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?”