Late afternoon. Glenn walked up the avenue at Wild Acres, back from the
first day of his job on the _World_. It had been a long day, beginning
at seven in the morning. He looked and was weary and disheartened, and
his mouth was set in a rather bitter line. Anne, lying in a long chair
in the square garden, the only patch of ground, except for a bit of
lawn, which was cultivated at Wild Acres, saw him through the screen of
hedge which protected her privacy, and sat up. "Glenn," she called
softly, "oh, Glenn!"
He responded to the call dispiritedly enough, but came around the hedge
and sat down on the foot of her chair when she had moved her legs to
make room for him. She handed him a cigarette and then held a match for
him. She herself had been smoking for hours, it seemed, for the grass
all around her chair was littered with cigarette stubs thrown carelessly
down.
"How goes it?" she asked.
He hesitated, then looked at her gloomily. "Have you seen the morning
papers?" he asked.
"Yes. The _Times_. But there's hope for him, it seems. And it may have
been only--only a temporary aberration. I'm upset too, Glenn. But
there's nothing we can do. Or will you try to see him?"
Brother and sister looked startlingly alike in their anxiety and
disillusionment. There were deep rings under their eyes and the general
pinched and worn look that can come, even to the very young, from a long
day of anguish. The morning papers on their front pages had carried a
blatantly headlined story of the attempted suicide in New York the night
before of the young novelist, Prescott Enderly. Failure in getting his
degree at Yale was the suggested cause, but there were added some
pointed hints at a love affair with an "older woman." And Glenn had been
assigned to write a more detailed story for the evening edition of his
paper, because he had known Enderly at Yale.
"Adams sent me to the hospital to get the latest on it," he told Anne.
"They wouldn't let me see him. He's delirious, anyway. He may lose one
eye. It was a bell boy who caught him in the act and jogged up his arm.
The bullet just grazed the brow and went through the ceiling. It was the
smoke that got the eye. Ass! Not to lock his door! Some bell boy! Nerve,
that kid had. I got his story too. Don't know why he had to butt in,
though! Pressy's not thanking him any."
Glenn's face was as white as the petals of the paper narcissus blowing
in the June breeze by the side of the long chair. Anne's eyes were black
with pain. They were both breathing fast. Short, nervous breaths.
After a minute Anne muttered. "He'll get over it and be happy yet. He'll
go on and have a good life. See if he doesn't! It was Joan, of course."
"How did you know? Yes, it was. But don't say it to a soul. Promise? He
saw her in town after he learned he'd lost out at Yale. He said
something to frighten her. Must have, I think. She saw he was desperate,
anyway. And she refused to see him again. Cut him right out. I knew he'd
written since and called her up. He told me this was what he'd do
too,--blow his brains out. But I--fool--couldn't believe him. Anne, I
laughed at him. Didn't help him any.... You see I simply can't imagine
any one being so desperate he'll do a thing--like this. I can't yet, as
a matter of fact. But if I'd _had_ the imagination, I might have saved
him. It's worse now, it seems to me, than as if he'd succeeded. Ghastly
humiliating, unless he tries again and does a clean job next time. I was
a damned fool. I am a damned fool.... I failed him...."
Anne held her cigarette case toward Glenn again, pulling one out for
herself at the same time. Glenn lit his from the stub of the one about
to burn his fingers, and kicked viciously at the clump of paper
narcissus blowing beside them, there in the June garden. Anne's eyes
followed the kick sympathetically. Her hands, clutching the arms of the
long chair, were shaking. And she had thought she was going to be calm
when Glenn came home!
All that morning, from the time she had happened upon the _Times_
headlines soon after breakfast, she had tramped--she didn't know
where--in woods and fields. And all the afternoon she had lain here,
exhausted, smoking cigarette after cigarette, watching the light change
across the lawn and garden and the edges of the woods, and waiting for
Glenn. Ariel she had avoided, rather than hunt her out. For Ariel had
done for her, Anne, what there had been nobody to do for Prescott. And
Anne almost resented that she had had an Ariel to go to, when Prescott
had had no one. If Anne herself was any good, Prescott would have had
her, as she had had Ariel.... If she had been understanding.... If she
had been able to break the snare of her own blind, egoistic passion and
had not driven him away from her by clutching at--what never comes for
clutching.... How terrible to be deaf and dumb and blind with passionate
love--and to lose that way all the possibilities of friendship and its
salvations!
And now, even if the beloved ever came sane,--and, blind in one eye and
shattered, should undertake to face the world again and its bitterness,
it would never be Anne who would help steady him to it. It would be
Glenn, perhaps. And, looking at the paper narcissus which had sprung
erect again with delicate vitality from Glenn's kick, she made a
resolution that Glenn must not know to what a degree she was suffering
over the plight of--his friend. Why, one of the reasons for Prescott's
breaking with her was his desire that Glenn should never know how far
their affair had gone. He had valued Glenn's comradeship mountains above
Anne's stupid, egoistic passion of love. And he was right to do so. One
thing she could save from the wreck of what might have become a fine,
even a lovely, human relationship with Prescott: she could save
Prescott's self-respect with her brother and incidentally, but not
primarily, for truly she was not thinking of herself in the old way any
more, her own self-respect.
"Joan's called off the dinner to-night, I suppose," Glenn muttered.
"Not so far as I know," Anne said, keeping her voice from shaking with
better success than her hands. "And I don't think she will. In fact, I
hope she won't. For both Hugh's and Ariel's sake. And why should she?
She'll pretend, don't you think, to be absolutely out of all this
business?"
"Yes. I suppose she will. But, of course I shan't go. And you needn't
either, Anne. After all, you were fond of him too. You can say you're
cut up, as I shall say."
Suddenly he turned and looked at her with a sharpness that almost broke
down her defenses. "And I believe you are. Of course you are. You and
Pressy were quite pals. Anyway, I know he liked you tremendously."
"But I'm going. I'm going, no matter what, Glenn! For Ariel's and Hugh's
sake!"
Glenn's face softened at this repetition of Ariel's name. "Why for their
sakes?" he asked. "Why should they be so keen on eating dinner at Holly
this particular night?"
"Well, after all, Ariel hasn't been outside of Wild Acres for several
weeks. She's getting a little too tired. She's thin. Anybody can see.
Besides, it's the poor darling's last chance to see Michael Schwankovsky
for months. He's going to Switzerland next week, and then to Russia. And
the party's a celebration in honor of the exhibition, you know. So, of
course, Ariel must be looking forward to it. And Hugh--Well, Joan's off
herself, to-morrow, for her Switzerland colony. I have a hunch--have had
it all day--that to-night may be Hugh's last chance. If she goes away
without their settling anything this time--he might just as well give
up. So--I'm going to the party anyway. You come too, old thing. For
Ariel?"
"I'd do anything in life for Ariel," Glenn responded quietly. "And if
she goes I want to go, anyway."
"Glenn? Really?"
"Well, yes, it is really. But it oughtn't to be. It's so idiotic of me,
isn't it? Two years more at least before I'll be making anything decent,
if then. And she deserves a man. Not a boy. If old Prescott had only
gone off his nut for her instead of for Joan, I could've understood it.
But then, if he had, I should all the more have wished him better
success with his target practice. Oh, Anne! I am a fool."
He buried his dark head in his hands. His shoulders shook. Anne prayed
through clenched lips that he would not cry out loud. But she understood
his sudden loss of control. His crying had nothing whatever to do with
Ariel, she knew. The thought of Ariel, whom he would in all probability
win and marry, was only joy to him. It was what he had said about
"target practice" and his friend. He was appalled at his own brutal
words.
She said in a matter-of-fact voice--but her face was set in a womanly
and even noble mask above Glenn's bent head--"It will be you and I, and
Mother, and Hugh, and Ariel, and Michael, and Charlie Frye and Joan, and
that's all to-night. If Joan does decide to marry Hugh you'll have to
forget about her and Prescott, you know. And if she decides not to marry
him, and will only be so kind as to tell him so to-night, then neither
of us need ever have anything to do with the creature again. No reason
to. We can forget her even before she has taken the trouble to forget
us.... Let's go in and give ourselves good old soapy baths now, doll up,
and see it through. Come along with big sister."
Contrary to Anne's and Glenn's expectations, though, Joan pretended
neither indifference nor ignorance concerning Prescott that night. Her
first words to Glenn were words of sympathy, and she took pains to let
him guess that her hostess manners this night were covering a grieved
and very troubled, even a contrite, heart. Glenn actually found himself
being sorry for her. After all, she had never encouraged Prescott to
think that he counted especially with her. Remembering this, and
Prescott's open hopelessness as he stated it, Glenn was boy enough and
susceptible enough to be softened by Joan's beauty and the pathos in her
eyes, as she stood holding his hand that brief minute of their whispered
interchange of troubled words in her wide hall at Holly. "It isn't your
fault," he heard himself muttering sincerely. "You couldn't believe he
meant what he said, any more than I could. If you only knew, Joan,
you're not so much to blame as I am."
Hugh was near enough to hear. And Joan turned to him, drawing him into
it. She said with something which had the similitude of harsh grief,
"Youth itself is to be blamed for this terrible thing. Do you remember,
Hugh, weeks, months ago, my telling you that young men in love were
frightening? The middle-aged were safe? They do not kill themselves for
romance. It is your generation, Glenn. Yours--and Anne's."
Anne had caught this, and for a minute she thought that Joan had raised
her voice for that very purpose. Had Prescott, then, told Joan that Anne
too had wanted a way out of life, and almost found it, because of youth
and love? But Ariel alone knew that. And Anne's sordid secret was as
safe with Ariel as it would be with the Wild Acres woods, or with the
sky, had she made her confidences to either. Anne was certain.
She turned away from Joan's group, hard, austere. Glenn might be won to
Joan by her beauty and charm, in spite of her terrible part in the
tragedy of his friend. Hugh might marry Joan. But Anne knew at that
moment that she herself would never again, after this night, be able to
bear the sight or the sound of her. "She's horrible," she thought. "A
glutton of love. A walking sore of vanity. It isn't jealousy that makes
me see her this way. Even to be loved by Prescott I would not be
anything like Joan Nevin. I'd rather Prescott never gave me a thought
again through eternity than have any touch of that stinking vanity,
scarring my voice and face as it scars Joan's to-night. I'm the only one
who _sees_. She's horrid, rotten." And she went over to stand with
Michael Schwankovsky and Charlie Frye and Ariel before the painting of
Gregory Clare's which Joan had bought for herself and which now hung
between the long windows in the drawing-room, where the party was to
wait for the announcement of dinner.
But even here she could not escape Joan's echoes. As Anne joined the
group, Charlie Frye was saying, "... wonderful! Of course, she knows,
just as we all know, that it's she young Enderly went off his head over.
She goes on with it all, though. Entertains us. It's magnificent of her,
I think. But she's pale to-night...."
Anne gripped Ariel's hand hard and cried with stifled violence, "Merely
a matter of leaving off rouge! Very effective too,"--and wanted to bite
her tongue out when she had said it. Michael Schwankovsky looked at her,
whether disgusted or quizzically she didn't know. _Or care!_ Charlie
Frye bit his lips to keep an angry retort back, and frowned at the
floor. But Ariel threw an arm about Anne's shoulder, and Anne felt that
she was trembling in unison with her.
The long windows leading onto the terraced rose-garden were open
throughout dinner. Candlelight, moonlight, rose scents and the glowing
colors of the other women's evening frocks were all mingled for Ariel in
a web of sensuous pleasure which mixed with a mind almost as anguished
as her friend Anne's.
Schwankovsky occupied the head of the table, where he played host
spectacularly, with a noisy zeal. Ariel, in whose honor the party had
been planned, was given the place of honor at his right. Mrs. Weyman was
opposite Ariel at his other side.
Glenn on Ariel's right remembered poignantly the first meal she had had
with them, how she had been as silent as now, but with a different
silence. Then she had bent with the flow of talk as forget-me-nots bent
in a grassy stream, flowing with it, not obstructing it. But to-night
she was withdrawn, on purpose. And she looked often at Anne, Glenn
noticed, with a tender, watchful regard. Why, Glenn could not imagine,
for Anne by this time was entering into everything exuberantly, as she
had promised him and herself she would. Charlie Frye, quite over his
earlier irritation with her, was merry as a grig. Anne was flirting with
him, a little clumsily, perhaps, but effectively, if one judged from the
man's reactions. What Glenn did not notice, but Ariel did, was that
Anne, on the evening when Joan Nevin had left off her rouge, had painted
her own face most brilliantly.
The talk flowed on. Chatter about summer plans, their own and other
people's. Gossip about Doctor Steiner who had just been given a degree
by conservative Harvard. Would he go to make his home in Vienna next
year, as he was threatening, or stay to enrich America with his
knowledge and genius? Some desultory discussions, too, of music, plays,
books and painting.
Suddenly, in a way that he intended to be confidential and intimate but
could not make so because of his size and the timbre of his voice which
even when consciously lowered compelled the attention of the whole
table, Schwankovsky leaned to Ariel and took her wrist in his fingers.
"My own darling child, you are _triste_. At this, your own party! But,
believe me, some day very soon, it will be forgotten.... You'll be rid
of grief.... Your old friend knows.... And grief so pure as yours is
pure, unstained by remorse, leaves no sediment of heaviness when time
has once flowed over it and past. It is a good fortune to have youth and
grief together. Some day you will think so.... This is a very beautiful
aquamarine, Ariel!"
He lifted her hand higher, and looked long and delightedly at the heavy
silver ring with its beautifully colored and flawless stone, which Ariel
was wearing.
Ariel wanted to cry, "Oh, Michael! It isn't missing my father that makes
me so out of things to-night. And please forgive me for not playing up
when we owe you everything, my father and I,--and you are going away so
soon! It isn't grief. It's something else. For I can't be brave, the way
Anne is brave. I am frightened, do you see?"
She was indeed frightened! For Ariel, like Anne, had a conviction that
to-night things were to be decided between Hugh and Joan. She only said,
however, calmly enough, conscious of the waiting silence of the others,
"Grandam gave me this ring just to-night. The color is wonderful, I
think."
"And the setting! It's a rare and beautiful setting! But it is a man's
ring! It cannot belong to you, my Ariel! It is much too heavy for this
little hand."
He continued to hold her wrist and stare down, fascinated, at the lovely
ring.
Mrs. Weyman was leaning across the table, amazed. "Grandam gave you her
aquamarine, Ariel! I hadn't noticed you wearing it. But she values it
above everything she possesses, except that pencil drawing of the hands.
I don't know what its association for her is, or why she always wears
it. She's avoided telling us. Did she give it to you, or just let you
wear it, Ariel?"
"She gave it to me," Ariel replied, but her own words, her answer to the
simple question, rang in her ears like a knell. Her blood went icy. For
suddenly she knew the significance of the ring, and the significance of
Grandam's having given it to her. And yet no one had told her. This ring
had been worn on one of those pictured hands, on the hand that was to
open the coach door for Grandam when she got out in Eternity. That holy
hand had given the jewel to Grandam as its last act on earth. And now
Grandam had passed it on to Ariel. And all Grandam had said was, "Here's
a keepsake to match your green feather."
_Father's green feather.... Grandam's and the Saint's aquamarine!_ Oh,
pray God Grandam hadn't meant Ariel to understand a swift farewell in
the casual, sacred gift. Pray God! Pray God! Did Grandam think she was
about to die?