  Ariel found the attic stairs in the wing opposite hers at the other end of the house. At the top she came out into a long hall. It was almost dark up here, the only light coming through two low little dormer windows at the farthest end. Ariel had never in real life been in an attic, but she had been in plenty of them in books, and this long, dim hall with narrow doors in its walls somehow did not seem like her imagined attics. Behind which of the several doors would she find Grandam’s living room? And above all, through which door would she come to “Noon”? No wonder the dim hall was as fascinating as a fairy-tale’s beginning. She tried first the door on her right, knocking tentatively. When there was no answer she opened the door and looked in. Transparent cubes of gold, which were sunlight aureoling dust, slanted between her and the low chain of windows out at the base of a far-away sloping roof. This was the real attic, all that Grandam had left of it, after making her own apartment. It covered more than half the big house, and trunks, discarded furniture and files of old magazines were stored here, much as in all attics. There was the smell of dust and of leather, a glimmer of cobweb curtains. Spaces. Shadows. This was, no doubt of it, an attic. And had Ariel expected the lovely Grandam to live here, in such an environment? To tell the truth, deep in her heart, though not with her mind, she had. For Grandam had become to her imagination, even before seeing her this noon at luncheon, and more vividly since then, a fairy-like, spiritual entity, twin sister to that other fairy or spirit (who knows which?) the great-great-great-great-grandmother who was so loved by the princess in George MacDonald’s true and beautiful allegory, “The Princess and the Goblins.” So, with her heart, but perhaps not her eyes, Ariel sought for her here, dreaming her visible, if one only had eyes of the seeing kind, in a cloud of invisibility. Hadn’t she seen, a few minutes ago, Grandam driving off with Glenn in Hugh’s roadster? But that didn’t matter. It was the real, the hidden Grandam she might find here—the one who would never be out if you needed her. But after a minute she turned away from dreams. The next door she knocked at, got no response, and opened, led into an elevator cage, about as big as a small closet. So that was the way Grandam and Miss Peters ascended and descended between the two worlds. And then her third try brought her to Grandam’s apartment. But no one answered here either, and so Ariel went in and stood alone, uninvited, but she felt welcomed, in Grandam’s own place. It was a big, dove-gray room with a darkly oiled floor of old, wide boards. Four dormer windows reached from the floor to the raised roof at one side, and two smaller and higher windows faced the west. On the baby grand piano near the door Ariel noticed a shallow bowl with hothouse anemones standing up in it, every flower separate, outlined on the air with glass-like precision,—mauve, pink, purple, blue, cream. A low daybed of ivory-colored wood carved all over with flower designs was drawn up before one of the dormer windows, heaped with violet-red and silver cushions. Close to the bed, within easy arm’s reach, there was a bench of the same carved ivory-white wood, with a few books scattered on it, a crystal lamp with a wide, pale gold shade, and a glass bowl of hothouse violets. Several bouquets of violets like the one Hugh had intended for Ariel but given to Joan must have gone into this bunch in the glass bowl. Their sweetness was almost palpable. Scent came falling through the air onto Ariel’s eyelids and onto her lips, as if the very petals of the violets themselves were wings and filling space. After the anemones and the violets the wood fire blazing away in a small grate was next alive, throwing rosy shadows over black marble tiling, and flickering them up onto tiers of books whose backs gave the effect of rich tapestry hung from ceiling to floor on either side of the fireplace. The fire seemed to Ariel like another cluster of flowers. “Roses!” she thought. Then she closed the door,—and in closing it shut herself into the room. For it had not entered her head to go away and leave this place until its mistress should return. She was already welcomed by the flowers, the fire, and the aura of Grandam herself, which even in her absence seemed as palpable in the atmosphere here as the scent of the violets. Ariel stood looking at the door she had closed. On this side it was not a door; it was a long mirror, crystal clear, and framed with a paneling of faintly colored flowers and leaves painted on silver. In the mirror, almost clearer than when looked at directly, was the view from the windows, the tops of Wild Acres’ trees, the Hudson, the purple Palisades, and closer—startlingly close and clear—the carved daybed with its colored cushions, the bowl of violets and, closer and clearer yet, two upstanding, mauve anemones.... And there, in that reflected world, Ariel looked for “Noon.” For there was the place to find it, in that crystal unearthly clearness. She was amazed not to see it at once. Yet she turned about with confidence only a little dimmed to survey, in order, the four walls, concrete. But the four walls of Grandam’s room might have been the four walls of a nun’s cell, they were so bare of decoration, washed with their dove gray. There was only one small picture in an ebony frame which hung at the side of the window where the daybed stood. It was a drawing, in pencil, of a man’s hands, palms meeting, raised in prayer or adoration. They were arresting hands, beautiful in austerity, the hands of a great saint—or an archangel. They were life size, and so vivid in their presentation that one might think, by looking more keenly, to see the arms and shoulders—the very head itself—of the saint or archangel outlined against the dove-gray wall. One piece of wall was obscured by a screen, silver silk stretched on an ebony frame and embroidered with the same faint flowers as framed the mirror. Ariel crossed to it and found that it had concealed a door which was standing open. She went through it and found herself in a dressing room: Grandam’s, of course, because of the scent and feeling of violets,—and so still. This was a very small, oblong room, the size of a big closet. A long, low dressing table surmounted by a mirror extended the length of one wall, and a window filled the other. On the table’s top crystal-stopped bottles stood in rows. Ivory and jade and silver boxes clustered everywhere. And bright liquids glowed in vials. The dressing chair was ivory-colored like the daybed and the bench in the first room. Over its low back lay, spread out, a swansdown robe with very wide sleeves. It seemed to stir and come alive in violet scent as Ariel bent above it. And out at the far corner of the table lay a silver crown. No, it was a wig! A replica of Grandam’s curled, short hair. So that too had been a wig. But Ariel was not repelled. Quite the contrary. She shivered with a kind of understanding, a delight. It had come to her that this was Grandam’s materialization room. Or no, it was no room; it was too small and narrow to be anything but a passageway. It was the passageway through which Grandam retained her access to the world of time and space. It was here, sitting in this chair, looking into this mirror, that she made herself up to become visible, palpable to everyday touch and sight. Ariel herself slipped into the chair. Elbows on the table, chin in her hands, she looked at herself as she appeared in this passageway. And she saw, for the first time, the Ariel her father had always seen. Green eyes. Pointed chin. Silver skin. Thin cheeks, beautifully fine in their drawing. Her heart was beating. Thud—thud—thud.... She turned hurriedly away from the mirror and the first realization of her peculiar beauty. It had almost frightened her. Out of the dressing room, and several times larger, opened the bathroom. It was green like a pool in deep woods. The door beyond was closed. Ariel knocked. A voice said “Come.” As Ariel opened the door in response to the voice which had startled her, for she had begun to think herself very much alone up here in Grandam’s “attic,” Miss Peters turned about from a desk where she had been writing a letter and stared at Ariel as at a ghost. And Ariel stared back. “But Miss Clare! It is Miss Clare, isn’t it? Where did you come from?” “I was looking for—” No, she could not say “Noon”!... She had not betrayed her expectations and disappointments to any one else at Wild Acres and she was not going to begin with Miss Peters. So she finished, after a perceptible pause—“I was looking for something. But it isn’t here. I’m afraid it isn’t up here at all.” “Something of your own?” But Miss Peters colored as she asked it. She hadn’t meant to be insulting to this guest of the Weymans about whom she knew nothing at all and had heard nothing,—since she was not on gossiping terms with the two servants. But “the old lady” was away, out driving with Glenn. It was very odd of Miss Clare, to say the least, to come prowling through the rooms in her absence. No one, not even Miss Anne and the two young men and their mother, ever came into the apartment uninvited. Ariel realized Miss Peters’ perturbation. She said “No. It isn’t mine, the thing I hoped to find. And anyway, it’s not up here at all. It isn’t anywhere at Wild Acres. If it were at Wild Acres it would be here, though.” “If I can help you—” Ariel shook her head. “No, thanks. I’ll just go back.” “You may use my door, then. You must have come through Mrs. Weyman’s whole apartment. This goes into the hall.” Miss Peters was moving toward her door, expecting Ariel to take the hint. But Ariel was too abstracted to realize. “I’ll go back the way I came,” she murmured. And Miss Peters knew nothing to do about it. But back in Grandam’s big room she decided to wait quietly up there for Grandam’s return from her outing. She was drawn to the daybed, with its wide view across woodlands to the Palisades. She sat down on the edge of the bed and absently gathered a scarf which was lying there up into her beauty-loving fingers. After a minute, she rose to her knees on the bed and wrapped the scarf about her. It was a silver wing, a silver cloud which draped her. One could dance in a scarf like this, even in the house. She wished that Persis and Nicky were here. She would dance for them, if they were, over the dark floor; she would feel that she was dancing, really, out in the golden snowy air, because of the magic of this scarf of Grandam’s. She began to hum,—low humming, with no tune in it. And she did not hear the door from the hall open and the quick step that followed. But she heard Mrs. Weyman’s voice when it came. Yet she did not start. One does not start out of such quiet happiness as had come to Ariel up here in Grandam’s environment. She looked up quietly into Mrs. Weyman’s astounded face. “But, my dear! Has Mrs. Weyman returned?” “No. Grandam is motoring with Glenn.” But such literalness was childish and Ariel knew it even as she spoke. She hurried on, suddenly embarrassed. “I just came up to look for something. But it isn’t here. Then—the view—” “But the scarf! Really, Ariel—” “Would she mind?” “I think she would. More than most people.” Ariel unwound herself from the lovely scarf. And in spite of its gossamer delicacy and the tough texture of her own green jersey frock, she felt that in coming out of the scarf she was coming out of a sure protection into a kind of nakedness. She folded the scarf very carefully, very softly, and laid it on a pillow. As she did this she murmured, “If it had been Grandam who came in just now instead of you—” Mrs. Weyman laughed, not unkindly. “My dear girl! If she only had come in! Found you kneeling on her precious bed, dressing up in her own precious scarfs! You’d have felt like—about two cents. It’s a gift she has. You’re lucky it was I!” Then she grew serious. “Ariel, I don’t want to offend you or hurt your feelings. I know things must be very strange and difficult for you these days. But there are a few very simple things I can help you with, I think. ‘Grandam,’ for instance. Just the family call my mother-in-law that. It’s a pet name made up by the children when they were little, you see. You had better call her ‘Mrs. Weyman.’ And then, to simplify things, you may call me ‘Mrs. John.’ People do, quite often, when there’s need to distinguish. And let’s both run along now before she appears. She’d be no more charmed with finding me here than you, even if I did come up with this scarf which Miss Peters neglected to bring. And they’ll be back any minute—” |
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