It was Mrs. Nevin again. She was there, with her children, almost at Ariel’s shoulder. And she was smiling down at the bearded man. But the children were looking at Ariel. She had so plainly refrained from inviting their acquaintance during the voyage that they had not once tried to force a contact. She had seemed to their sensitive child perceptions to be out with the flying fish and the dip of the waves, more than in her steamer chair beside their mother, for that was where her gaze had lived. But the small green feather, which fluttered its down incessantly against the brim of her hat, had all the while had a life, they felt, quite apart from its wearer’s. It had been a veritable fairy flag, waving recognition and good will to them whenever their play brought them near. And now Ariel had turned so quickly that she had caught the children’s glances of camaraderie with the feather. And suddenly she took in their magic, realized it, as they had from the very first recognized and taken in the magic of the feather her father had found and given her. She was aware of the children—really aware—at last.
That was all that it needed. They saw her face lose its abstraction, come as alive as the wind-dancing feather. Ariel’s eyes and lips smiled. Everything went golden. The children’s hearts fluttered as though they were magic feathers.
But even now when Ariel’s smile had taught them all that there was to know about her the children did not rush upon her. They came slowly, with sensitive delicacy, as children will,—but for all the delicacy, with an air of deep, almost frightening assurance. Each child, taking one of Ariel’s cold, ungloved hands, pressed close.
“We’ll be in, in another minute,” Ariel faltered, tremulously and almost beneath her breath, as if to warn them of the unreasonableness of this sudden, overwhelming intimacy which must be lost almost as soon as consummated. “Look. There goes the gangplank. And there’s some one—some one I know.” Suddenly, and when she had really forgotten his very existence, she had seen Hugh.
To her relief this first sight assured her that he had not changed in the five years. He was the same Hugh, her father’s eager, quiet friend of the hawklike dark head, poised, alert, on shoulders that for all their breadth had an indefinable air of elegance about them. In his darkness and poise he was in direct contrast to the blond-bearded person gesticulating to Mrs. Nevin. Hugh stood beside this giant, looking up at the decks of the Bermuda as he was looking up, but with a difference. Without excitement, but rapidly, his eyes were traveling along the tiers of decks and the bending faces. In another minute he would get to the last deck and find what he sought, Ariel. Their eyes would meet and in the meeting remember everything of that sunlit week of five years ago. Under one arm she saw that he was carrying, tucked there as though it might be any ordinary parcel, a big bunch of English violets. They were for her, of course. So why had she ever been shy, afraid? She had forgotten the children and was bending forward over the rail, waiting with genuine gayety now the moment of his recognition.
But just before his glance, in its methodical journey, came to her deck, she had her first sense of change in him. After all, he was different, a little, from the Bermuda days. There was a moody hunger in his eyes, and something gaunt, unfed, in the face that she had remembered only as keen, without shadows. But his face would light up in the old way when he discovered her. This might be his look when alone and unaware of friends near.
The light, however, when it came, was not for Ariel. It was Mrs. Nevin his searching glance was halted by, and the glory that transfigured the dark, uplifted face took away Ariel’s breath.
Mrs. Nevin laughed down a greeting, and murmured above her breath, so that Ariel caught the words, “Now how’d he know I was coming?”
It flashed through Ariel’s mind that much reading of Aldous Huxley during the voyage, if that was the author’s name, must have dulled Mrs. Nevin’s perceptions, if she did not see that it had needed surprise as well as joy, so to shatter Hugh’s reserve.
Mrs. Nevin called to her children, who still pressed against Ariel, holding her hands, “There’s Uncle Hugh, darlings. Wave to him. See, he has found us. Isn’t it nice of him to meet our boat!”