Mrs. Weyman’s humoring of her mother-in-law turned almost into merriment. “Hugh’s as far from ordinary as dear Joan herself,” she affirmed. “But it’s not because of either of their gifts or brains or anything of the sort that I want him to get her, if he can. It’s because he happens to be in love with her. He’s been that way ever since she was fourteen and he fifteen, when she came to Tarrytown with her parents, and they bought the Manor from the Careys. You were in India and China those years? It was charming, that boy and girl romance. We thought—we took it for granted—they’d marry the minute they were old enough, and Hugh had a profession. Till Nevin appeared. What girl wouldn’t have her head turned by the attentions of a man like that! Untold wealth, world-famous, and looking like a Greek God. Even being Hugh’s mother didn’t make me blame Joan. It was infatuation, not love, though. She has always loved Hugh. Not been in love with him. Perhaps never that. But loved him. Something deeper than infatuation or mere passion. I have seen it. I know more about Joan than she knows about herself. Hugh’s the first person she always turns to, thinks of. Yesterday, for instance, Michael Schwankovsky met her at the docks and brought her out to Holly. He and two or three other people, almost as important and interesting, are at Holly over the week-end. But just the same, last night she came to us after dinner and stayed an hour or more. She didn’t leave her guests to see me, I assure you. It was Hugh. It’s rather wonderful, watching it.”
Grandam stirred restlessly among her pillows. “You’ve never spoken quite so plainly before. My dear Hortense, do you seriously want Joan Nevin, after having married some one else, had two children by him, and inherited his wealth, to marry Hugh now? If she’d taken him the year after Nevin died or even the second year, they might have made something of it. But certainly the time for that has passed. She’s picked him up and thrown him down too many times. It amuses her, of course. No, it’s much deeper than amusement. It feeds her. She’s gorged her vanity on it for years. That’s what she loves in Hugh, his food-value! His romantic, silent, dark devotion. Other people are always falling in love with her, of course. But there’s no one quite like Hugh. There wouldn’t be in the twentieth century. His unchanging passion is the pièce de résistance of her gluttonous vanity. And Joan’s vanity, I’ve noticed, has become herself. It’s absorbed the soul she was born with. I don’t know which is more stupid: to think you’re a great painter when you aren’t even a little artist—or to think you are a real person, a worthy human being, when you are nothing but a mass of festering vanity. If you really want Hugh to marry that, and wake up too late, or never wake up at all, and so prove himself an imbecile—”
But Hortense would not listen to more. She had pushed back her chair and was at the door. “You’re almost horrifying, Mother Weyman! Joan is a friend of mine. I admire her and I’m deeply fond of her. You know that very well. I’m sorry I interrupted your morning retreat. It would have been much better if I hadn’t.”
She smiled, but wholly artificially, into the glare of March sunshine with the blur, somewhere at the center of it, which was Grandam, before shutting the door with careful softness between them.
Ariel was enjoying her solitary explorations in Wild Acres’ woods. The snow was not deep, and by following paths part of the time, and keeping to ridges the rest of the time, she avoided going too often over her rubbers. Woods in March! The stillness of them! The mystery! Beauty dumb. But not Beauty inarticulate. A girl had leapt a brook whose summer loveliness was stilled to ice, and stood on the other side, circled by beauty that was making itself articulate in her very veins—no need for sight, touch or smell. Winter woods have communications that can overleap the senses altogether on their avenues to the soul.
Whenever Ariel came to a rise of ground she looked for the house, in order to keep her bearings, and because the attic windows, which Hugh had pointed out from the station platform, fascinated her. She noticed that although they were dormer windows they were of an unusual height and width. After a while she had almost a sense of the windows being eyes that followed her, knew and cared about her adventures with the woods.
Twice Hugh had warned her, once on the drive out from New York, and again this morning at the station, that his grandmother was not mysterious. But why emphasize it so? Ariel would never have thought of mystery in connection with the old lady up there if it hadn’t been for these protests. Some hint of mysteriousness had showed even in Mrs. Weyman’s face last night, when she said in answer to a question from Joan that the shawl she was knitting was for Grandam, and even more in the faces of the others. At the words, a ripple of incredulity had gone over the room. Why, if Mrs. Weyman had said “This shawl? Oh, it’s for Spring. I thought she might be chilly, if she gets here early, dear Spring,”—they wouldn’t have looked more incredulous for just that instant. And then, when any one had spoken of the likelihood or unlikelihood of Grandam’s coming downstairs to join them after dinner, they might as well have been asking, “Will the wind blow? Will it rain? Do you think a bird may fly across the window?” It was like that.
And as Ariel went on, stealing, running, walking, and jumping across brooks and over hollows, she began, almost, to hope to come upon this mysterious person, this elusive house fairy of a grandmother, out here at some turn in the lovely stillness. She might discover her standing, leaning an arm against the other side of that dark tree bole just beyond,—or lying asleep among these feathery snowy plumes of bush which she had been about to pass with too careless a glance.—Will it snow? Will a bird start from this thicket if I make a noise? When shall I see Grandam?
Then she heard laughter. But it was sudden, human laughter. Not for an instant did she think that it might be Grandam, mysteriously laughing. For she knew that it was children’s voices, and children she had heard laughing before on the Bermuda. Nicky and Persis must be somewhere not far away, playing in these woods. Perhaps, she, Ariel, was a trespasser and had got over into the grounds of Holly without realizing it.
Around the next tree she saw them. They were beneath her, in an open hollow at the foot of what might be a rock garden when spring came. And yes, up beyond the garden there were rolling stretches of white lawn and hedges marking off other gardens. But the house was not in sight. Perhaps that grove of fir trees stood at just the angle to conceal it. At any rate, there were the children, in navy blue coats with brass buttons, scarlet sashes around their waists, and scarlet tam-o’-shanters on their heads, pushing at a big snowball, higher than themselves, which they had rolled up in the hollow.