  Late afternoon. Glenn walked up the avenue at Wild Acres, back from the first day of his job on the World. It had been a long day, beginning at seven in the morning. He looked and was weary and disheartened, and his mouth was set in a rather bitter line. Anne, lying in a long chair in the square garden, the only patch of ground, except for a bit of lawn, which was cultivated at Wild Acres, saw him through the screen of hedge which protected her privacy, and sat up. “Glenn,” she called softly, “oh, Glenn!” He responded to the call dispiritedly enough, but came around the hedge and sat down on the foot of her chair when she had moved her legs to make room for him. She handed him a cigarette and then held a match for him. She herself had been smoking for hours, it seemed, for the grass all around her chair was littered with cigarette stubs thrown carelessly down. “How goes it?” she asked. He hesitated, then looked at her gloomily. “Have you seen the morning papers?” he asked. “Yes. The Times. But there’s hope for him, it seems. And it may have been only—only a temporary aberration. I’m upset too, Glenn. But there’s nothing we can do. Or will you try to see him?” Brother and sister looked startlingly alike in their anxiety and disillusionment. There were deep rings under their eyes and the general pinched and worn look that can come, even to the very young, from a long day of anguish. The morning papers on their front pages had carried a blatantly headlined story of the attempted suicide in New York the night before of the young novelist, Prescott Enderly. Failure in getting his degree at Yale was the suggested cause, but there were added some pointed hints at a love affair with an “older woman.” And Glenn had been assigned to write a more detailed story for the evening edition of his paper, because he had known Enderly at Yale. “Adams sent me to the hospital to get the latest on it,” he told Anne. “They wouldn’t let me see him. He’s delirious, anyway. He may lose one eye. It was a bell boy who caught him in the act and jogged up his arm. The bullet just grazed the brow and went through the ceiling. It was the smoke that got the eye. Ass! Not to lock his door! Some bell boy! Nerve, that kid had. I got his story too. Don’t know why he had to butt in, though! Pressy’s not thanking him any.” Glenn’s face was as white as the petals of the paper narcissus blowing in the June breeze by the side of the long chair. Anne’s eyes were black with pain. They were both breathing fast. Short, nervous breaths. After a minute Anne muttered. “He’ll get over it and be happy yet. He’ll go on and have a good life. See if he doesn’t! It was Joan, of course.” “How did you know? Yes, it was. But don’t say it to a soul. Promise? He saw her in town after he learned he’d lost out at Yale. He said something to frighten her. Must have, I think. She saw he was desperate, anyway. And she refused to see him again. Cut him right out. I knew he’d written since and called her up. He told me this was what he’d do too,—blow his brains out. But I—fool—couldn’t believe him. Anne, I laughed at him. Didn’t help him any.... You see I simply can’t imagine any one being so desperate he’ll do a thing—like this. I can’t yet, as a matter of fact. But if I’d had the imagination, I might have saved him. It’s worse now, it seems to me, than as if he’d succeeded. Ghastly humiliating, unless he tries again and does a clean job next time. I was a damned fool. I am a damned fool.... I failed him....” Anne held her cigarette case toward Glenn again, pulling one out for herself at the same time. Glenn lit his from the stub of the one about to burn his fingers, and kicked viciously at the clump of paper narcissus blowing beside them, there in the June garden. Anne’s eyes followed the kick sympathetically. Her hands, clutching the arms of the long chair, were shaking. And she had thought she was going to be calm when Glenn came home! All that morning, from the time she had happened upon the Times headlines soon after breakfast, she had tramped—she didn’t know where—in woods and fields. And all the afternoon she had lain here, exhausted, smoking cigarette after cigarette, watching the light change across the lawn and garden and the edges of the woods, and waiting for Glenn. Ariel she had avoided, rather than hunt her out. For Ariel had done for her, Anne, what there had been nobody to do for Prescott. And Anne almost resented that she had had an Ariel to go to, when Prescott had had no one. If Anne herself was any good, Prescott would have had her, as she had had Ariel.... If she had been understanding.... If she had been able to break the snare of her own blind, egoistic passion and had not driven him away from her by clutching at—what never comes for clutching.... How terrible to be deaf and dumb and blind with passionate love—and to lose that way all the possibilities of friendship and its salvations! And now, even if the beloved ever came sane,—and, blind in one eye and shattered, should undertake to face the world again and its bitterness, it would never be Anne who would help steady him to it. It would be Glenn, perhaps. And, looking at the paper narcissus which had sprung erect again with delicate vitality from Glenn’s kick, she made a resolution that Glenn must not know to what a degree she was suffering over the plight of—his friend. Why, one of the reasons for Prescott’s breaking with her was his desire that Glenn should never know how far their affair had gone. He had valued Glenn’s comradeship mountains above Anne’s stupid, egoistic passion of love. And he was right to do so. One thing she could save from the wreck of what might have become a fine, even a lovely, human relationship with Prescott: she could save Prescott’s self-respect with her brother and incidentally, but not primarily, for truly she was not thinking of herself in the old way any more, her own self-respect. “Joan’s called off the dinner to-night, I suppose,” Glenn muttered. “Not so far as I know,” Anne said, keeping her voice from shaking with better success than her hands. “And I don’t think she will. In fact, I hope she won’t. For both Hugh’s and Ariel’s sake. And why should she? She’ll pretend, don’t you think, to be absolutely out of all this business?” “Yes. I suppose she will. But, of course I shan’t go. And you needn’t either, Anne. After all, you were fond of him too. You can say you’re cut up, as I shall say.” Suddenly he turned and looked at her with a sharpness that almost broke down her defenses. “And I believe you are. Of course you are. You and Pressy were quite pals. Anyway, I know he liked you tremendously.” “But I’m going. I’m going, no matter what, Glenn! For Ariel’s and Hugh’s sake!” Glenn’s face softened at this repetition of Ariel’s name. “Why for their sakes?” he asked. “Why should they be so keen on eating dinner at Holly this particular night?” “Well, after all, Ariel hasn’t been outside of Wild Acres for several weeks. She’s getting a little too tired. She’s thin. Anybody can see. Besides, it’s the poor darling’s last chance to see Michael Schwankovsky for months. He’s going to Switzerland next week, and then to Russia. And the party’s a celebration in honor of the exhibition, you know. So, of course, Ariel must be looking forward to it. And Hugh—Well, Joan’s off herself, to-morrow, for her Switzerland colony. I have a hunch—have had it all day—that to-night may be Hugh’s last chance. If she goes away without their settling anything this time—he might just as well give up. So—I’m going to the party anyway. You come too, old thing. For Ariel?” “I’d do anything in life for Ariel,” Glenn responded quietly. “And if she goes I want to go, anyway.” “Glenn? Really?” “Well, yes, it is really. But it oughtn’t to be. It’s so idiotic of me, isn’t it? Two years more at least before I’ll be making anything decent, if then. And she deserves a man. Not a boy. If old Prescott had only gone off his nut for her instead of for Joan, I could’ve understood it. But then, if he had, I should all the more have wished him better success with his target practice. Oh, Anne! I am a fool.” He buried his dark head in his hands. His shoulders shook. Anne prayed through clenched lips that he would not cry out loud. But she understood his sudden loss of control. His crying had nothing whatever to do with Ariel, she knew. The thought of Ariel, whom he would in all probability win and marry, was only joy to him. It was what he had said about “target practice” and his friend. He was appalled at his own brutal words. She said in a matter-of-fact voice—but her face was set in a womanly and even noble mask above Glenn’s bent head—“It will be you and I, and Mother, and Hugh, and Ariel, and Michael, and Charlie Frye and Joan, and that’s all to-night. If Joan does decide to marry Hugh you’ll have to forget about her and Prescott, you know. And if she decides not to marry him, and will only be so kind as to tell him so to-night, then neither of us need ever have anything to do with the creature again. No reason to. We can forget her even before she has taken the trouble to forget us.... Let’s go in and give ourselves good old soapy baths now, doll up, and see it through. Come along with big sister.” Contrary to Anne’s and Glenn’s expectations, though, Joan pretended neither indifference nor ignorance concerning Prescott that night. Her first words to Glenn were words of sympathy, and she took pains to let him guess that her hostess manners this night were covering a grieved and very troubled, even a contrite, heart. Glenn actually found himself being sorry for her. After all, she had never encouraged Prescott to think that he counted especially with her. Remembering this, and Prescott’s open hopelessness as he stated it, Glenn was boy enough and susceptible enough to be softened by Joan’s beauty and the pathos in her eyes, as she stood holding his hand that brief minute of their whispered interchange of troubled words in her wide hall at Holly. “It isn’t your fault,” he heard himself muttering sincerely. “You couldn’t believe he meant what he said, any more than I could. If you only knew, Joan, you’re not so much to blame as I am.” Hugh was near enough to hear. And Joan turned to him, drawing him into it. She said with something which had the similitude of harsh grief, “Youth itself is to be blamed for this terrible thing. Do you remember, Hugh, weeks, months ago, my telling you that young men in love were frightening? The middle-aged were safe? They do not kill themselves for romance. It is your generation, Glenn. Yours—and Anne’s.” Anne had caught this, and for a minute she thought that Joan had raised her voice for that very purpose. Had Prescott, then, told Joan that Anne too had wanted a way out of life, and almost found it, because of youth and love? But Ariel alone knew that. And Anne’s sordid secret was as safe with Ariel as it would be with the Wild Acres woods, or with the sky, had she made her confidences to either. Anne was certain. She turned away from Joan’s group, hard, austere. Glenn might be won to Joan by her beauty and charm, in spite of her terrible part in the tragedy of his friend. Hugh might marry Joan. But Anne knew at that moment that she herself would never again, after this night, be able to bear the sight or the sound of her. “She’s horrible,” she thought. “A glutton of love. A walking sore of vanity. It isn’t jealousy that makes me see her this way. Even to be loved by Prescott I would not be anything like Joan Nevin. I’d rather Prescott never gave me a thought again through eternity than have any touch of that stinking vanity, scarring my voice and face as it scars Joan’s to-night. I’m the only one who sees. She’s horrid, rotten.” And she went over to stand with Michael Schwankovsky and Charlie Frye and Ariel before the painting of Gregory Clare’s which Joan had bought for herself and which now hung between the long windows in the drawing-room, where the party was to wait for the announcement of dinner. But even here she could not escape Joan’s echoes. As Anne joined the group, Charlie Frye was saying, “... wonderful! Of course, she knows, just as we all know, that it’s she young Enderly went off his head over. She goes on with it all, though. Entertains us. It’s magnificent of her, I think. But she’s pale to-night....” Anne gripped Ariel’s hand hard and cried with stifled violence, “Merely a matter of leaving off rouge! Very effective too,”—and wanted to bite her tongue out when she had said it. Michael Schwankovsky looked at her, whether disgusted or quizzically she didn’t know. Or care! Charlie Frye bit his lips to keep an angry retort back, and frowned at the floor. But Ariel threw an arm about Anne’s shoulder, and Anne felt that she was trembling in unison with her. The long windows leading onto the terraced rose-garden were open throughout dinner. Candlelight, moonlight, rose scents and the glowing colors of the other women’s evening frocks were all mingled for Ariel in a web of sensuous pleasure which mixed with a mind almost as anguished as her friend Anne’s. Schwankovsky occupied the head of the table, where he played host spectacularly, with a noisy zeal. Ariel, in whose honor the party had been planned, was given the place of honor at his right. Mrs. Weyman was opposite Ariel at his other side. Glenn on Ariel’s right remembered poignantly the first meal she had had with them, how she had been as silent as now, but with a different silence. Then she had bent with the flow of talk as forget-me-nots bent in a grassy stream, flowing with it, not obstructing it. But to-night she was withdrawn, on purpose. And she looked often at Anne, Glenn noticed, with a tender, watchful regard. Why, Glenn could not imagine, for Anne by this time was entering into everything exuberantly, as she had promised him and herself she would. Charlie Frye, quite over his earlier irritation with her, was merry as a grig. Anne was flirting with him, a little clumsily, perhaps, but effectively, if one judged from the man’s reactions. What Glenn did not notice, but Ariel did, was that Anne, on the evening when Joan Nevin had left off her rouge, had painted her own face most brilliantly. The talk flowed on. Chatter about summer plans, their own and other people’s. Gossip about Doctor Steiner who had just been given a degree by conservative Harvard. Would he go to make his home in Vienna next year, as he was threatening, or stay to enrich America with his knowledge and genius? Some desultory discussions, too, of music, plays, books and painting. Suddenly, in a way that he intended to be confidential and intimate but could not make so because of his size and the timbre of his voice which even when consciously lowered compelled the attention of the whole table, Schwankovsky leaned to Ariel and took her wrist in his fingers. “My own darling child, you are triste. At this, your own party! But, believe me, some day very soon, it will be forgotten.... You’ll be rid of grief.... Your old friend knows.... And grief so pure as yours is pure, unstained by remorse, leaves no sediment of heaviness when time has once flowed over it and past. It is a good fortune to have youth and grief together. Some day you will think so.... This is a very beautiful aquamarine, Ariel!” He lifted her hand higher, and looked long and delightedly at the heavy silver ring with its beautifully colored and flawless stone, which Ariel was wearing. Ariel wanted to cry, “Oh, Michael! It isn’t missing my father that makes me so out of things to-night. And please forgive me for not playing up when we owe you everything, my father and I,—and you are going away so soon! It isn’t grief. It’s something else. For I can’t be brave, the way Anne is brave. I am frightened, do you see?” She was indeed frightened! For Ariel, like Anne, had a conviction that to-night things were to be decided between Hugh and Joan. She only said, however, calmly enough, conscious of the waiting silence of the others, “Grandam gave me this ring just to-night. The color is wonderful, I think.” “And the setting! It’s a rare and beautiful setting! But it is a man’s ring! It cannot belong to you, my Ariel! It is much too heavy for this little hand.” He continued to hold her wrist and stare down, fascinated, at the lovely ring. Mrs. Weyman was leaning across the table, amazed. “Grandam gave you her aquamarine, Ariel! I hadn’t noticed you wearing it. But she values it above everything she possesses, except that pencil drawing of the hands. I don’t know what its association for her is, or why she always wears it. She’s avoided telling us. Did she give it to you, or just let you wear it, Ariel?” “She gave it to me,” Ariel replied, but her own words, her answer to the simple question, rang in her ears like a knell. Her blood went icy. For suddenly she knew the significance of the ring, and the significance of Grandam’s having given it to her. And yet no one had told her. This ring had been worn on one of those pictured hands, on the hand that was to open the coach door for Grandam when she got out in Eternity. That holy hand had given the jewel to Grandam as its last act on earth. And now Grandam had passed it on to Ariel. And all Grandam had said was, “Here’s a keepsake to match your green feather.” Father’s green feather.... Grandam’s and the Saint’s aquamarine! Oh, pray God Grandam hadn’t meant Ariel to understand a swift farewell in the casual, sacred gift. Pray God! Pray God! Did Grandam think she was about to die? |
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