“Why, Mother! You’re crying! Why? I hadn’t an idea you were so bothered! Poor darling!—I’ve an idea. Why don’t you go to Europe right now, this spring? We can manage it beautifully—”
“And leave you unchaperoned here with this young person, I suppose!”
“That’s ridiculous! Unchaperoned! But if you must be so considerate, darling, there’s Grandam—”
“Yes? But is there? I sometimes wonder! Grandam might as well be living in the highest snow of the Andes for all the contact she has with us these days! Her röle as chaperone wouldn’t have much illusion for the servants, or even for the world at large, I’m afraid, Hugh dear. But in any case I don’t want to be driven away, if you please, from my home and my children and my friends by your Ariel Clare!”
Hugh was utterly taken aback. He had not known that his mother harbored any resentment whatever toward Ariel. And why in heaven’s name should she! But he said, after a moment of quick thought, “Look here, Mother! Ariel can go in to New York with me mornings. There’ll be plenty for her to do all day, seeing the sights. That’ll get her off your hands. I only haven’t suggested it before because she’ll need money, batting around by herself, and the poor girl’s awfully touchy about money right now. If she weren’t so proud—”
His mother’s strange, suddenly hysterical laugh halted him. “So proud!” she gibed. “Why don’t you suggest that she pawn the fur coat you gave her, Hugh! She wouldn’t need any further resources for a long time. She could go to Europe then, or anywhere else she wanted to—comfortably. But certainly you’re not to dry-nurse her days in New York. That’s absurd. Something will come along to solve the problems, I know. It’ll have to. Thursday, though, I will let you take your turn, since you suggest it. It’s my day for the Shakespeare Club, and Ariel certainly wouldn’t fit. So your New York plan will be useful for that one day. You are a self-sacrificing old dear!”
Hugh, on leaving his mother, walked quietly out to the guest-room wing and stood for a few seconds before Ariel’s shut door. All was still. So very still that he actually sensed a girl sleeping. He wanted to go in, to look at her asleep. Her room, when she was in it, was, he knew, like a still little corner in the sky, cold, star-filled.... She was precious to him, this daughter of his friend, every hour more so, as he came to know her better. Was this tenderness that welled in his heart merely the automatic tenderness which most people do harbor for what is helpless and dependent on them, and not really the unique thing he felt it? He scarcely knew.
But as he turned away from Ariel’s door, he was thinking of Joan. He felt that he knew to-night, definitely and forever, that she would never relent, never love him. Her indifference to Ariel and Ariel’s good had convinced him. It was as if in refusing to share some of his tenderness for Ariel, Joan had refused to give him a child. This was absurd, on the surface, he was aware, but it had deep roots of truth somewhere, strongly reaching down into reality.
Chapter XV
Thursday came, and Ariel was prepared to go to town with Hugh. They were breakfasting together. The day was clear and sunny. Ariel was wearing her green hat with the magic feather, and her fur coat was lying with her pocketbook on a near-by chair, ready to be snatched up when they had finished their toast and coffee.