Ariel stood at her window, that first morning at Wild Acres, for some
time before dressing, and looked out into the black branches of the
snow-floored woods. The trees pressed up to the window panes. So Wild
Acres was really wild. She was curious to look from all the windows and
to explore the big, rambling house from top to bottom. After nine hours
of dreamless sleep, her body warm between sheets and light blankets, her
face deliciously cool in the cold, woodsy air of the little guest room,
Ariel had waked with a sense of happiness. The carpet of snow in the
woods below her was a thin veil, ever so thin, drawn over the
spring-to-come: green leaves, moss, butterflies, birds, hot sunshine,
cool shade and myriads and myriads of _violets_. Hugh had promised her
violets. At any moment the veil might tremble, blow to one side, and
that world of wings and scent and color rise to the window and envelop
her with joy. But meanwhile the white, clear-smelling snow (she had seen
snow before in imagination, as she had told Hugh, but she had never
smelled it), the ebony black of bare tree boles, roots and limbs and
twigs, were all just pictures on a veil over Spring's face. Ariel was
glad she had come to Wild Acres before the veil blew off. She was so
happy, standing there at the window, still in her nightgown, that she
was frightened of it. It was like too piercingly beautiful a note in
music.
She felt besieged by happiness from every side. Involuntarily she looked
into the actualities of her life for escape. There were avenues enough
there, leading back into loneliness, self-distrusts and that wide, wide
avenue ending at a grave and her grief. But strangely, they closed and
shut her out when she would have entered them. The black trees, the
clear-smelling snow, and all those hidden wings and joys of spring were
opening to her, and grief was shut.
As she bathed and dressed, she remembered with wonder the mood in which
she had gone to bed. She had been lonely and dazed. Too heartsick even
to cry, she had said her prayers lying on her face in bed, without
caring enough to kneel. And then, her mind blunted by misery, she had
fallen on sleep,--as Samurai in Japanese prints fall on their swords.
She brushed at her hair until it glimmered to silver and every curl had
a separate life. She knew that her hair was lovely. Her father had never
tired of praising it and painting it. Ash-colored in some lights, it was
silvery in others, palest gold in others. Sometimes it seemed the
absorption of light itself. And it curled in close, soft curls at her
neck. That blond hair, and her grace of movement, were her claims to
beauty. But at the minute she was seeing her narrow green eyes in the
mirror, and her thin, pale mouth with its pointed corners. She knew that
the Weymans must think her plain, but to-day she would not be bothered
even to care.
The house was very still. Not a sound. Hugh was at his place at the
dining table, reading the _Tribune_ while he waited for Rose to bring
his coffee.
He looked his surprise. "Hello, Ariel! But we should have told you. The
family doesn't breakfast until eight-thirty. It isn't eight yet. I'm
catching the eight-fifteen express to town, and I usually do grab
breakfast like this alone. It's a twenty minutes' walk to the station."
He was holding out her chair. She took it quickly so that he might begin
the breakfast which Rose was arranging at his place. "I thought you
drove to New York," she said. "Don't you usually?"
"Often, but not usually. Not when Glenn and Anne are at home. It's
convenient for them to have the car. Well, Rose, what are you going to
scare up for Miss Clare? She mustn't wait for the others."
"May I just have some coffee, and one of those rolls, and walk to the
station with you? I should like that so much, if you don't mind. I won't
talk and disturb the morning. But I want to get out into the snow and
the woods."
"Of course you do. But why not talk? You won't 'disturb the morning' any
more than the sunshine or the snow does. You're that kind of a person."
He did not feel that he was talking nonsense. The Bermuda Ariel was here
this morning, back after five years.
But in spite of Hugh's reassurance, Ariel stuck to her bargain and did
not talk, during all their long walk out the path which Hugh's previous
solitary morning walks had made in the snow through the woods and across
wide fields, and finally down to the big road and the little station.
She was so silent, and her feet went so stilly before or behind his,
just as it happened, that she actually intruded no more on his
consciousness, after the first two or three minutes, than the March
sunshine, which was wreathing the landscape in golden scarfs of light.
Nor was he thinking of the coming busy day in his Wall Street office.
The unexpectedness of Joan Nevin's return yesterday from her winter
months on the Riviera and in Bermuda had broken down his recently so
carefully built up resistance to her obsession of his mind. She had
swarmed back into possession, as it were, and taken him captive. The
same old tune was on again, jangling his nerves and partially stupefying
his intellect.
"When I get to the office," he promised himself, "I'll cut this out,
stop thinking about her. The minute I sit down at my desk I'll shut her
out. And after this not even her unexpected appearance, or the sudden
hearing her name spoken, will jolt me out of control of my mind again. I
promise myself. I promise myself...."
From the platform of the little station the roofs of Wild Acres could
just be discerned through bare tree branches at the top of a long upward
slope of country. Ariel stood, her hands deep in the pockets of her
wonderful coat, her chin lifted, looking back over the way they had
come. Hugh, suddenly remembering her, followed her eyes, and said,
"That's Wild Acres roof. Did you think we'd come so far? And those
windows in the attic are Grandam's. If I were going to be at home this
morning, I'd take you up to her, whether she invited us or not, first
thing. Probably, as it is, you won't see her till dinner to-night,--if
then. But if Grandam does appear before I get back don't let her scare
you. She's not really mysterious and awesome. Quite an ordinary human
being. Remember that. And you might tell Mother that I'll try to get out
rather early this afternoon. Good-by, Ariel, and thanks for your
company. It's very pleasant being seen off like this!"
From the steps of the moving train he looked back at her. It was
pleasant, in all conscience--now that he had at the last minute possible
waked up to it,--having a friendly girl, with a friendly, sympathetic
light in her green eyes, smiling from under a green hat, waving him off.
And the green feather on the hat, as the train rushed away, seemed as
smiling and friendly as the eyes. Ariel and her green feather! There was
something sympathetic among the three of them, Ariel, the green feather,
and Hugh himself. Something living and vital. And how glad he was that
he had hit on that particular coat for her! It went with the fairy-tale
hat, the fairy-tale eyes. He took joy in his gift.
After the train had rushed out of the landscape, Ariel stood on the
platform for a moment longer, the only visible sentient thing in the
whole morning world,--a morning world that cried, "Come, Come, Come.
Dive, swim, run through me, come into my heart! I love you as your beach
at home loves you, as the sea loves you. Come quickly. Every step since
you left Wild Acres' door you have been getting nearer. Come all the way
now. Into my heart. Into the heart within my heart. Into its
_beat_!"--Oh, Ariel was happy!
She had made her bed and arranged her possessions in closets and drawers
before going downstairs. She saw no reason now why she should return to
the house. The moth, no doubt, would tell Mrs. Weyman that she had
accompanied Hugh to the station, and when she did not come back, they
would understand that she had gone for a walk, and not bother about her.
She started down the stairs from the train platform slowly, and then,
more quickly, walked away into March sunlight.