Grandam did not come down to dinner that night. But Mrs. Weyman said
that she rarely did appear for two meals in the same day, even when she
was feeling her best. Ariel suspected that Mrs. Weyman, in emphasizing
this point, was indirectly intending to reassure her and make her feel
that Grandam's absence had nothing to do with her own visit uninvited to
the attic apartment.
They gathered in the library after dinner. Glenn and Ariel were at one
end of the divan in front of the fire engaged in setting up the
chessmen. Anne and Prescott Enderly were at the other end, waiting for
Mrs. Nevin, who was taking them, that evening, to a dance at the house
of friends of hers in Scarsdale. Mrs. Weyman occupied a low chair near
by, and she was smoking an after-dinner cigarette.
Enderly looked both handsome and distinguished in his evening clothes.
"Much more the accredited novelist than the college boy," thought Mrs.
Weyman, looking at him through the spiraling smoke of her cigarette,
which was mostly held in her fingers and very rarely in her lips, since
she smoked only to put other smokers at their ease, including her
daughter Anne,--and to keep young. "He's changed since he came. Seems
more manly, somehow. Firmer. And exhilarated about something too. I
wonder, is it Joan? That she's almost ten years older wouldn't
necessarily make any difference. Probably she's the first woman of the
world he has ever met,--at any rate seen so much of. She would be a
revelation, a dream come true, to a young man of his background." For
Enderly's family was totally undistinguished socially. Glenn had told
his mother this, and added that Enderly boasted of the fact, and was
more glad than otherwise not to belong to the "bloated bourgeoisie."
So, looking rather keenly at the young man through the smoke spiraling
up through her fingers, Mrs. Weyman exclaimed with assumed casualness,
"It's rather sweet of Mrs. Nevin to be so nice to you young things!
Having you to meet Michael Schwankovsky this afternoon and all! But I
suppose, Prescott, you have unclassed yourself as a young thing by
having produced 'Stephen's Fall' and got famous. Glenn and Anne, of
course, are merely being included along with you. Don't you find her
very charming?"
Enderly was holding Anne's hand, for all the decorum of their
appearance, as it lay between them on the divan, under a fold of her
outspread skirt. "Oh, very charming," he answered, with casualness as
assumed as his hostess'. "Beauty, brains and magnetism, all working
together, make a very high-powered charm. And she must have used the
full force of it on her bootlegger. We don't get the chance to buy that
quality from ours, do we, Glenn!"
Mrs. Weyman crushed out her cigarette on a tray at her elbow. For the
first time she felt definitely jarred by Enderly's personality. "You're
quite wrong," she said coldly. "Anything that Mrs. Nevin serves would be
legal. Her cellar was stocked by her husband before the war, and it will
last her a lifetime, the way she uses it. She doesn't drink and give
drinking parties as some society women do. She entertains with the same
dignity and reasonableness that all of our kind of people did before
prohibition. It's the same with us. Anything you are served here is
legal." It was important for even a famous novelist to be aware of
impeccability, when he was being entertained by it.
Enderly's fingers had closed about Anne's wrist, stifling her heart,
while her mother took such pains with his social education. But he
answered with disarming candor, "Oh, I took that quite for granted,
about you, I mean. But I couldn't know about Mrs. Nevin, could I? So
many different sorts of people know her, or claim to, and boast of being
entertained at Holly! And although she's obviously a lady, she's even
more obviously a person of temperament, genius. I hadn't associated her
with Puritanism."
"I didn't mean you to! Mrs. Nevin is as far removed from anything
Puritanical or priggish as I am. But she has _character_. Aristocracy,
if you like. Self-respecting people must draw the line somewhere, even
to-day. But they needn't be bigoted. Look at me. I let Anne smoke. I
even smoke with her. But that sort of tolerance doesn't change one's
fundamental principles. In things that really matter, our kind of people
are not changed at all. We keep our standards for ourselves and our
associates pretty definite. And Mrs. Nevin is one of us, very much so."
Glenn had just captured Ariel's queen, but for all that his smile as he
barged into the conversation at this point was a sardonic smile. "Hadn't
you got Mother doped out for yourself, Scribbler?" he asked his friend.
"Pity to make her do it for you! Bad commentary on your analytical
powers. Couldn't you see, at first sight, that she is one of those
simple souls who believe that this jazz-ridden world is as sound at
bottom, possibly sounder, than the lost world of the Good Queen Vic? It
has invented virtues, not lost them. Who ever heard of frankness,
honesty, hatred of shams before our somber decade? We're less prudish,
of course, but all the more wholesome for precisely that reason. And
though somewhat obscured by the camouflage of 'petting,' purity still
reigns supreme in girlish hearts, and honor in manly breasts. At least
in the best families--like ours. Your own novel is only an example,
Prescott. Its obscenity is healthy obscenity. By showing up the visible
and ugly, you suggest all the more vividly the lovely idealism lurking
under it all, invisible. Didn't Stephen, in the end, after his diverting
but possibly sordid passional experiences, fall in love, in the last
chapters, with a nice girl? He seduced her, of course, but it woke her
stupid parents up to the facts of--er--_life_. It's a very idealistic
book. Even the old folks got saved. They saw how narrow they'd been--"
"Oh, chuck it, Glenn! I'm in perfect sympathy with your mother. And I
believe--in fact, I believe it passionately--that she is right. What is
moderation and self-control but aristocracy? Our Bohemian pose is too
cheap, too easy. What do you think, Anne?"
What Anne thought no one but Enderly discovered, however, for it was
conveyed to him very simply by the throbbing of a pulse in a delicate,
blue-veined wrist.
At that moment Miss Peters surprisingly made an appearance in the
library door. "Mrs. Weyman Senior would be charmed if Miss Clare would
care to come up to her for a little while this evening."
Ariel sprang from the divan. "Oh, do you mind, Glenn? I do want to go."
"Mind!" Glenn exclaimed. "That wouldn't matter. The Queen has sent her
command. And the elevator waits without. I say! I thought you enjoyed
chess, though!"
Mrs. Weyman beckoned Ariel to her side. "I'm afraid Miss Peters has told
Grandam about--our being in the apartment this afternoon, and that is
why she has sent for you. I'm sorry. Don't do anything to excite her
unnecessarily, will you, and come away as soon as you can." Then,
turning to Miss Peters, who stood waiting to escort Ariel to the
elevator, she asked, "How is Mrs. Weyman to-night? I hope the drive
didn't tire her too much."
"She is a little tired. But I don't think it was the drive." Miss Peters
was looking curiously at Ariel. "I don't think she'll keep Miss Clare
long. She ought to be in bed this minute."
The elevator was waiting for them at the end of the back hall. Miss
Peters ran it very nonchalantly by a mere touching of buttons.
"Oh! That's the way it works? Next time I can take myself up," Ariel
said, as they stepped out into the attic hall. Miss Peters, meticulously
closing the sliding door of the cage, remarked, "Oh, the family never
use the elevator. Mrs. Weyman has heart disease, you know, and Mr. Hugh
put it in for her. Then it's a convenience in carrying trays up and
down, of course. I couldn't take care of Mrs. Weyman if I had to climb
two flights of stairs each meal."
The attic hall, by night, was unromantically lighted by ordinary
electric-light bulbs. Ariel regretted the afternoon's mysterious
twilight. But when Miss Peters had opened Grandam's door, announced
Ariel, and gone on her way, leaving them alone together, all the romance
of the afternoon poured back, with Grandam added.
Curtains of dim flower pattern were drawn across the windows. But they
did not give the effect of shutting in the room. They were caressing, as
night's own starry curtains, and they brought distance near. Tall wax
candles glimmered their light down on the piano, over the ivory keys and
the glossy rosewood, and the dish with the anemones. But the anemones
themselves stood up dark in the dusk, their colors lost. At the edge of
the area of light shed by the crystal lamp on the bench, across the
room, lay Grandam, her head elevated, among her pillows. She was wearing
the silver scarf in which Ariel had been discovered by Mrs. Weyman.
A chair was drawn up conveniently near to the daybed in preparation for
Miss Clare's visit. But Ariel ignored it, or perhaps did not see it. She
went straight to the daybed and sat down on the edge of that, face to
face with Grandam.
Grandam did not waste words. "Miss Peters says you were up here this
afternoon, Ariel, looking for something in my apartment. I have the
liveliest curiosity to know what it was."
"I was looking for 'Noon,' the painting Hugh bought of my father. I
can't find where they've hung it. I couldn't ask Hugh, since Father
himself wouldn't,--and anyway, he went away the very first day. But
after you came to lunch I thought Hugh must have given it to you,--that
it would be here. But it isn't here. Can you tell me where it is? I
don't mind asking you. Father wouldn't mind."
Pity woke in Grandam's face. Things she had at different times heard of
Ariel and her father and this picture of Hugh's all suddenly fitted
themselves together into a human pattern. She knew a great deal, all at
once. She was silent.
Ariel, during the silence, noticed that Grandam was not wearing her wig.
This was her own hair, cut short, clipping her small head like a
knight's helmet. It was even lovelier than the wig, Ariel thought. What
_was_ Grandam? She was not an old lady with heart disease. She was not a
grande dame of a civilization outworn. She was not even Ariel's
great-great-great-great-grandmother. Whatever she was, she was a friend
of Ariel's and would have been even more a friend of her father's, if he
had only known her.
Grandam at last said, "I think I must have been away from Wild Acres,
abroad, when Hugh came back with that picture. And I never have seen it.
But very recently, since you came, in fact, Hortense has mentioned it to
me, told me where it is. You shall have it to-night."
Ariel was on her feet. "Now?"
"No. Wait. Let's talk a few minutes first. Sit down again, my dear. Why
are you so--so wild to see this picture? Didn't you bring any other of
your father's pictures with you?"
Ariel sat down again on the edge of the bed. Now that Grandam had
promised her a sight of "Noon" she could wait patiently forever, so long
as she waited here with Grandam. "No. I didn't bring a single canvas,"
she answered. "You see, they are all quite big. But I am keeping out
five for myself. Not letting them be sold--although they will be in the
exhibition, of course. Father thought 'Noon' the very best of them all.
And seeing it again now,--well, it will be like going home."
"Yes, I can understand that. But you look as though you were seeing a
vision, Ariel. What is it?"
Ariel was looking at the picture in the ebony frame beyond Grandam's
shoulder. "Those hands," she said. "They make me think of Father's
to-night, though they didn't this afternoon when I was up here. And they
aren't like his really. Father's hands aren't so long, and the fingers
aren't nearly so pointed. Are those an angel's hands? Or a saint's?"
Grandam's expression was veiled. Yet it was not a secretive look that
came into her features, making them enigmatical; it was an illuminative
glow.
"A very fine artist drew those hands," she said. But her voice was
concealing as much as was her face, and Ariel knew it. "He is dead now.
Piccoli. An Italian. And he had an earthly model, not an angel. At least
he thought so, I suppose. The hands themselves--are the hands of a
friend of mine. He, too, is dead.... How is it with you here at Wild
Acres, Ariel? Are you lonely?"
Ariel bent quickly forward and picking up an end of Grandam's silver
scarf, kissed it. "I am not lonely now," she said. "Who could be! And
I'm never really lonely in the woods." Then she told Grandam about
sensing violets behind the snow that first day at Wild Acres and how she
had found Persis and Nicky in the woods and danced her happiness for
them.
"But at lunch you were saying you had no talent. What about dancing for
a profession, Ariel? Have you thought of that?"
Ariel shook her head. "My dancing is like those hands there in their
adoring. Adoring, and dancing, and loving,--they aren't professions."
"Still, dancing can be as much a conscious and cultivated art as
painting. Seriously, Ariel, hadn't this occurred to you? Or to your
father?"
"No. But, then, I never saw a real dancer. Father has told me about
Isadora Duncan and her wonderful dancing. And there's Ruth St. Denis,
too! But he liked Isadora better." She went on then to tell Grandam how
her father had put her, dancing, into all of his pictures. "I'm in
'Noon' too," she said. "But they're not pictures of me, you understand.
Not portraits. You do understand?"
"Yes, of course, they're not pictures of you; they are snatches at the
idea of you. But you've come just in the nick of time, Ariel. I might
have got away, with you in the house, and never known you."
"You are going away!" Ariel's fingers closed again on the scarf, as if
to clutch Grandam back. "Where? How soon?"
"I'm going to die. Quite soon, the doctors think. But you got here
first. And now I can be a messenger to your father from you. You will
bring us together, perhaps. Do you think we shall get along?"
Ariel was not grave. She was merry. Oh, this was no old lady with
dangerous heart disease, but a vibrant, swift-footed friend whom she was
holding back from departure with force, by this piece of clutched
drapery.
"Do you know," Grandam told her, "when I was a little girl and taken on
train journeys, I'd look out of the windows at other children playing in
dooryards, walking along roads, and sitting on fences waving at my
train. And I'd wonder how they could bear being left behind, not being
in a train. Do all children in trains feel that way, looking out of
coach windows? I suspect they do. Well, Ariel, I'm in the same case now.
I'm on the train, actually off, on a journey, and all the rest of you
are like those other children. The nearest you can come to my adventure
is to sit on the country fences and wave me past. And it's more glorious
than exciting because at the end of this journey there will be people I
love and haven't seen for almost a life-time. Those hands--these that
you asked about, Ariel--will be there, I believe, to open the coach
door.... Do you wonder that I pity all you children, left behind, out of
the journey? But not you, Ariel! You aren't left. You are more like a
darting swallow at the train window, keeping up for a little way."
"Yes," Ariel cried. "Put out your wrist, Grandam! I'll light on it. I'll
stay till the wind blows me off!" Then they smiled at each other and
during the instant of the smile their friendship mellowed as though the
instant had been an entire life-time.
"But we're forgetting about 'Noon,'" Grandam reminded Ariel. "I'll go
with you now to look for it."
"Look for it? But don't you know where it is? I thought you said you
knew."
"It's in the attic across the hall. It mayn't be just in plain sight,
though. But we'll find it and bring it in here and hang it above the
mantel."
"In the attic! But why?" Ariel could not take it in for a minute. But
strangely, her body was quicker than her brain to react. Her heart had
started an angry pounding and her fingers were curling into her palms,
hard, the nails biting into the flesh. Ariel wondered at her fingers and
at her heart.
She had followed Grandam across the floor toward the hall door. But
Grandam halted by the piano and leaned a hand on it, suddenly supporting
herself. "Wait, Ariel," she said. "I'll try to explain it to you a
little. Hugh put 'Noon' in the attic because he didn't want it around
where he could see it. But it isn't the insult to the painting and to
your father that it seems. I'm sure it isn't. It is something different
altogether. For the attic, in this case, isn't the attic at all...."
But Ariel was not to be betrayed into thinking that the attic was the
haunted, magical home of the invisible
great-great-great-great-grandmother which she had almost imagined it on
looking in there this afternoon. Her nails were biting into her palms,
and her mouth was dry. What did Grandam mean, saying the attic was not
an attic?
Grandam was looking down at the anemones. She had stopped looking at
Ariel.
"The attic isn't an attic--because it is Hugh's subconscious mind.
That's what modern psychology, anyway, calls the place where we chuck
away the memories that hurt us. And no more than the attic out there is
an attic, is 'Noon' a painting. It was a painting when Hugh bought it,
and thought it so beautiful. But Hugh was in love. And when one is a
lover, every æsthetic joy actually hurts until it can be passed on to
the beloved. To share it would be even more relieving, of course. But in
this case there was no hope of Hugh's sharing anything very much with
Mrs. Nevin. Her husband was still living and Joan had chosen him in
preference to Hugh, anyway. No. Whatever he could possess of beauty he
must give her outright, not even think of sharing with her."
Grandam touched the glassy petal of an anemone, so lightly that its
delicate nerves did not feel a tremor.
"Well, he showed 'Noon' to Joan without first telling her that it was to
belong to her, because he wanted to tantalize her a little--and enjoy
with her the moment of surprise when he thrust 'Noon' into her hands, to
keep. But he never got that far, for Joan merely laughed at the
painting, and the artist, and laughed at all the Bermuda episode. She
wanted to be the source of all his joys.
"From the instant of that laugh 'Noon' stopped being a painting to Hugh.
It became the symbol of his love,--sneered at, denied. So he tossed it
into the attic and shut the door on it. Forgot it. A very wholesome
proceeding in spite of the psychoanalysts.... But whether this
explanation, which, to be honest, is not founded on knowledge but merely
surmise, really _is_ an explanation or not needn't matter to you, I
hope. You'll be magnanimous.... If one can't be magnanimous, one had
better be chucked into the attic oneself. I can state that as a fact. No
surmise about it."
Ariel, too, was looking at the anemone. She addressed it, rather than
Grandam, but to her they were one,--the glassy, heavenly still flower,
and the voice counseling magnanimity.
"I'm going to go now and get that--love, hidden in the attic," she said.
"Find it. Dust it. Nobody can stop me. You mustn't come, Grandam. You
look very tired."
Grandam was more tired than she had known, and glad to be forced, very
nearly carried, over to her daybed by Ariel. She could well afford to
rest now. Ariel was all right.
It took Ariel some long minutes in the cold barnlike place, robbed by
Grandam's analogy of mystery and charm, to find "Noon." But at last she
hauled it out from behind a wall of discarded mattresses, a rather large
and heavy unframed canvas, festooned with dusty cobwebs. Not minding at
all the havoc it wreaked on her wispy green evening frock, she brought
it in to Grandam's room.
"Turn away your face," she called from the door. "I want to dust it
before you look and I'll put it up on the mantel with the candles around
it. It'll be better in daylight, of course, but even candlelight will
give you some idea!"
Grandam turned her face obediently but held out the silver shawl toward
Ariel. "Here's a duster," she said, "that's just the thing for it."
Without objections or even hesitation, Ariel used that live, lovely
belonging of Grandam's to dust the cobwebs and the dirt from the face of
"Noon." But she knew perfectly what it was she was doing. And Grandam
knew that she knew. For the scarf was a rare and unreplaceable thing.
Ariel's tongue and lips were dry as the dust on the picture over which
she worked and her heart beat heavily, like the waves on her home beach
after a storm.
As she lifted the canvas up to position on the fireplace mantel and then
brought candles from the piano to set either side of it, Grandam, with
her face conscientiously turned away, was saying, "You mustn't be
disappointed, Ariel, if I don't find 'Noon' so wonderful as Hugh and you
and your father think it. I'm no judge of painting. Know next to nothing
about it. It will be merely a matter of personal taste with me, and of
no account whatever as criticism. But then no individual's word can make
a final judgment. Not Joan's certainly. Not even Michael Schwankovsky's.
Not yours or mine, or your father's. Least of all your father's, Ariel.
No one knows anything about his own creative work--whether it's good or
bad--any more than the soul knows its own state."
But Ariel scarcely heard her or cared to hear her. The picture was
placed. She moved back into the middle of the room, and looked. _And
looked._
Home.... She had come home! Grandam's room was a dove-gray wave on which
she had been tossed up onto her and her father's own beach, and she
stood now in the hollow where her father's easel had stood the morning
that Hugh interrupted the painting of the masterpiece.... She had come
home. _And her Father was not far off._ Her heart had stopped thudding.
The waves on the beach were stilled in the noon heat. Tears overflowed
onto her cold cheeks with grateful warmth. She tasted salt on her
lips,--and thought it sea spray.
But now that she was blind, Grandam was seeing. Grandam, looking through
white sunlight, saw an edge of curling wave, a white beach, rocks where
the sunlight broke into purple pieces, and in the air just above the
rocks, Ariel dancing. It was the Ariel of five years ago, and still it
was the same Ariel, because the artist's genius had caught her as she
would be always, through eternity. It was her essence he had caught
there, as surely as her grace. And he had got the beach in the same
way,--the essence of it.
Grandam, in spite of the ignorance she had claimed for herself, knew
perfectly well that anything which could stop her breath, as this
painting did, and then make her life go on with a new tide of richness
and meaning in its flow, as this picture did too, was--_good_.