Mrs. Nevin had been visiting in Philadelphia at a house party a few
days, and Hugh had not the opportunity to thank her for what he was
convinced was the result of her machinations concerning the Clare
pictures. He thought of writing, but decided against it, preferring to
express to her face the gratitude which he felt so deeply. Strange,
sweet gratitude, really. Soon now her voice might come to him on the
telephone either at his office or Wild Acres, to tell him that she was
back and wanted to see him. For because it was Hugh who did most of the
wanting, the initiative had become, gradually, almost entirely Joan's.
She knew, and he knew that she knew, that he would break an appointment
with heaven itself for a three-minute encounter with her anywhere, any
time. And this being true, the initiative had to be hers, unless he were
to lose her altogether; for if it were his he would only drive her from
his life by constant importunities. The only way to hold Joan, Hugh
knew, was by letting her go.
Her summons came sooner than he had dared hope. The telephone on his
office desk rang joyfully. She was to be in town that evening, she said,
for a dinner at Schwankovsky's. Afterwards Michael wouldn't mind a bit
if Hugh turned up there. They'd probably dance.
Hugh went, of course. It was the first time he had ever been invited to
Michael Schwankovsky's house. And to-night it was not in any sense, he
knew, Schwankovsky's invitation, but entirely Joan's.
When he got to the mansion--for Schwankovsky's house on Riverside Drive
was no less--Hugh was taken up in the house elevator, run by a footman
in Schwankovsky's livery, to the top floor, where the host and his
dinner guests were dancing in the long gallery. This was--the World
knew--where Schwankovsky's collection of oils was hung, and Hugh
wondered, as the elevator ascended, whether the connoisseur had perhaps
already snaked out some of the best of the Clare pictures for himself,
and whether they were already up here in the famous gallery. He did not
know the ethics of the business, or whether, indeed, Frye had the right
to sell ahead of the exhibition. But even if he might not purchase them,
it was conceivable that the man who was to finance and advertise the
exhibition could borrow from it ahead, at will, any pictures he wished.
Hugh thought of Ariel. "She'll want to know every last detail, which
pictures are here, how they look by electric light, everything. I must
take particular pains to notice and remember."
The elevator let him out directly into the gallery. A dozen couples were
dancing. An electrola was blaring. Joan saw him, left her partner, and
crossed to him at once.
"Nice of you to come. Don't bother whether you know people or not. Just
cut in and dance with them. Have a drink?"
"No, thanks. But can't we talk--you and I? Must it be dancing?"
"I'm afraid so, for a while, anyway. We've only just begun."
"Are you going out to Holly to-night? Is your car here?"
"No. I'm not going home till to-morrow morning. I'm staying with Brenda
Loring. You remember her? Be nice to her to-night. She quite betrayed
her girlish heart concerning you in Philadelphia. She was at the house
party."
Hugh had met Miss Loring several times at Holly, and she was one of the
very few girls among Joan's acquaintances who cherished the illusion
that he was unattached. She danced past at the moment with Michael
Schwankovsky and smiled brilliantly at Hugh around--she could not
possibly manage it over--the big man's shoulder.
Hugh noticed Joan's recently discarded partner, who had seized the
opportunity of Joan's welcoming Hugh to get himself a drink at the
buffet set up temporarily near the electrola, turning toward them. "Not
yet, you idiot!" he cried inwardly, and took Joan quickly into his arms.
They danced.
"I was going to write you, Joan. But I waited. You can't know what a
brick I think you've been. How I appreciate--"
Joan was exchanging lip and eye signals with her host, who, still with
Brenda Loring, was passing them again, and she barely noticed Hugh's
words.
"I don't see any of the pictures up here, though. Perhaps it's more
advisable to wait and spring them on the public, all at once. Is that
the idea? Knock their eyes out? I must speak to your friend about
'Noon.' He'll want that in the exhibition, of course. I've given it to
Ariel."
"Hugh! What _are_ you talking about? Hold me closer. That's right. You
haven't caught on yet, have you? You'll have to, though. This step has
come to stay. It _is_ a little intricate. But try now. That's better!"
At least he was holding her closer. But his heart and his pulse found it
hard to keep the slow rhythm. They boomed, pounded, plunged as though he
were one with some cosmic ocean. And the new step Joan wanted him to
learn was mathematically precise, for all that the partner must be held
so very close.
It was naturally, then, some time before Hugh got back to the subject of
the exhibition, and he only returned to it at all--desperately trying to
ignore the mad race of his blood--because of Ariel. He must take news to
her, detailed news, since Frye had neglected to write again in answer to
her instant letter of many eager questions. Joan, of course, could now
tell him all that they wanted to know. He hoped Ariel would be awake
when he got home and thought she would; for he had telephoned her that
he was to see Schwankovsky himself to-night. He had refrained from
mentioning Joan only because Ariel, strangely, seemed to resent Joan's
part in her amazing good fortune.
"It's too splendid about Schwankovsky--that he should be so enthusiastic
about the pictures!" he managed finally. "Did you have to do much
persuading--after he had seen them, I mean? And have you seen any of
them yourself yet? Joan! You were a darling to do it!"
There were the other two again, Schwankovsky smiling intimately into
Joan's passing eyes, Miss Loring into Hugh's. "Like silly monkeys going
past on a merry-go-round. I wish they'd stop it. Joan won't listen. She
hasn't heard a word," Hugh groaned to himself. And all the time there
was his thundering heart, his pulse to ignore,--holding Joan close like
this in the slow movements of the dance.
"Does Schwankovsky think the exhibition is bound to be a success?"
Hugh's voice raised itself, insistent, above the electrola's blare, and
above the thundering of the cosmic sea in his blood. Joan began to pay
attention.
"What exhibition?" she asked. "Which exhibition?"
"Ariel's.... The Gregory Clare pictures, of course."
"Oh! So it's Ariel again. Good Heavens! I keep forgetting that wretched
girl. The wretched artist-father too! Sorry, Hugh. I know you feel
responsible about the stupid business. That you're worried. Who wouldn't
be! But it isn't at all likely that Michael knows anything about that
silly exhibition,--if there is really to be one. Why should he be
bothered?"
"But I thought that Schwankovsky--that you, Joan--that you'd got him to
look at the pictures, and that that was why--"
Joan laughed tolerantly. "Well, I haven't got him to look at them. I
don't even know where they are, in fact. And I'm glad I don't. After the
sample you showed me! But there's nothing to keep _you_ from pulling
wires for Ariel, if you like. Why, you might even get Michael as a
patron for the event. What a delicious idea!"
Schwankovsky joined them at this point in their conversation of
cross-purposes. The music had fallen mercifully silent for the minute.
Joan took the big man possessively by the arm. "I invited Hugh here
to-night," she began, explaining to him, "to see me. But he's not
interested in me. Only in some wretched little artist's exhibition. I
suspect he means to tackle you next, Michael.--Better first-hand than
second-hand, Hugh.--But I'm warning you, Michael! Hugh's on the prowl
for strings to pull to-night. He's all on the make--for the artist's
daughter."
Having thus made things, as she thought, simple for her simple friend,
Joan gave herself up to the arms of a new partner simultaneously with
the reawakening of the electrola to a fresh burst of racket.
Hugh had not the slightest idea of how he had managed it, but, plainly,
during their brief moments of contact he had irritated Joan beyond
endurance. And now he must gather up the pieces of himself which she had
left and be coherent for his involuntary host. "It's only the Clare
pictures I was discussing with Joan," he explained. "I thought she had
had something to do with your interest in them."
"The Clare pictures! What do you know about the Clare pictures, if you
please, Mr. Weyman? Or Mrs. Nevin, for the matter of that? Kindly tell
me!"
The big man was openly annoyed.
"What do I know? Well, not much. Except, of course, that you've taken
'em on."
"Who told you that?"
"Charlie Frye wrote it to us. Since then, we've heard nothing."
"Charlie Frye! Young idiot! Now why should he go around telling this,
when I particularly requested that he shouldn't?"
"Well, of course, he had to let _us_ know! Naturally we--"
"Pff. Since it's out, it's out. No matter. Only it was going to be
something of a satisfaction, springing an exhibition like that on New
York. But now you and Joan know! Probably he's told everybody. Well, I
don't suppose it really matters--"
He blustered off without another word or look, leaving Hugh stranded.
Didn't Schwankovsky know that Ariel was at Wild Acres with the Weymans?
That Hugh was her host? Apparently not.
Miss Loring, seeing Hugh so suddenly and unequivocally disengaged,
forsook her own group by the buffet and started to insinuate her way
through the room toward him.
"Got to catch a train," he thought, to put himself in countenance with
himself. If Miss Loring got to him before the elevator arrived, summoned
by his urgent finger, he would say it aloud. He looked at his watch.
True enough! If he was to catch the hour's train from the Grand Central,
he must get himself on the inside of a taxi in something less than a
minute. The elevator beat Miss Loring, and Hugh was grateful.
In the taxi he began sorting it out. Schwankovsky had seen Gregory
Clare's pictures all right, and he had taken the exhibition in charge.
But Joan had had nothing to do with it, and in fact knew nothing about
it. And Schwankovsky himself hadn't a hint of Hugh's connection with the
artist or with his daughter. Probably he wasn't even aware that Joan
herself knew Ariel. Surprising, perhaps, but not unaccountable. Charlie
Frye mightn't even have mentioned that she had left Bermuda.--And Hugh
decided that his having bolted away from that party didn't matter. He
couldn't think that Miss Loring would be unconsolable, and no one else
would even notice. Certainly Joan wouldn't. Asking him to come had been
the merest impulse--a fragile impulse at that--just a slight flutter of
well-meaningness toward poor old Hugh.
He looked drawn as he paid off his taxi driver at the Grand Central and
mingled his stride with the throngs pouring toward their various locals
on the lower level.
His mother was reading in bed when he got home. She called out to him.
Propped among snowy pillows, swathed in a rosy negligee under a rosy
bedside light, she was reading a book of "Cases,"--collected and edited
by Joan's Doctor Steiner. For unpleasantness of subject they competed
tolerably with the popular murder mysteries of the day, and for the
ingenuity of their unraveling and denouements they competed not at all,
but superbly surmounted.
"Ariel in bed?" Hugh inquired. Mrs. Weyman closed the book, but kept a
finger in it. "I should hope so," she exclaimed, just this side of
sharpness, while her welcoming smile changed into an irritated frown.
"Really! Hugh! Don't you expect quite a lot of me these days? Three
times this week I've dined with that girl alone here. We've nothing to
say to each other. If Grandam came down, it would help. But no, Ariel
seems to have become my eternal vis-à-vis. Joan's away. Mrs. Drake and
the Eddingtons and 'most everybody else, for the matter of that, are
still in Florida. Even without Ariel it would be dreary enough--But
_with_ her! And you come rushing in--'_Is Ariel in bed?_' I can't stand
it."
"I'm sorry, Mother. But Joan's back. You'll see her to-morrow, probably.
That will help. And the exhibition's on the way,--less than two months
to wait. After that Ariel might go abroad, or something, with some nice
older woman. Meanwhile--"
"Exactly, Hugh! Meanwhile? It's appalling! What to do with her! And
how's she to go abroad, or do anything--without any money?"
"Why, Mother! You're crying! Why? I hadn't an idea you were so bothered!
Poor darling!--I've an idea. Why don't _you_ go to Europe right now,
this spring? We can manage it beautifully--"
"And leave you unchaperoned here with this young person, I suppose!"
"That's ridiculous! Unchaperoned! But if you must be so considerate,
darling, there's Grandam--"
"Yes? But _is_ there? I sometimes wonder! Grandam might as well be
living in the highest snow of the Andes for all the contact she has with
_us_ these days! Her role as chaperone wouldn't have much illusion for
the servants, or even for the world at large, I'm afraid, Hugh dear. But
in any case I don't want to be driven away, if you please, from my home
and my children and my friends by your Ariel Clare!"
Hugh was utterly taken aback. He had not known that his mother harbored
any resentment whatever toward Ariel. And why in heaven's name should
she! But he said, after a moment of quick thought, "Look here, Mother!
Ariel can go in to New York with me mornings. There'll be plenty for her
to do all day, seeing the sights. That'll get her off your hands. I only
haven't suggested it before because she'll need money, batting around by
herself, and the poor girl's awfully touchy about money right now. If
she weren't so proud--"
His mother's strange, suddenly hysterical laugh halted him. "So proud!"
she gibed. "Why don't you suggest that she pawn the fur coat you gave
her, Hugh! She wouldn't need any further resources for a long time. She
_could_ go to Europe then, or anywhere else she wanted to--comfortably.
But certainly you're not to dry-nurse her days in New York. That's
absurd. Something will come along to solve the problems, I know. It'll
have to. Thursday, though, I _will_ let you take your turn, since you
suggest it. It's my day for the Shakespeare Club, and Ariel certainly
wouldn't fit. So your New York plan will be useful for that one day. You
are a self-sacrificing old dear!"
Hugh, on leaving his mother, walked quietly out to the guest-room wing
and stood for a few seconds before Ariel's shut door. All was still. So
very still that he actually _sensed_ a girl sleeping. He wanted to go
in, to look at her asleep. Her room, when she was in it, was, he knew,
like a still little corner in the sky, cold, star-filled.... She was
precious to him, this daughter of his friend, every hour more so, as he
came to know her better. Was this tenderness that welled in his heart
merely the automatic tenderness which most people do harbor for what is
helpless and dependent on them, and not really the unique thing he felt
it? He scarcely knew.
But as he turned away from Ariel's door, he was thinking of Joan. He
felt that he knew to-night, definitely and forever, that she would never
relent, never love him. Her indifference to Ariel and Ariel's good had
convinced him. It was as if in refusing to share some of his tenderness
for Ariel, Joan had refused to give him a child. This was absurd, on the
surface, he was aware, but it had deep roots of truth somewhere,
strongly reaching down into reality.