In a minute Hugh was standing in the hot attic hallway, among the bowls
and jars of flowers which had been swept with the rest of Grandam's
personality out of her room. Under his feet, where his haste had almost
broken it, was the wide, shell-like dish of hepaticas he had watched
Ariel put up on the mantel long, long ago, that morning.
He opened the door of the attic apartment cautiously, without knocking.
As twice before when Grandam had had these heart attacks, her
personality had fled the room and left it amazingly bare, even barren.
The daybed was there by the long open window, white and stark, no violet
and silver cushions left to its adornment,--and on it, straight between
white sheets, propped high on white pillows, Grandam lay unstirring.
Ariel sat in a chair on the far side of the bed, facing the door, hands
folded in her lap. There was something in her posture and utter
stillness that said she had been thus immobile a long while.
Hugh came as near to the daybed as he dared. Even then Ariel did not
look up. She was intent on Grandam's sleeping face. He noticed how tiny
gold freckles stood out on her cheeks and nose, freckles that the
silvery tone of her skin generally concealed but which were shown up now
by pallor. Her hair, as in "The Shell," was bent back from her
temples,--only now by the air of Death, not of the sea, Hugh thought.
And to him, still under the power and beauty of "The Shell," she seemed
a figure watching at the edge of the tide of death, wondering how high
it would come, how close to her watching eyes, her folded hands.
Grandam was sleeping with apparent comfort and tranquillity, her face,
airily and delicately mysterious, a face that in its elusive quality had
somehow escaped all the marks of the usual human experiences--old age,
fear, and now even Death.
Hugh ever since he was grown up, and much more since his father's death,
had realized Grandam's uniqueness. Her only son, Hugh's father, had been
her last great love left to her, but when he went Grandam had remained
as now, elusive of suffering. It was when his father died, or soon
after, that Grandam gave herself away to Hugh in confidences, and ever
since the already close bond of sympathy between them had been closer.
She had reminded Hugh that she had married a man twenty years older than
herself. His friends had become her friends; he had a genius for
friendship and the men and women he knew intimately and had drawn to
himself were people of rich lives, spiritually and intellectually. Among
them were poets and painters, saints and humanitarians. Their values
were spiritual. Grandam married when she was seventeen. Hugh's father
was born when she was twenty; and that same year her husband died.
But in those three short years of a perfect marriage Grandam had made
herself as accepted and loved by her husband's circle of rare friends as
he was himself.... "My love identified me with him. That is the only way
I can explain such a miracle," she told Hugh, that one brief hour some
time in the course of their coming together in grief for his father's
death.
But she never felt worthy of the remarkable friendships. She knew, none
better, that she must fly, race, to keep up with her husband's friends
and himself in their flight through time and in Eternity.
"The one who has helped me most in this flight, this race, is the
possessor of those hands." She indicated the drawing of the hands from
which Hugh had never known her to be separated, whether at home or
traveling. Wherever Grandam was, there always in her bedroom hung the
ebony-framed drawing.
"He taught me short cuts. After Hugh died (her husband Hugh, she meant)
I would have lost the race if it hadn't been for 'The Saint.' For if
Hugh was so far ahead of me in Time here, in Eternity he would be
lost--like a star shot into space. But 'The Saint' made me have faith
that there are ways of keeping in touch even with shooting stars.
"Well, 'The Saint' himself and all my husband's loves have left Time,
one after another,--and me here in Time. Even my son has left me behind
here. But Time and Eternity are really one in a mysterious way, as 'The
Saint' taught me, and so I am racing still, a girl at the tail of the
race, but in it."
Grandam had ended these confidences concerning her inner life on a
humorous word. "The whole point of this story, Hugh, is that I am _God's
accident_. He let me into Time twenty years too late. So I've just had
to leave time out of my practical life."
And Hugh knew she had succeeded. Grandam had eluded time. That
constituted the mystery of her elusiveness. And looking down at her now,
there was nothing of the pity of vigorous youth in his glance. Whether
she died to-night or next month didn't matter. Her death would hardly be
so much as a stumble in the race she was running with that clan of noble
souls!
Ariel had become aware of Hugh's presence. She came beside him, took his
coat sleeve between a thumb and forefinger, and drew him away from the
bed toward the piano. There, as far from the daybed as they could get,
she whispered.
"It was like Father. This happened to him several times, before the last
one. She was too ill to take the medicine. So I used the hypodermic, as
I had done with Father, and as Doctor Bradshaw had said I should with
Grandam. Rose got him on the telephone. But it was almost over when he
got here. He said that Rose and I and Nora had done everything we could
have done to help her. He brought Miss Freer, the nurse, with him. She's
down in the kitchen now. She's very nice and Grandam likes her ...
Grandam was very brave...."
Ariel looked down, away from Hugh's intent eyes, and her dropped
eyelids, delicately etched, petal-shaped, took his breath with their
loveliness as they had in "The Shell."
... "She threw her scarf over her face, Hugh, so that I shouldn't see
the agony of the pain.... Oh, Hugh!"
She lifted eyes, clear of tears, but pitiful. And Hugh had been thinking
of petal eyelids and eerie gold freckles, when it was death and agony
that were here, close by. His beloved Grandam's death and agony. It was
suddenly Hugh who had tears. His throat ached with them, and the light
went black with them.
Instinctively, he felt for and found Ariel's wrist and held it hard.
When he could see again, Ariel was still there by his side, but looking
away toward the daybed, a tender patience on her face, keeping watch
over Grandam's peace. Then Hugh remembered the exhibition. Ariel had not
asked or looked a word about it. And such a little time ago it had meant
so much to her! It was really to have been Ariel's and her dead father's
great hour.
"She's a woman, this girl," Hugh knew with his whole soul then. "Life
falls into its just proportions before the eyes of her womanhood. She
has forgotten herself. She has even forgotten her father in sharing
Grandam's suffering."
He was overwhelmingly rejoiced. He felt that neither life nor death
could ever sadden him again, because one woman was so good, so sweet.