“Warm?” he was booming. “Why, I hadn’t thought so. Hadn’t noticed. Those pictures in there are more on my mind than the weather. They’re going to take you by storm, I promise. You never saw sunlight in paint before, on canvas. It’s epoch-making. You’ll see. It almost blinds you, this Clare sunlight does.”
Mrs. Weyman shuddered prettily, and gratefully took the drink from Hugh’s hands. “But didn’t he paint any shade?” she asked. “If not, I absolutely shall not risk it.”
“Pooh! You wouldn’t miss it for the world. But where’s my Ariel? I thought she was with you, Weyman. She must be here when the doors are opened.”
Hugh was annoyed. He felt it very important for Ariel’s peace of mind and her enjoyment of the victory—if the exhibition was to prove a victory—that she should be unrecognized, and he expected Schwankovsky to think of this and be a little careful.
“Joan’s driving Ariel in. They’ll be here any minute,” he replied in as low a voice as he could use and still be heard.
But the minute hand on the face of Schwankovsky’s absurd little platinum wristwatch moved on under his anxious gaze, and proved Hugh wrong. Schwankovsky waited five minutes beyond the announced time of the opening for Joan and Ariel to make their appearance before, with a disappointed grunt, he gave the sign to Charlie Frye to slide back the big doors.
“I’ll wait here for them,” Hugh told his mother. “You go on in, though. It’ll be cooler there.”
It was very much cooler. The gallery where the Clare pictures were hung was a huge room covering nearly half a block, and the crowds which had choked the anteroom, Hugh could observe through the great open doors, were mere driblets of humanity almost lost in the expanse of floor space.
He pushed a chair to an open window, where he would find air to breathe if there was any, and composed himself, outwardly, to wait. People continued to arrive by the elevators, and even some undaunted and impatient ones by the stairs. They hesitated in the anteroom to secure their catalogues from Charlie Frye, who was officiating at the desk there, and passed quickly on into the gallery, where a babble, as the minutes passed, was rising gradually higher and higher, with Schwankovsky’s big voice forever cresting it.