Joan telephoned Hugh the next morning early and asked him to pick her up
at Holly if he was driving to town that day. This was not an unusual
request, but for all its usualness Hugh never failed to be delightedly
surprised to the point of suddenly being able to eat no more breakfast.
To-day, however, its effect on him was unusual. He was delighted, it is
true, and decided instantly that he _was_ driving, of course, although
he had intended going in by train and leaving the car for his mother.
The sudden change in plan necessitated hiring a car and driver from a
Tarrytown garage by telephone, writing a note of explanation to his
mother, who was still asleep, and arriving an hour or so late at his
office. This meant nothing to him, or ordinarily would have meant
nothing, compared with the felicity of having Joan's company on the long
drive. But to-day, on returning from the telephone, he finished his
whole breakfast and told himself that if he drove fast perhaps he
needn't be much more than an hour late in town. He'd try, anyway.
It had been a long winter. But to-day not so much as a wispy trace of it
was left in the Wild Acres woods. As he drove down the avenue he
marveled how the last patches of snow had melted from the hollows over
night. The woods glistened with red and purple and gold leaf-buds.
To-morrow, or the next day--or the day after that, at the latest,--it
would be a golden-green blaze through here.
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold--
That was the beginning of a poem of Robert Frost's. Anne had quoted or
read it to Hugh sometime in the winter. He remembered her coming to him
where he sat at the piano, tentatively searching for some theme he had
heard,--keeping it soft and just for his own ear. He had not wanted to
share his music. But Anne had wanted to share her poem. And how had he
responded? He had listened, his hands raised waiting above the keys, to
that much:
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold--
and beyond that he remembered nothing. Perhaps his indifference and
self-absorption had discouraged Anne. In any case, she hadn't gone on
with the poem. But it wasn't so much his music she had interrupted with
her poetry, that far-away afternoon in winter. It was his thoughts. And
those thoughts, his whole preoccupation, had been Joan ... Joan ...
Joan.... His music was only a path, winding through his preoccupation, a
path through, not a path out.
But now, this morning, noticing the swelling purple and red and gold of
the budded trees which almost before his eyes were rushing upon spring,
the beauty Anne had failed to share so many weeks ago pierced through to
him. And it came to him, as a matter of fact, that things in general
lately had been piercing through to him with more and more persistence.
He saw, felt, tasted, smelled the world this spring as he had not done
for many springs. Joan was in his mind more or less, for he was still in
love with her. But she no longer tinged his perceptions of everything
else as well. Anne, Glenn, his mother, Brenda Loring, his friends at the
office, spring coming,--these held vital places of their own in his new,
sharpened attention.
And Ariel and Grandam? Grandam had never given way to Joan in his
thoughts, any more than she gave way to her in actuality. As for Ariel,
she did not so much enter into as hover about the outer edges of Hugh's
consciousness, her feet on azure air as in her father's paintings. Yes.
From her arrival on the same boat with Joan, Ariel had been above and
outside but very present to Hugh's conscious mind.... So he thought now,
stirred to such thinking by those pointed, sharp buds of the tree
boughs.
Yet after all it wasn't these buds which had pierced through and touched
his soul. As he turned out from the spring woods onto the Post Road, he
knew that it wasn't the buds but something corresponding to them. For
all Ariel's delicate lightness, her tenderness, it was she, her presence
at Wild Acres, which had pierced the harsh coating over his sleeping
soul.
He jammed on his brakes and the big wheels of his car spurted gravel on
Holly's superbly tended driveway under Holly's portico. Joan was on the
steps.
She, too, knew that spring had come. From head to foot she was all in
fresh spring raiment. A lettuce-green hat tilted its shade across
glowing eyes. She was drawing on lemon-colored doeskin gloves and
laughing. "I thought you were going to drive right through and out
again! What _were_ you thinking of so dourly, Hugh?"
He waited while she settled in beside him, knees close together, narrow
patent-leather-slippered feet glittering by the accelerator, her
shoulder a careful inch or so from his. "I wasn't a bit dour. Quite the
contrary. I was thinking of spring."
Joan opened a huge patent-leather purse, as glittering as her feet,
glanced to make sure of money, tickets, compact, kerchief, snapped the
luxurious receptacle shut, tucked it between them on the seat, and
clasped her gloved hands about her knees, ready.
"Yes? Spring's really come, hasn't it! And one begins to make summer
plans. I've been flirting with the idea of Switzerland all morning, and
Doctor Steiner's colony. He wants me to spend July there. Your little
friend, Brenda, may go. And Michael certainly will."
Hugh threw in the clutch, and they slid away down the broad avenue
between wide, freshly spaded flower-beds glowing with hyacinths. Hugh
was thinking, "Ariel must get spring clothes too. She was still wearing
her fur coat yesterday. No wonder she looked tired! Yesterday was almost
as warm as today."
Joan went on. "Your engine, Hugh, is as soundless as a gull's wings
almost, even in first and second. Oh! It's too delicious! I can think of
nothing but the sea and the mountains. I think I must fall in with
Doctor Steiner's plan. I'm dreadfully happy and excited 'cause it's
spring and I'm free to go anywhere, do anything I please!--And you,
Hugh?"
She had given him his cue. She would sense either in his silence or hear
in words what spring, that might take her to the other side of the
world, could mean to him. Loneliness, of course.
But to-day Hugh did not seem to be realizing what spring should mean to
him with Joan already planning to go away because of it. He'd missed his
cue. For he was saying, "Look here, Joan. I want to talk to you about
Ariel. It's rather a strenuous existence she has with Grandam, you know.
And these New York parties on top of her work might prove a bit too
much. Last night, she turned up completely exhausted. Anybody could see!
Poor kid! So I've persuaded her to break her Saturday engagement with
your crowd, or to let me break it for her. I hope you don't mind, Joan.
I don't really see how it can do her any good. If she gave up her job
she might manage that sort of thing. But I think she's right to prefer
to keep the job. I like her pluck. Don't you, really? And you don't
mind, do you, not having her along at whatever it is you've planned?"
After a breath of surprised silence, Joan exclaimed, "Of course I don't
mind. She isn't exactly one of those people who _make_ a party, is she!
It's only that Michael's got the bee in his bonnet that Gregory Clare's
daughter needs a little polishing,--some experience of the world. But I
agree with you that he's forcing the pace a bit. I was only trying to
help."
"Yes. I can imagine that. And you've been sweet to Ariel these last few
days. I _am_ grateful."
But Joan pushed away his gratitude. "You've got it wrong. It's Michael
I'm befriending, not Ariel. After an erotic past of thirty or forty odd
years, the poor dear is ripe for the attractions of sheer youth, as are
most of his kind, not? It may be only a flash in the pan, probably is.
But I understand it's quite real while it lasts. If he goes so far as to
marry the little thing, perhaps you won't then be so thankful I'm
helping him. For I prophesy he'll murder her during the second week of
the honeymoon. He's as fearful of boredom as any creature I ever knew,
and by the second week Ariel will be about as stimulating as a
milk-shake. So in the end it may be accessory before the fact you'll
accuse me of being."
If Joan had looked at Hugh then! But she didn't.
After a while, "Am I meant to take any of that seriously, Joan?" he
asked. "Schwankovsky is sixty-two, you told me. Ariel's twenty. I don't
like Schwankovsky. Why should I? He despises me and takes no pains to
hide it. But he's being very kind to Ariel. I haven't liked to see the
way he paws her, naturally. But I thought it was just his Bohemian
habit. The artistic temperament. And Ariel doesn't seem to mind. I
trusted her instinct: thought he must be all right, do you see, since
_she_ wasn't revolted, no matter what I felt. But if he's the sort you
suggest, then she's never to so much as shake hands with him again. I'll
attend to it.... But it isn't so. You were--teasing?"
"Teasing! Why should I? But perhaps you misunderstood. The gentleman's
intentions if he has any, of which I'm not after all certain, are
honorable. And if that's so, what's bothering you? Wouldn't it be rather
a wonderful marriage for such a girl as Ariel? The murder--well, that'll
probably turn into a divorce. Dear old Michael wouldn't hurt a fly, you
know, much less a tender young _madchen_. It seems to me that Ariel has
all to gain."
"Please don't. It isn't funny. And I shall see that they don't go on
meeting. It's horrible."
"And the exhibition?" Joan asked.
Hugh consigned the exhibition to perdition with a breath. "I'll take
that over," he said, "and do my best with it."
"You!" Joan laughed. "You'd make a funny art patron, Hugh! Besides, I'm
afraid that this particular exhibition needs more money as well as more
authority than you happen to be able to bring to it. But if you are as
earnest as you sound, or even half as earnest, I might take sides with
you, push Michael into giving up the exhibition, and separate spring and
winter. How about it? Do you want my help?"
Hugh, half in hope half in distrust, just glanced at his companion's
cameo-like profile, and surprised on it a gleam which stirred an old and
until now forgotten memory. They were a boy and a girl just come on
their skis to the top of Sparrow Hill in the snow, up above Wild Acres.
Joan was insisting on trying a dangerously steep and tricky slide to
regain her tam-o'-shanter which had blown over and down. Hugh dragged
her back just in time, as he thought, and holding out his arms against
her, shot past and down himself. He saw no surer way to convince Joan of
the absurdity of her intention than to break his own neck in
demonstration. As he went down he carried with him the memory of her
profile. To-day's very gleam was on it then. A gleam of _elated malice_.
Going down the slide he took the gleam with him, and then with the
snapping of his ankle, for he broke it at the bottom, he forgot it ...
until this instant. And now memory's revival saved him. He smiled to
himself.
"I'm dull not to know when you're joking, Joan,--after all these years,"
he said. "Of course, we both know that a man doesn't love beautiful
things and give his fortune and his time generously to them if he's
nothing more than a sensualist at heart. Schwankovsky's devotion to
Ariel is disinterested. He's fascinated by everything that concerns the
Clare pictures, that's all. And who can wonder! They are so wonderful!"
"But dear Hugh! If you are so sure that the pictures are wonderful why
did you keep 'Noon' in the attic all these years?"
He answered through his teeth. They might just as well have been
fourteen again, and back on their skis up on Sparrow Hill. "You know
very well why I put it in the attic. It was you put it there and not I.
And you know it. But for some reason it amuses you to make me out
stupid. Why? And it isn't only 'Noon' you've put in the attic for me,
but most of my æsthetic pleasures. You know perfectly well that I can't
hear great music or see a sunset without wanting to take them in my bare
hands and rush to lay them in your lap. I can't adore anything for its
own sake. Even God. Beauty disrupts me, gives me anguish precisely in
proportion to its loveliness, for the simple cause that I can so seldom
share it with you. That's what's the matter with me. Or it has been that
way until lately. Lately, thank God, I've almost been able to care about
things for their own sakes again, as I did when I was a boy. Getting
'Noon' out again has helped, perhaps. I don't know."
He was exasperated. Weary. Now let dull misery rise again and entomb him
where the sharp-pointed buds of spring could not pierce through. What
was all their red-purple-gold to him!
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold ...
But Joan was appeased. Certainties which had quaked lately were stable
again. Hugh adored her. Just now what she usually got only in his eyes
and kisses, he had given her in words. For once and at last he was
articulate, poor darling. Complacency, almost amounting to beatitude,
reëstablished itself in her psyche. But it was a beatitude just tainted,
curdled rather, with scorn. Joan regretted the curdle. But it was
inevitable. For it is a law of the heart, she realized, that love given
so completely as Hugh's was given, with nothing reserved, can never have
its like in return. "And it's a pity," she thought a little bitterly.
"For if I could be absolutely sure of a love like Hugh's, and return it,
it would be bliss. The trouble is, one can't. It's against nature."
Wistfully, some lines from an Irish poet echoed through her mind.
Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women, if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss.
She pulled off her lemon-colored gloves and reached a warm vital hand,
laying each separate finger exactly on Hugh's fingers, which were
guiding the wheel now through Fifth Avenue traffic. She measured their
hands thus. And hers were only a little smaller than his. For Joan's
hands, though beautiful, with their smooth palms and backs, and the long
conical fingers, glistening-tipped, were large and strong. The hand on
Hugh's shut away the hot, spring sunlight. And it seemed almost, then,
as though his whole body as by infection from the shadowed hand was
darkened slowly. Flames might any instant roar through that dark. But
his expression was unmoved except for straightened lips. His eyes
remained keen for every loophole in the difficult traffic. Even his
hand, under that shut-down vital one on it, vibrated only with the
nuances of steering.
Joan was absorbed like a child in the way her enameled finger nails
reflected the spring sunlight. And then she became aware of how
beautifully shaped and groomed were Hugh's own almond-shaped nails. By
shifting the tips of her fingers ever so slightly she could see the
moons at the base of his nails, so clear, high and definite.
"You have nice hands, Hugh," she murmured. "Terribly nice." And when he
did not respond by look or word she added with sudden generosity, "I'll
'fess up, dear. I did make an idiotic and totally moronish mistake about
'Noon' five years ago when you brought it to me from Bermuda. But don't
tell on me, please; I am ashamed. And it doesn't matter to you what any
one thinks of your taste. You don't pretend to anything, you dear, so
they can't show you up, do you see!"
"Oh, it doesn't matter," Hugh muttered. He meant, of course, "What does
anything matter compared with your hand on mine, and this darkness and
its flame corroding my body, my mind!"
Presently Joan said, "You can put me down at the next corner, Hugh. I
want to walk twenty blocks or so for exercise before plunging into my
silly spring shopping."
She did not stir her hand from his until the car was parked against the
curb.
But spring was insistent. Nothing could keep the pointed, delicate buds
from piercing their way through the harsh bark to azure light and air
and sun, and their flowering expression. One afternoon, a few days after
his drive to town with Joan, Hugh returned to Wild Acres rather early
with the idea of persuading Ariel and his grandmother to take a drive
with him, it was such perfect weather. No one answered his knock at the
attic apartment door; so he opened it and went in.
Grandam was not there on the bed nor in the long chair: only Ariel, and
she was kneeling by one of the wide-open windows, her back to the room,
looking out into the tree-tops that in the past few days had foamed into
a sea of green gold. The sunlight slanted down this sea, at the moment
of Hugh's arrival and Ariel's watching, in a way that turned it into an
unearthly lightness of gold,--a winged, breathing _wind_ of green gold.
And Ariel knelt upright at the edge of the wind-shaken loveliness like a
wand, stilled, not bent, by the high stir of beauty.
Hugh stopped short. He had come to Grandam's low table and saw it spread
with brown paper, and on the paper a heap of wild flowers. Hepaticas,
anemones, white and yellow violets, green leaves too, and clumps of rich
brown wood loam,--all in a fragrant tangle. At the edge of the pile
Ariel's green hat was tossed down, with its green feather.
"Hello! Did you collect all these?" Hugh asked.
At his voice Ariel turned and stood, her body aurora'd by the golden
stream of air and leaves behind her.
"You here? Hello, Hugh! Grandam's driving with your mother. It's such a
day! I've been in the woods all the afternoon, with Persis and Nicky.
Just got in."
She moved toward him and stood by the table looking down at the flowers.
Some of the gold from beyond the window had flowed into her hair. And
when she looked up from the flowers Hugh saw it in her eyes too,--green
gold. The woods, Wild Acres woods, beloved of Hugh, were there,
shimmering, in Ariel's eyes.
She looked her surprise at the expression on Hugh's face before her. It
was so stirred, so new. Perhaps it was to break the spell and get the
familiar Hugh back again that she lifted her hands, palm upwards,--the
corners of her mouth too, in that sharp delicate lift darted with light,
that was her smile when she danced in the woods for Persis and
Nicky--and remarked, "Spring has come."
It had indeed. It had come rushing on a broad stream of light and poured
itself along Hugh's veins. The look in his face increased rather than
diminished. But Ariel had done her best, all she knew, to relieve the
intensity in Hugh's dark eyes. Her knees began to tremble. She did not
want Hugh to see that she was trembling. She would be utterly ashamed if
he should see. So she sat down suddenly, on the edge of the daybed, and
commenced to part the flowers from the wood loam, and from each other.
Her hands were browned by this one afternoon's sun and air. They were
narrow hands and small, with rather square-tipped, very straight
fingers. Hugh recalled Joan's hand above his own on his steering wheel.
It was white and beautiful and exquisitely molded, a sculptor's dream.
But these little hands--their appeal was in their simplicity, in their
graceful but inconspicuous motions, not in their form and modeling. If
he should put his own hands down over them now they would be quite lost,
all the magic and grace of their movements stilled away, and they would
feel to him like the grubby hands of any little girl who had been out
picking wild flowers in the woods.
He would put his hands down over hers. He would do that. He would find
out how it felt to capture grace like a bird under one's
fingers,--perhaps to destroy it in the grasp of it and so prove it an
illusion. Not real. Not actual. Not like Joan's beauty, inescapable. He
would prove that Ariel's charm for him was something he could always
control, could catch and subdue and hide away from himself, under his
hand.
It was only for a breath or so that he had Ariel's hands under his own,
crushed down in the medley of spring flowers and damp earth. But the
grace, the charm was not controlled by his will or his hold. It escaped
without a flutter of struggle. It flowed up into the surprised lift of
Ariel's head, the rising of her eyelids, and spread a shimmer of
green-gold light in the quickly widening pupils of her eyes, raised to
his.
Suddenly he discovered, and she knew that he had discovered it, that she
was trembling. What Ariel did not realize was that Hugh was trembling
too, a little.
He released her hands. "I didn't mean to hurt the flowers," he muttered.
"Sorry if I have." And he commenced to help her in her sorting.
"I'm going to put these shortest-stemmed ones in a saucer," Ariel
explained. "Isn't there something special, don't you think, about little
white and yellow violets? Secret and special? They sort of break my
heart...."
He should hear how her voice didn't tremble. She repeated the silly
words to make sure that he heard how it didn't: "They sort of break my
heart."
"Yes? Well, _spring_ sort of breaks _my_ heart," Hugh responded.