Ariel had a talent: the gift of a graceful, even a gracious silence. And this night she sat during the long dinner hour at the board of strangers, scarcely uttering a word, and yet not seeming bored, and certainly not boring. The talk seemed to flow over her, around her, even through her, while her silence bent with it but did not dissolve—like forget-me-nots in a brook.
So thought Glenn, who, sitting next to her, was almost as silent as herself, but with the thick silence of moodiness and self-centeredness. To-night, however, he was a little less self-centered than usual, for he was giving thought to Ariel. And even when his mind turned to something far away and long ago, Ariel had impelled it in that direction. He was remembering when he was a little boy, ten—or was it nine?—years old. His mother was abroad with his father, vacationing, and Grandam had returned to oversee things at Wild Acres. He, the boy Glenn, had taken the occasion to come down with scarlet fever. Grandam straightway moved her things into Hugh’s room, which opened out of Glenn’s, and Hugh’s things away somewhere into one of the spare rooms. Then had followed magic,—long days of it. Forget-me-nots flowing with a brook, under water, yet never away from their roots. But where did forget-me-nots come in, when he was merely shut away in two rooms with Grandam? And the crystal water running, running? Wings in the air too? How had all this got into those shut-away rooms and days? But they had. He remembered them more vividly than the fever and the headache. Yet why did he connect the two experiences,—Ariel silent beside him at the commonplace rite of dinner at Wild Acres, and Grandam sitting beside his bed in the night, years and years ago? It was two silences he was connecting,—clear silences, crystal silences, through which at any moment one might hear the footsteps of beauty coming—coming.... Wasn’t there a poem somewhere—?
Old Pres was talking. Something about Spengler—no—Walter Lippmann. Glenn had been missing, had skipped whole gobs of what his brilliant friend was saying. An important contribution to civilized thinking? Walter Lippmann’s book? Oh, yes, Glenn agreed with that. Prescott, meeting his glance, caught the full force of the agreement and regained in a twinkling the complacency he had been in danger of losing since Glenn had gone obviously wool-gathering and stopped listening. For Glenn was the only one here really interested in this sort of thing. The others were merely polite, pretending agreement and interest. Prescott and Glenn understood each other, valued each other. The others didn’t count—except in quite a different way. Anne counted—rather—of course. But it was Glenn he really addressed himself to.
And Glenn was saying to himself, “I’m following old Pres now—what he’s saying. I like this dessert, almond flavoring it’s got. And yet it still holds. There’s magic here—in this silence—something wonderful here.... Like when I was a kid....”
The moth was directed to bring coffee into the drawing-room later, for Mrs. Nevin was coming to have it with them. A fire was blazing on the hearth there. The moth had been sent to apply the match during dinner.
The drawing-room contrasted sharply with the hall, the dining room, and the library. They were dim, big apartments, lighted by richly shaded but subdued lamps. The drawing-room had creamy walls, spindly gilt furniture, and turquois blue rugs. An Italian chandelier, a cluster of glittering bulbs and crystals, outdid the fire and the lamps and made the room brighter than day.
Anne and Enderly quickly appropriated the little blue and gilt sofa near the library door, sat uneasily there and looked prepared, at the flick of an eye, to escape into the romantic, shadowy library. Glenn got a book, and with the air of being a martyr to his mother’s desires, settled himself with it in a distant chair, a straight-backed, fragile piece of furniture which looked as though it had never before in its history been read on. Hugh, his mother and Ariel were together around the low table, a little back from the fire, which soon was to hold the coffee things. Mrs. Weyman, in the glaring white light cast down by the chandelier, looked more a possible mother of Hugh than she had when Ariel first saw her, but she was still very pretty.
There was only one picture on the creamy walls of this room. That was a big panel framed in ebony, which reached from ceiling to floor of the wall opposite the door from the hall,—a conventionalized, brilliant shower of garden flowers.
It was beautiful, Ariel thought. But where was “Noon”? Hugh might want it for his own room of course, but even wanting it, he would never deny others the satisfaction of living with it too. Ariel couldn’t believe him so selfish. It might be loaned to some exhibition. But surely Hugh would explain about it now, any minute. He must know that she was wondering and longing to see it. She remembered, however, his strange silence on this matter of the picture in his letters to her father. Her father had refused to ask when Hugh was silent. His pride was now Ariel’s. She would not violate it. And Mrs. Weyman was speaking to her, directly.
“Hugh has told us really very little about you, Ariel. We’d hardly heard your name a month ago. I’m afraid I don’t even know where you lived, your family, I mean, originally. And your mother. Have you been long without her?”