  In a minute Hugh was standing in the hot attic hallway, among the bowls and jars of flowers which had been swept with the rest of Grandam’s personality out of her room. Under his feet, where his haste had almost broken it, was the wide, shell-like dish of hepaticas he had watched Ariel put up on the mantel long, long ago, that morning. He opened the door of the attic apartment cautiously, without knocking. As twice before when Grandam had had these heart attacks, her personality had fled the room and left it amazingly bare, even barren. The daybed was there by the long open window, white and stark, no violet and silver cushions left to its adornment,—and on it, straight between white sheets, propped high on white pillows, Grandam lay unstirring. Ariel sat in a chair on the far side of the bed, facing the door, hands folded in her lap. There was something in her posture and utter stillness that said she had been thus immobile a long while. Hugh came as near to the daybed as he dared. Even then Ariel did not look up. She was intent on Grandam’s sleeping face. He noticed how tiny gold freckles stood out on her cheeks and nose, freckles that the silvery tone of her skin generally concealed but which were shown up now by pallor. Her hair, as in “The Shell,” was bent back from her temples,—only now by the air of Death, not of the sea, Hugh thought. And to him, still under the power and beauty of “The Shell,” she seemed a figure watching at the edge of the tide of death, wondering how high it would come, how close to her watching eyes, her folded hands. Grandam was sleeping with apparent comfort and tranquillity, her face, airily and delicately mysterious, a face that in its elusive quality had somehow escaped all the marks of the usual human experiences—old age, fear, and now even Death. Hugh ever since he was grown up, and much more since his father’s death, had realized Grandam’s uniqueness. Her only son, Hugh’s father, had been her last great love left to her, but when he went Grandam had remained as now, elusive of suffering. It was when his father died, or soon after, that Grandam gave herself away to Hugh in confidences, and ever since the already close bond of sympathy between them had been closer. She had reminded Hugh that she had married a man twenty years older than herself. His friends had become her friends; he had a genius for friendship and the men and women he knew intimately and had drawn to himself were people of rich lives, spiritually and intellectually. Among them were poets and painters, saints and humanitarians. Their values were spiritual. Grandam married when she was seventeen. Hugh’s father was born when she was twenty; and that same year her husband died. But in those three short years of a perfect marriage Grandam had made herself as accepted and loved by her husband’s circle of rare friends as he was himself.... “My love identified me with him. That is the only way I can explain such a miracle,” she told Hugh, that one brief hour some time in the course of their coming together in grief for his father’s death. But she never felt worthy of the remarkable friendships. She knew, none better, that she must fly, race, to keep up with her husband’s friends and himself in their flight through time and in Eternity. “The one who has helped me most in this flight, this race, is the possessor of those hands.” She indicated the drawing of the hands from which Hugh had never known her to be separated, whether at home or traveling. Wherever Grandam was, there always in her bedroom hung the ebony-framed drawing. “He taught me short cuts. After Hugh died (her husband Hugh, she meant) I would have lost the race if it hadn’t been for ‘The Saint.’ For if Hugh was so far ahead of me in Time here, in Eternity he would be lost—like a star shot into space. But ‘The Saint’ made me have faith that there are ways of keeping in touch even with shooting stars. “Well, ‘The Saint’ himself and all my husband’s loves have left Time, one after another,—and me here in Time. Even my son has left me behind here. But Time and Eternity are really one in a mysterious way, as ‘The Saint’ taught me, and so I am racing still, a girl at the tail of the race, but in it.” Grandam had ended these confidences concerning her inner life on a humorous word. “The whole point of this story, Hugh, is that I am God’s accident. He let me into Time twenty years too late. So I’ve just had to leave time out of my practical life.” And Hugh knew she had succeeded. Grandam had eluded time. That constituted the mystery of her elusiveness. And looking down at her now, there was nothing of the pity of vigorous youth in his glance. Whether she died to-night or next month didn’t matter. Her death would hardly be so much as a stumble in the race she was running with that clan of noble souls! Ariel had become aware of Hugh’s presence. She came beside him, took his coat sleeve between a thumb and forefinger, and drew him away from the bed toward the piano. There, as far from the daybed as they could get, she whispered. “It was like Father. This happened to him several times, before the last one. She was too ill to take the medicine. So I used the hypodermic, as I had done with Father, and as Doctor Bradshaw had said I should with Grandam. Rose got him on the telephone. But it was almost over when he got here. He said that Rose and I and Nora had done everything we could have done to help her. He brought Miss Freer, the nurse, with him. She’s down in the kitchen now. She’s very nice and Grandam likes her ... Grandam was very brave....” Ariel looked down, away from Hugh’s intent eyes, and her dropped eyelids, delicately etched, petal-shaped, took his breath with their loveliness as they had in “The Shell.” ... “She threw her scarf over her face, Hugh, so that I shouldn’t see the agony of the pain.... Oh, Hugh!” She lifted eyes, clear of tears, but pitiful. And Hugh had been thinking of petal eyelids and eerie gold freckles, when it was death and agony that were here, close by. His beloved Grandam’s death and agony. It was suddenly Hugh who had tears. His throat ached with them, and the light went black with them. Instinctively, he felt for and found Ariel’s wrist and held it hard. When he could see again, Ariel was still there by his side, but looking away toward the daybed, a tender patience on her face, keeping watch over Grandam’s peace. Then Hugh remembered the exhibition. Ariel had not asked or looked a word about it. And such a little time ago it had meant so much to her! It was really to have been Ariel’s and her dead father’s great hour. “She’s a woman, this girl,” Hugh knew with his whole soul then. “Life falls into its just proportions before the eyes of her womanhood. She has forgotten herself. She has even forgotten her father in sharing Grandam’s suffering.” He was overwhelmingly rejoiced. He felt that neither life nor death could ever sadden him again, because one woman was so good, so sweet. |
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