“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.”