To-morrow, Saturday, Ariel (contrary to Mrs. Weyman's predictions) would
have held her job and given satisfaction for something over a week, and
she was to have a holiday. Grandam had decided that one entire day free,
rather than the two afternoons which had been Miss Peters', would afford
Ariel more of a break and give her a chance to begin getting acquainted
with New York. Having a job now and money of her own, she could go ahead
at this without loss of pride.
Ariel was finishing getting Grandam to bed for the night. It was nearly
midnight. "I don't really like leaving you to-morrow," she was
protesting. "If Mrs. Ridelle doesn't show up in the morning I shan't be
sorry."
"But she always does. She never fails. And you are to get right out and
away the minute we have had breakfast. You're free until midnight. Don't
even come in to say good night to me. It's a totally free day. I want it
that way. My only word of advice is, wear both your slippers home when
you do come, and be in bed at the stroke of twelve. But your overshoes
will secure the slippers.--This is probably the last snowfall we'll have
this year." The soft thud of big flakes sounded constantly on the glass
of the panes at the back of the faintly flowered curtains. The sound was
lovely to Ariel. It was whiteness and stillness made sensible.
But there came almost the same soft thud on the door, as Ariel was about
to pull back the curtains, open the windows and let in the snowy night.
"I can't imagine," Grandam murmured. "But go see."
Ariel opened the door into the brightly lighted attic hall. Nothing
there. She stepped out, feeling eerie. Then she saw who had knocked. It
was Anne Weyman, in hat and coat just as she had come from the station,
pressed back against the wall, out of sight of Grandam's bed. In the
glaring overhead light she looked ghastly. "Ariel Clare," she whispered,
"I've got to see you. How soon can you sneak down to my room? No one but
Rose knows I'm home, and I don't want they should. Rose said you were up
here!"
"I can't come down at all," Ariel whispered back. "I have to keep in
touch with Grandam's bell, you see. I'm in Miss Peters' place. Did you
know? But go on into my bedroom and I'll be there in a minute. Or don't
you want to speak to Grandam first?"
"No. Absolutely. Don't tell her I'm here, or anything. Only hurry."
Ariel shut the door and returned to her final night duties. "It's
something for me. Very important," she told Grandam. "But I can't tell
you. You don't mind?"
Grandam let her finish and go off to her own room without a single
question, or even any show of surprise; she was a person wise in her
incuriosities. Going, Ariel shut all the doors between herself and
Grandam. The electric bell in the side of Grandam's bed made that
reasonably safe, and in any case it was always done.
Anne was lying across Ariel's bed, still in her coat though her hat had
been thrown on the floor, sobbing. Ariel sat down on the edge of the bed
and tried to get her attention, but the wild sobbing only increased. She
knew nothing farther to do but to lie down beside her, throw an arm
tight around her, bulky fur coat and all, and press her cheek to the
burning, drenched one. She had never heard any one cry like this or felt
such convulsions of sobbing through a body. But her pity was more potent
than her surprise and shyness, and she pressed closer and closer,
holding Anne with a steady arm.
Then, gradually, as though quelled by that slender arm which was so
persistent in its steadiness and the cool cheek pressed against her own,
Anne's sobbing began to die away, the convulsions to lessen, to stop
altogether. After several minutes of comparative quiet Anne disengaged
herself from Ariel's clasp and sat up. The rouge on her cheeks, if there
had been any, was soaked away. She was white, like a Pierrot, in spite
of all her weeping. When she began speaking, the natural huskiness of
her voice was roughened by past sobs into a raspingness hardly human.
"See here, Ariel! I've been thinking about you, coming toward you,
wanting to get to you, hours and hours. Not any girl at Smith. Not
Mother. Nobody but you, Ariel! You are the only one who can help me and
keep me from killing myself."
Ariel took Anne's words literally and believed them. She knew that Anne
was here for her to save from death. Why she was the one who had to do
it, didn't matter. It might be, however, for the simple reason that she
herself was simple enough and real enough to be able to believe in the
stark danger which threatened Anne before it had been demonstrated by
fulfillment.
Tears were streaming down Anne's face, but she made no more noise of
crying and seemed unaware of the continuing flood. So Ariel took her own
handkerchief and wiped them as they came, while Anne stared into
nothingness. Now the minute had come when Ariel was to have it out with
Death on Anne's account. Anne was moved away, out of the conflict. Thus
the blind stare, the stopped sobbing. And Ariel knew Death when she was
faced with it. Hadn't she gotten thoroughly acquainted with its presence
in the studio that last week with her father, while it waited around to
make its final attack? And here it was, back again. Strong and stark as
before. However, there was some difference between Ariel's two meetings
with the dark wings. Before, they had hovered down slowly, with every
assurance of finding a resting place in the studio, and been content to
stir and rustle from corner to corner, waiting their time. But to-night
they were not so sure of their prey, and not being sure, were insistent,
beating, angry.
Ariel could not pretend to ignore them; but she took both of Anne's
hands in her own hands,--the hands that Doctor Hazzard had found so firm
after her first Death encounter. They were every bit as firm now. Anne
felt without doubt the strength that the doctor had felt. "What is the
matter, Anne? Tell me?"
The haggard dark eyes made an effort, focused on Ariel's face. Then went
blank again. And in their blank-dark Ariel saw--was it a wild beating of
black wings? "Look at me!" she cried. "Anne Weyman, stop staring like
that. You've got to tell me what is the matter."
Anne reacted, as if she were under hypnosis, which in fact she was. The
wings beat back and away in the depths of the brown eyes. "It's
Prescott," she said. "He's ended with me."
"What do you mean? What has happened? Go on. Tell me." This was forced
confidence, in all conscience, and well for Anne that Ariel had no
compunction about that. Indeed, she no more hesitated in compelling
Anne's confidence at this minute than she would have hesitated to knock
a child, in danger of drowning, unconscious in order to save it. But the
command in Ariel's voice knocked Anne into consciousness, not out of it.
She began at once telling Ariel, coherently and with detail, everything.
"Last year," the ragged parrot-voice croaked out, "I made up my mind to
be like other girls. I didn't see why I wasn't popular in the way they
were--with men, I mean. I wanted so much to be. My roommate--and she's
my best friend, too--said it was because I was prudish. You can't be
_prudish_ if you want invitations to fraternity dances and things. Patty
told me how she worked it. She said she'd begun herself by not being
very keen on necking, but it grew on you. So she got a few dates for me
through her dates, and I went ahead, trying her plan out. But it didn't
work. I couldn't pretend well enough. And then, of course, the dates
didn't repeat. I didn't much mind, for if popularity came that way it
wasn't worth the price, I'd learned, you see. So I went in for Drama
instead, and compensated by trying to make my dent acting. And I got
quite happy again. Patty and I sort of drifted apart. But giving up the
ambition to be popular was like coming out of prison and I could bear
even losing Patty.
"Then all of a sudden, Ariel, the whole works went bang.... Because I
met Prescott. And I had to laugh. For how can you really let a man kiss
you so it counts, until you're really and truly crazy for him to kiss
you? I ask you?"
This last was no mere slang phrase. Anne was seriously asking Ariel. And
Ariel replied sharply, "You can't, of course. That's the whole secret;
anybody knows."
Anne laughed, if one could call it laughter. It was neither sob nor
speech, at any rate. And went on. "There's something tremendous about
wanting to be kissed like that. You don't know whether it's pain or
bliss. It's both, I guess, full up to the brim of your heart, really....
When he touched my hand, even by accident, it was like the world coming
to an end. I thought I'd die of it. And it seemed to be like that with
him too.
"Patty said I was coming along,--for I'd won back her respect again,
attracting a man like Prescott. She warned me to be careful, though. But
there has never been any danger. It was Prescott who was careful. So far
as I was concerned he could have had anything he wanted of me. Why not?
After kisses like that?
"But it didn't affect _him_ that way I guess. Just his loving me as much
as he did was bliss. And I didn't want him to want to marry me, after he
explained to me his point of view on marriage and I had read 'Stephen's
Fall,' and all. It wouldn't have been Prescott, you see, married
stodgily to a nice girl! I was glad he was just himself and I was
_proud_ that he could tell me frankly just how much he didn't care for
me as well as how much he did, if you know what I mean."
"Yes," Ariel agreed. "I do know. Loving a person doesn't mean wanting to
change them, even if changing them would only mean their being able to
love you better. You love them because they are the way they are...."
"Yes. And listen.--The last two days of vacation here, Prescott was
different. Toward me, I mean. If he could manage it, he wasn't alone
with me. He'd stick around Glenn or you, or Mother. Any one! And he went
for one walk all alone. Pretended he didn't know I was waiting for him
with my things on in the library. Just slipped out without my knowledge.
"I thought it was you that had changed him, Ariel. Imagine! But then he
did keep saying how graceful you are and what lovely hair you've got.
And that last morning when he went to sleep in the library--remember?
That morning I was _sure_ that he was crazy about you.
"I was pretty dumb not to see that it was Joan Nevin all the time, from
the first minute he saw her!
"When he got back to New Haven, after his visit here, he didn't write.
He'd written every day for months. I nearly went insane watching for
mail. I wrote him at first, pretending everything was the same. But when
he wouldn't answer, I began calling him up on long distance. He was
always out--they said. I sent telegrams too. I hadn't any pride. Or I'd
have it one hour, decide I'd let eternal silence on my part show him how
indifferent I was, and the next _minute_, almost, I was calling long
distance again. It was wild, but I didn't seem to have any will. Then,
to-day, I couldn't stand it. I _had_ to see him if he was never going to
answer the telephone, never write. So I cut all my classes and went to
New Haven. I'd gone to classes right along. Even studied. Patty never
guessed anything, right in the room with me! I didn't cry, not once.
Till you came in just now.
"I went right from the train to Prescott's dorm. And I met him coming
out of the street door. I had meant to go right up to his room, unless
somebody stopped me. But there he was--like Fate. He took me away from
the college into the town to an awful, dirty little eating place, miles
away. It seemed miles. And all the time he talked. He said I was crazy
and he despised me for chasing him like that. He'd made love to dozens
of girls and got through with them. But not one of them had ever done a
crazy thing like coming to his dormitory and trying to throw a scene.
Girls of my sort understood how much necking meant with a man, and _how
little_. If they didn't, he'd written a book, to help them to, hadn't
he! If a man of his sort wanted something more serious than necking, he
didn't usually take it with the sisters of his best friends. Or with my
kind of girl at all. He thought I'd understood that. I'd pretended to
understand, he said.
"And he talked like anything against Mother--sneered--kept saying that
in inviting him to visit us she'd tacitly admitted that she expected me
to be able to take care of myself. Or hadn't she believed in the
sincerity of 'Stephen's Fall'? She had read it, hadn't she? Well,
then--and so on! He said that she, Mother, expected to have her cake and
eat it too. That she didn't think straight.
"He said it had come to him here at Wild Acres that in spite of Mother's
and my stupidity, he didn't want to go on fooling along with his best
friend's sister any longer.
"I grabbed his hands. We were in the tearoom. They were building a house
out of matches. He has marvelous hands, do you remember? Just looking at
them stops your heart,--my heart. He pulled them away, and there mine
lay, flat, on the tablecloth. I looked at them and looked at them. They
seemed to have dropped off from my arms and be just lying there, you
know.
"He wouldn't even look at me any more. His face was all twisted--snarly.
Loathing me. I left my hands on the table and said over and over, 'I
love you. I love you. What has Glenn got to do with it? Or Mother? I'll
take all the responsibility. You're afraid, that's what's the matter.
You're afraid of Glenn. And Mother. Afraid.'
"He got even angrier. He said, 'Be quiet. Glenn Weyman's friendship
means more to me than necking with a dozen girls like you, or a hundred.
How couldn't it! He has a mind I respect. He's a person. A contemporary
I value. He means something in my life and always will, I hope. And of
course, I'm not afraid of him. He isn't the sort to let me down because
I've kissed his sister a few times without matrimonial intentions. Not
Glenn. Hugh's in that class, perhaps. Hugh might raise a rumpus, even
now, when we haven't done anything. So what if we _had_? Doesn't that
scare _you_?'
"He said he didn't suppose I was capable of understanding how much more
real satisfaction it was to him to spend his time with a person like
Glenn than to waste it dabbling for hours with me on the edge of a
_slough of sentimentality tainted with sensuality_. The economical and
fastidious thing, he said, was for him to take his intellectual
companionship where he could find it, with fellows like Glenn, and when
he wanted a girl he'd do what Stephen did before he lost his soul and
married the nice daughter of his president.... Yes, Ariel. He said that.
"He said, 'If I ever do fall romantically in love, it would have to be
with a developed personality, a real woman. Some one who has a life of
her own, and to whom our passion would be just an incident of that life,
not a fulfillment. _Some one like Mrs. Nevin._'
"Then I knew. It was Joan had done it all to him. Some of the very
things he had said, she had said first, and he was just quoting. I
_knew_....
"He took a bill out of his pocketbook and pushed it all mussed up into
my hand. 'You pay. I'm going,' he said. I was dizzy. He hated even to
look at me. He got up and walked out of the tearoom. I hadn't poured the
tea. The toast hadn't been uncovered. I put the money down on my plate
and walked out too. Walking to the door was like walking in the dark. I
couldn't see. Felt my way among the chairs. But when I got into the
street the faintness went. I must have run, for I caught up with
Prescott down the block. I took his arm. He jumped as if a leper had
come and taken his arm, almost off the curb. But I got his hand. He hit
me then, I think, and started to run. Whether there were other people on
the street or not, I don't know. Must have been, though. After a while,
I saw a taxi driver looking at me funnily. He was drawn up by the curb.
He said, 'Buck up. It's a great life, kid, if you don't weaken.' He was
fine. I liked him. He took me to the station.
"I bought a ticket for Northampton. But I was really headed for the
Connecticut. I was crazy to get down to a place I know--a place he and I
had often been--where the water is deep, and I could slide off into the
blackness under the ice. I didn't think of Mother or Glenn or Hugh or
Grandam or Patty or any one. I didn't even think about death. I only
wanted to slip off under the ice.
"But sometime, after a long time, you came, Ariel, like a picture on the
air. You, and your green feather! I remembered how you had lost your
father. I'd never taken it in before, but I did then, on the train. You
had lost him and I had lost Prescott. And then for the first time I knew
that I was crazy, and that my wanting to get into the black water was
part of the craziness. But your green feather was not part of it. It was
the other direction, away from craziness. I don't understand about that.
But it was the Connecticut for me, or to go where the green feather was.
"So I came home on the first train. And now the craziness has gone....
Every word I've said to you, Ariel, has been driving it away. Just
looking at you drives it away. But I don't see where your feather comes
in, do you? Is it still on your hat? Safe in the closet? There's
something--_deep_--about that, that I don't see...."
Again Ariel wiped the tears from Anne's face; for although she had come
back into occupation of her mentality, she was still almost beyond
physical sensation, and did not even know she was crying.
"Let's say our prayers," Ariel said. "That's all we can do. I don't
understand about the green feather any more than you. But God is in it
somewhere--and my darling father, for it's father's feather. Persis and
Nicky think it's a magic feather--but I guess there's something better
than magic about it now.... Deeper ... though we _don't_ understand."
They knelt beside the bed.