  Ariel stood at her window, that first morning at Wild Acres, for some time before dressing, and looked out into the black branches of the snow-floored woods. The trees pressed up to the window panes. So Wild Acres was really wild. She was curious to look from all the windows and to explore the big, rambling house from top to bottom. After nine hours of dreamless sleep, her body warm between sheets and light blankets, her face deliciously cool in the cold, woodsy air of the little guest room, Ariel had waked with a sense of happiness. The carpet of snow in the woods below her was a thin veil, ever so thin, drawn over the spring-to-come: green leaves, moss, butterflies, birds, hot sunshine, cool shade and myriads and myriads of violets. Hugh had promised her violets. At any moment the veil might tremble, blow to one side, and that world of wings and scent and color rise to the window and envelop her with joy. But meanwhile the white, clear-smelling snow (she had seen snow before in imagination, as she had told Hugh, but she had never smelled it), the ebony black of bare tree boles, roots and limbs and twigs, were all just pictures on a veil over Spring’s face. Ariel was glad she had come to Wild Acres before the veil blew off. She was so happy, standing there at the window, still in her nightgown, that she was frightened of it. It was like too piercingly beautiful a note in music. She felt besieged by happiness from every side. Involuntarily she looked into the actualities of her life for escape. There were avenues enough there, leading back into loneliness, self-distrusts and that wide, wide avenue ending at a grave and her grief. But strangely, they closed and shut her out when she would have entered them. The black trees, the clear-smelling snow, and all those hidden wings and joys of spring were opening to her, and grief was shut. As she bathed and dressed, she remembered with wonder the mood in which she had gone to bed. She had been lonely and dazed. Too heartsick even to cry, she had said her prayers lying on her face in bed, without caring enough to kneel. And then, her mind blunted by misery, she had fallen on sleep,—as Samurai in Japanese prints fall on their swords. She brushed at her hair until it glimmered to silver and every curl had a separate life. She knew that her hair was lovely. Her father had never tired of praising it and painting it. Ash-colored in some lights, it was silvery in others, palest gold in others. Sometimes it seemed the absorption of light itself. And it curled in close, soft curls at her neck. That blond hair, and her grace of movement, were her claims to beauty. But at the minute she was seeing her narrow green eyes in the mirror, and her thin, pale mouth with its pointed corners. She knew that the Weymans must think her plain, but to-day she would not be bothered even to care. The house was very still. Not a sound. Hugh was at his place at the dining table, reading the Tribune while he waited for Rose to bring his coffee. He looked his surprise. “Hello, Ariel! But we should have told you. The family doesn’t breakfast until eight-thirty. It isn’t eight yet. I’m catching the eight-fifteen express to town, and I usually do grab breakfast like this alone. It’s a twenty minutes’ walk to the station.” He was holding out her chair. She took it quickly so that he might begin the breakfast which Rose was arranging at his place. “I thought you drove to New York,” she said. “Don’t you usually?” “Often, but not usually. Not when Glenn and Anne are at home. It’s convenient for them to have the car. Well, Rose, what are you going to scare up for Miss Clare? She mustn’t wait for the others.” “May I just have some coffee, and one of those rolls, and walk to the station with you? I should like that so much, if you don’t mind. I won’t talk and disturb the morning. But I want to get out into the snow and the woods.” “Of course you do. But why not talk? You won’t ‘disturb the morning’ any more than the sunshine or the snow does. You’re that kind of a person.” He did not feel that he was talking nonsense. The Bermuda Ariel was here this morning, back after five years. But in spite of Hugh’s reassurance, Ariel stuck to her bargain and did not talk, during all their long walk out the path which Hugh’s previous solitary morning walks had made in the snow through the woods and across wide fields, and finally down to the big road and the little station. She was so silent, and her feet went so stilly before or behind his, just as it happened, that she actually intruded no more on his consciousness, after the first two or three minutes, than the March sunshine, which was wreathing the landscape in golden scarfs of light. Nor was he thinking of the coming busy day in his Wall Street office. The unexpectedness of Joan Nevin’s return yesterday from her winter months on the Riviera and in Bermuda had broken down his recently so carefully built up resistance to her obsession of his mind. She had swarmed back into possession, as it were, and taken him captive. The same old tune was on again, jangling his nerves and partially stupefying his intellect. “When I get to the office,” he promised himself, “I’ll cut this out, stop thinking about her. The minute I sit down at my desk I’ll shut her out. And after this not even her unexpected appearance, or the sudden hearing her name spoken, will jolt me out of control of my mind again. I promise myself. I promise myself....” From the platform of the little station the roofs of Wild Acres could just be discerned through bare tree branches at the top of a long upward slope of country. Ariel stood, her hands deep in the pockets of her wonderful coat, her chin lifted, looking back over the way they had come. Hugh, suddenly remembering her, followed her eyes, and said, “That’s Wild Acres roof. Did you think we’d come so far? And those windows in the attic are Grandam’s. If I were going to be at home this morning, I’d take you up to her, whether she invited us or not, first thing. Probably, as it is, you won’t see her till dinner to-night,—if then. But if Grandam does appear before I get back don’t let her scare you. She’s not really mysterious and awesome. Quite an ordinary human being. Remember that. And you might tell Mother that I’ll try to get out rather early this afternoon. Good-by, Ariel, and thanks for your company. It’s very pleasant being seen off like this!” From the steps of the moving train he looked back at her. It was pleasant, in all conscience—now that he had at the last minute possible waked up to it,—having a friendly girl, with a friendly, sympathetic light in her green eyes, smiling from under a green hat, waving him off. And the green feather on the hat, as the train rushed away, seemed as smiling and friendly as the eyes. Ariel and her green feather! There was something sympathetic among the three of them, Ariel, the green feather, and Hugh himself. Something living and vital. And how glad he was that he had hit on that particular coat for her! It went with the fairy-tale hat, the fairy-tale eyes. He took joy in his gift. After the train had rushed out of the landscape, Ariel stood on the platform for a moment longer, the only visible sentient thing in the whole morning world,—a morning world that cried, “Come, Come, Come. Dive, swim, run through me, come into my heart! I love you as your beach at home loves you, as the sea loves you. Come quickly. Every step since you left Wild Acres’ door you have been getting nearer. Come all the way now. Into my heart. Into the heart within my heart. Into its beat!”—Oh, Ariel was happy! She had made her bed and arranged her possessions in closets and drawers before going downstairs. She saw no reason now why she should return to the house. The moth, no doubt, would tell Mrs. Weyman that she had accompanied Hugh to the station, and when she did not come back, they would understand that she had gone for a walk, and not bother about her. She started down the stairs from the train platform slowly, and then, more quickly, walked away into March sunlight. |
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