Prescott Enderly laughed aloud, a nervous, meaningless laugh. And simultaneous with the young novelist’s laugh, Mrs. Nevin did remember—something, almost everything in fact. “Oh, yes, Mrs. Weyman’s letter mentioned that your father was an artist. Do you paint too, Ariel?” But she had remembered more. Wasn’t “Noon” that weird painting Hugh had brought home with him from Bermuda years ago, and produced for her inspection, so confident that he’d found, all by himself, a rare masterpiece? Of course. That picture and this girl, and Hugh’s having been imposed on by the futile, beach-combing artist of a father! It was all getting connected. “Have you inherited your father’s—er—talent?” she asked.
Ariel was baffled. Of course now she saw she had been wrong. Mrs. Nevin was not in possession of “Noon” and could never even have seen it. But this was too unreasonable, ununderstandable. Wasn’t she a friend of the family’s? They had said so, at dinner,—an intimate and old friend, as well as the next-door neighbor. Then what had Hugh done with “Noon”? If it were at Wild Acres, Mrs. Nevin would be familiar with it? What had become of it? What was the mystery?
Hugh also was doing some rapid thinking. “The poor child expects Joan to know all about her father, and particularly about ‘Noon’! In a minute she’ll ask me where it is. She must have been looking around for it ever since she came. What in Heaven’s name did I do with it after—after Joan laughed at it?”
The hurt of that careless laugh at his mistaken taste in art throbbed freshly, as if it had never healed. But it had healed, and he had forgotten it, forgotten and hidden it away with the picture which had caused the catastrophe to his vanity years and years ago. He’d look the thing up when he got back from his office to-morrow and give it to Ariel for her room. But what he would say to explain its whereabouts to-night, if she should ask, he hadn’t an idea. His selfish stupidity in not having foreseen this situation shamed him.
Mrs. Weyman was pouring the pungent coffee into an array of little cups on the silver tray, while Prescott Enderly stood at attention, ready to pass them.
Glenn came and stood before Ariel.
“You don’t care about coffee, do you?” he asked. “Come along into the library with me and play chess? Hugh, where’d we leave the men?”
Ariel was glad to escape with Glenn into the library and feel the familiar, friendly shapes of chessmen under her fingers. She had played this game endlessly with her father from almost the time of earliest remembrance. But could one escape from the hurt of hating merely by leaving the room where the hated person sat?
Chapter VII
Ariel stood at her window, that first morning at Wild Acres, for some time before dressing, and looked out into the black branches of the snow-floored woods. The trees pressed up to the window panes. So Wild Acres was really wild. She was curious to look from all the windows and to explore the big, rambling house from top to bottom. After nine hours of dreamless sleep, her body warm between sheets and light blankets, her face deliciously cool in the cold, woodsy air of the little guest room, Ariel had waked with a sense of happiness. The carpet of snow in the woods below her was a thin veil, ever so thin, drawn over the spring-to-come: green leaves, moss, butterflies, birds, hot sunshine, cool shade and myriads and myriads of violets. Hugh had promised her violets. At any moment the veil might tremble, blow to one side, and that world of wings and scent and color rise to the window and envelop her with joy. But meanwhile the white, clear-smelling snow (she had seen snow before in imagination, as she had told Hugh, but she had never smelled it), the ebony black of bare tree boles, roots and limbs and twigs, were all just pictures on a veil over Spring’s face. Ariel was glad she had come to Wild Acres before the veil blew off. She was so happy, standing there at the window, still in her nightgown, that she was frightened of it. It was like too piercingly beautiful a note in music.