Pity woke in Grandam’s face. Things she had at different times heard of Ariel and her father and this picture of Hugh’s all suddenly fitted themselves together into a human pattern. She knew a great deal, all at once. She was silent.
Ariel, during the silence, noticed that Grandam was not wearing her wig. This was her own hair, cut short, clipping her small head like a knight’s helmet. It was even lovelier than the wig, Ariel thought. What was Grandam? She was not an old lady with heart disease. She was not a grande dame of a civilization outworn. She was not even Ariel’s great-great-great-great-grandmother. Whatever she was, she was a friend of Ariel’s and would have been even more a friend of her father’s, if he had only known her.
Grandam at last said, “I think I must have been away from Wild Acres, abroad, when Hugh came back with that picture. And I never have seen it. But very recently, since you came, in fact, Hortense has mentioned it to me, told me where it is. You shall have it to-night.”
Ariel was on her feet. “Now?”
“No. Wait. Let’s talk a few minutes first. Sit down again, my dear. Why are you so—so wild to see this picture? Didn’t you bring any other of your father’s pictures with you?”
Ariel sat down again on the edge of the bed. Now that Grandam had promised her a sight of “Noon” she could wait patiently forever, so long as she waited here with Grandam. “No. I didn’t bring a single canvas,” she answered. “You see, they are all quite big. But I am keeping out five for myself. Not letting them be sold—although they will be in the exhibition, of course. Father thought ‘Noon’ the very best of them all. And seeing it again now,—well, it will be like going home.”
“Yes, I can understand that. But you look as though you were seeing a vision, Ariel. What is it?”
Ariel was looking at the picture in the ebony frame beyond Grandam’s shoulder. “Those hands,” she said. “They make me think of Father’s to-night, though they didn’t this afternoon when I was up here. And they aren’t like his really. Father’s hands aren’t so long, and the fingers aren’t nearly so pointed. Are those an angel’s hands? Or a saint’s?”
Grandam’s expression was veiled. Yet it was not a secretive look that came into her features, making them enigmatical; it was an illuminative glow.
“A very fine artist drew those hands,” she said. But her voice was concealing as much as was her face, and Ariel knew it. “He is dead now. Piccoli. An Italian. And he had an earthly model, not an angel. At least he thought so, I suppose. The hands themselves—are the hands of a friend of mine. He, too, is dead.... How is it with you here at Wild Acres, Ariel? Are you lonely?”