Every one was exclaiming the same thing. "Genius! Isadora was never so
wonderful! Ariel Clare, why didn't you do it for us before!" Every one
except Hugh. He had got himself out of the room into the summer night,
and, invisible himself, stood looking through the open window at Ariel,
the center of the charmed, noisy little crowd.
"I've been wrong," Joan was using the occasion to try on generosity, as
an ordinary mortal might try on a new hat. "You know, my dear, I have
been guilty of murmuring that you were just a normal, nice girl for whom
we must find a husband. Your career should be motherhood. And all that.
All the time Persis and Nicky could have told me better. But I thought
your dancing with them was only a game. Now, my dear, I'd pay you
dollars a minute if you'd teach my babies how to walk, kneel, move,
dance. You did intend us to see children there at the end, didn't you?
Michael! Isn't she too wonderful!"
"Come along, Ariel. You can put on your stockings and slippers in
private." Arm through her friend's arm, Anne was pulling Ariel toward
the open window. They did not see Hugh there as they came out, although
Ariel's wood-smoke frock actually brushed his knees in her passing. They
sat down at the top of the steps going down from the terrace, while
Ariel put on her stockings and slippers.
"Oh, Ariel! You're lucky! Lucky! You'll be a great dancer. You'll have a
career. So it really won't matter to you whether your heart breaks or
not. A person with genius like yours is safe, forever and forever. If I
only had some gift, some art! I'd never be afraid again. I know I
wouldn't!"
"Anne!" Ariel sounded amazed at Anne's lack of understanding. "I haven't
any art. And I'm not going to be a dancer. Ever! In there, nobody knows
anything about me. But I thought you knew. As long as I live, I shall
never dance when grown people are around again. Never--Never.... I
shouldn't have done it...."
The slippers were on. Ariel stood up. "I'm going home now. Do you think
Glenn would drive me, and then come back?" she asked.
"But why? It's your party, in your honor, and it's not ten o'clock yet!
Joan will be furious."
Ariel lifted her hand and pressed the cold aquamarine against her cheek.
"I can't stay away from Grandam any longer," she exclaimed. "Not
to-night. She may be needing me."
"Well, of course Glenn will take you. Your excuse is pretty weak,
though. Rose has often stayed with Grandam before and got along all
right. You haven't by any chance got a hunch, have you, that Grandam
does literally need you? The air is positively electric to-night. I've a
strong hunch myself that Joan and Hugh are at last going to get engaged.
Glenn and I are in cahoots to keep old Schwankovsky and Mother and
Charlie amused, and give Hugh his chance--"
Hugh was suddenly there with them, materialized from the shadows. "I'll
drive you home," he said authoritatively.
Although the girls had not known that any one was near them on the
terrace they did not start at the sudden apparition. "I heard you,
Anne," Hugh added. "And _your_ hunch, at least, is wrong. Joan
definitely ended things last Sunday at the Hunt-Smith's. As it happens,
we're both very happy about it. Thank you all the same, and Glenn!"
Although he addressed Anne, he was looking at Ariel, and Anne, even by
moonlight, caught the quality of that look. She drew in her breath
sharply. So that was it. And she hadn't dreamed. God help Glenn then,
and on this day of all days!
"But of course you're not going so early!" Joan, visibly non-plused,
refused to see Ariel's hand held out for good-by. "Why should you, so
early?"
Ariel looked down at her aquamarine. "I'm afraid I have to, Mrs. Nevin.
Grandam may need me."
"But surely not. Did she ask you to break up the party so early?"
"No--But I must--So, good night. And thank you very much."
"Oh, very well then. So sorry. Glenn, you'll drive Ariel home and come
back, won't you?" Joan put it as a command.
But Michael Schwankovsky boomed, "I shall be very happy to take the rest
of the Weymans home in _my_ car, if Glenn _doesn't_ get back. Youth,
Joan, youth!--No! This is not our 'good-by,' my Ariel. I shall put you
into the car carefully, right beside your young man. Not?"
Joan was trying to catch Hugh's eyes, but he was looking at Ariel. "I'm
taking Ariel home," he said. "Sorry, Glenn." But his voice was vibrant.
His face, his voice--together with Ariel's pale, victorious face--told a
great deal. But Joan shrank back from understanding what was becoming
plain to most of the others.
She urged sharply, "But you'll come back. You'll only be gone ten
minutes or so. I want a long, quiet talk with you to-night, Hugh. Our
last, perhaps, for months!" She was very white. But Hugh did not take
his eyes from the top of Ariel's head, which was all he could see, for
her face was bent quite down and she was still looking at the
aquamarine. He replied, and it sounded absent-minded and was certainly
casual, "Let's have that talk to-morrow morning, Joan. Your boat doesn't
sail till midnight. I'm counting on quite a wonderful walk and talk with
you in the woods to-morrow."
"Oh! Yes?" Joan knew now, but did not admit to herself, that she had
lost. How could she acknowledge that she had anything to fear from this
pale girl, who stared at her silly ring when she could look up and see
Hugh Weyman's very heart in his eyes bent on her? Had Hugh ever looked
at herself like that? She could not believe he had. If he had, then she
had been a fool--a fool! She felt her ego shrivel. It was like a spent
dandelion flower, dried into fluffy seed, blowing to the four winds.
When Ariel, after long ages, to Joan's aching sensibilities, lifted her
gaze from the aquamarine, withdrew herself from those distant, eerie,
Bermudian depths, Joan made no more of her even then; for the eyes she
lifted were crystal,--blind with tears. What in heaven's name was the
girl crying about? Crying!
Hugh found Glenn beside him when he went to get his car. And suddenly,
as they crossed the wide sweep of gravel toward the parked roadster,
Hugh came to earth again, for a minute. His heart smote him. His love
for Ariel had been gradually, all the spring, making him more sensitive
to the world about him and other people. And now he sensed possible
suffering. He turned on Glenn and gripped his shoulders in the summer
dark. "Glenn, old fellow! Are you in love with Ariel?" he asked.
There was only the hint of a hesitation before Glenn said carefully, as
if he wanted Hugh to hear every word and remember it forever, "Does one
fall in love with a poem? A star? Dawn? Ariel to me is all imagination.
She's in my soul, somehow. But not as woman.... I saw her look at you,
Hugh.... At the end of the dance, you know. So I know that you two--that
you two--Well! That's only the shadow of Ariel you've got. An accident.
Her earth side. The impersonal and beautiful is left for me. I'm not
jealous. I'm not--suffering...."
"God bless you! Yes. It's the woman I want, and that I've got. The wife.
The mother...."
They went on to the car. Joan was waiting on the lowest stair under the
portico, when they drove it around to the door, and Ariel had not yet
broken away from Michael Schwankovsky's farewells on the top step. The
big voice was booming, "And next winter we'll make a dancer of you!
Divine! Better than Isadora ever was!"
Ariel laughed. "No, Michael. No, no. I shall never be a dancer. I may
dance for you, if you will play again. Because you are not grown up and
don't embarrass me. I don't mind you any more than I mind Persis and
Nicky. You'll dance with me. But you can't ever make me into a dancer.
Dear Michael!"
"We shall see about that. We shall see. When I come back I shall take
care of you. I shall teach you to be ambitious. For the sake of art, I
must do that, my child. Art cannot let you off, let you go. Not with
such genius! I am no artist myself, you see, but I am militant for it
wherever there is cause. It is religion with me. So, as I discover your
father's pictures, so I discover you. Not?"
Joan drew Hugh into the shadow of a pillar. "Michael's raving again,"
she whispered intimately, her breath at Hugh's cheek, her perfumed scarf
falling against the back of his hand, soft, mothlike. "It's fatherly
raving. _We needn't worry!_"
With the intimately whispered "We needn't worry," Joan was trying
desperately to identify her interest in Ariel with Hugh's interest. She
was determined to marry Hugh now, not merely resigned to it. And her
cue, she thought, was partnership in his responsibility for Ariel. She
would pretend genuine concern for the girl, even fondness, if she must.
She was ready to do, to be anything--if only in return the scattered
seeds of her vanity and pride could be blown back again into their
brilliant flower pattern.
But Hugh scarcely heard her. He was listening to Ariel's laughter and to
Schwankovsky's exuberant flattery and affection up by the door. And
then--oh heavenly!--to Ariel's voice, pebble-cool:
"No, never on the stage! But always for you, when you want. When you
come to visit us--me." But she had meant "us," and Hugh knew that "us"
meant _them_, himself and Ariel.
"... To-morrow then? A walk in the woods? I'll have something quite
wonderful to tell you, Joan dear." He had not understood her whispered
surrender. And he was not aware that she had taken the end of her scarf
from his fingers and was wrapping her bare shoulders now as if she were
cold.
She tried only once more. "Hugh! Suppose I don't go to-morrow! I'm quite
out of the mood to-night. Why should I go? With Holly never so
beautiful, and all my friends, my _dearest_ friends, here?"
His answer to that astounded her, in spite of all that had happened to
her ego this night, by its simple cruelty. "I know it! Why should you
go? It's heaven on earth right here. Why should any one leave it? This
night is--I never knew a night like this! It is wild--it is _wild_, Joan
dear, with beauty and wonderfulness! I wouldn't go to heaven to-morrow
if all the angels invited me."
She stood away from him. "Hugh! Are you aware of me at all?" she cried,
but under her breath. "Do you realize that I said I might give up
Switzerland? _And why I should want to give it up?_"
"Holly, you said, is so beautiful.... But Joan...." He was appalled. But
then, before he allowed himself quite to understand her--and he had very
nearly allowed that misfortune to them both to happen--he said quickly,
"You mustn't think of me, my dear. Or pity me. Ever! You were awfully
right in all you said at Fernly. Remember? And our friendship, yours and
mine, _is_ going to be deeper and sounder than ever. It is enriched."
And then, forgetting her again, he exclaimed, "Everything's enriched.
Even the moonlight. It's magic, isn't it, Joan? Wild with loveliness!"
Before he got finally off with his Ariel, Hugh remembered that Glenn had
lost his latchkey lately and not replaced it yet. So he'd better find
him--he seemed to have vanished into the house--and give him his. He did
not interrupt Ariel and Schwankovsky in their protracted farewells up at
the door, but went around by the terrace to enter by the drawing-room
windows.
Frye was at the piano now, in Schwankovsky's place, his head bowed over
the keys, his eyes shut, playing a blues. Anne and Glenn were dancing to
it. But Hugh did not go in. He stood, struck into wonder by a wholly new
aspect he was suddenly vouchsafed of his brother and sister. They were
not his little brother--his little sister. No. The weird, heart-rending
"blues" had turned them into a type--into its own note, its wail. They
were figurines--pale--beautiful with grief.... Aristocratic, narrow
heads held high.... Their chiseled faces Benda masks. Every motion of
foot and leg and the wandlike bodies was heart-rending with passion and
grief's restraint....
Perhaps love had turned Hugh clairvoyant. Perhaps acute happiness does
that sometimes. But whatever the cause of the illumination of his
sympathy, he realized Glenn and Anne as noble, beautiful. And for one
flashing instant he saw, typified in them, the pain of Youth itself.
He did no more about the key, but turned back to the car, awed and
quieted. He did not understand precisely what had happened to him by
this quickening in his soul of the power of insight. And above all he
was not conscious of any concrete reason there might be in those two
particular lives for his compassion. All that he knew definitely was
that he had looked with naked eyes on the fortitude of youth.... He
himself had never been so clear-cut as were Anne and Glenn. He had hoped
and pretended his youth away. Glenn and Anne would go on dancing through
their youth, dancing over its pains and anguishes, wand-held, reserved,
with intricate steps.... Their eyes open.... Perfectly
self-conscious.... But dancing still--with all the discipline of a
patterned art.
The minute he was in the car beside Ariel he forgot them. The big house
and all it held was blotted out in shadow at their backs, and their path
cut itself ahead through moonlight. But neither spoke. Ariel sat well
over at her own side of the wide seat. Hugh watched the road and guided
the wheel. As they neared their avenue it never entered Hugh's head to
suggest, "Let's go on, up the river." Although the road was a wide path
of sheer moonlight, and the silvered river raced at their shoulders like
an Angel of Lovers. For he knew that Ariel's heart held one
intention--to get to Grandam. From the minute when, at dinner,
Schwankovsky had drawn attention to her ring (except for the swift
bright period of the dance), this had been true. So he raced the
roadster in under the dark arch and up the moon-laced wood road through
the glimmering birches and beeches, around the silvery-dark curves to
the door. There he spoke the first words that had been uttered since
they were alone together:
"I won't drive the car around yet, but go up to see Grandam with you,
Ariel."
As they ascended the steps,--the three, shallow, wide steps to Wild
Acres' home-promising door,--Hugh was shy of Ariel. He longed that she
should turn her face, look at him, speak to him. But Ariel was afraid of
Hugh. She had said too much. She had said everything there ever would be
to say, with her eyes, when she looked up from those heads of the dark
dream-children, and found his dark eyes--so like, so terribly like--on
hers.
Besides, here was the aquamarine on her finger, clear in the moonlight.
And before she gave herself to Hugh, Grandam, her beloved friend, was to
die. Things must come in their order. If she raised a hand, if she
breathed too deeply, something might be shaken out of God's beautiful
intended order for it. All life--and birth and death--was so delicately
balanced, it seemed, here, in one girl's heart!
Hugh had his latchkey in the lock. But the door was not opening.
Surprised at that, Ariel did turn and look up at him.
She stepped back--suddenly--away from what she saw. But he followed and
took her into his arms. She leaned back against his arms, held herself
back and away from his body, but her face remained lifted to his. By
moonlight he saw that it was as expressionless as when she had danced,
expressionless as the face of a flower is expressionless--to mortal
eyes--and strangely silver, bent back this way against his dark coat
sleeve. But although she was leaning back and away from him, he felt no
weight on his arm. Her body was held with the dancer's self-sustaining
poise. Then he knew what he had only believed before: she was the
eternal dancer, but not to music. Hers was the dance to life. His
beloved's whole genius was for living.
Gently, he drew the poised, free body toward him. There was no blindness
of engulfing passion here, only two wills, free as day, rushing fleetly
upon one another. No red flames roared against a dark mind-misery. Only
sunrise breaking about the whole circle of his soul's horizon. Heaven's
dawn.
Grandam saw their faces and bodies radiant with that dawn when they came
into her room.
"So it is here in time for me to see, and to be happy with you! But just
in time!" she told them with a quick breath.
Rose, who had stayed with Grandam until Ariel's return, had left; and
now that she was gone, Ariel ran forward and dropped on her knees by the
low bed, and kissed Grandam on the lips. Sunrises, kisses. Hugh sat on
the other side of the bed, and to-night Grandam did not make him get up
and bring a chair. Instead she gave him one of her hands to hold. "How
did you know, Grandam?" he asked. "I never told you we were in love. Did
Ariel?"
"Neither of you told me. And I only hoped. I thank God you've got home
in time to make me sure. Ariel! If your messenger should be off
to-night, what message shall she take your father? Make it exact, and
I'll impress it on my memory. If only one could take a letter!"
Ariel was swept by terror. Her blood ran icy again, as at dinner. She
tore her eyes from Hugh's startled, puzzled face. Oh, the aquamarine had
told her right. Her darling's agony and death was coming
swiftly--swiftly--Tears rose in an agony of their own in her throat and
scalded her cheeks. Her sight fought through them for a view of the
beloved face. Already Death was slipping over it the mask for agony. But
no. The mask was carelessly put on--anyhow--askew. Ariel saw this....
And then, as if her tears were a clarifying medium--as in this case they
were--she saw that under the badly adjusted mask-for-agony Grandam was
smiling.
It was a new sort of smile altogether. It seemed to express
anticipation, a kind of joyous excitement.... Youth.... Love.... An
almost _shy_ love.
But the smile was not for Ariel, nor for Hugh. For some one else
entirely.... Some one whose hands Grandam guessed were about to open the
door of her coach and let her out into Eternity? Or for some one else at
the Saint's shoulder? Only Death knows.
Through salty lips Ariel was sobbing--"Tell Father that I love him with
my whole heart and that I am happy, happy--"
Hugh knelt. There was no time to get help or to do anything themselves.
He held Grandam up, supported her agony.
"Darling!" he whispered. "Tell Gregory Clare that I will take care of
his girl as long as we both shall live. Tell him that I love Ariel. No!
Tell him _how_ I love Ariel."
And they knew--_just_--that Grandam caught their messages.
THE END
Transcriber's Notes
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--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and
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