a precarious winter road.
"Yes. If they called me 'uncle' that _was_ only a manner of speaking.
Mrs. Nevin's manner of speaking. Most of her men friends are 'uncle' to
the children. Did you gather exactly who _she_ was, on the ship, Ariel?
Her husband was Nevin, the producer,--'dramaturg,' he called himself.
Your father would have known."
It was really a dangerous speed. Never had she realized that bodies
could move so fast through space. Her breath came almost in a sob. It
was only after a mile or more of this agony that Hugh became aware of
her fear, but he slowed down then at once. "Do excuse me," he muttered
contritely. "You're right. It isn't safe. I forgot I wasn't alone. An
idiocy I won't repeat."
"It's only that I'm not used--" Ariel murmured. Her knees began to
tremble, now that she had no cause for fear and the danger was past. She
hoped he would not feel how she was shaking from head to feet, as with a
chill. If he did, he said nothing about it but asked, "Was Mrs. Nevin
entertaining? Did you enjoy her?"
"Entertaining?" Ariel sounded amazed.
"Well, yes. She can be, you know. She's rather famous for wit and charm
and brilliance. Didn't you guess that?"
"But I wouldn't. We never even spoke to each other, you see. I happened
to have a chair beside hers on deck, but we didn't speak. Even the
children didn't. They just happened to stand by me while we were
docking. That was the way it was. Perhaps she's like your
grandmother--Mrs. Nevin. Keeps her company with silence and the
angels...."
"No. Hers is another sort of exclusiveness altogether," Hugh answered.
"But I can't imagine two days, and not a word...."
"There was Aldous Huxley. I think that was the name."
"Well, I suppose he might have more for her at this stage in her life
than you, Ariel." His tone was dry. The lines at the corners of his
mouth deepened. But it was too dark for Ariel to see that now. "There's
Mrs. Nevin's house," he said suddenly. "All lighted up. So she's at home
before us. Ours is the next place."
Ariel saw a great house, as magnificent as Government House, crowning a
low hill above them with dozens of windows blazing through the dusk.
"That's Holly. Her husband, Nevin, built it. It's palatial, isn't it!
Wild Acres is much humbler. You'll see in a minute. Or rather in a few
minutes, because there's a long, very twisty avenue up to our portico
and you don't really know there's a house until you practically come,
bump, into the front door. Here's the entrance."
The car had turned in through a dark, rather low, stone archway, and the
headlights were cutting a golden shaft up through snow-enchanted, stilly
woods.