“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.”