  The morning of the Gregory Clare exhibition Hugh was waked by the clangor of birds in Wild Acres woods. The window by Hugh’s bed held the view like a picture frame. Sleepily, he thought it a pity they couldn’t hang this in the exhibition. It was quite in the Gregory Clare manner. But something was missing from it. The painter’s daughter. Where would he, Hugh, put her, if he were the painter? There at the right, where the sunlight was silvery in the tops of the giant beech, her head not quite level with the highest branch, standing still on the breathless, silvery-green-gold air. Hugh was to meet his mother in town for lunch and be with her at the New Texas Galleries in time for the opening of the doors. Joan had offered to drive Ariel in directly after lunch, and get her there in good time for the opening also. That was kind of Joan. Remembering and appreciating this kindness of Joan’s was Hugh’s first thought of her this morning. He noticed, just in passing, this surprising fact. When before had he ever been awake for any length of time without thinking of Joan! And now she had come only in connection with Ariel and the exhibition. Certainly to sail coolly into town in Joan’s open roadster would be far better for Ariel than traveling in alone on the stuffy local. It promised, already, to be a very warm day. Hugh regretted, however, that Grandam had not taken his suggestion of sending Ariel in for lunch with his mother and himself. She might be devoted to Ariel, but working her to death was a strange way of showing it. Ariel had been very quiet as to what she felt about this great day herself; but Hugh knew it to be one of the most exciting and exhilarating days of her life. He lay down again. It was very early, just past dawn. He half imagined, half dreamed himself waiting for Ariel in the little anteroom of the galleries, her arrival, pale with excitement, and his rising to steady her and share in her feelings of elation and joy. Taking her arm through his and holding her hand steadily and firmly under his elbow against his side, they mixed with the crowd which was genuflecting and chattering before her father’s genius. No one would guess that the inconspicuous girl on the arm of the inconspicuous, rather typical New York business man was the dancer of the pictures. Least of all would any one, now or ever, know that Hugh had given to the painter his first taste of practical appreciation in buying “Noon” for one thousand dollars. It would be delightful, masquerading with Ariel like this, sharing alone in all that crowd their secrets. For some reason his mother, Schwankovsky, Charlie Frye, even Joan herself, did not enter into this early morning daydream. But Hugh did not miss them. In fact, they would have spoiled the point, the reason of its creation, which was his isolation with Ariel in her first great happiness. He went up to the attic as soon as he had had his breakfast. Grandam and Ariel had been awake and dressed since the crack of dawn. Grandam was as stirred as Ariel about the significance of the day, and it occurred to Hugh that that was why she had wanted to keep Ariel with her until the last possible minute. She, too, had her daydream of sharing happiness with the dear girl. She was lying in her long chair at the edge of the almost too warm sunshine which fell through the open tall window. Ariel was just finishing turning the night bed into a daybed. She placed the last silver pillow as Hugh came in. “Noon” was gone from the mantel, but the whole room had taken on its atmosphere. It seemed that in vanishing it had left its very glamour and light behind. And it had left the dancer. She was there with a shallow dish of hepaticas in her hand, a dish that might have been a wide sea shell, reaching up to place it on the mantel. In an ivory silk blouse, opened at the throat, and a clinging green skirt, her hair a wave of light on her neck—and the identical light of the spring morning in her eyes and at the corners of her uptilted lips, she was the dancer glorified. Hugh had a swift sense as he entered that Ariel, Grandam and the room were all aswim in the clear light that was Gregory Clare’s imagination: that he was seeing them as they existed only in Gregory Clare’s heart, not in his, Hugh Weyman’s, dull life. For the moment he knew that his friend was not dead, that Ariel was still his care, and still moved through his imagination, the dancer. Almost jealously Hugh came forward, tried to enter and be where Ariel was, in that realm of imagination and light. And he did not entirely fail. For the few minutes he stayed in Grandam’s apartment the world was fresh and life was winged. There was a crush in the anteroom of the exhibition when Hugh and his mother arrived. Schwankovsky had promised them this would be so, and Hugh’s daydream had previsioned it. Although they had made a point of being ten minutes early, the room was already full of curious and eager men and women, and the three elevators in the hall of the building were steadily discharging more groups of crowding humanity to add to the discomfort. There was no question of Hugh finding a chair for his mother while they waited that ten minutes. They were lucky, they felt, in having and retaining standing room. As the day had turned out to be an unseasonably hot day, far more like August at its hottest than mid-May, the room was almost unbearably close. Very soon Mrs. Weyman murmured, “Really, Hugh, I shan’t be able to stay. I’d rather go out and return to-morrow after the first rush. After all, what is the advantage in being among the first in the stampede for this show?” “Oh, do stick it if you can, darling,” Hugh urged. “I’ll find you some ice-water. Will that help?” He himself was only stimulated to a kind of elation by the heat and the pressing crowd. “Of course it will help. But you’re the only person I know, Hugh, who would so confidently promise ice-water in these circumstances. And the nice part of it is that I know you’ll manage it somehow. You’re awfully satisfactory, dear boy.” He grinned down at her his appreciation of her appreciation, patted her arm, and vanished like a genie. When he returned through the envious crowd, steadying a paper cup filled to the brim with ice-water, he found that Schwankovsky, against all the laws of physics, had made a place for his great bulk in the room somehow, and was towering above Mrs. Weyman, talking down at the top of her smart spring hat. “Warm?” he was booming. “Why, I hadn’t thought so. Hadn’t noticed. Those pictures in there are more on my mind than the weather. They’re going to take you by storm, I promise. You never saw sunlight in paint before, on canvas. It’s epoch-making. You’ll see. It almost blinds you, this Clare sunlight does.” Mrs. Weyman shuddered prettily, and gratefully took the drink from Hugh’s hands. “But didn’t he paint any shade?” she asked. “If not, I absolutely shall not risk it.” “Pooh! You wouldn’t miss it for the world. But where’s my Ariel? I thought she was with you, Weyman. She must be here when the doors are opened.” Hugh was annoyed. He felt it very important for Ariel’s peace of mind and her enjoyment of the victory—if the exhibition was to prove a victory—that she should be unrecognized, and he expected Schwankovsky to think of this and be a little careful. “Joan’s driving Ariel in. They’ll be here any minute,” he replied in as low a voice as he could use and still be heard. But the minute hand on the face of Schwankovsky’s absurd little platinum wristwatch moved on under his anxious gaze, and proved Hugh wrong. Schwankovsky waited five minutes beyond the announced time of the opening for Joan and Ariel to make their appearance before, with a disappointed grunt, he gave the sign to Charlie Frye to slide back the big doors. “I’ll wait here for them,” Hugh told his mother. “You go on in, though. It’ll be cooler there.” It was very much cooler. The gallery where the Clare pictures were hung was a huge room covering nearly half a block, and the crowds which had choked the anteroom, Hugh could observe through the great open doors, were mere driblets of humanity almost lost in the expanse of floor space. He pushed a chair to an open window, where he would find air to breathe if there was any, and composed himself, outwardly, to wait. People continued to arrive by the elevators, and even some undaunted and impatient ones by the stairs. They hesitated in the anteroom to secure their catalogues from Charlie Frye, who was officiating at the desk there, and passed quickly on into the gallery, where a babble, as the minutes passed, was rising gradually higher and higher, with Schwankovsky’s big voice forever cresting it. Hugh spent his time between watching the door for the appearance of the girls and studying the catalogue which Charlie Frye had, unsolicited, thrust into his hands. It was a good-looking catalogue, engraved on creamy, thick paper. “The Shell” ... “Tree in the Sun” ... “Reef” ... “Under the Rock.” ... Gradually he worked down the list of two hundred odd titles. And although he knew that the dancer appeared in them all, in no title was she mentioned. He was vastly relieved by this fact. But then his eye caught something it had missed. “212. Sketch for the Dancer.” He remembered Schwankovsky’s mention of this sketch and he was chilled. Schwankovsky had said that life without it would be unthinkable, or something as exaggerated. A finger of shadow fell on “212. Sketch for the Dancer.” Hugh sprang to his feet, for he was aware of Joan, and had a sense that she had been standing beside him for some appreciable seconds before she made the stir that flung the shadow. She gave him her hand. He took it warmly, but instantly looked beyond her for Ariel. “Where is she?” If his question had been a slap in Joan’s face a more scarlet stain would not have whipped her cheeks. She looked at Hugh with astonishment too profound to hide. But he missed it, still looking for Ariel. Others, however, were not so unobservant. Art-lovers passing through the anteroom into the gallery turned their heads, and even paused to look again at the tall, very beautiful woman who appeared so gloriously angry. Meanwhile, she controlled her voice, if not her blazing eyes, and explained about Ariel. “She isn’t coming. Your grandmother was taken ill, one of her attacks. In the middle of the morning. The servants got Doctor Bradshaw at once, and he brought a nurse. Ariel, in the excitement, I suppose, forgot to call me and explain. So when I went for her she merely came downstairs and told me about it. I offered to stay in her place and let Amos drive her in. But she wouldn’t listen. She wouldn’t stay long enough even to give me the essential details to bring to you. So I insisted on seeing Doctor Bradshaw. He assured me that the danger was quite past, for this time. He said, too, that Ariel was not needed now, and could come into the exhibition of her father’s paintings as well as not. I gathered that the poor child in her anxiety had been and was still being a trifle officious and that both doctor and nurse would be glad to have her out of it. But she was stronger than any of us.—Now I’m killed, sir, in all this heat, and without a glass of water or anything. Your messenger may fall dead at any moment. Smiling though, in the heroic manner.” Hugh did not rally to her humor. “My dear, you’ll let me take your car, won’t you, and go right out there? Schwankovsky or somebody will send you home. Where did you leave it?” She shook her head. “No. Sorry. But you know I never let any one, even you, drive my car. You haven’t been into the gallery yet? You must come in with me for a few minutes, and then I’ll drive you out myself, if you insist. I assure you Doctor Bradshaw’s not a bit worried, and for this time the danger to your grandmother is past. But seriously, first I must cool my throat. Is there water anywhere?” Michael Schwankovsky, catching sight of them, barged down into their path, insisting that they produce his Ariel. When he learned that she was not coming at all to-day, he appeared to be desolated. He took his beard in his hands and declared it was too bitter. But the next instant he was dragging Joan and Hugh forward to point out for them with exuberant joy the canvases that pleased him most. “Here’s one,” he bellowed. “That ought to be called, ‘The Dancer.’ But we left Clare’s own titles, of course. This is the painting for which he made the sketch, ‘The Dancer.’” It was one of the newer pictures, since Hugh’s visit to Bermuda. And it must, in fact, be comparatively recent, for there was Ariel as she was now. It might be a portrait of her, for here, as in not one of the other paintings, she was the theme. The foreground was a line of tide on a beach of silver sand. The misty, dewy light said early morning. The dancer had taken a shell from the fingers of the incoming tide, and she was straightening from having reached for it. She held it before her with extended arms, her fingers curling its outward edges, and her expression of face and body was all of delight and gratitude. The moist wind bent her hair back from brow and neck. It bent her violet tunic back against knees and breasts. And for the first time, here in a painting, Hugh was consciously aware, with an odd pang of recognition, of what he had seen only half-consciously before,—the beautiful and naÏve shape of her eyelids. “Well, she’s not dancing!” He heard Joan’s voice as if from a great way off, although in reality she was close by his side. “Why, Michael, do you want to call it ‘The Dancer’?” “Oh, but my friend! Isn’t it plain? She has just found this shell in the foam, brought to her by the tide. She is the soul of this fragile, drifting shell. Or the shell is her soul. God knows which is which, but one is true. All that one does know is that those two hands with those so deliciously curling fingers will lift the iridescent thing higher and higher, as her figure comes more and more erect. Finally, with it held as high as her hands can reach above her head, she will dance, looking up at it. Slowly. A religious dance of gratitude. It is my Ariel. And she dances gratitude. Gratitude to God Himself for the gift of her soul and for life.” Joan laughed. “Oh, Michael! You aren’t talking art. That’s mystical mush.” “Perhaps!” Schwankovsky agreed with good humor. “Probably, in fact. But my Ariel, even in pictures, has a way of turning me into a mystical mush. She is so sweet.” “Horrible! Please spare my sensibilities, and the sensibilities of the two or three hundred people who are listening to you,” Joan murmured nervously, for at times being about with Michael Schwankovsky publicly was embarrassing,—yes, even when as now he was the sole patron of an exhibition, and every one knew he was the famous Michael Schwankovsky. Hugh said in a low but emphatic voice, “Schwankovsky! I want to buy this picture. It’s here in the catalogue as ‘The Shell.’ Do I arrange it with you or Frye?” But Schwankovsky hummed, deep in his throat. “Um ... Ah ... Um ... This one, Weyman, we’ve given a rather high figure. I did that, meaning to get it myself. However, when you take it up with Frye—he’s the business manager—say I waive my claim, if, hearing the price, you still want it. No sales are being made until the end of the exhibition, but people are speaking ahead, of course. The sketch for this painting, let me tell you, nobody could get for love or money. It’s mine. It’s really finer than the painting. There’s an exquisiteness, almost supernatural, that is lost in the paint. And the foot and leg, the turn of that bared shoulder—it’s spiritually ravishing. But if you can afford to own ‘The Shell,’ Weyman, you needn’t worry. It’s the pick of all the paintings—except for ‘Noon.’ That’s—” He broke off in disgust, suddenly remembering “Noon’s” history, and Hugh’s connection with it. “If Frye lets ‘The Shell’ go to you, he’d better see that a contract goes with it, stating explicitly that you’ll not hang it in your attic or your cellar. Come to think of it, Weyman, you’re probably an art sadist!” He turned on Joan. “Would that be possible? You know all about morbid psychology. Do some men like to torment artists as others like to torment women?” Joan shrugged this away. And Hugh was too genuinely moved by the painting before him, and by his underlying anxiety for his grandmother, to speculate which Schwankovsky thought himself, humorous or insulting. Joan took Hugh’s arm and said impatiently, but her impatience was directed toward Michael Schwankovsky, “Hugh! It’s getting dreadfully close! Let’s look at the ‘Studio’ Michael’s giving me, and dash off. How will your mother get home? We must find her and tell her about your grandmother.” “You will come back to-morrow and all the days, I trust,” Schwankovsky commanded them both. “And please take my devoted respects to Mrs. Weyman. The first minute she will see me I shall beg the privilege. But she knows this. She’s agreed to send me word when next I may have that felicity. And give my Ariel my fondest love, fondest kisses, and describe for her the crowds and the enthusiasm. Our success is already apparent. Not? But you look tired, Joan, my girl! It is the heat. Insist on driving, Weyman. She has no business to be your chauffeur, looking like that!” When they were down on the Avenue, walking toward the spot where Joan, by bribing a policeman pretty heavily, had been able to park only half a block from the galleries, Hugh urged, “Do let me drive, Joan. Schwankovsky’s right. The heat has got you. I won’t strip the gears, or anything.” But Joan autocratically rejected the idea. “It will be cooler the minute we are out of this ghastly city,” she said. “I wouldn’t have had Amos put down the top if I’d realized what a blazing day it is. But we won’t even stop to get it up now. Only I don’t want to worry you, Hugh. You will tell me if I go too fast?” Hugh, however, very justly and at all times admired Joan’s driving, and to-day was no exception. It occurred to him, as they won out of traffic at last to the open road, where speed was not only possible but safe, that she would like to frighten him by her use of the accelerator,—that she wanted him to think her unduly reckless. But he knew, instinctively, that she would not for an instant endanger her beautiful body and rich life. So her passenger was safe. This was not a matter of skiing, where their interests were separated. “What are you thinking?” she asked, snatching a glance at his profile. He could scarcely tell her the truth, that he was seeing her, and for the first time, as a woman who would never under any circumstances be capable of living dangerously: that she might encourage it in others, but never if it involved herself. Besides, he imagined that he was still in love with her, and so he let the sudden unflattering perception slip from the foreground of his mind even as she asked her question. He said, what in truth had been very much in his heart all the time, “It’s a shame Ariel missed the opening. Did she seem dreadfully disappointed? Or was she too upset by Grandam’s attack to realize?” “I don’t think she realized. Imagination isn’t exactly Ariel’s long suit, is it? And of course, she was upset about your grandmother. Pain isn’t ever pretty—’specially to the young.” “Her father died that way. Did you know? So it would be all the worse. Poor girl!” Joan gripped the wheel. “Now I’m going to make time,” she warned. “Watch out for motor police, please. Your Ariel’s not a ‘poor girl’ at all. A supremely lucky one. In one day, without any merit or effort of her own, she’s become financially independent and perhaps even famous too. The next question, though, is: will the dear public ever grasp the fact that Gregory Clare idealized his model beyond conception? Or will they think her beautiful and talented, hypnotized by the suggestions of the press and Michael Schwankovsky’s ravings? What will they do to her? Pay her a fabulous fortune for showing herself to them in the talkies, or go by the thousands to see her walk around in front of velvet curtains, waving her arms above her head and kneeling now and then—an Æsthetic dancer? What’s your guess, Hugh?” Hugh was some time before even trying to answer the cool and slightly weary voice of his interlocutor. When he did speak, finally, he too sounded slightly weary. “Personally, I don’t see why the public should bother about Ariel at all. But you and Brenda Loring seem to take it for granted that they will, so I’m wrong probably. It’s rather up to us, isn’t it, to protect her from cheap publicity. It’s in Schwankovsky’s power, I’m sure. Will you speak to him, Joan?” Joan shook her head. “Schwankovsky happens to be hypnotized by the ways Gregory Clare found of putting light on canvas. But some other just as good critics are going to be even more hypnotized by how a great artist has been able to take one single model and by changing her postures make of her a whole symphony of the dance, a kaleidoscopic vision of the possibilities of beauty in movement of the feminine form.... If only Ariel had the beauty that Clare has imagined and created there! But she simply hasn’t any quality which will justify the free publicity she’ll be getting from all this. “So I think she will need protection. But ours, Hugh, not Schwankovsky’s. Whatever Michael’s talents are, protecting’s not one of them. I should think we’d be agreed on that, you and I. No, it’s up to us, if you think she’s worth the bother. And you do, I know. You’ve been a darling from the very first about this girl. You are the protector supreme, my dear. It’s quite your character! Would you be pleased if I helped a little, took her off your hands? I might even invite her to Switzerland with me next month. Would that help?” Hugh knew at once that it would help, immensely. What better could happen to Ariel this summer than that a woman like Joan should take her in hand, travel with her? And wasn’t it very wonderful of Joan? Mightn’t Hugh take hope and heart from the fact that Joan was at last identifying her interests with his own in this sudden and generous way? But oddly enough, he took neither hope nor heart. His heart, in fact, instead of responding joyously, had set up a lonely, almost sullen thud. He did not want Ariel to go to Switzerland, next month,—even with Joan. As he was not responding to her wildly generous suggestion, Joan after a minute of waiting began talking fast, for her, and nervously. “Did you notice that in all these pictures Clare takes great care to paint Ariel turned away—or if her face is there, he blurs it with light, or throws a shadow across it, or bends it down. It seems that he wasn’t so oblivious of the limitations of his model, then, doesn’t it? Her face, at least, never touched his imagination. There’s a whole theme for a tragic novel in that! The tragedy of an artist,—His muse, full face, is not beautiful. Rather subtle, that! Too subtle for you, Hugh, I’m afraid. But it quite thrills me. Some day I may write it. It would be big, profound.... Do you remember, Hugh, how you said that Ariel made no impression on you in Bermuda? How shadowy she was?” “Did I? Yes, I know I did. Well, she was like some figure in a dream, so absolutely quiet. But surely you are wrong about Clare. He was more aware than a stupid Philistine like me could ever be. He got it all. Have you forgotten ‘The Shell’? That is his portrait of Ariel.” “And do you think her beautiful there?” Joan asked, genuinely surprised. “Those narrow, greenish eyes! The thin, sharp lips!” “I know. No. She isn’t beautiful by any special standards. But did you notice her eyelids in that painting? They are astonishingly beautiful, by any standards.... Their pure corners ... petals ... And her hair....” “Hugh! You aren’t convinced! You do think her as beautiful every bit as Michael does? Is it seeing her in all those pictures this afternoon that’s made you? You’ve said all along—” Hugh laughed constrainedly. “This is nonsense. We’re babbling along like two schoolgirls about another girl! But I do admit and know that of course Ariel Clare is not a beautiful or even a pretty girl.... All the same, Beauty itself has her, possesses her. Now you, Joan, dear, have Beauty. You possess It. Do you see the distinction? It’s a real one.” “No. Indeed I don’t. Hugh, you are maddening. Are you paying me a compliment in this new and inimitably mystical way of talking, or are you laughing at me?” Hugh put his arm along the seat at Joan’s back. “You’re the most beautiful girl this poor mortal has ever seen or dreamed of, Joan my dear. You know that, and God help me. Let’s forget Ariel.” “Let’s forget Ariel. Let’s forget Ariel. Let’s forget Ariel.” The words were merely an echo of a thin high cry that had arisen days ago in his heart. Imperceptibly but very actually Joan’s strong white hand relaxed on the glossy wheel. Hugh thought, “Her driving is superb. But I do hope she keeps up the speed and doesn’t slow down again. If she does keep it up we’ll be there soon, soon....” And Joan, though happily unconscious that she was doing so, gratified his unspoken desire. She drove where it was absolutely safe to do so at an almost terrific speed, and she did not speak again until she let Hugh out at his door. |
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