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?”