- The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Reef, by Edith Wharton
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- Title: The Reef
- Author: Edith Wharton
- Posting Date: July 12, 2008 [EBook #283]
- Release Date: June, 1995
- [Last Updated: August 19, 2017]
- Language: English
- Character set encoding: UTF-8
- *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REEF ***
- Produced by Gail Jahn, and John Hamm
- THE REEF
- by Edith Wharton
- BOOK I
- I
- “Unexpected obstacle. Please don’t come till thirtieth. Anna.”
- All the way from Charing Cross to Dover the train had hammered the words
- of the telegram into George Darrow’s ears, ringing every change of irony
- on its commonplace syllables: rattling them out like a discharge of
- musketry, letting them, one by one, drip slowly and coldly into his
- brain, or shaking, tossing, transposing them like the dice in some game
- of the gods of malice; and now, as he emerged from his compartment at
- the pier, and stood facing the wind-swept platform and the angry sea
- beyond, they leapt out at him as if from the crest of the waves, stung
- and blinded him with a fresh fury of derision.
- “Unexpected obstacle. Please don’t come till thirtieth. Anna.”
- She had put him off at the very last moment, and for the second time:
- put him off with all her sweet reasonableness, and for one of her usual
- “good” reasons--he was certain that this reason, like the other, (the
- visit of her husband’s uncle’s widow) would be “good”! But it was that
- very certainty which chilled him. The fact of her dealing so reasonably
- with their case shed an ironic light on the idea that there had been any
- exceptional warmth in the greeting she had given him after their twelve
- years apart.
- They had found each other again, in London, some three months
- previously, at a dinner at the American Embassy, and when she had caught
- sight of him her smile had been like a red rose pinned on her widow’s
- mourning. He still felt the throb of surprise with which, among
- the stereotyped faces of the season’s diners, he had come upon her
- unexpected face, with the dark hair banded above grave eyes; eyes in
- which he had recognized every little curve and shadow as he would have
- recognized, after half a life-time, the details of a room he had played
- in as a child. And as, in the plumed starred crowd, she had stood out
- for him, slender, secluded and different, so he had felt, the instant
- their glances met, that he as sharply detached himself for her. All that
- and more her smile had said; had said not merely “I remember,” but “I
- remember just what you remember”; almost, indeed, as though her memory
- had aided his, her glance flung back on their recaptured moment its
- morning brightness. Certainly, when their distracted Ambassadress--with
- the cry: “Oh, you know Mrs. Leath? That’s perfect, for General Farnham
- has failed me”--had waved them together for the march to the dining-room,
- Darrow had felt a slight pressure of the arm on his, a pressure faintly
- but unmistakably emphasizing the exclamation: “Isn’t it wonderful?--In
- London--in the season--in a mob?”
- Little enough, on the part of most women; but it was a sign of Mrs.
- Leath’s quality that every movement, every syllable, told with her. Even
- in the old days, as an intent grave-eyed girl, she had seldom misplaced
- her light strokes; and Darrow, on meeting her again, had immediately
- felt how much finer and surer an instrument of expression she had
- become.
- Their evening together had been a long confirmation of this feeling. She
- had talked to him, shyly yet frankly, of what had happened to her during
- the years when they had so strangely failed to meet. She had told him
- of her marriage to Fraser Leath, and of her subsequent life in France,
- where her husband’s mother, left a widow in his youth, had been
- re-married to the Marquis de Chantelle, and where, partly in consequence
- of this second union, the son had permanently settled himself. She had
- spoken also, with an intense eagerness of affection, of her little girl
- Effie, who was now nine years old, and, in a strain hardly less tender,
- of Owen Leath, the charming clever young stepson whom her husband’s
- death had left to her care...
- A porter, stumbling against Darrow’s bags, roused him to the fact that
- he still obstructed the platform, inert and encumbering as his luggage.
- “Crossing, sir?”
- Was he crossing? He really didn’t know; but for lack of any more
- compelling impulse he followed the porter to the luggage van, singled
- out his property, and turned to march behind it down the gang-way. As
- the fierce wind shouldered him, building up a crystal wall against his
- efforts, he felt anew the derision of his case.
- “Nasty weather to cross, sir,” the porter threw back at him as they beat
- their way down the narrow walk to the pier. Nasty weather, indeed; but
- luckily, as it had turned out, there was no earthly reason why Darrow
- should cross.
- While he pushed on in the wake of his luggage his thoughts slipped back
- into the old groove. He had once or twice run across the man whom Anna
- Summers had preferred to him, and since he had met her again he had been
- exercising his imagination on the picture of what her married life must
- have been. Her husband had struck him as a characteristic specimen of
- the kind of American as to whom one is not quite clear whether he
- lives in Europe in order to cultivate an art, or cultivates an art as a
- pretext for living in Europe. Mr. Leath’s art was water-colour painting,
- but he practised it furtively, almost clandestinely, with the disdain of
- a man of the world for anything bordering on the professional, while
- he devoted himself more openly, and with religious seriousness, to the
- collection of enamelled snuff-boxes. He was blond and well-dressed, with
- the physical distinction that comes from having a straight figure, a
- thin nose, and the habit of looking slightly disgusted--as who should
- not, in a world where authentic snuff-boxes were growing daily harder to
- find, and the market was flooded with flagrant forgeries?
- Darrow had often wondered what possibilities of communion there could
- have been between Mr. Leath and his wife. Now he concluded that there
- had probably been none. Mrs. Leath’s words gave no hint of her husband’s
- having failed to justify her choice; but her very reticence betrayed
- her. She spoke of him with a kind of impersonal seriousness, as if he
- had been a character in a novel or a figure in history; and what she
- said sounded as though it had been learned by heart and slightly dulled
- by repetition. This fact immensely increased Darrow’s impression that
- his meeting with her had annihilated the intervening years. She, who was
- always so elusive and inaccessible, had grown suddenly communicative and
- kind: had opened the doors of her past, and tacitly left him to draw his
- own conclusions. As a result, he had taken leave of her with the
- sense that he was a being singled out and privileged, to whom she had
- entrusted something precious to keep. It was her happiness in their
- meeting that she had given him, had frankly left him to do with as he
- willed; and the frankness of the gesture doubled the beauty of the gift.
- Their next meeting had prolonged and deepened the impression. They had
- found each other again, a few days later, in an old country house full
- of books and pictures, in the soft landscape of southern England.
- The presence of a large party, with all its aimless and agitated
- displacements, had served only to isolate the pair and give them (at
- least to the young man’s fancy) a deeper feeling of communion, and their
- days there had been like some musical prelude, where the instruments,
- breathing low, seem to hold back the waves of sound that press against
- them.
- Mrs. Leath, on this occasion, was no less kind than before; but she
- contrived to make him understand that what was so inevitably coming was
- not to come too soon. It was not that she showed any hesitation as to
- the issue, but rather that she seemed to wish not to miss any stage in
- the gradual reflowering of their intimacy.
- Darrow, for his part, was content to wait if she wished it. He
- remembered that once, in America, when she was a girl, and he had
- gone to stay with her family in the country, she had been out when he
- arrived, and her mother had told him to look for her in the garden. She
- was not in the garden, but beyond it he had seen her approaching down a
- long shady path. Without hastening her step she had smiled and signed to
- him to wait; and charmed by the lights and shadows that played upon her
- as she moved, and by the pleasure of watching her slow advance toward
- him, he had obeyed her and stood still. And so she seemed now to be
- walking to him down the years, the light and shade of old memories and
- new hopes playing variously on her, and each step giving him the vision
- of a different grace. She did not waver or turn aside; he knew she would
- come straight to where he stood; but something in her eyes said “Wait”,
- and again he obeyed and waited.
- On the fourth day an unexpected event threw out his calculations.
- Summoned to town by the arrival in England of her husband’s mother, she
- left without giving Darrow the chance he had counted on, and he cursed
- himself for a dilatory blunderer. Still, his disappointment was tempered
- by the certainty of being with her again before she left for France;
- and they did in fact see each other in London. There, however, the
- atmosphere had changed with the conditions. He could not say that she
- avoided him, or even that she was a shade less glad to see him; but
- she was beset by family duties and, as he thought, a little too readily
- resigned to them.
- The Marquise de Chantelle, as Darrow soon perceived, had the same
- mild formidableness as the late Mr. Leath: a sort of insistent
- self-effacement before which every one about her gave way. It was
- perhaps the shadow of this lady’s presence--pervasive even during her
- actual brief eclipses--that subdued and silenced Mrs. Leath. The latter
- was, moreover, preoccupied about her stepson, who, soon after receiving
- his degree at Harvard, had been rescued from a stormy love-affair, and
- finally, after some months of troubled drifting, had yielded to his
- step-mother’s counsel and gone up to Oxford for a year of supplementary
- study. Thither Mrs. Leath went once or twice to visit him, and her
- remaining days were packed with family obligations: getting, as she
- phrased it, “frocks and governesses” for her little girl, who had
- been left in France, and having to devote the remaining hours to long
- shopping expeditions with her mother-in-law. Nevertheless, during her
- brief escapes from duty, Darrow had had time to feel her safe in the
- custody of his devotion, set apart for some inevitable hour; and the
- last evening, at the theatre, between the overshadowing Marquise and the
- unsuspicious Owen, they had had an almost decisive exchange of words.
- Now, in the rattle of the wind about his ears, Darrow continued to
- hear the mocking echo of her message: “Unexpected obstacle.” In such an
- existence as Mrs. Leath’s, at once so ordered and so exposed, he knew
- how small a complication might assume the magnitude of an “obstacle;”
- yet, even allowing as impartially as his state of mind permitted for
- the fact that, with her mother-in-law always, and her stepson
- intermittently, under her roof, her lot involved a hundred small
- accommodations generally foreign to the freedom of widowhood--even so,
- he could not but think that the very ingenuity bred of such conditions
- might have helped her to find a way out of them. No, her “reason”,
- whatever it was, could, in this case, be nothing but a pretext; unless
- he leaned to the less flattering alternative that any reason seemed good
- enough for postponing him! Certainly, if her welcome had meant what he
- imagined, she could not, for the second time within a few weeks,
- have submitted so tamely to the disarrangement of their plans; a
- disarrangement which--his official duties considered--might, for all she
- knew, result in his not being able to go to her for months.
- “Please don’t come till thirtieth.” The thirtieth--and it was now the
- fifteenth! She flung back the fortnight on his hands as if he had been
- an idler indifferent to dates, instead of an active young diplomatist
- who, to respond to her call, had had to hew his way through a very
- jungle of engagements! “Please don’t come till thirtieth.” That was all.
- Not the shadow of an excuse or a regret; not even the perfunctory “have
- written” with which it is usual to soften such blows. She didn’t want
- him, and had taken the shortest way to tell him so. Even in his first
- moment of exasperation it struck him as characteristic that she should
- not have padded her postponement with a fib. Certainly her moral angles
- were not draped!
- “If I asked her to marry me, she’d have refused in the same language.
- But thank heaven I haven’t!” he reflected.
- These considerations, which had been with him every yard of the way from
- London, reached a climax of irony as he was drawn into the crowd on the
- pier. It did not soften his feelings to remember that, but for her lack
- of forethought, he might, at this harsh end of the stormy May day, have
- been sitting before his club fire in London instead of shivering in the
- damp human herd on the pier. Admitting the sex’s traditional right to
- change, she might at least have advised him of hers by telegraphing
- directly to his rooms. But in spite of their exchange of letters she
- had apparently failed to note his address, and a breathless emissary had
- rushed from the Embassy to pitch her telegram into his compartment as
- the train was moving from the station.
- Yes, he had given her chance enough to learn where he lived; and this
- minor proof of her indifference became, as he jammed his way through the
- crowd, the main point of his grievance against her and of his derision
- of himself. Half way down the pier the prod of an umbrella increased his
- exasperation by rousing him to the fact that it was raining. Instantly
- the narrow ledge became a battle-ground of thrusting, slanting, parrying
- domes. The wind rose with the rain, and the harried wretches exposed to
- this double assault wreaked on their neighbours the vengeance they could
- not take on the elements.
- Darrow, whose healthy enjoyment of life made him in general a good
- traveller, tolerant of agglutinated humanity, felt himself obscurely
- outraged by these promiscuous contacts. It was as though all the people
- about him had taken his measure and known his plight; as though they
- were contemptuously bumping and shoving him like the inconsiderable
- thing he had become. “She doesn’t want you, doesn’t want you, doesn’t
- want you,” their umbrellas and their elbows seemed to say.
- He had rashly vowed, when the telegram was flung into his window: “At
- any rate I won’t turn back”--as though it might cause the sender a
- malicious joy to have him retrace his steps rather than keep on to
- Paris! Now he perceived the absurdity of the vow, and thanked his stars
- that he need not plunge, to no purpose, into the fury of waves outside
- the harbour.
- With this thought in his mind he turned back to look for his porter;
- but the contiguity of dripping umbrellas made signalling impossible and,
- perceiving that he had lost sight of the man, he scrambled up again to
- the platform. As he reached it, a descending umbrella caught him in the
- collar-bone; and the next moment, bent sideways by the wind, it turned
- inside out and soared up, kite-wise, at the end of a helpless female
- arm.
- Darrow caught the umbrella, lowered its inverted ribs, and looked up at
- the face it exposed to him.
- “Wait a minute,” he said; “you can’t stay here.”
- As he spoke, a surge of the crowd drove the owner of the umbrella
- abruptly down on him. Darrow steadied her with extended arms, and
- regaining her footing she cried out: “Oh, dear, oh, dear! It’s in
- ribbons!”
- Her lifted face, fresh and flushed in the driving rain, woke in him
- a memory of having seen it at a distant time and in a vaguely
- unsympathetic setting; but it was no moment to follow up such clues, and
- the face was obviously one to make its way on its own merits.
- Its possessor had dropped her bag and bundles to clutch at the tattered
- umbrella. “I bought it only yesterday at the Stores; and--yes--it’s
- utterly done for!” she lamented.
- Darrow smiled at the intensity of her distress. It was food for the
- moralist that, side by side with such catastrophes as his, human nature
- was still agitating itself over its microscopic woes!
- “Here’s mine if you want it!” he shouted back at her through the
- shouting of the gale.
- The offer caused the young lady to look at him more intently. “Why,
- it’s Mr. Darrow!” she exclaimed; and then, all radiant recognition: “Oh,
- thank you! We’ll share it, if you will.”
- She knew him, then; and he knew her; but how and where had they met? He
- put aside the problem for subsequent solution, and drawing her into a
- more sheltered corner, bade her wait till he could find his porter.
- When, a few minutes later, he came back with his recovered property,
- and the news that the boat would not leave till the tide had turned, she
- showed no concern.
- “Not for two hours? How lucky--then I can find my trunk!”
- Ordinarily Darrow would have felt little disposed to involve himself
- in the adventure of a young female who had lost her trunk; but at the
- moment he was glad of any pretext for activity. Even should he decide to
- take the next up train from Dover he still had a yawning hour to fill;
- and the obvious remedy was to devote it to the loveliness in distress
- under his umbrella.
- “You’ve lost a trunk? Let me see if I can find it.”
- It pleased him that she did not return the conventional “Oh, WOULD you?”
- Instead, she corrected him with a laugh--“Not a trunk, but my trunk; I’ve
- no other--” and then added briskly: “You’d better first see to getting
- your own things on the boat.”
- This made him answer, as if to give substance to his plans by discussing
- them: “I don’t actually know that I’m going over.”
- “Not going over?”
- “Well ... perhaps not by this boat.” Again he felt a stealing indecision.
- “I may probably have to go back to London. I’m--I’m waiting ... expecting
- a letter...(She’ll think me a defaulter,” he reflected.) “But meanwhile
- there’s plenty of time to find your trunk.”
- He picked up his companion’s bundles, and offered her an arm which
- enabled her to press her slight person more closely under his umbrella;
- and as, thus linked, they beat their way back to the platform, pulled
- together and apart like marionettes on the wires of the wind, he
- continued to wonder where he could have seen her. He had immediately
- classed her as a compatriot; her small nose, her clear tints, a kind
- of sketchy delicacy in her face, as though she had been brightly but
- lightly washed in with water-colour, all confirmed the evidence of her
- high sweet voice and of her quick incessant gestures. She was clearly an
- American, but with the loose native quality strained through a closer
- woof of manners: the composite product of an enquiring and adaptable
- race. All this, however, did not help him to fit a name to her, for just
- such instances were perpetually pouring through the London Embassy, and
- the etched and angular American was becoming rarer than the fluid type.
- More puzzling than the fact of his being unable to identify her was
- the persistent sense connecting her with something uncomfortable and
- distasteful. So pleasant a vision as that gleaming up at him between
- wet brown hair and wet brown boa should have evoked only associations as
- pleasing; but each effort to fit her image into his past resulted in the
- same memories of boredom and a vague discomfort...
- II
- “Don’t you remember me now--at Mrs. Murrett’s?” She threw the question at
- Darrow across a table of the quiet coffee-room to which, after a vainly
- prolonged quest for her trunk, he had suggested taking her for a cup of
- tea.
- In this musty retreat she had removed her dripping hat, hung it on the
- fender to dry, and stretched herself on tiptoe in front of the round
- eagle-crowned mirror, above the mantel vases of dyed immortelles, while
- she ran her fingers comb-wise through her hair. The gesture had acted on
- Darrow’s numb feelings as the glow of the fire acted on his circulation;
- and when he had asked: “Aren’t your feet wet, too?” and, after
- frank inspection of a stout-shod sole, she had answered cheerfully:
- “No--luckily I had on my new boots,” he began to feel that human
- intercourse would still be tolerable if it were always as free from
- formality.
- The removal of his companion’s hat, besides provoking this reflection,
- gave him his first full sight of her face; and this was so
- favourable that the name she now pronounced fell on him with a quite
- disproportionate shock of dismay.
- “Oh, Mrs. Murrett’s--was it THERE?”
- He remembered her now, of course: remembered her as one of the shadowy
- sidling presences in the background of that awful house in Chelsea, one
- of the dumb appendages of the shrieking unescapable Mrs. Murrett, into
- whose talons he had fallen in the course of his head-long pursuit of
- Lady Ulrica Crispin. Oh, the taste of stale follies! How insipid it was,
- yet how it clung!
- “I used to pass you on the stairs,” she reminded him.
- Yes: he had seen her slip by--he recalled it now--as he dashed up to
- the drawing-room in quest of Lady Ulrica. The thought made him steal a
- longer look. How could such a face have been merged in the Murrett
- mob? Its fugitive slanting lines, that lent themselves to all manner of
- tender tilts and foreshortenings, had the freakish grace of some young
- head of the Italian comedy. The hair stood up from her forehead in a
- boyish elf-lock, and its colour matched her auburn eyes flecked with
- black, and the little brown spot on her cheek, between the ear that was
- meant to have a rose behind it and the chin that should have rested on
- a ruff. When she smiled, the left corner of her mouth went up a little
- higher than the right; and her smile began in her eyes and ran down to
- her lips in two lines of light. He had dashed past that to reach Lady
- Ulrica Crispin!
- “But of course you wouldn’t remember me,” she was saying. “My name is
- Viner--Sophy Viner.”
- Not remember her? But of course he DID! He was genuinely sure of it now.
- “You’re Mrs. Murrett’s niece,” he declared.
- She shook her head. “No; not even that. Only her reader.”
- “Her reader? Do you mean to say she ever reads?”
- Miss Viner enjoyed his wonder. “Dear, no! But I wrote notes, and made up
- the visiting-book, and walked the dogs, and saw bores for her.”
- Darrow groaned. “That must have been rather bad!”
- “Yes; but nothing like as bad as being her niece.”
- “That I can well believe. I’m glad to hear,” he added, “that you put it
- all in the past tense.”
- She seemed to droop a little at the allusion; then she lifted her chin
- with a jerk of defiance. “Yes. All is at an end between us. We’ve just
- parted in tears--but not in silence!”
- “Just parted? Do you mean to say you’ve been there all this time?”
- “Ever since you used to come there to see Lady Ulrica? Does it seem to
- you so awfully long ago?”
- The unexpectedness of the thrust--as well as its doubtful taste--chilled
- his growing enjoyment of her chatter. He had really been getting to
- like her--had recovered, under the candid approval of her eye, his
- usual sense of being a personable young man, with all the privileges
- pertaining to the state, instead of the anonymous rag of humanity he
- had felt himself in the crowd on the pier. It annoyed him, at that
- particular moment, to be reminded that naturalness is not always
- consonant with taste.
- She seemed to guess his thought. “You don’t like my saying that you came
- for Lady Ulrica?” she asked, leaning over the table to pour herself a
- second cup of tea.
- He liked her quickness, at any rate. “It’s better,” he laughed, “than
- your thinking I came for Mrs. Murrett!”
- “Oh, we never thought anybody came for Mrs. Murrett! It was always for
- something else: the music, or the cook--when there was a good one--or
- the other people; generally ONE of the other people.”
- “I see.”
- She was amusing, and that, in his present mood, was more to his purpose
- than the exact shade of her taste. It was odd, too, to discover suddenly
- that the blurred tapestry of Mrs. Murrett’s background had all the while
- been alive and full of eyes. Now, with a pair of them looking into his,
- he was conscious of a queer reversal of perspective.
- “Who were the ‘we’? Were you a cloud of witnesses?”
- “There were a good many of us.” She smiled. “Let me see--who was there
- in your time? Mrs. Bolt--and Mademoiselle--and Professor Didymus and
- the Polish Countess. Don’t you remember the Polish Countess? She
- crystal-gazed, and played accompaniments, and Mrs. Murrett chucked her
- because Mrs. Didymus accused her of hypnotizing the Professor. But of
- course you don’t remember. We were all invisible to you; but we could
- see. And we all used to wonder about you----”
- Again Darrow felt a redness in the temples. “What about me?”
- “Well--whether it was you or she who...”
- He winced, but hid his disapproval. It made the time pass to listen to
- her.
- “And what, if one may ask, was your conclusion?”
- “Well, Mrs. Bolt and Mademoiselle and the Countess naturally thought it
- was SHE; but Professor Didymus and Jimmy Brance--especially Jimmy----”
- “Just a moment: who on earth is Jimmy Brance?”
- She exclaimed in wonder: “You WERE absorbed--not to remember Jimmy
- Brance! He must have been right about you, after all.” She let her
- amused scrutiny dwell on him. “But how could you? She was false from
- head to foot!”
- “False----?” In spite of time and satiety, the male instinct of
- ownership rose up and repudiated the charge.
- Miss Viner caught his look and laughed. “Oh, I only meant externally!
- You see, she often used to come to my room after tennis, or to touch
- up in the evenings, when they were going on; and I assure you she took
- apart like a puzzle. In fact I used to say to Jimmy--just to make him
- wild--: ‘I’ll bet you anything you like there’s nothing wrong, because
- I know she’d never dare un--’” She broke the word in two, and her quick
- blush made her face like a shallow-petalled rose shading to the deeper
- pink of the centre.
- The situation was saved, for Darrow, by an abrupt rush of memories, and
- he gave way to a mirth which she as frankly echoed. “Of course,” she
- gasped through her laughter, “I only said it to tease Jimmy----”
- Her amusement obscurely annoyed him. “Oh, you’re all alike!” he
- exclaimed, moved by an unaccountable sense of disappointment.
- She caught him up in a flash--she didn’t miss things! “You say that
- because you think I’m spiteful and envious? Yes--I was envious of Lady
- Ulrica...Oh, not on account of you or Jimmy Brance! Simply because
- she had almost all the things I’ve always wanted: clothes and fun and
- motors, and admiration and yachting and Paris--why, Paris alone would be
- enough!--And how do you suppose a girl can see that sort of thing about
- her day after day, and never wonder why some women, who don’t seem to
- have any more right to it, have it all tumbled into their laps, while
- others are writing dinner invitations, and straightening out accounts,
- and copying visiting lists, and finishing golf-stockings, and matching
- ribbons, and seeing that the dogs get their sulphur? One looks in one’s
- glass, after all!”
- She launched the closing words at him on a cry that lifted them above
- the petulance of vanity; but his sense of her words was lost in the
- surprise of her face. Under the flying clouds of her excitement it was
- no longer a shallow flower-cup but a darkening gleaming mirror that
- might give back strange depths of feeling. The girl had stuff in her--he
- saw it; and she seemed to catch the perception in his eyes.
- “That’s the kind of education I got at Mrs. Murrett’s--and I never had
- any other,” she said with a shrug.
- “Good Lord--were you there so long?”
- “Five years. I stuck it out longer than any of the others.” She spoke as
- though it were something to be proud of.
- “Well, thank God you’re out of it now!”
- Again a just perceptible shadow crossed her face. “Yes--I’m out of it
- now fast enough.”
- “And what--if I may ask--are you doing next?”
- She brooded a moment behind drooped lids; then, with a touch of hauteur:
- “I’m going to Paris: to study for the stage.”
- “The stage?” Darrow stared at her, dismayed. All his confused
- contradictory impressions assumed a new aspect at this announcement; and
- to hide his surprise he added lightly: “Ah--then you will have Paris,
- after all!”
- “Hardly Lady Ulrica’s Paris. It s not likely to be roses, roses all the
- way.”
- “It’s not, indeed.” Real compassion prompted him to continue: “Have you
- any--any influence you can count on?”
- She gave a somewhat flippant little laugh. “None but my own. I’ve never
- had any other to count on.”
- He passed over the obvious reply. “But have you any idea how the
- profession is over-crowded? I know I’m trite----”
- “I’ve a very clear idea. But I couldn’t go on as I was.”
- “Of course not. But since, as you say, you’d stuck it out longer than
- any of the others, couldn’t you at least have held on till you were sure
- of some kind of an opening?”
- She made no reply for a moment; then she turned a listless glance to the
- rain-beaten window. “Oughtn’t we be starting?” she asked, with a lofty
- assumption of indifference that might have been Lady Ulrica’s.
- Darrow, surprised by the change, but accepting her rebuff as a phase of
- what he guessed to be a confused and tormented mood, rose from his seat
- and lifted her jacket from the chair-back on which she had hung it to
- dry. As he held it toward her she looked up at him quickly.
- “The truth is, we quarrelled,” she broke out, “and I left last night
- without my dinner--and without my salary.”
- “Ah--” he groaned, with a sharp perception of all the sordid dangers
- that might attend such a break with Mrs. Murrett.
- “And without a character!” she added, as she slipped her arms into the
- jacket. “And without a trunk, as it appears--but didn’t you say that,
- before going, there’d be time for another look at the station?”
- There was time for another look at the station; but the look again
- resulted in disappointment, since her trunk was nowhere to be found in
- the huge heap disgorged by the newly-arrived London express. The fact
- caused Miss Viner a moment’s perturbation; but she promptly adjusted
- herself to the necessity of proceeding on her journey, and her decision
- confirmed Darrow’s vague resolve to go to Paris instead of retracing his
- way to London.
- Miss Viner seemed cheered at the prospect of his company, and sustained
- by his offer to telegraph to Charing Cross for the missing trunk; and
- he left her to wait in the fly while he hastened back to the telegraph
- office. The enquiry despatched, he was turning away from the desk when
- another thought struck him and he went back and indited a message to his
- servant in London: “If any letters with French post-mark received since
- departure forward immediately to Terminus Hotel Gare du Nord Paris.”
- Then he rejoined Miss Viner, and they drove off through the rain to the
- pier.
- III
- Almost as soon as the train left Calais her head had dropped back into
- the corner, and she had fallen asleep.
- Sitting opposite, in the compartment from which he had contrived to have
- other travellers excluded, Darrow looked at her curiously. He had never
- seen a face that changed so quickly. A moment since it had danced like
- a field of daisies in a summer breeze; now, under the pallid oscillating
- light of the lamp overhead, it wore the hard stamp of experience, as of
- a soft thing chilled into shape before its curves had rounded: and it
- moved him to see that care already stole upon her when she slept.
- The story she had imparted to him in the wheezing shaking cabin, and at
- the Calais buffet--where he had insisted on offering her the dinner
- she had missed at Mrs. Murrett’s--had given a distincter outline to
- her figure. From the moment of entering the New York boarding-school to
- which a preoccupied guardian had hastily consigned her after the death
- of her parents, she had found herself alone in a busy and indifferent
- world. Her youthful history might, in fact, have been summed up in
- the statement that everybody had been too busy to look after her. Her
- guardian, a drudge in a big banking house, was absorbed by “the office”;
- the guardian’s wife, by her health and her religion; and an elder
- sister, Laura, married, unmarried, remarried, and pursuing, through all
- these alternating phases, some vaguely “artistic” ideal on which the
- guardian and his wife looked askance, had (as Darrow conjectured) taken
- their disapproval as a pretext for not troubling herself about
- poor Sophy, to whom--perhaps for this reason--she had remained the
- incarnation of remote romantic possibilities.
- In the course of time a sudden “stroke” of the guardian’s had thrown his
- personal affairs into a state of confusion from which--after his widely
- lamented death--it became evident that it would not be possible to
- extricate his ward’s inheritance. No one deplored this more sincerely
- than his widow, who saw in it one more proof of her husband’s life
- having been sacrificed to the innumerable duties imposed on him, and who
- could hardly--but for the counsels of religion--have brought herself to
- pardon the young girl for her indirect share in hastening his end. Sophy
- did not resent this point of view. She was really much sorrier for her
- guardian’s death than for the loss of her insignificant fortune. The
- latter had represented only the means of holding her in bondage, and
- its disappearance was the occasion of her immediate plunge into the
- wide bright sea of life surrounding the island--of her captivity. She had
- first landed--thanks to the intervention of the ladies who had directed
- her education--in a Fifth Avenue school-room where, for a few months,
- she acted as a buffer between three autocratic infants and their
- bodyguard of nurses and teachers. The too-pressing attentions of their
- father’s valet had caused her to fly this sheltered spot, against the
- express advice of her educational superiors, who implied that, in their
- own case, refinement and self-respect had always sufficed to keep the
- most ungovernable passions at bay. The experience of the guardian’s
- widow having been precisely similar, and the deplorable precedent of
- Laura’s career being present to all their minds, none of these ladies
- felt any obligation to intervene farther in Sophy’s affairs; and she was
- accordingly left to her own resources.
- A schoolmate from the Rocky Mountains, who was taking her father and
- mother to Europe, had suggested Sophy’s accompanying them, and “going
- round” with her while her progenitors, in the care of the courier,
- nursed their ailments at a fashionable bath. Darrow gathered that the
- “going round” with Mamie Hoke was a varied and diverting process; but
- this relatively brilliant phase of Sophy’s career was cut short by
- the elopement of the inconsiderate Mamie with a “matinee idol” who had
- followed her from New York, and by the precipitate return of her parents
- to negotiate for the repurchase of their child.
- It was then--after an interval of repose with compassionate but
- impecunious American friends in Paris--that Miss Viner had been drawn
- into the turbid current of Mrs. Murrett’s career. The impecunious
- compatriots had found Mrs. Murrett for her, and it was partly on
- their account (because they were such dears, and so unconscious, poor
- confiding things, of what they were letting her in for) that Sophy had
- stuck it out so long in the dreadful house in Chelsea. The Farlows, she
- explained to Darrow, were the best friends she had ever had (and the
- only ones who had ever “been decent” about Laura, whom they had seen
- once, and intensely admired); but even after twenty years of Paris they
- were the most incorrigibly inexperienced angels, and quite persuaded
- that Mrs. Murrett was a woman of great intellectual eminence, and the
- house at Chelsea “the last of the salons”--Darrow knew what she meant?
- And she hadn’t liked to undeceive them, knowing that to do so would be
- virtually to throw herself back on their hands, and feeling, moreover,
- after her previous experiences, the urgent need of gaining, at any cost,
- a name for stability; besides which--she threw it off with a slight
- laugh--no other chance, in all these years, had happened to come to her.
- She had brushed in this outline of her career with light rapid strokes,
- and in a tone of fatalism oddly untinged by bitterness. Darrow perceived
- that she classified people according to their greater or less “luck” in
- life, but she appeared to harbour no resentment against the undefined
- power which dispensed the gift in such unequal measure. Things came
- one’s way or they didn’t; and meanwhile one could only look on, and make
- the most of small compensations, such as watching “the show” at Mrs.
- Murrett’s, and talking over the Lady Ulricas and other footlight
- figures. And at any moment, of course, a turn of the kaleidoscope might
- suddenly toss a bright spangle into the grey pattern of one’s days.
- This light-hearted philosophy was not without charm to a young man
- accustomed to more traditional views. George Darrow had had a fairly
- varied experience of feminine types, but the women he had frequented had
- either been pronouncedly “ladies” or they had not. Grateful to both for
- ministering to the more complex masculine nature, and disposed to
- assume that they had been evolved, if not designed, to that end, he
- had instinctively kept the two groups apart in his mind, avoiding that
- intermediate society which attempts to conciliate both theories of life.
- “Bohemianism” seemed to him a cheaper convention than the other two, and
- he liked, above all, people who went as far as they could in their own
- line--liked his “ladies” and their rivals to be equally unashamed of
- showing for exactly what they were. He had not indeed--the fact of Lady
- Ulrica was there to remind him--been without his experience of a third
- type; but that experience had left him with a contemptuous distaste for
- the woman who uses the privileges of one class to shelter the customs of
- another.
- As to young girls, he had never thought much about them since his early
- love for the girl who had become Mrs. Leath. That episode seemed, as
- he looked back on it, to bear no more relation to reality than a pale
- decorative design to the confused richness of a summer landscape. He
- no longer understood the violent impulses and dreamy pauses of his own
- young heart, or the inscrutable abandonments and reluctances of hers. He
- had known a moment of anguish at losing her--the mad plunge of youthful
- instincts against the barrier of fate; but the first wave of stronger
- sensation had swept away all but the outline of their story, and the
- memory of Anna Summers had made the image of the young girl sacred, but
- the class uninteresting.
- Such generalisations belonged, however, to an earlier stage of his
- experience. The more he saw of life the more incalculable he found
- it; and he had learned to yield to his impressions without feeling
- the youthful need of relating them to others. It was the girl in the
- opposite seat who had roused in him the dormant habit of comparison.
- She was distinguished from the daughters of wealth by her avowed
- acquaintance with the real business of living, a familiarity as
- different as possible from their theoretical proficiency; yet it seemed
- to Darrow that her experience had made her free without hardness and
- self-assured without assertiveness.
- The rush into Amiens, and the flash of the station lights into their
- compartment, broke Miss Viner’s sleep, and without changing her position
- she lifted her lids and looked at Darrow. There was neither surprise nor
- bewilderment in the look. She seemed instantly conscious, not so much
- of where she was, as of the fact that she was with him; and that fact
- seemed enough to reassure her. She did not even turn her head to look
- out; her eyes continued to rest on him with a vague smile which appeared
- to light her face from within, while her lips kept their sleepy droop.
- Shouts and the hurried tread of travellers came to them through the
- confusing cross-lights of the platform. A head appeared at the window,
- and Darrow threw himself forward to defend their solitude; but the
- intruder was only a train hand going his round of inspection. He passed
- on, and the lights and cries of the station dropped away, merged in a
- wider haze and a hollower resonance, as the train gathered itself up
- with a long shake and rolled out again into the darkness.
- Miss Viner’s head sank back against the cushion, pushing out a dusky
- wave of hair above her forehead. The swaying of the train loosened a
- lock over her ear, and she shook it back with a movement like a boy’s,
- while her gaze still rested on her companion.
- “You’re not too tired?”
- She shook her head with a smile.
- “We shall be in before midnight. We’re very nearly on time.” He verified
- the statement by holding up his watch to the lamp.
- She nodded dreamily. “It’s all right. I telegraphed Mrs. Farlow that
- they mustn’t think of coming to the station; but they’ll have told the
- concierge to look out for me.”
- “You’ll let me drive you there?”
- She nodded again, and her eyes closed. It was very pleasant to Darrow
- that she made no effort to talk or to dissemble her sleepiness. He sat
- watching her till the upper lashes met and mingled with the lower,
- and their blent shadow lay on her cheek; then he stood up and drew the
- curtain over the lamp, drowning the compartment in a bluish twilight.
- As he sank back into his seat he thought how differently Anna
- Summers--or even Anna Leath--would have behaved. She would not have
- talked too much; she would not have been either restless or embarrassed;
- but her adaptability, her appropriateness, would not have been
- nature but “tact.” The oddness of the situation would have made sleep
- impossible, or, if weariness had overcome her for a moment, she would
- have waked with a start, wondering where she was, and how she had come
- there, and if her hair were tidy; and nothing short of hairpins and a
- glass would have restored her self-possession...
- The reflection set him wondering whether the “sheltered” girl’s
- bringing-up might not unfit her for all subsequent contact with life.
- How much nearer to it had Mrs. Leath been brought by marriage and
- motherhood, and the passage of fourteen years? What were all her
- reticences and evasions but the result of the deadening process of
- forming a “lady”? The freshness he had marvelled at was like the
- unnatural whiteness of flowers forced in the dark.
- As he looked back at their few days together he saw that their
- intercourse had been marked, on her part, by the same hesitations and
- reserves which had chilled their earlier intimacy. Once more they had
- had their hour together and she had wasted it. As in her girlhood, her
- eyes had made promises which her lips were afraid to keep. She was still
- afraid of life, of its ruthlessness, its danger and mystery. She was
- still the petted little girl who cannot be left alone in the dark...His
- memory flew back to their youthful story, and long-forgotten details
- took shape before him. How frail and faint the picture was! They seemed,
- he and she, like the ghostly lovers of the Grecian Urn, forever pursuing
- without ever clasping each other. To this day he did not quite know
- what had parted them: the break had been as fortuitous as the fluttering
- apart of two seed-vessels on a wave of summer air...
- The very slightness, vagueness, of the memory gave it an added
- poignancy. He felt the mystic pang of the parent for a child which
- has just breathed and died. Why had it happened thus, when the least
- shifting of influences might have made it all so different? If she had
- been given to him then he would have put warmth in her veins and light
- in her eyes: would have made her a woman through and through. Musing
- thus, he had the sense of waste that is the bitterest harvest of
- experience. A love like his might have given her the divine gift of
- self-renewal; and now he saw her fated to wane into old age repeating
- the same gestures, echoing the words she had always heard, and
- perhaps never guessing that, just outside her glazed and curtained
- consciousness, life rolled away, a vast blackness starred with lights,
- like the night landscape beyond the windows of the train.
- The engine lowered its speed for the passage through a sleeping station.
- In the light of the platform lamp Darrow looked across at his companion.
- Her head had dropped toward one shoulder, and her lips were just far
- enough apart for the reflection of the upper one to deepen the colour
- of the other. The jolting of the train had again shaken loose the lock
- above her ear. It danced on her cheek like the flit of a brown wing over
- flowers, and Darrow felt an intense desire to lean forward and put it
- back behind her ear.
- IV
- As their motor-cab, on the way from the Gare du Nord, turned into the
- central glitter of the Boulevard, Darrow had bent over to point out an
- incandescent threshold.
- “There!”
- Above the doorway, an arch of flame flashed out the name of a great
- actress, whose closing performances in a play of unusual originality
- had been the theme of long articles in the Paris papers which Darrow had
- tossed into their compartment at Calais.
- “That’s what you must see before you’re twenty-four hours older!”
- The girl followed his gesture eagerly. She was all awake and alive now,
- as if the heady rumours of the streets, with their long effervescences
- of light, had passed into her veins like wine.
- “Cerdine? Is that where she acts?” She put her head out of the window,
- straining back for a glimpse of the sacred threshold. As they flew past
- it she sank into her seat with a satisfied sigh.
- “It’s delicious enough just to KNOW she’s there! I’ve never seen her,
- you know. When I was here with Mamie Hoke we never went anywhere but to
- the music halls, because she couldn’t understand any French; and when
- I came back afterward to the Farlows’ I was dead broke, and couldn’t
- afford the play, and neither could they; so the only chance we had was
- when friends of theirs invited us--and once it was to see a tragedy by
- a Roumanian lady, and the other time it was for ‘L’Ami Fritz’ at the
- Francais.”
- Darrow laughed. “You must do better than that now. ‘Le Vertige’ is a
- fine thing, and Cerdine gets some wonderful effects out of it. You
- must come with me tomorrow evening to see it--with your friends, of
- course.--That is,” he added, “if there’s any sort of chance of getting
- seats.”
- The flash of a street lamp lit up her radiant face. “Oh, will you really
- take us? What fun to think that it’s tomorrow already!”
- It was wonderfully pleasant to be able to give such pleasure. Darrow was
- not rich, but it was almost impossible for him to picture the state of
- persons with tastes and perceptions like his own, to whom an evening at
- the theatre was an unattainable indulgence. There floated through his
- mind an answer of Mrs. Leath’s to his enquiry whether she had seen the
- play in question. “No. I meant to, of course, but one is so overwhelmed
- with things in Paris. And then I’m rather sick of Cerdine--one is always
- being dragged to see her.”
- That, among the people he frequented, was the usual attitude toward such
- opportunities. There were too many, they were a nuisance, one had to
- defend one’s self! He even remembered wondering, at the moment,
- whether to a really fine taste the exceptional thing could ever become
- indifferent through habit; whether the appetite for beauty was so soon
- dulled that it could be kept alive only by privation. Here, at any rate,
- was a fine chance to experiment with such a hunger: he almost wished he
- might stay on in Paris long enough to take the measure of Miss Viner’s
- receptivity.
- She was still dwelling on his promise, “It’s too beautiful of you! Oh,
- don’t you THINK you’ll be able to get seats?” And then, after a pause of
- brimming appreciation: “I wonder if you’ll think me horrid?--but it may
- be my only chance; and if you can’t get places for us all, wouldn’t you
- perhaps just take ME? After all, the Farlows may have seen it!”
- He had not, of course, thought her horrid, but only the more engaging,
- for being so natural, and so unashamed of showing the frank greed of her
- famished youth. “Oh, you shall go somehow!” he had gaily promised her;
- and she had dropped back with a sigh of pleasure as their cab passed
- into the dimly-lit streets of the Farlows’ quarter beyond the Seine...
- This little passage came back to him the next morning, as he opened his
- hotel window on the early roar of the Northern Terminus.
- The girl was there, in the room next to him. That had been the first
- point in his waking consciousness. The second was a sense of relief at
- the obligation imposed on him by this unexpected turn of everts. To
- wake to the necessity of action, to postpone perforce the fruitless
- contemplation of his private grievance, was cause enough for gratitude,
- even if the small adventure in which he found himself involved had not,
- on its own merits, roused an instinctive curiosity to see it through.
- When he and his companion, the night before, had reached the Farlows’
- door in the rue de la Chaise, it was only to find, after repeated
- assaults on its panels, that the Farlows were no longer there. They
- had moved away the week before, not only from their apartment but from
- Paris; and Miss Viner’s breach with Mrs. Murrett had been too sudden to
- permit her letter and telegram to overtake them. Both communications,
- no doubt, still reposed in a pigeon-hole of the loge; but its custodian,
- when drawn from his lair, sulkily declined to let Miss Viner verify the
- fact, and only flung out, in return for Darrow’s bribe, the statement
- that the Americans had gone to Joigny.
- To pursue them there at that hour was manifestly impossible, and Miss
- Viner, disturbed but not disconcerted by this new obstacle, had quite
- simply acceded to Darrow’s suggestion that she should return for what
- remained of the night to the hotel where he had sent his luggage.
- The drive back through the dark hush before dawn, with the nocturnal
- blaze of the Boulevard fading around them like the false lights of
- a magician’s palace, had so played on her impressionability that she
- seemed to give no farther thought to her own predicament. Darrow noticed
- that she did not feel the beauty and mystery of the spectacle as much
- as its pressure of human significance, all its hidden implications
- of emotion and adventure. As they passed the shadowy colonnade of the
- Francais, remote and temple-like in the paling lights, he felt a clutch
- on his arm, and heard the cry: “There are things THERE that I want so
- desperately to see!” and all the way back to the hotel she continued to
- question him, with shrewd precision and an artless thirst for detail,
- about the theatrical life of Paris. He was struck afresh, as he
- listened, by the way in which her naturalness eased the situation of
- constraint, leaving to it only a pleasant savour of good fellowship. It
- was the kind of episode that one might, in advance, have characterized
- as “awkward”, yet that was proving, in the event, as much outside such
- definitions as a sunrise stroll with a dryad in a dew-drenched forest;
- and Darrow reflected that mankind would never have needed to invent tact
- if it had not first invented social complications.
- It had been understood, with his good-night to Miss Viner, that the next
- morning he was to look up the Joigny trains, and see her safely to
- the station; but, while he breakfasted and waited for a time-table, he
- recalled again her cry of joy at the prospect of seeing Cerdine. It was
- certainly a pity, since that most elusive and incalculable of artists
- was leaving the next week for South America, to miss what might be a
- last sight of her in her greatest part; and Darrow, having dressed and
- made the requisite excerpts from the time-table, decided to carry the
- result of his deliberations to his neighbour’s door.
- It instantly opened at his knock, and she came forth looking as if she
- had been plunged into some sparkling element which had curled up all her
- drooping tendrils and wrapped her in a shimmer of fresh leaves.
- “Well, what do you think of me?” she cried; and with a hand at her waist
- she spun about as if to show off some miracle of Parisian dress-making.
- “I think the missing trunk has come--and that it was worth waiting for!”
- “You DO like my dress?”
- “I adore it! I always adore new dresses--why, you don’t mean to say it’s
- NOT a new one?”
- She laughed out her triumph.
- “No, no, no! My trunk hasn’t come, and this is only my old rag of
- yesterday--but I never knew the trick to fail!” And, as he stared: “You
- see,” she joyously explained, “I’ve always had to dress in all kinds of
- dreary left-overs, and sometimes, when everybody else was smart and
- new, it used to make me awfully miserable. So one day, when Mrs. Murrett
- dragged me down unexpectedly to fill a place at dinner, I suddenly
- thought I’d try spinning around like that, and say to every one: ‘WELL,
- WHAT DO YOU THINK OF ME?’ And, do you know, they were all taken in,
- including Mrs. Murrett, who didn’t recognize my old turned and dyed
- rags, and told me afterward it was awfully bad form to dress as if I
- were somebody that people would expect to know! And ever since, whenever
- I’ve particularly wanted to look nice, I’ve just asked people what they
- thought of my new frock; and they’re always, always taken in!”
- She dramatized her explanation so vividly that Darrow felt as if his
- point were gained.
- “Ah, but this confirms your vocation--of course,” he cried, “you must
- see Cerdine!” and, seeing her face fall at this reminder of the change
- in her prospects, he hastened to set forth his plan. As he did so, he
- saw how easy it was to explain things to her. She would either accept
- his suggestion, or she would not: but at least she would waste no time
- in protestations and objections, or any vain sacrifice to the idols of
- conformity. The conviction that one could, on any given point, almost
- predicate this of her, gave him the sense of having advanced far enough
- in her intimacy to urge his arguments against a hasty pursuit of her
- friends.
- Yes, it would certainly be foolish--she at once agreed--in the case
- of such dear indefinite angels as the Farlows, to dash off after them
- without more positive proof that they were established at Joigny, and
- so established that they could take her in. She owned it was but too
- probable that they had gone there to “cut down”, and might be doing so
- in quarters too contracted to receive her; and it would be unfair, on
- that chance, to impose herself on them unannounced. The simplest way of
- getting farther light on the question would be to go back to the rue de
- la Chaise, where, at that more conversable hour, the concierge might be
- less chary of detail; and she could decide on her next step in the light
- of such facts as he imparted.
- Point by point, she fell in with the suggestion, recognizing, in the
- light of their unexplained flight, that the Farlows might indeed be in a
- situation on which one could not too rashly intrude. Her concern for her
- friends seemed to have effaced all thought of herself, and this little
- indication of character gave Darrow a quite disproportionate pleasure.
- She agreed that it would be well to go at once to the rue de la Chaise,
- but met his proposal that they should drive by the declaration that it
- was a “waste” not to walk in Paris; so they set off on foot through the
- cheerful tumult of the streets.
- The walk was long enough for him to learn many things about her. The
- storm of the previous night had cleared the air, and Paris shone in
- morning beauty under a sky that was all broad wet washes of white and
- blue; but Darrow again noticed that her visual sensitiveness was less
- keen than her feeling for what he was sure the good Farlows--whom he
- already seemed to know--would have called “the human interest.” She
- seemed hardly conscious of sensations of form and colour, or of any
- imaginative suggestion, and the spectacle before them--always, in
- its scenic splendour, so moving to her companion--broke up, under her
- scrutiny, into a thousand minor points: the things in the shops, the
- types of character and manner of occupation shown in the passing faces,
- the street signs, the names of the hotels they passed, the motley
- brightness of the flower-carts, the identity of the churches and public
- buildings that caught her eye. But what she liked best, he divined, was
- the mere fact of being free to walk abroad in the bright air, her
- tongue rattling on as it pleased, while her feet kept time to the mighty
- orchestration of the city’s sounds. Her delight in the fresh air, in
- the freedom, light and sparkle of the morning, gave him a sudden insight
- into her stifled past; nor was it indifferent to him to perceive
- how much his presence evidently added to her enjoyment. If only as a
- sympathetic ear, he guessed what he must be worth to her. The girl
- had been dying for some one to talk to, some one before whom she could
- unfold and shake out to the light her poor little shut-away emotions.
- Years of repression were revealed in her sudden burst of confidence; and
- the pity she inspired made Darrow long to fill her few free hours to the
- brim.
- She had the gift of rapid definition, and his questions as to the life
- she had led with the Farlows, during the interregnum between the Hoke
- and Murrett eras, called up before him a queer little corner of Parisian
- existence. The Farlows themselves--he a painter, she a “magazine
- writer”--rose before him in all their incorruptible simplicity: an
- elderly New England couple, with vague yearnings for enfranchisement,
- who lived in Paris as if it were a Massachusetts suburb, and dwelt
- hopefully on the “higher side” of the Gallic nature. With equal
- vividness she set before him the component figures of the circle from
- which Mrs. Farlow drew the “Inner Glimpses of French Life” appearing
- over her name in a leading New England journal: the Roumanian lady who
- had sent them tickets for her tragedy, an elderly French gentleman
- who, on the strength of a week’s stay at Folkestone, translated English
- fiction for the provincial press, a lady from Wichita, Kansas, who
- advocated free love and the abolition of the corset, a clergyman’s
- widow from Torquay who had written an “English Ladies’ Guide to Foreign
- Galleries” and a Russian sculptor who lived on nuts and was “almost
- certainly” an anarchist. It was this nucleus, and its outer ring
- of musical, architectural and other American students, which posed
- successively to Mrs. Farlow’s versatile fancy as a centre of “University
- Life”, a “Salon of the Faubourg St. Germain”, a group of Parisian
- “Intellectuals” or a “Cross-section of Montmartre”; but even her faculty
- for extracting from it the most varied literary effects had not sufficed
- to create a permanent demand for the “Inner Glimpses”, and there
- were days when--Mr. Farlow’s landscapes being equally unmarketable--a
- temporary withdrawal to the country (subsequently utilized as “Peeps
- into Chateau Life”) became necessary to the courageous couple.
- Five years of Mrs. Murrett’s world, while increasing Sophy’s tenderness
- for the Farlows, had left her with few illusions as to their power of
- advancing her fortunes; and she did not conceal from Darrow that
- her theatrical projects were of the vaguest. They hung mainly on the
- problematical good-will of an ancient comedienne, with whom Mrs. Farlow
- had a slight acquaintance (extensively utilized in “Stars of the French
- Footlights” and “Behind the Scenes at the Francais”), and who had once,
- with signs of approval, heard Miss Viner recite the Nuit de Mai.
- “But of course I know how much that’s worth,” the girl broke off, with
- one of her flashes of shrewdness. “And besides, it isn’t likely that a
- poor old fossil like Mme. Dolle could get anybody to listen to her now,
- even if she really thought I had talent. But she might introduce me to
- people; or at least give me a few tips. If I could manage to earn enough
- to pay for lessons I’d go straight to some of the big people and work
- with them. I’m rather hoping the Farlows may find me a chance of that
- kind--an engagement with some American family in Paris who would want to
- be ‘gone round’ with like the Hokes, and who’d leave me time enough to
- study.”
- In the rue de la Chaise they learned little except the exact address
- of the Farlows, and the fact that they had sub-let their flat before
- leaving. This information obtained, Darrow proposed to Miss Viner that
- they should stroll along the quays to a little restaurant looking out on
- the Seine, and there, over the plat du jour, consider the next step
- to be taken. The long walk had given her cheeks a glow indicative of
- wholesome hunger, and she made no difficulty about satisfying it in
- Darrow’s company. Regaining the river they walked on in the direction
- of Notre Dame, delayed now and again by the young man’s irresistible
- tendency to linger over the bookstalls, and by his ever-fresh response
- to the shifting beauties of the scene. For two years his eyes had been
- subdued to the atmospheric effects of London, to the mysterious fusion
- of darkly-piled city and low-lying bituminous sky; and the transparency
- of the French air, which left the green gardens and silvery stones so
- classically clear yet so softly harmonized, struck him as having a kind
- of conscious intelligence. Every line of the architecture, every arch
- of the bridges, the very sweep of the strong bright river between them,
- while contributing to this effect, sent forth each a separate appeal
- to some sensitive memory; so that, for Darrow, a walk through the Paris
- streets was always like the unrolling of a vast tapestry from which
- countless stored fragrances were shaken out.
- It was a proof of the richness and multiplicity of the spectacle that
- it served, without incongruity, for so different a purpose as the
- background of Miss Viner’s enjoyment. As a mere drop-scene for her
- personal adventure it was just as much in its place as in the evocation
- of great perspectives of feeling. For her, as he again perceived when
- they were seated at their table in a low window above the Seine, Paris
- was “Paris” by virtue of all its entertaining details, its endless
- ingenuities of pleasantness. Where else, for instance, could one
- find the dear little dishes of hors d’oeuvre, the symmetrically-laid
- anchovies and radishes, the thin golden shells of butter, or the wood
- strawberries and brown jars of cream that gave to their repast the last
- refinement of rusticity? Hadn’t he noticed, she asked, that cooking
- always expressed the national character, and that French food was
- clever and amusing just because the people were? And in private houses,
- everywhere, how the dishes always resembled the talk--how the very
- same platitudes seemed to go into people’s mouths and come out of them?
- Couldn’t he see just what kind of menu it would make, if a fairy waved a
- wand and suddenly turned the conversation at a London dinner into joints
- and puddings? She always thought it a good sign when people liked Irish
- stew; it meant that they enjoyed changes and surprises, and taking life
- as it came; and such a beautiful Parisian version of the dish as the
- navarin that was just being set before them was like the very best kind
- of talk--the kind when one could never tell before-hand just what was
- going to be said!
- Darrow, as he watched her enjoyment of their innocent feast, wondered if
- her vividness and vivacity were signs of her calling. She was the kind
- of girl in whom certain people would instantly have recognized the
- histrionic gift. But experience had led him to think that, except at the
- creative moment, the divine flame burns low in its possessors. The one
- or two really intelligent actresses he had known had struck him, in
- conversation, as either bovine or primitively “jolly”. He had a notion
- that, save in the mind of genius, the creative process absorbs too
- much of the whole stuff of being to leave much surplus for personal
- expression; and the girl before him, with her changing face and flexible
- fancies, seemed destined to work in life itself rather than in any of
- its counterfeits.
- The coffee and liqueurs were already on the table when her mind suddenly
- sprang back to the Farlows. She jumped up with one of her subversive
- movements and declared that she must telegraph at once. Darrow called
- for writing materials and room was made at her elbow for the parched
- ink-bottle and saturated blotter of the Parisian restaurant; but the
- mere sight of these jaded implements seemed to paralyze Miss Viner’s
- faculties. She hung over the telegraph-form with anxiously-drawn brow,
- the tip of the pen-handle pressed against her lip; and at length she
- raised her troubled eyes to Darrow’s.
- “I simply can’t think how to say it.”
- “What--that you’re staying over to see Cerdine?”
- “But AM I--am I, really?” The joy of it flamed over her face.
- Darrow looked at his watch. “You could hardly get an answer to your
- telegram in time to take a train to Joigny this afternoon, even if you
- found your friends could have you.”
- She mused for a moment, tapping her lip with the pen. “But I must let
- them know I’m here. I must find out as soon as possible if they CAN,
- have me.” She laid the pen down despairingly. “I never COULD write a
- telegram!” she sighed.
- “Try a letter, then and tell them you’ll arrive tomorrow.”
- This suggestion produced immediate relief, and she gave an energetic dab
- at the ink-bottle; but after another interval of uncertain scratching
- she paused again. “Oh, it’s fearful! I don’t know what on earth to say. I
- wouldn’t for the world have them know how beastly Mrs. Murrett’s been.”
- Darrow did not think it necessary to answer. It was no business of his,
- after all. He lit a cigar and leaned back in his seat, letting his eyes
- take their fill of indolent pleasure. In the throes of invention she
- had pushed back her hat, loosening the stray lock which had invited his
- touch the night before. After looking at it for a while he stood up and
- wandered to the window.
- Behind him he heard her pen scrape on.
- “I don’t want to worry them--I’m so certain they’ve got bothers of their
- own.” The faltering scratches ceased again. “I wish I weren’t such an
- idiot about writing: all the words get frightened and scurry away when
- I try to catch them.” He glanced back at her with a smile as she bent
- above her task like a school-girl struggling with a “composition.” Her
- flushed cheek and frowning brow showed that her difficulty was genuine
- and not an artless device to draw him to her side. She was really
- powerless to put her thoughts in writing, and the inability seemed
- characteristic of her quick impressionable mind, and of the incessant
- come-and-go of her sensations. He thought of Anna Leath’s letters, or
- rather of the few he had received, years ago, from the girl who had been
- Anna Summers. He saw the slender firm strokes of the pen, recalled the
- clear structure of the phrases, and, by an abrupt association of ideas,
- remembered that, at that very hour, just such a document might be
- awaiting him at the hotel.
- What if it were there, indeed, and had brought him a complete
- explanation of her telegram? The revulsion of feeling produced by this
- thought made him look at the girl with sudden impatience. She struck him
- as positively stupid, and he wondered how he could have wasted half his
- day with her, when all the while Mrs. Leath’s letter might be lying on
- his table. At that moment, if he could have chosen, he would have left
- his companion on the spot; but he had her on his hands, and must accept
- the consequences.
- Some odd intuition seemed to make her conscious of his change of mood,
- for she sprang from her seat, crumpling the letter in her hand.
- “I’m too stupid; but I won’t keep you any longer. I’ll go back to the
- hotel and write there.”
- Her colour deepened, and for the first time, as their eyes met, he
- noticed a faint embarrassment in hers. Could it be that his nearness
- was, after all, the cause of her confusion? The thought turned his vague
- impatience with her into a definite resentment toward himself. There was
- really no excuse for his having blundered into such an adventure. Why
- had he not shipped the girl off to Joigny by the evening train, instead
- of urging her to delay, and using Cerdine as a pretext? Paris was full
- of people he knew, and his annoyance was increased by the thought that
- some friend of Mrs. Leath’s might see him at the play, and report his
- presence there with a suspiciously good-looking companion. The idea was
- distinctly disagreeable: he did not want the woman he adored to think he
- could forget her for a moment. And by this time he had fully persuaded
- himself that a letter from her was awaiting him, and had even gone so
- far as to imagine that its contents might annul the writer’s telegraphed
- injunction, and call him to her side at once...
- V
- At the porter’s desk a brief “Pas de lettres” fell destructively on the
- fabric of these hopes. Mrs. Leath had not written--she had not taken the
- trouble to explain her telegram. Darrow turned away with a sharp pang
- of humiliation. Her frugal silence mocked his prodigality of hopes and
- fears. He had put his question to the porter once before, on returning
- to the hotel after luncheon; and now, coming back again in the late
- afternoon, he was met by the same denial. The second post was in, and
- had brought him nothing.
- A glance at his watch showed that he had barely time to dress before
- taking Miss Viner out to dine; but as he turned to the lift a new
- thought struck him, and hurrying back into the hall he dashed off
- another telegram to his servant: “Have you forwarded any letter with
- French postmark today? Telegraph answer Terminus.”
- Some kind of reply would be certain to reach him on his return from the
- theatre, and he would then know definitely whether Mrs. Leath meant
- to write or not. He hastened up to his room and dressed with a lighter
- heart.
- Miss Viner’s vagrant trunk had finally found its way to its owner;
- and, clad in such modest splendour as it furnished, she shone at Darrow
- across their restaurant table. In the reaction of his wounded vanity he
- found her prettier and more interesting than before. Her dress, sloping
- away from the throat, showed the graceful set of her head on its slender
- neck, and the wide brim of her hat arched above her hair like a dusky
- halo. Pleasure danced in her eyes and on her lips, and as she shone on
- him between the candle-shades Darrow felt that he should not be at all
- sorry to be seen with her in public. He even sent a careless glance
- about him in the vague hope that it might fall on an acquaintance.
- At the theatre her vivacity sank into a breathless hush, and she sat
- intent in her corner of their baignoire, with the gaze of a neophyte
- about to be initiated into the sacred mysteries. Darrow placed himself
- behind her, that he might catch her profile between himself and the
- stage. He was touched by the youthful seriousness of her expression. In
- spite of the experiences she must have had, and of the twenty-four
- years to which she owned, she struck him as intrinsically young; and he
- wondered how so evanescent a quality could have been preserved in the
- desiccating Murrett air. As the play progressed he noticed that her
- immobility was traversed by swift flashes of perception. She was not
- missing anything, and her intensity of attention when Cerdine was on the
- stage drew an anxious line between her brows.
- After the first act she remained for a few minutes rapt and motionless;
- then she turned to her companion with a quick patter of questions. He
- gathered from them that she had been less interested in following
- the general drift of the play than in observing the details of its
- interpretation. Every gesture and inflection of the great actress’s
- had been marked and analyzed; and Darrow felt a secret gratification in
- being appealed to as an authority on the histrionic art. His interest in
- it had hitherto been merely that of the cultivated young man curious of
- all forms of artistic expression; but in reply to her questions he found
- things to say about it which evidently struck his listener as impressive
- and original, and with which he himself was not, on the whole,
- dissatisfied. Miss Viner was much more concerned to hear his views
- than to express her own, and the deference with which she received his
- comments called from him more ideas about the theatre than he had ever
- supposed himself to possess.
- With the second act she began to give more attention to the development
- of the play, though her interest was excited rather by what she called
- “the story” than by the conflict of character producing it. Oddly
- combined with her sharp apprehension of things theatrical, her knowledge
- of technical “dodges” and green-room precedents, her glibness about
- “lines” and “curtains”, was the primitive simplicity of her attitude
- toward the tale itself, as toward something that was “really happening”
- and at which one assisted as at a street-accident or a quarrel overheard
- in the next room. She wanted to know if Darrow thought the lovers
- “really would” be involved in the catastrophe that threatened them,
- and when he reminded her that his predictions were disqualified by his
- having already seen the play, she exclaimed: “Oh, then, please don’t
- tell me what’s going to happen!” and the next moment was questioning
- him about Cerdine’s theatrical situation and her private history. On the
- latter point some of her enquiries were of a kind that it is not in
- the habit of young girls to make, or even to know how to make; but her
- apparent unconsciousness of the fact seemed rather to reflect on her
- past associates than on herself.
- When the second act was over, Darrow suggested their taking a turn
- in the foyer; and seated on one of its cramped red velvet sofas they
- watched the crowd surge up and down in a glare of lights and gilding.
- Then, as she complained of the heat, he led her through the press to the
- congested cafe at the foot of the stairs, where orangeades were thrust
- at them between the shoulders of packed consommateurs and Darrow,
- lighting a cigarette while she sucked her straw, knew the primitive
- complacency of the man at whose companion other men stare.
- On a corner of their table lay a smeared copy of a theatrical journal.
- It caught Sophy’s eye and after poring over the page she looked up with
- an excited exclamation.
- “They’re giving Oedipe tomorrow afternoon at the Francais! I suppose
- you’ve seen it heaps and heaps of times?”
- He smiled back at her. “You must see it too. We’ll go tomorrow.”
- She sighed at his suggestion, but without discarding it. “How can I? The
- last train for Joigny leaves at four.”
- “But you don’t know yet that your friends will want you.”
- “I shall know tomorrow early. I asked Mrs. Farlow to telegraph as soon
- as she got my letter.” A twinge of compunction shot through Darrow. Her
- words recalled to him that on their return to the hotel after luncheon
- she had given him her letter to post, and that he had never thought of
- it again. No doubt it was still in the pocket of the coat he had taken
- off when he dressed for dinner. In his perturbation he pushed back his
- chair, and the movement made her look up at him.
- “What’s the matter?”
- “Nothing. Only--you know I don’t fancy that letter can have caught this
- afternoon’s post.”
- “Not caught it? Why not?”
- “Why, I’m afraid it will have been too late.” He bent his head to light
- another cigarette.
- She struck her hands together with a gesture which, to his amusement, he
- noticed she had caught from Cerdine.
- “Oh, dear, I hadn’t thought of that! But surely it will reach them in
- the morning?”
- “Some time in the morning, I suppose. You know the French provincial
- post is never in a hurry. I don’t believe your letter would have been
- delivered this evening in any case.” As this idea occurred to him he
- felt himself almost absolved.
- “Perhaps, then, I ought to have telegraphed?”
- “I’ll telegraph for you in the morning if you say so.”
- The bell announcing the close of the entr’-acte shrilled through the
- cafe, and she sprang to her feet.
- “Oh, come, come! We mustn’t miss it!”
- Instantly forgetful of the Farlows, she slipped her arm through his and
- turned to push her way back to the theatre.
- As soon as the curtain went up she as promptly forgot her companion.
- Watching her from the corner to which he had returned, Darrow saw that
- great waves of sensation were beating deliciously against her brain. It
- was as though every starved sensibility were throwing out feelers to the
- mounting tide; as though everything she was seeing, hearing, imagining,
- rushed in to fill the void of all she had always been denied.
- Darrow, as he observed her, again felt a detached enjoyment in her
- pleasure. She was an extraordinary conductor of sensation: she seemed to
- transmit it physically, in emanations that set the blood dancing in his
- veins. He had not often had the opportunity of studying the effects of a
- perfectly fresh impression on so responsive a temperament, and he felt a
- fleeting desire to make its chords vibrate for his own amusement.
- At the end of the next act she discovered with dismay that in their
- transit to the cafe she had lost the beautiful pictured programme he
- had bought for her. She wanted to go back and hunt for it, but Darrow
- assured her that he would have no trouble in getting her another. When
- he went out in quest of it she followed him protestingly to the door of
- the box, and he saw that she was distressed at the thought of his having
- to spend an additional franc for her. This frugality smote Darrow by its
- contrast to her natural bright profusion; and again he felt the desire
- to right so clumsy an injustice.
- When he returned to the box she was still standing in the doorway,
- and he noticed that his were not the only eyes attracted to her. Then
- another impression sharply diverted his attention. Above the fagged
- faces of the Parisian crowd he had caught the fresh fair countenance
- of Owen Leath signalling a joyful recognition. The young man, slim and
- eager, had detached himself from two companions of his own type, and
- was seeking to push through the press to his step-mother’s friend. The
- encounter, to Darrow, could hardly have been more inopportune; it woke
- in him a confusion of feelings of which only the uppermost was allayed
- by seeing Sophy Viner, as if instinctively warned, melt back into the
- shadow of their box.
- A minute later Owen Leath was at his side. “I was sure it was you! Such
- luck to run across you! Won’t you come off with us to supper after it’s
- over? Montmartre, or wherever else you please. Those two chaps over
- there are friends of mine, at the Beaux Arts; both of them rather good
- fellows--and we’d be so glad----”
- For half a second Darrow read in his hospitable eye the termination “if
- you’d bring the lady too”; then it deflected into: “We’d all be so glad
- if you’d come.”
- Darrow, excusing himself with thanks, lingered on for a few minutes’
- chat, in which every word, and every tone of his companion’s voice, was
- like a sharp light flashed into aching eyes. He was glad when the bell
- called the audience to their seats, and young Leath left him with the
- friendly question: “We’ll see you at Givre later on?”
- When he rejoined Miss Viner, Darrow’s first care was to find out, by a
- rapid inspection of the house, whether Owen Leath’s seat had given him a
- view of their box. But the young man was not visible from it, and Darrow
- concluded that he had been recognized in the corridor and not at his
- companion’s side. He scarcely knew why it seemed to him so important
- that this point should be settled; certainly his sense of reassurance
- was less due to regard for Miss Viner than to the persistent vision of
- grave offended eyes...
- During the drive back to the hotel this vision was persistently kept
- before him by the thought that the evening post might have brought a
- letter from Mrs. Leath. Even if no letter had yet come, his servant
- might have telegraphed to say that one was on its way; and at the
- thought his interest in the girl at his side again cooled to the
- fraternal, the almost fatherly. She was no more to him, after all, than
- an appealing young creature to whom it was mildly agreeable to have
- offered an evening’s diversion; and when, as they rolled into the
- illuminated court of the hotel, she turned with a quick movement which
- brought her happy face close to his, he leaned away, affecting to be
- absorbed in opening the door of the cab.
- At the desk the night porter, after a vain search through the
- pigeon-holes, was disposed to think that a letter or telegram had in
- fact been sent up for the gentleman; and Darrow, at the announcement,
- could hardly wait to ascend to his room. Upstairs, he and his companion
- had the long dimly-lit corridor to themselves, and Sophy paused on her
- threshold, gathering up in one hand the pale folds of her cloak, while
- she held the other out to Darrow.
- “If the telegram comes early I shall be off by the first train; so I
- suppose this is good-bye,” she said, her eyes dimmed by a little shadow
- of regret.
- Darrow, with a renewed start of contrition, perceived that he had again
- forgotten her letter; and as their hands met he vowed to himself that
- the moment she had left him he would dash down stairs to post it.
- “Oh, I’ll see you in the morning, of course!”
- A tremor of pleasure crossed her face as he stood before her, smiling a
- little uncertainly.
- “At any rate,” she said, “I want to thank you now for my good day.”
- He felt in her hand the same tremor he had seen in her face. “But it’s
- YOU, on the contrary--” he began, lifting the hand to his lips.
- As he dropped it, and their eyes met, something passed through hers that
- was like a light carried rapidly behind a curtained window.
- “Good night; you must be awfully tired,” he said with a friendly
- abruptness, turning away without even waiting to see her pass into her
- room. He unlocked his door, and stumbling over the threshold groped in
- the darkness for the electric button. The light showed him a telegram on
- the table, and he forgot everything else as he caught it up.
- “No letter from France,” the message read.
- It fell from Darrow’s hand to the floor, and he dropped into a chair
- by the table and sat gazing at the dingy drab and olive pattern of
- the carpet. She had not written, then; she had not written, and it
- was manifest now that she did not mean to write. If she had had any
- intention of explaining her telegram she would certainly, within
- twenty-four hours, have followed it up by a letter. But she evidently
- did not intend to explain it, and her silence could mean only that she
- had no explanation to give, or else that she was too indifferent to be
- aware that one was needed.
- Darrow, face to face with these alternatives, felt a recrudescence of
- boyish misery. It was no longer his hurt vanity that cried out. He told
- himself that he could have borne an equal amount of pain, if only it had
- left Mrs. Leath’s image untouched; but he could not bear to think of her
- as trivial or insincere. The thought was so intolerable that he felt a
- blind desire to punish some one else for the pain it caused him.
- As he sat moodily staring at the carpet its silly intricacies melted
- into a blur from which the eyes of Mrs. Leath again looked out at him.
- He saw the fine sweep of her brows, and the deep look beneath them as
- she had turned from him on their last evening in London. “This will be
- good-bye, then,” she had said; and it occurred to him that her parting
- phrase had been the same as Sophy Viner’s.
- At the thought he jumped to his feet and took down from its hook the
- coat in which he had left Miss Viner’s letter. The clock marked the
- third quarter after midnight, and he knew it would make no difference
- if he went down to the post-box now or early the next morning; but he
- wanted to clear his conscience, and having found the letter he went to
- the door.
- A sound in the next room made him pause. He had become conscious again
- that, a few feet off, on the other side of a thin partition, a small
- keen flame of life was quivering and agitating the air. Sophy’s face
- came back to him insistently. It was as vivid now as Mrs. Leath’s had
- been a moment earlier. He recalled with a faint smile of retrospective
- pleasure the girl’s enjoyment of her evening, and the innumerable fine
- feelers of sensation she had thrown out to its impressions.
- It gave him a curiously close sense of her presence to think that at
- that moment she was living over her enjoyment as intensely as he was
- living over his unhappiness. His own case was irremediable, but it was
- easy enough to give her a few more hours of pleasure. And did she not
- perhaps secretly expect it of him? After all, if she had been very
- anxious to join her friends she would have telegraphed them on reaching
- Paris, instead of writing. He wondered now that he had not been struck
- at the moment by so artless a device to gain more time. The fact of her
- having practised it did not make him think less well of her; it merely
- strengthened the impulse to use his opportunity. She was starving, poor
- child, for a little amusement, a little personal life--why not give
- her the chance of another day in Paris? If he did so, should he not be
- merely falling in with her own hopes?
- At the thought his sympathy for her revived. She became of absorbing
- interest to him as an escape from himself and an object about which his
- thwarted activities could cluster. He felt less drearily alone because
- of her being there, on the other side of the door, and in his gratitude
- to her for giving him this relief he began, with indolent amusement, to
- plan new ways of detaining her. He dropped back into his chair, lit a
- cigar, and smiled a little at the image of her smiling face. He tried to
- imagine what incident of the day she was likely to be recalling at that
- particular moment, and what part he probably played in it. That it
- was not a small part he was certain, and the knowledge was undeniably
- pleasant.
- Now and then a sound from her room brought before him more vividly
- the reality of the situation and the strangeness of the vast swarming
- solitude in which he and she were momentarily isolated, amid long lines
- of rooms each holding its separate secret. The nearness of all these
- other mysteries enclosing theirs gave Darrow a more intimate sense of
- the girl’s presence, and through the fumes of his cigar his imagination
- continued to follow her to and fro, traced the curve of her slim young
- arms as she raised them to undo her hair, pictured the sliding down of
- her dress to the waist and then to the knees, and the whiteness of her
- feet as she slipped across the floor to bed...
- He stood up and shook himself with a yawn, throwing away the end of
- his cigar. His glance, in following it, lit on the telegram which had
- dropped to the floor. The sounds in the next room had ceased, and once
- more he felt alone and unhappy.
- Opening the window, he folded his arms on the sill and looked out on the
- vast light-spangled mass of the city, and then up at the dark sky, in
- which the morning planet stood.
- VI
- At the Theatre Francais, the next afternoon, Darrow yawned and fidgeted
- in his seat.
- The day was warm, the theatre crowded and airless, and the performance,
- it seemed to him, intolerably bad. He stole a glance at his companion,
- wondering if she shared his feelings. Her rapt profile betrayed no
- unrest, but politeness might have caused her to feign an interest that
- she did not feel. He leaned back impatiently, stifling another yawn,
- and trying to fix his attention on the stage. Great things were going
- forward there, and he was not insensible to the stern beauties of the
- ancient drama. But the interpretation of the play seemed to him as
- airless and lifeless as the atmosphere of the theatre. The players were
- the same whom he had often applauded in those very parts, and perhaps
- that fact added to the impression of staleness and conventionality
- produced by their performance. Surely it was time to infuse new blood
- into the veins of the moribund art. He had the impression that the
- ghosts of actors were giving a spectral performance on the shores of
- Styx.
- Certainly it was not the most profitable way for a young man with a
- pretty companion to pass the golden hours of a spring afternoon. The
- freshness of the face at his side, reflecting the freshness of the
- season, suggested dapplings of sunlight through new leaves, the sound of
- a brook in the grass, the ripple of tree-shadows over breezy meadows...
- When at length the fateful march of the cothurns was stayed by the
- single pause in the play, and Darrow had led Miss Viner out on the
- balcony overhanging the square before the theatre, he turned to see if
- she shared his feelings. But the rapturous look she gave him checked the
- depreciation on his lips.
- “Oh, why did you bring me out here? One ought to creep away and sit in
- the dark till it begins again!”
- “Is THAT the way they made you feel?”
- “Didn’t they _YOU?_...As if the gods were there all the while, just behind
- them, pulling the strings?” Her hands were pressed against the railing,
- her face shining and darkening under the wing-beats of successive
- impressions.
- Darrow smiled in enjoyment of her pleasure. After all, he had felt all
- that, long ago; perhaps it was his own fault, rather than that of the
- actors, that the poetry of the play seemed to have evaporated...But no,
- he had been right in judging the performance to be dull and stale:
- it was simply his companion’s inexperience, her lack of occasions to
- compare and estimate, that made her think it brilliant.
- “I was afraid you were bored and wanted to come away.”
- “BORED?” She made a little aggrieved grimace. “You mean you thought me
- too ignorant and stupid to appreciate it?”
- “No; not that.” The hand nearest him still lay on the railing of the
- balcony, and he covered it for a moment with his. As he did so he saw
- the colour rise and tremble in her cheek.
- “Tell me just what you think,” he said, bending his head a little, and
- only half-aware of his words.
- She did not turn her face to his, but began to talk rapidly, trying
- to convey something of what she felt. But she was evidently unused to
- analyzing her aesthetic emotions, and the tumultuous rush of the drama
- seemed to have left her in a state of panting wonder, as though it had
- been a storm or some other natural cataclysm. She had no literary or
- historic associations to which to attach her impressions: her education
- had evidently not comprised a course in Greek literature. But she felt
- what would probably have been unperceived by many a young lady who had
- taken a first in classics: the ineluctable fatality of the tale, the
- dread sway in it of the same mysterious “luck” which pulled the threads
- of her own small destiny. It was not literature to her, it was fact: as
- actual, as near by, as what was happening to her at the moment and what
- the next hour held in store. Seen in this light, the play regained for
- Darrow its supreme and poignant reality. He pierced to the heart of
- its significance through all the artificial accretions with which his
- theories of art and the conventions of the stage had clothed it, and saw
- it as he had never seen it: as life.
- After this there could be no question of flight, and he took her back to
- the theatre, content to receive his own sensations through the medium of
- hers. But with the continuation of the play, and the oppression of the
- heavy air, his attention again began to wander, straying back over the
- incidents of the morning.
- He had been with Sophy Viner all day, and he was surprised to find
- how quickly the time had gone. She had hardly attempted, as the hours
- passed, to conceal her satisfaction on finding that no telegram came
- from the Farlows. “They’ll have written,” she had simply said; and her
- mind had at once flown on to the golden prospect of an afternoon at the
- theatre. The intervening hours had been disposed of in a stroll through
- the lively streets, and a repast, luxuriously lingered over, under
- the chestnut-boughs of a restaurant in the Champs Elysees. Everything
- entertained and interested her, and Darrow remarked, with an amused
- detachment, that she was not insensible to the impression her charms
- produced. Yet there was no hard edge of vanity in her sense of her
- prettiness: she seemed simply to be aware of it as a note in the general
- harmony, and to enjoy sounding the note as a singer enjoys singing.
- After luncheon, as they sat over their coffee, she had again asked
- an immense number of questions and delivered herself of a remarkable
- variety of opinions. Her questions testified to a wholesome and
- comprehensive human curiosity, and her comments showed, like her
- face and her whole attitude, an odd mingling of precocious wisdom and
- disarming ignorance. When she talked to him about “life”--the word was
- often on her lips--she seemed to him like a child playing with a tiger’s
- cub; and he said to himself that some day the child would grow up--and
- so would the tiger. Meanwhile, such expertness qualified by such candour
- made it impossible to guess the extent of her personal experience, or
- to estimate its effect on her character. She might be any one of a dozen
- definable types, or she might--more disconcertingly to her companion and
- more perilously to herself--be a shifting and uncrystallized mixture of
- them all.
- Her talk, as usual, had promptly reverted to the stage. She was eager
- to learn about every form of dramatic expression which the metropolis
- of things theatrical had to offer, and her curiosity ranged from the
- official temples of the art to its less hallowed haunts. Her searching
- enquiries about a play whose production, on one of the latter scenes,
- had provoked a considerable amount of scandal, led Darrow to throw out
- laughingly: “To see THAT you’ll have to wait till you’re married!” and
- his answer had sent her off at a tangent.
- “Oh, I never mean to marry,” she had rejoined in a tone of youthful
- finality.
- “I seem to have heard that before!”
- “Yes; from girls who’ve only got to choose!” Her eyes had grown suddenly
- almost old. “I’d like you to see the only men who’ve ever wanted to
- marry me! One was the doctor on the steamer, when I came abroad with the
- Hokes: he’d been cashiered from the navy for drunkenness. The other was
- a deaf widower with three grown-up daughters, who kept a clock-shop in
- Bayswater!--Besides,” she rambled on, “I’m not so sure that I believe
- in marriage. You see I’m all for self-development and the chance to live
- one’s life. I’m awfully modern, you know.”
- It was just when she proclaimed herself most awfully modern that she
- struck him as most helplessly backward; yet the moment after, without
- any bravado, or apparent desire to assume an attitude, she would
- propound some social axiom which could have been gathered only in the
- bitter soil of experience.
- All these things came back to him as he sat beside her in the theatre
- and watched her ingenuous absorption. It was on “the story” that her
- mind was fixed, and in life also, he suspected, it would always be “the
- story”, rather than its remoter imaginative issues, that would hold her.
- He did not believe there were ever any echoes in her soul...
- There was no question, however, that what she felt was felt with
- intensity: to the actual, the immediate, she spread vibrating strings.
- When the play was over, and they came out once more into the sunlight,
- Darrow looked down at her with a smile.
- “Well?” he asked.
- She made no answer. Her dark gaze seemed to rest on him without seeing
- him. Her cheeks and lips were pale, and the loose hair under her
- hat-brim clung to her forehead in damp rings. She looked like a young
- priestess still dazed by the fumes of the cavern.
- “You poor child--it’s been almost too much for you!”
- She shook her head with a vague smile.
- “Come,” he went on, putting his hand on her arm, “let’s jump into a taxi
- and get some air and sunshine. Look, there are hours of daylight left;
- and see what a night it’s going to be!”
- He pointed over their heads, to where a white moon hung in the misty
- blue above the roofs of the rue de Rivoli.
- She made no answer, and he signed to a motor-cab, calling out to the
- driver: “To the Bois!”
- As the carriage turned toward the Tuileries she roused herself. “I must
- go first to the hotel. There may be a message--at any rate I must decide
- on something.”
- Darrow saw that the reality of the situation had suddenly forced itself
- upon her. “I MUST decide on something,” she repeated.
- He would have liked to postpone the return, to persuade her to drive
- directly to the Bois for dinner. It would have been easy enough to
- remind her that she could not start for Joigny that evening, and that
- therefore it was of no moment whether she received the Farlows’ answer
- then or a few hours later; but for some reason he hesitated to use this
- argument, which had come so naturally to him the day before. After all,
- he knew she would find nothing at the hotel--so what did it matter if
- they went there?
- The porter, interrogated, was not sure. He himself had received nothing
- for the lady, but in his absence his subordinate might have sent a
- letter upstairs.
- Darrow and Sophy mounted together in the lift, and the young man, while
- she went into her room, unlocked his own door and glanced at the empty
- table. For him at least no message had come; and on her threshold, a
- moment later, she met him with the expected: “No--there’s nothing!”
- He feigned an unregretful surprise. “So much the better! And now, shall
- we drive out somewhere? Or would you rather take a boat to Bellevue?
- Have you ever dined there, on the terrace, by moonlight? It’s not at all
- bad. And there’s no earthly use in sitting here waiting.”
- She stood before him in perplexity.
- “But when I wrote yesterday I asked them to telegraph. I suppose they’re
- horribly hard up, the poor dears, and they thought a letter would do
- as well as a telegram.” The colour had risen to her face. “That’s why I
- wrote instead of telegraphing; I haven’t a penny to spare myself!”
- Nothing she could have said could have filled her listener with a deeper
- contrition. He felt the red in his own face as he recalled the motive
- with which he had credited her in his midnight musings. But that motive,
- after all, had simply been trumped up to justify his own disloyalty: he
- had never really believed in it. The reflection deepened his confusion,
- and he would have liked to take her hand in his and confess the
- injustice he had done her.
- She may have interpreted his change of colour as an involuntary protest
- at being initiated into such shabby details, for she went on with a
- laugh: “I suppose you can hardly understand what it means to have to
- stop and think whether one can afford a telegram? But I’ve always had to
- consider such things. And I mustn’t stay here any longer now--I must try
- to get a night train for Joigny. Even if the Farlows can’t take me in,
- I can go to the hotel: it will cost less than staying here.” She paused
- again and then exclaimed: “I ought to have thought of that sooner; I
- ought to have telegraphed yesterday! But I was sure I should hear from
- them today; and I wanted--oh, I DID so awfully want to stay!” She threw
- a troubled look at Darrow. “Do you happen to remember,” she asked, “what
- time it was when you posted my letter?”
- VII
- Darrow was still standing on her threshold. As she put the question he
- entered the room and closed the door behind him.
- His heart was beating a little faster than usual and he had no clear
- idea of what he was about to do or say, beyond the definite conviction
- that, whatever passing impulse of expiation moved him, he would not be
- fool enough to tell her that he had not sent her letter. He knew that
- most wrongdoing works, on the whole, less mischief than its useless
- confession; and this was clearly a case where a passing folly might be
- turned, by avowal, into a serious offense.
- “I’m so sorry--so sorry; but you must let me help you...You will let me
- help you?” he said.
- He took her hands and pressed them together between his, counting on a
- friendly touch to help out the insufficiency of words. He felt her yield
- slightly to his clasp, and hurried on without giving her time to answer.
- “Isn’t it a pity to spoil our good time together by regretting anything
- you might have done to prevent our having it?”
- She drew back, freeing her hands. Her face, losing its look of appealing
- confidence, was suddenly sharpened by distrust.
- “You didn’t forget to post my letter?”
- Darrow stood before her, constrained and ashamed, and ever more keenly
- aware that the betrayal of his distress must be a greater offense than
- its concealment.
- “What an insinuation!” he cried, throwing out his hands with a laugh.
- Her face instantly melted to laughter. “Well, then--I WON’T be sorry; I
- won’t regret anything except that our good time is over!”
- The words were so unexpected that they routed all his resolves. If she
- had gone on doubting him he could probably have gone on deceiving her;
- but her unhesitating acceptance of his word made him hate the part he
- was playing. At the same moment a doubt shot up its serpent-head in his
- own bosom. Was it not he rather than she who was childishly trustful?
- Was she not almost too ready to take his word, and dismiss once for all
- the tiresome question of the letter? Considering what her experiences
- must have been, such trustfulness seemed open to suspicion. But the
- moment his eyes fell on her he was ashamed of the thought, and knew it
- for what it really was: another pretext to lessen his own delinquency.
- “Why should our good time be over?” he asked. “Why shouldn’t it last a
- little longer?”
- She looked up, her lips parted in surprise; but before she could speak
- he went on: “I want you to stay with me--I want you, just for a few
- days, to have all the things you’ve never had. It’s not always May
- and Paris--why not make the most of them now? You know me--we’re not
- strangers--why shouldn’t you treat me like a friend?”
- While he spoke she had drawn away a little, but her hand still lay in
- his. She was pale, and her eyes were fixed on him in a gaze in which
- there was neither distrust or resentment, but only an ingenuous wonder.
- He was extraordinarily touched by her expression.
- “Oh, do! You must. Listen: to prove that I’m sincere I’ll tell
- you...I’ll tell you I didn’t post your letter...I didn’t post it because
- I wanted so much to give you a few good hours ... and because I couldn’t
- bear to have you go.”
- He had the feeling that the words were being uttered in spite of him by
- some malicious witness of the scene, and yet that he was not sorry to
- have them spoken.
- The girl had listened to him in silence. She remained motionless for a
- moment after he had ceased to speak; then she snatched away her hand.
- “You didn’t post my letter? You kept it back on purpose? And you tell
- me so NOW, to prove to me that I’d better put myself under your
- protection?” She burst into a laugh that had in it all the piercing
- echoes of her Murrett past, and her face, at the same moment, underwent
- the same change, shrinking into a small malevolent white mask in which
- the eyes burned black. “Thank you--thank you most awfully for
- telling me! And for all your other kind intentions! The plan’s
- delightful--really quite delightful, and I’m extremely flattered and
- obliged.”
- She dropped into a seat beside her dressing-table, resting her chin on
- her lifted hands, and laughing out at him under the elf-lock which had
- shaken itself down over her eyes.
- Her outburst did not offend the young man; its immediate effect was that
- of allaying his agitation. The theatrical touch in her manner made his
- offense seem more venial than he had thought it a moment before.
- He drew up a chair and sat down beside her. “After all,” he said, in a
- tone of good-humoured protest, “I needn’t have told you I’d kept back
- your letter; and my telling you seems rather strong proof that I hadn’t
- any very nefarious designs on you.”
- She met this with a shrug, but he did not give her time to answer. “My
- designs,” he continued with a smile, “were not nefarious. I saw you’d
- been through a bad time with Mrs. Murrett, and that there didn’t seem
- to be much fun ahead for you; and I didn’t see--and I don’t yet see--the
- harm of trying to give you a few hours of amusement between a depressing
- past and a not particularly cheerful future.” He paused again, and then
- went on, in the same tone of friendly reasonableness: “The mistake I
- made was not to tell you this at once--not to ask you straight out to
- give me a day or two, and let me try to make you forget all the things
- that are troubling you. I was a fool not to see that if I’d put it to
- you in that way you’d have accepted or refused, as you chose; but that
- at least you wouldn’t have mistaken my intentions.--Intentions!” He
- stood up, walked the length of the room, and turned back to where she
- still sat motionless, her elbows propped on the dressing-table, her chin
- on her hands. “What rubbish we talk about intentions! The truth is I
- hadn’t any: I just liked being with you. Perhaps you don’t know how
- extraordinarily one can like being with you...I was depressed and adrift
- myself; and you made me forget my bothers; and when I found you were
- going--and going back to dreariness, as I was--I didn’t see why we
- shouldn’t have a few hours together first; so I left your letter in my
- pocket.”
- He saw her face melt as she listened, and suddenly she unclasped her
- hands and leaned to him.
- “But are YOU unhappy too? Oh, I never understood--I never dreamed it! I
- thought you’d always had everything in the world you wanted!”
- Darrow broke into a laugh at this ingenuous picture of his state. He
- was ashamed of trying to better his case by an appeal to her pity, and
- annoyed with himself for alluding to a subject he would rather have
- kept out of his thoughts. But her look of sympathy had disarmed him; his
- heart was bitter and distracted; she was near him, her eyes were shining
- with compassion--he bent over her and kissed her hand.
- “Forgive me--do forgive me,” he said.
- She stood up with a smiling head-shake. “Oh, it’s not so often that
- people try to give me any pleasure--much less two whole days of it!
- I sha’n’t forget how kind you’ve been. I shall have plenty of time to
- remember. But this IS good-bye, you know. I must telegraph at once to
- say I’m coming.”
- “To say you’re coming? Then I’m not forgiven?”
- “Oh, you’re forgiven--if that’s any comfort.”
- “It’s not, the very least, if your way of proving it is to go away!”
- She hung her head in meditation. “But I can’t stay.--How CAN I stay?”
- she broke out, as if arguing with some unseen monitor.
- “Why can’t you? No one knows you’re here...No one need ever know.”
- She looked up, and their eyes exchanged meanings for a rapid minute. Her
- gaze was as clear as a boy’s. “Oh, it’s not THAT,” she exclaimed,
- almost impatiently; “it’s not people I’m afraid of! They’ve never put
- themselves out for me--why on earth should I care about them?”
- He liked her directness as he had never liked it before. “Well, then,
- what is it? Not ME, I hope?”
- “No, not you: I like you. It’s the money! With me that’s always the root
- of the matter. I could never yet afford a treat in my life!”
- “Is _THAT_ all?” He laughed, relieved by her naturalness. “Look here;
- since we re talking as man to man--can’t you trust me about that too?”
- “Trust you? How do you mean? You’d better not trust ME!” she laughed
- back sharply. “I might never be able to pay up!”
- His gesture brushed aside the allusion. “Money may be the root of the
- matter; it can’t be the whole of it, between friends. Don’t you think
- one friend may accept a small service from another without looking too
- far ahead or weighing too many chances? The question turns entirely on
- what you think of me. If you like me well enough to be willing to take
- a few days’ holiday with me, just for the pleasure of the thing, and the
- pleasure you’ll be giving me, let’s shake hands on it. If you don’t like
- me well enough we’ll shake hands too; only I shall be sorry,” he ended.
- “Oh, but I shall be sorry too!” Her face, as she lifted it to his,
- looked so small and young that Darrow felt a fugitive twinge of
- compunction, instantly effaced by the excitement of pursuit.
- “Well, then?” He stood looking down on her, his eyes persuading her.
- He was now intensely aware that his nearness was having an effect which
- made it less and less necessary for him to choose his words, and he went
- on, more mindful of the inflections of his voice than of what he was
- actually saying: “Why on earth should we say good-bye if we’re both
- sorry to? Won’t you tell me your reason? It’s not a bit like you to let
- anything stand in the way of your saying just what you feel. You mustn’t
- mind offending me, you know!”
- She hung before him like a leaf on the meeting of cross-currents, that
- the next ripple may sweep forward or whirl back. Then she flung up
- her head with the odd boyish movement habitual to her in moments of
- excitement. “What I feel? Do you want to know what I feel? That you’re
- giving me the only chance I’ve ever had!”
- She turned about on her heel and, dropping into the nearest chair, sank
- forward, her face hidden against the dressing-table.
- Under the folds of her thin summer dress the modelling of her back and
- of her lifted arms, and the slight hollow between her shoulder-blades,
- recalled the faint curves of a terra-cotta statuette, some young image
- of grace hardly more than sketched in the clay. Darrow, as he stood
- looking at her, reflected that her character, for all its seeming
- firmness, its flashing edges of “opinion”, was probably no less
- immature. He had not expected her to yield so suddenly to his
- suggestion, or to confess her yielding in that way. At first he was
- slightly disconcerted; then he saw how her attitude simplified his own.
- Her behaviour had all the indecision and awkwardness of inexperience. It
- showed that she was a child after all; and all he could do--all he had
- ever meant to do--was to give her a child’s holiday to look back to.
- For a moment he fancied she was crying; but the next she was on her feet
- and had swept round on him a face she must have turned away only to hide
- the first rush of her pleasure.
- For a while they shone on each other without speaking; then she sprang
- to him and held out both hands.
- “Is it true? Is it really true? Is it really going to happen to ME?”
- He felt like answering: “You’re the very creature to whom it was bound
- to happen”; but the words had a double sense that made him wince, and
- instead he caught her proffered hands and stood looking at her across
- the length of her arms, without attempting to bend them or to draw
- her closer. He wanted her to know how her words had moved him; but his
- thoughts were blurred by the rush of the same emotion that possessed
- her, and his own words came with an effort.
- He ended by giving her back a laugh as frank as her own, and declaring,
- as he dropped her hands: “All that and more too--you’ll see!”
- VIII
- All day, since the late reluctant dawn, the rain had come down in
- torrents. It streamed against Darrow’s high-perched windows, reduced
- their vast prospect of roofs and chimneys to a black oily huddle, and
- filled the room with the drab twilight of an underground aquarium.
- The streams descended with the regularity of a third day’s rain, when
- trimming and shuffling are over, and the weather has settled down to do
- its worst. There were no variations of rhythm, no lyrical ups and downs:
- the grey lines streaking the panes were as dense and uniform as a page
- of unparagraphed narrative.
- George Darrow had drawn his armchair to the fire. The time-table he
- had been studying lay on the floor, and he sat staring with dull
- acquiescence into the boundless blur of rain, which affected him like a
- vast projection of his own state of mind. Then his eyes travelled slowly
- about the room.
- It was exactly ten days since his hurried unpacking had strewn it with
- the contents of his portmanteaux. His brushes and razors were spread out
- on the blotched marble of the chest of drawers. A stack of newspapers
- had accumulated on the centre table under the “electrolier”, and half a
- dozen paper novels lay on the mantelpiece among cigar-cases and toilet
- bottles; but these traces of his passage had made no mark on the
- featureless dulness of the room, its look of being the makeshift setting
- of innumerable transient collocations. There was something sardonic,
- almost sinister, in its appearance of having deliberately “made up” for
- its anonymous part, all in noncommittal drabs and browns, with a
- carpet and paper that nobody would remember, and chairs and tables as
- impersonal as railway porters.
- Darrow picked up the time-table and tossed it on to the table. Then he
- rose to his feet, lit a cigar and went to the window. Through the rain
- he could just discover the face of a clock in a tall building beyond the
- railway roofs. He pulled out his watch, compared the two time-pieces,
- and started the hands of his with such a rush that they flew past the
- hour and he had to make them repeat the circuit more deliberately. He
- felt a quite disproportionate irritation at the trifling blunder. When
- he had corrected it he went back to his chair and threw himself down,
- leaning back his head against his hands. Presently his cigar went out,
- and he got up, hunted for the matches, lit it again and returned to his
- seat.
- The room was getting on his nerves. During the first few days, while
- the skies were clear, he had not noticed it, or had felt for it only the
- contemptuous indifference of the traveller toward a provisional shelter.
- But now that he was leaving it, was looking at it for the last time,
- it seemed to have taken complete possession of his mind, to be soaking
- itself into him like an ugly indelible blot. Every detail pressed itself
- on his notice with the familiarity of an accidental confidant: whichever
- way he turned, he felt the nudge of a transient intimacy...
- The one fixed point in his immediate future was that his leave was over
- and that he must be back at his post in London the next morning. Within
- twenty-four hours he would again be in a daylight world of recognized
- activities, himself a busy, responsible, relatively necessary factor in
- the big whirring social and official machine. That fixed obligation
- was the fact he could think of with the least discomfort, yet for some
- unaccountable reason it was the one on which he found it most difficult
- to fix his thoughts. Whenever he did so, the room jerked him back into
- the circle of its insistent associations. It was extraordinary with what
- a microscopic minuteness of loathing he hated it all: the grimy carpet
- and wallpaper, the black marble mantel-piece, the clock with a gilt
- allegory under a dusty bell, the high-bolstered brown-counterpaned bed,
- the framed card of printed rules under the electric light switch, and
- the door of communication with the next room. He hated the door most of
- all...
- At the outset, he had felt no special sense of responsibility. He was
- satisfied that he had struck the right note, and convinced of his power
- of sustaining it. The whole incident had somehow seemed, in spite of its
- vulgar setting and its inevitable prosaic propinquities, to be enacting
- itself in some unmapped region outside the pale of the usual. It was not
- like anything that had ever happened to him before, or in which he had
- ever pictured himself as likely to be involved; but that, at first, had
- seemed no argument against his fitness to deal with it.
- Perhaps but for the three days’ rain he might have got away without a
- doubt as to his adequacy. The rain had made all the difference. It had
- thrown the whole picture out of perspective, blotted out the mystery
- of the remoter planes and the enchantment of the middle distance, and
- thrust into prominence every commonplace fact of the foreground. It was
- the kind of situation that was not helped by being thought over; and
- by the perversity of circumstance he had been forced into the unwilling
- contemplation of its every aspect...
- His cigar had gone out again, and he threw it into the fire and vaguely
- meditated getting up to find another. But the mere act of leaving his
- chair seemed to call for a greater exertion of the will than he was
- capable of, and he leaned his head back with closed eyes and listened to
- the drumming of the rain.
- A different noise aroused him. It was the opening and closing of
- the door leading from the corridor into the adjoining room. He sat
- motionless, without opening his eyes; but now another sight forced
- itself under his lowered lids. It was the precise photographic picture
- of that other room. Everything in it rose before him and pressed itself
- upon his vision with the same acuity of distinctness as the objects
- surrounding him. A step sounded on the floor, and he knew which way the
- step was directed, what pieces of furniture it had to skirt, where it
- would probably pause, and what was likely to arrest it. He heard another
- sound, and recognized it as that of a wet umbrella placed in the black
- marble jamb of the chimney-piece, against the hearth. He caught the
- creak of a hinge, and instantly differentiated it as that of the
- wardrobe against the opposite wall. Then he heard the mouse-like squeal
- of a reluctant drawer, and knew it was the upper one in the chest of
- drawers beside the bed: the clatter which followed was caused by the
- mahogany toilet-glass jumping on its loosened pivots...
- The step crossed the floor again. It was strange how much better he knew
- it than the person to whom it belonged! Now it was drawing near the door
- of communication between the two rooms. He opened his eyes and looked.
- The step had ceased and for a moment there was silence. Then he heard
- a low knock. He made no response, and after an interval he saw that
- the door handle was being tentatively turned. He closed his eyes once
- more...
- The door opened, and the step was in the room, coming cautiously toward
- him. He kept his eyes shut, relaxing his body to feign sleep. There
- was another pause, then a wavering soft advance, the rustle of a dress
- behind his chair, the warmth of two hands pressed for a moment on his
- lids. The palms of the hands had the lingering scent of some stuff that
- he had bought on the Boulevard...He looked up and saw a letter falling
- over his shoulder to his knee...
- “Did I disturb you? I’m so sorry! They gave me this just now when I came
- in.”
- The letter, before he could catch it, had slipped between his knees to
- the floor. It lay there, address upward, at his feet, and while he sat
- staring down at the strong slender characters on the blue-gray envelope
- an arm reached out from behind to pick it up.
- “Oh, don’t--DON’T” broke from him, and he bent over and caught the arm.
- The face above it was close to his.
- “Don’t what?”
- ----“take the trouble,” he stammered.
- He dropped the arm and stooped down. His grasp closed over the letter,
- he fingered its thickness and weight and calculated the number of sheets
- it must contain.
- Suddenly he felt the pressure of the hand on his shoulder, and became
- aware that the face was still leaning over him, and that in a moment he
- would have to look up and kiss it...
- He bent forward first and threw the unopened letter into the middle of
- the fire.
- BOOK II
- IX
- The light of the October afternoon lay on an old high-roofed house which
- enclosed in its long expanse of brick and yellowish stone the breadth of
- a grassy court filled with the shadow and sound of limes.
- From the escutcheoned piers at the entrance of the court a level drive,
- also shaded by limes, extended to a white-barred gate beyond which
- an equally level avenue of grass, cut through a wood, dwindled to a
- blue-green blur against a sky banked with still white slopes of cloud.
- In the court, half-way between house and drive, a lady stood. She held
- a parasol above her head, and looked now at the house-front, with its
- double flight of steps meeting before a glazed door under sculptured
- trophies, now down the drive toward the grassy cutting through the wood.
- Her air was less of expectancy than of contemplation: she seemed not so
- much to be watching for any one, or listening for an approaching sound,
- as letting the whole aspect of the place sink into her while she held
- herself open to its influence. Yet it was no less apparent that the
- scene was not new to her. There was no eagerness of investigation in her
- survey: she seemed rather to be looking about her with eyes to which,
- for some intimate inward reason, details long since familiar had
- suddenly acquired an unwonted freshness.
- This was in fact the exact sensation of which Mrs. Leath was conscious
- as she came forth from the house and descended into the sunlit court.
- She had come to meet her step-son, who was likely to be returning
- at that hour from an afternoon’s shooting in one of the more distant
- plantations, and she carried in her hand the letter which had sent her
- in search of him; but with her first step out of the house all thought
- of him had been effaced by another series of impressions.
- The scene about her was known to satiety. She had seen Givre at all
- seasons of the year, and for the greater part of every year, since the
- far-off day of her marriage; the day when, ostensibly driving through
- its gates at her husband’s side, she had actually been carried there on
- a cloud of iris-winged visions.
- The possibilities which the place had then represented were still
- vividly present to her. The mere phrase “a French chateau” had called
- up to her youthful fancy a throng of romantic associations, poetic,
- pictorial and emotional; and the serene face of the old house seated in
- its park among the poplar-bordered meadows of middle France, had
- seemed, on her first sight of it, to hold out to her a fate as noble and
- dignified as its own mien.
- Though she could still call up that phase of feeling it had long since
- passed, and the house had for a time become to her the very symbol
- of narrowness and monotony. Then, with the passing of years, it had
- gradually acquired a less inimical character, had become, not again a
- castle of dreams, evoker of fair images and romantic legend, but the
- shell of a life slowly adjusted to its dwelling: the place one came back
- to, the place where one had one’s duties, one’s habits and one’s books,
- the place one would naturally live in till one died: a dull house, an
- inconvenient house, of which one knew all the defects, the shabbinesses,
- the discomforts, but to which one was so used that one could hardly,
- after so long a time, think one’s self away from it without suffering a
- certain loss of identity.
- Now, as it lay before her in the autumn mildness, its mistress was
- surprised at her own insensibility. She had been trying to see the
- house through the eyes of an old friend who, the next morning, would be
- driving up to it for the first time; and in so doing she seemed to be
- opening her own eyes upon it after a long interval of blindness.
- The court was very still, yet full of a latent life: the wheeling and
- rustling of pigeons about the rectangular yews and across the sunny
- gravel; the sweep of rooks above the lustrous greyish-purple slates of
- the roof, and the stir of the tree-tops as they met the breeze which
- every day, at that hour, came punctually up from the river.
- Just such a latent animation glowed in Anna Leath. In every nerve and
- vein she was conscious of that equipoise of bliss which the fearful
- human heart scarce dares acknowledge. She was not used to strong or
- full emotions; but she had always known that she should not be afraid of
- them. She was not afraid now; but she felt a deep inward stillness.
- The immediate effect of the feeling had been to send her forth in quest
- of her step-son. She wanted to stroll back with him and have a quiet
- talk before they re-entered the house. It was always easy to talk to
- him, and at this moment he was the one person to whom she could have
- spoken without fear of disturbing her inner stillness. She was glad, for
- all sorts of reasons, that Madame de Chantelle and Effie were still
- at Ouchy with the governess, and that she and Owen had the house to
- themselves. And she was glad that even he was not yet in sight. She
- wanted to be alone a little longer; not to think, but to let the long
- slow waves of joy break over her one by one.
- She walked out of the court and sat down on one of the benches that
- bordered the drive. From her seat she had a diagonal view of the long
- house-front and of the domed chapel terminating one of the wings. Beyond
- a gate in the court-yard wall the flower-garden drew its dark-green
- squares and raised its statues against the yellowing background of the
- park. In the borders only a few late pinks and crimsons smouldered,
- but a peacock strutting in the sun seemed to have gathered into his
- out-spread fan all the summer glories of the place.
- In Mrs. Leath’s hand was the letter which had opened her eyes to these
- things, and a smile rose to her lips at the mere feeling of the paper
- between her fingers. The thrill it sent through her gave a keener edge
- to every sense. She felt, saw, breathed the shining world as though a
- thin impenetrable veil had suddenly been removed from it.
- Just such a veil, she now perceived, had always hung between herself and
- life. It had been like the stage gauze which gives an illusive air of
- reality to the painted scene behind it, yet proves it, after all, to be
- no more than a painted scene.
- She had been hardly aware, in her girlhood, of differing from others in
- this respect. In the well-regulated well-fed Summers world the unusual
- was regarded as either immoral or ill-bred, and people with emotions
- were not visited. Sometimes, with a sense of groping in a topsy-turvy
- universe, Anna had wondered why everybody about her seemed to ignore all
- the passions and sensations which formed the stuff of great poetry and
- memorable action. In a community composed entirely of people like her
- parents and her parents’ friends she did not see how the magnificent
- things one read about could ever have happened. She was sure that if
- anything of the kind had occurred in her immediate circle her mother
- would have consulted the family clergyman, and her father perhaps even
- have rung up the police; and her sense of humour compelled her to own
- that, in the given conditions, these precautions might not have been
- unjustified.
- Little by little the conditions conquered her, and she learned to regard
- the substance of life as a mere canvas for the embroideries of poet
- and painter, and its little swept and fenced and tended surface as its
- actual substance. It was in the visioned region of action and emotion
- that her fullest hours were spent; but it hardly occurred to her that
- they might be translated into experience, or connected with anything
- likely to happen to a young lady living in West Fifty-fifth Street.
- She perceived, indeed, that other girls, leading outwardly the same life
- as herself, and seemingly unaware of her world of hidden beauty, were
- yet possessed of some vital secret which escaped her. There seemed to be
- a kind of freemasonry between them; they were wider awake than she, more
- alert, and surer of their wants if not of their opinions. She supposed
- they were “cleverer”, and accepted her inferiority good-humouredly, half
- aware, within herself, of a reserve of unused power which the others
- gave no sign of possessing.
- This partly consoled her for missing so much of what made their “good
- time”; but the resulting sense of exclusion, of being somehow laughingly
- but firmly debarred from a share of their privileges, threw her back on
- herself and deepened the reserve which made envious mothers cite her as
- a model of ladylike repression. Love, she told herself, would one day
- release her from this spell of unreality. She was persuaded that the
- sublime passion was the key to the enigma; but it was difficult to
- relate her conception of love to the forms it wore in her experience.
- Two or three of the girls she had envied for their superior acquaintance
- with the arts of life had contracted, in the course of time, what were
- variously described as “romantic” or “foolish” marriages; one even made
- a runaway match, and languished for a while under a cloud of social
- reprobation. Here, then, was passion in action, romance converted
- to reality; yet the heroines of these exploits returned from them
- untransfigured, and their husbands were as dull as ever when one had to
- sit next to them at dinner.
- Her own case, of course, would be different. Some day she would find the
- magic bridge between West Fifty-fifth Street and life; once or twice she
- had even fancied that the clue was in her hand. The first time was
- when she had met young Darrow. She recalled even now the stir of the
- encounter. But his passion swept over her like a wind that shakes the
- roof of the forest without reaching its still glades or rippling its
- hidden pools. He was extraordinarily intelligent and agreeable, and her
- heart beat faster when he was with her. He had a tall fair easy presence
- and a mind in which the lights of irony played pleasantly through the
- shades of feeling. She liked to hear his voice almost as much as to
- listen to what he was saying, and to listen to what he was saying almost
- as much as to feel that he was looking at her; but he wanted to kiss
- her, and she wanted to talk to him about books and pictures, and have
- him insinuate the eternal theme of their love into every subject they
- discussed.
- Whenever they were apart a reaction set in. She wondered how she could
- have been so cold, called herself a prude and an idiot, questioned if
- any man could really care for her, and got up in the dead of night to
- try new ways of doing her hair. But as soon as he reappeared her head
- straightened itself on her slim neck and she sped her little shafts of
- irony, or flew her little kites of erudition, while hot and cold waves
- swept over her, and the things she really wanted to say choked in her
- throat and burned the palms of her hands.
- Often she told herself that any silly girl who had waltzed through a
- season would know better than she how to attract a man and hold him; but
- when she said “a man” she did not really mean George Darrow.
- Then one day, at a dinner, she saw him sitting next to one of the silly
- girls in question: the heroine of the elopement which had shaken West
- Fifty-fifth Street to its base. The young lady had come back from her
- adventure no less silly than when she went; and across the table the
- partner of her flight, a fat young man with eye-glasses, sat stolidly
- eating terrapin and talking about polo and investments.
- The young woman was undoubtedly as silly as ever; yet after watching
- her for a few minutes Miss Summers perceived that she had somehow grown
- luminous, perilous, obscurely menacing to nice girls and the young men
- they intended eventually to accept. Suddenly, at the sight, a rage of
- possessorship awoke in her. She must save Darrow, assert her right
- to him at any price. Pride and reticence went down in a hurricane
- of jealousy. She heard him laugh, and there was something new in his
- laugh...She watched him talking, talking...He sat slightly sideways, a
- faint smile beneath his lids, lowering his voice as he lowered it when
- he talked to her. She caught the same inflections, but his eyes were
- different. It would have offended her once if he had looked at her like
- that. Now her one thought was that none but she had a right to be so
- looked at. And that girl of all others! What illusions could he have
- about a girl who, hardly a year ago, had made a fool of herself over
- the fat young man stolidly eating terrapin across the table? If that
- was where romance and passion ended, it was better to take to district
- visiting or algebra!
- All night she lay awake and wondered: “What was she saying to him? How
- shall I learn to say such things?” and she decided that her heart would
- tell her--that the next time they were alone together the irresistible
- word would spring to her lips. He came the next day, and they were
- alone, and all she found was: “I didn’t know that you and Kitty Mayne
- were such friends.”
- He answered with indifference that he didn’t know it either, and in the
- reaction of relief she declared: “She’s certainly ever so much prettier
- than she was...”
- “She’s rather good fun,” he admitted, as though he had not noticed her
- other advantages; and suddenly Anna saw in his eyes the look she had
- seen there the previous evening.
- She felt as if he were leagues and leagues away from her. All her hopes
- dissolved, and she was conscious of sitting rigidly, with high head and
- straight lips, while the irresistible word fled with a last wing-beat
- into the golden mist of her illusions...
- She was still quivering with the pain and bewilderment of this adventure
- when Fraser Leath appeared. She met him first in Italy, where she was
- travelling with her parents; and the following winter he came to
- New York. In Italy he had seemed interesting: in New York he became
- remarkable. He seldom spoke of his life in Europe, and let drop but the
- most incidental allusions to the friends, the tastes, the pursuits which
- filled his cosmopolitan days; but in the atmosphere of West Fifty-fifth
- Street he seemed the embodiment of a storied past. He presented Miss
- Summers with a prettily-bound anthology of the old French poets and,
- when she showed a discriminating pleasure in the gift, observed with his
- grave smile: “I didn’t suppose I should find any one here who would feel
- about these things as I do.” On another occasion he asked her acceptance
- of a half-effaced eighteenth century pastel which he had surprisingly
- picked up in a New York auction-room. “I know no one but you who would
- really appreciate it,” he explained.
- He permitted himself no other comments, but these conveyed with
- sufficient directness that he thought her worthy of a different setting.
- That she should be so regarded by a man living in an atmosphere of art
- and beauty, and esteeming them the vital elements of life, made her
- feel for the first time that she was understood. Here was some one whose
- scale of values was the same as hers, and who thought her opinion
- worth hearing on the very matters which they both considered of supreme
- importance. The discovery restored her self-confidence, and she revealed
- herself to Mr. Leath as she had never known how to reveal herself to
- Darrow.
- As the courtship progressed, and they grew more confidential, her
- suitor surprised and delighted her by little explosions of revolutionary
- sentiment. He said: “Shall you mind, I wonder, if I tell you that you
- live in a dread-fully conventional atmosphere?” and, seeing that she
- manifestly did not mind: “Of course I shall say things now and then that
- will horrify your dear delightful parents--I shall shock them awfully, I
- warn you.”
- In confirmation of this warning he permitted himself an occasional
- playful fling at the regular church-going of Mr. and Mrs. Summers, at
- the innocuous character of the literature in their library, and at their
- guileless appreciations in art. He even ventured to banter Mrs. Summers
- on her refusal to receive the irrepressible Kitty Mayne who, after a
- rapid passage with George Darrow, was now involved in another and more
- flagrant adventure.
- “In Europe, you know, the husband is regarded as the only judge in such
- matters. As long as he accepts the situation--” Mr. Leath explained
- to Anna, who took his view the more emphatically in order to convince
- herself that, personally, she had none but the most tolerant sentiments
- toward the lady.
- The subversiveness of Mr. Leath’s opinions was enhanced by the
- distinction of his appearance and the reserve of his manners. He was
- like the anarchist with a gardenia in his buttonhole who figures in
- the higher melodrama. Every word, every allusion, every note of his
- agreeably-modulated voice, gave Anna a glimpse of a society at once
- freer and finer, which observed the traditional forms but had discarded
- the underlying prejudices; whereas the world she knew had discarded many
- of the forms and kept almost all the prejudices.
- In such an atmosphere as his an eager young woman, curious as to all the
- manifestations of life, yet instinctively desiring that they should come
- to her in terms of beauty and fine feeling, must surely find the largest
- scope for self-expression. Study, travel, the contact of the world, the
- comradeship of a polished and enlightened mind, would combine to enrich
- her days and form her character; and it was only in the rare moments
- when Mr. Leath’s symmetrical blond mask bent over hers, and his kiss
- dropped on her like a cold smooth pebble, that she questioned the
- completeness of the joys he offered.
- There had been a time when the walls on which her gaze now rested had
- shed a glare of irony on these early dreams. In the first years of her
- marriage the sober symmetry of Givre had suggested only her husband’s
- neatly-balanced mind. It was a mind, she soon learned, contentedly
- absorbed in formulating the conventions of the unconventional. West
- Fifty-fifth Street was no more conscientiously concerned than Givre with
- the momentous question of “what people did”; it was only the type of
- deed investigated that was different. Mr. Leath collected his social
- instances with the same seriousness and patience as his snuff-boxes.
- He exacted a rigid conformity to his rules of non-conformity and his
- scepticism had the absolute accent of a dogma. He even cherished certain
- exceptions to his rules as the book-collector prizes a “defective” first
- edition. The Protestant church-going of Anna’s parents had provoked
- his gentle sarcasm; but he prided himself on his mother’s devoutness,
- because Madame de Chantelle, in embracing her second husband’s creed,
- had become part of a society which still observes the outward rites of
- piety.
- Anna, in fact, had discovered in her amiable and elegant mother-in-law
- an unexpected embodiment of the West Fifty-fifth Street ideal. Mrs.
- Summers and Madame de Chantelle, however strongly they would have
- disagreed as to the authorized source of Christian dogma, would have
- found themselves completely in accord on all the momentous minutiae of
- drawing-room conduct; yet Mr. Leath treated his mother’s foibles with a
- respect which Anna’s experience of him forbade her to attribute wholly
- to filial affection.
- In the early days, when she was still questioning the Sphinx instead of
- trying to find an answer to it, she ventured to tax her husband with his
- inconsistency.
- “You say your mother won’t like it if I call on that amusing little
- woman who came here the other day, and was let in by mistake; but
- Madame de Chantelle tells me she lives with her husband, and when mother
- refused to visit Kitty Mayne you said----”
- Mr. Leath’s smile arrested her. “My dear child, I don’t pretend to apply
- the principles of logic to my poor mother’s prejudices.”
- “But if you admit that they ARE prejudices----?”
- “There are prejudices and prejudices. My mother, of course, got hers
- from Monsieur de Chantelle, and they seem to me as much in their place
- in this house as the pot-pourri in your hawthorn jar. They preserve a
- social tradition of which I should be sorry to lose the least perfume.
- Of course I don’t expect you, just at first, to feel the difference, to
- see the nuance. In the case of little Madame de Vireville, for instance:
- you point out that she’s still under her husband’s roof. Very true; and
- if she were merely a Paris acquaintance--especially if you had met her,
- as one still might, in the RIGHT KIND of house in Paris--I should be the
- last to object to your visiting her. But in the country it’s different.
- Even the best provincial society is what you would call narrow: I
- don’t deny it; and if some of our friends met Madame de Vireville at
- Givre--well, it would produce a bad impression. You’re inclined to
- ridicule such considerations, but gradually you’ll come to see their
- importance; and meanwhile, do trust me when I ask you to be guided by
- my mother. It is always well for a stranger in an old society to err a
- little on the side of what you call its prejudices but I should rather
- describe as its traditions.”
- After that she no longer tried to laugh or argue her husband out of his
- convictions. They WERE convictions, and therefore unassailable. Nor
- was any insincerity implied in the fact that they sometimes seemed to
- coincide with hers. There were occasions when he really did look at
- things as she did; but for reasons so different as to make the distance
- between them all the greater. Life, to Mr. Leath, was like a walk
- through a carefully classified museum, where, in moments of doubt, one
- had only to look at the number and refer to one’s catalogue; to his wife
- it was like groping about in a huge dark lumber-room where the exploring
- ray of curiosity lit up now some shape of breathing beauty and now a
- mummy’s grin.
- In the first bewilderment of her new state these discoveries had had the
- effect of dropping another layer of gauze between herself and reality.
- She seemed farther than ever removed from the strong joys and pangs for
- which she felt herself made. She did not adopt her husband’s views, but
- insensibly she began to live his life. She tried to throw a compensating
- ardour into the secret excursions of her spirit, and thus the old
- vicious distinction between romance and reality was re-established for
- her, and she resigned herself again to the belief that “real life” was
- neither real nor alive.
- The birth of her little girl swept away this delusion. At last she felt
- herself in contact with the actual business of living: but even this
- impression was not enduring.
- Everything but the irreducible crude fact of child-bearing assumed, in
- the Leath household, the same ghostly tinge of unreality. Her husband,
- at the time, was all that his own ideal of a husband required. He was
- attentive, and even suitably moved: but as he sat by her bedside, and
- thoughtfully proffered to her the list of people who had “called to
- enquire”, she looked first at him, and then at the child between them,
- and wondered at the blundering alchemy of Nature...
- With the exception of the little girl herself, everything connected with
- that time had grown curiously remote and unimportant. The days that had
- moved so slowly as they passed seemed now to have plunged down head-long
- steeps of time; and as she sat in the autumn sun, with Darrow’s letter
- in her hand, the history of Anna Leath appeared to its heroine like some
- grey shadowy tale that she might have read in an old book, one night as
- she was falling asleep...
- X
- Two brown blurs emerging from the farther end of the wood-vista
- gradually defined themselves as her step-son and an attendant
- game-keeper. They grew slowly upon the bluish background, with
- occasional delays and re-effacements, and she sat still, waiting till
- they should reach the gate at the end of the drive, where the keeper
- would turn off to his cottage and Owen continue on to the house.
- She watched his approach with a smile. From the first days of her
- marriage she had been drawn to the boy, but it was not until after
- Effie’s birth that she had really begun to know him. The eager
- observation of her own child had shown her how much she had still to
- learn about the slight fair boy whom the holidays periodically restored
- to Givre. Owen, even then, both physically and morally, furnished her
- with the oddest of commentaries on his father’s mien and mind. He would
- never, the family sighingly recognized, be nearly as handsome as Mr.
- Leath; but his rather charmingly unbalanced face, with its brooding
- forehead and petulant boyish smile, suggested to Anna what his father’s
- countenance might have been could one have pictured its neat features
- disordered by a rattling breeze. She even pushed the analogy farther,
- and descried in her step-son’s mind a quaintly-twisted reflection of
- her husband’s. With his bursts of door-slamming activity, his fits of
- bookish indolence, his crude revolutionary dogmatizing and his flashes
- of precocious irony, the boy was not unlike a boisterous embodiment of
- his father’s theories. It was as though Fraser Leath’s ideas, accustomed
- to hang like marionettes on their pegs, should suddenly come down
- and walk. There were moments, indeed, when Owen’s humours must have
- suggested to his progenitor the gambols of an infant Frankenstein; but
- to Anna they were the voice of her secret rebellions, and her tenderness
- to her step-son was partly based on her severity toward herself. As he
- had the courage she had lacked, so she meant him to have the chances
- she had missed; and every effort she made for him helped to keep her own
- hopes alive.
- Her interest in Owen led her to think more often of his mother, and
- sometimes she would slip away and stand alone before her predecessor’s
- portrait. Since her arrival at Givre the picture--a “full-length” by a
- once fashionable artist--had undergone the successive displacements of
- an exiled consort removed farther and farther from the throne; and
- Anna could not help noting that these stages coincided with the gradual
- decline of the artist’s fame. She had a fancy that if his credit had
- been in the ascendant the first Mrs. Leath might have continued to
- throne over the drawing-room mantel-piece, even to the exclusion of
- her successor’s effigy. Instead of this, her peregrinations had finally
- landed her in the shrouded solitude of the billiard-room, an apartment
- which no one ever entered, but where it was understood that “the light
- was better,” or might have been if the shutters had not been always
- closed.
- Here the poor lady, elegantly dressed, and seated in the middle of a
- large lonely canvas, in the blank contemplation of a gilt console, had
- always seemed to Anna to be waiting for visitors who never came.
- “Of course they never came, you poor thing! I wonder how long it
- took you to find out that they never would?” Anna had more than once
- apostrophized her, with a derision addressed rather to herself than to
- the dead; but it was only after Effie’s birth that it occurred to her to
- study more closely the face in the picture, and speculate on the kind of
- visitors that Owen’s mother might have hoped for.
- “She certainly doesn’t look as if they would have been the same kind as
- mine: but there’s no telling, from a portrait that was so obviously done
- ‘to please the family’, and that leaves Owen so unaccounted for. Well,
- they never came, the visitors; they never came; and she died of it. She
- died of it long before they buried her: I’m certain of that. Those are
- stone-dead eyes in the picture...The loneliness must have been awful, if
- even Owen couldn’t keep her from dying of it. And to feel it so she must
- have HAD feelings--real live ones, the kind that twitch and tug. And all
- she had to look at all her life was a gilt console--yes, that’s it, a
- gilt console screwed to the wall! That’s exactly and absolutely what he
- is!”
- She did not mean, if she could help it, that either Effie or Owen should
- know that loneliness, or let her know it again. They were three, now, to
- keep each other warm, and she embraced both children in the same passion
- of motherhood, as though one were not enough to shield her from her
- predecessor’s fate.
- Sometimes she fancied that Owen Leath’s response was warmer than that
- of her own child. But then Effie was still hardly more than a baby,
- and Owen, from the first, had been almost “old enough to understand”:
- certainly DID understand now, in a tacit way that yet perpetually spoke
- to her. This sense of his understanding was the deepest element in their
- feeling for each other. There were so many things between them that were
- never spoken of, or even indirectly alluded to, yet that, even in their
- occasional discussions and differences, formed the unadduced arguments
- making for final agreement...
- Musing on this, she continued to watch his approach; and her heart began
- to beat a little faster at the thought of what she had to say to him.
- But when he reached the gate she saw him pause, and after a moment he
- turned aside as if to gain a cross-road through the park.
- She started up and waved her sunshade, but he did not see her. No doubt
- he meant to go back with the gamekeeper, perhaps to the kennels, to see
- a retriever who had hurt his leg. Suddenly she was seized by the whim
- to overtake him. She threw down the parasol, thrust her letter into her
- bodice, and catching up her skirts began to run.
- She was slight and light, with a natural ease and quickness of gait, but
- she could not recall having run a yard since she had romped with Owen in
- his school-days; nor did she know what impulse moved her now. She only
- knew that run she must, that no other motion, short of flight, would
- have been buoyant enough for her humour. She seemed to be keeping pace
- with some inward rhythm, seeking to give bodily expression to the lyric
- rush of her thoughts. The earth always felt elastic under her, and she
- had a conscious joy in treading it; but never had it been as soft and
- springy as today. It seemed actually to rise and meet her as she went,
- so that she had the feeling, which sometimes came to her in dreams, of
- skimming miraculously over short bright waves. The air, too, seemed to
- break in waves against her, sweeping by on its current all the slanted
- lights and moist sharp perfumes of the failing day. She panted to
- herself: “This is nonsense!” her blood hummed back: “But it’s glorious!”
- and she sped on till she saw that Owen had caught sight of her and was
- striding back in her direction.
- Then she stopped and waited, flushed and laughing, her hands clasped
- against the letter in her breast.
- “No, I’m not mad,” she called out; “but there’s something in the air
- today--don’t you feel it?--And I wanted to have a little talk with you,”
- she added as he came up to her, smiling at him and linking her arm in
- his.
- He smiled back, but above the smile she saw the shade of anxiety which,
- for the last two months, had kept its fixed line between his handsome
- eyes.
- “Owen, don’t look like that! I don’t want you to!” she said imperiously.
- He laughed. “You said that exactly like Effie. What do you want me to
- do? To race with you as I do Effie? But I shouldn’t have a show!” he
- protested, still with the little frown between his eyes.
- “Where are you going?” she asked.
- “To the kennels. But there’s not the least need. The vet has seen Garry
- and he’s all right. If there’s anything you wanted to tell me----”
- “Did I say there was? I just came out to meet you--I wanted to know if
- you’d had good sport.”
- The shadow dropped on him again. “None at all. The fact is I didn’t try.
- Jean and I have just been knocking about in the woods. I wasn’t in a
- sanguinary mood.”
- They walked on with the same light gait, so nearly of a height that
- keeping step came as naturally to them as breathing. Anna stole another
- look at the young face on a level with her own.
- “You DID say there was something you wanted to tell me,” her step-son
- began after a pause.
- “Well, there is.” She slackened her pace involuntarily, and they came to
- a pause and stood facing each other under the limes.
- “Is Darrow coming?” he asked.
- She seldom blushed, but at the question a sudden heat suffused her. She
- held her head high.
- “Yes: he’s coming. I’ve just heard. He arrives to-morrow. But that’s
- not----” She saw her blunder and tried to rectify it. “Or rather, yes,
- in a way it is my reason for wanting to speak to you----”
- “Because he’s coming?”
- “Because he’s not yet here.”
- “It’s about him, then?”
- He looked at her kindly, half-humourously, an almost fraternal wisdom in
- his smile.
- “About----? No, no: I meant that I wanted to speak today because it’s
- our last day alone together.”
- “Oh, I see.” He had slipped his hands into the pockets of his tweed
- shooting jacket and lounged along at her side, his eyes bent on the
- moist ruts of the drive, as though the matter had lost all interest for
- him.
- “Owen----”
- He stopped again and faced her. “Look here, my dear, it’s no sort of
- use.”
- “What’s no use?”
- “Anything on earth you can any of you say.”
- She challenged him: “Am I one of ‘any of you’?”
- He did not yield. “Well, then--anything on earth that even YOU can say.”
- “You don’t in the least know what I can say--or what I mean to.”
- “Don’t I, generally?”
- She gave him this point, but only to make another. “Yes; but this is
- particularly. I want to say...Owen, you’ve been admirable all through.”
- He broke into a laugh in which the odd elder-brotherly note was once
- more perceptible.
- “Admirable,” she emphasized. “And so has SHE.”
- “Oh, and so have you to HER!” His voice broke down to boyishness. “I’ve
- never lost sight of that for a minute. It’s been altogether easier for
- her, though,” he threw off presently.
- “On the whole, I suppose it has. Well----” she summed up with a laugh,
- “aren’t you all the better pleased to be told you’ve behaved as well as
- she?”
- “Oh, you know, I’ve not done it for you,” he tossed back at her, without
- the least note of hostility in the affected lightness of his tone.
- “Haven’t you, though, perhaps--the least bit? Because, after all, you
- knew I understood?”
- “You’ve been awfully kind about pretending to.”
- She laughed. “You don’t believe me? You must remember I had your
- grandmother to consider.”
- “Yes: and my father--and Effie, I suppose--and the outraged shades of
- Givre!” He paused, as if to lay more stress on the boyish sneer: “Do you
- likewise include the late Monsieur de Chantelle?”
- His step-mother did not appear to resent the thrust. She went on, in the
- same tone of affectionate persuasion: “Yes: I must have seemed to you
- too subject to Givre. Perhaps I have been. But you know that was not my
- real object in asking you to wait, to say nothing to your grandmother
- before her return.”
- He considered. “Your real object, of course, was to gain time.”
- “Yes--but for whom? Why not for YOU?”
- “For me?” He flushed up quickly. “You don’t mean----?”
- She laid her hand on his arm and looked gravely into his handsome eyes.
- “I mean that when your grandmother gets back from Ouchy I shall speak to
- her----” “You’ll speak to her...?”
- “Yes; if only you’ll promise to give me time----”
- “Time for her to send for Adelaide Painter?”
- “Oh, she’ll undoubtedly send for Adelaide Painter!”
- The allusion touched a spring of mirth in both their minds, and they
- exchanged a laughing look.
- “Only you must promise not to rush things. You must give me time to
- prepare Adelaide too,” Mrs. Leath went on.
- “Prepare her too?” He drew away for a better look at her. “Prepare her
- for what?”
- “Why, to prepare your grandmother! For your marriage. Yes, that’s what I
- mean. I’m going to see you through, you know----”
- His feint of indifference broke down and he caught her hand. “Oh, you
- dear divine thing! I didn’t dream----”
- “I know you didn’t.” She dropped her gaze and began to walk on slowly.
- “I can’t say you’ve convinced me of the wisdom of the step. Only I
- seem to see that other things matter more--and that not missing things
- matters most. Perhaps I’ve changed--or YOUR not changing has convinced
- me. I’m certain now that you won’t budge. And that was really all I ever
- cared about.”
- “Oh, as to not budging--I told you so months ago: you might have been
- sure of that! And how can you be any surer today than yesterday?”
- “I don’t know. I suppose one learns something every day----”
- “Not at Givre!” he laughed, and shot a half-ironic look at her. “But you
- haven’t really BEEN at Givre lately--not for months! Don’t you suppose
- I’ve noticed that, my dear?”
- She echoed his laugh to merge it in an undenying sigh. “Poor Givre...”
- “Poor empty Givre! With so many rooms full and yet not a soul in
- it--except of course my grandmother, who is its soul!”
- They had reached the gateway of the court and stood looking with a
- common accord at the long soft-hued facade on which the autumn light was
- dying. “It looks so made to be happy in----” she murmured.
- “Yes--today, today!” He pressed her arm a little. “Oh, you darling--to
- have given it that look for me!” He paused, and then went on in a lower
- voice: “Don’t you feel we owe it to the poor old place to do what we can
- to give it that look? You, too, I mean? Come, let’s make it grin
- from wing to wing! I’ve such a mad desire to say outrageous things to
- it--haven’t you? After all, in old times there must have been living
- people here!”
- Loosening her arm from his she continued to gaze up at the house-front,
- which seemed, in the plaintive decline of light, to send her back the
- mute appeal of something doomed.
- “It IS beautiful,” she said.
- “A beautiful memory! Quite perfect to take out and turn over when I’m
- grinding at the law in New York, and you’re----” He broke off and looked
- at her with a questioning smile. “Come! Tell me. You and I don’t have
- to say things to talk to each other. When you turn suddenly absentminded
- and mysterious I always feel like saying: ‘Come back. All is
- discovered’.”
- She returned his smile. “You know as much as I know. I promise you
- that.”
- He wavered, as if for the first time uncertain how far he might go. “I
- don’t know Darrow as much as you know him,” he presently risked.
- She frowned a little. “You said just now we didn’t need to say things”
- “Was I speaking? I thought it was your eyes----” He caught her by both
- elbows and spun her halfway round, so that the late sun shed a betraying
- gleam on her face. “They’re such awfully conversational eyes! Don’t you
- suppose they told me long ago why it’s just today you’ve made up your
- mind that people have got to live their own lives--even at Givre?”
- XI
- “This is the south terrace,” Anna said. “Should you like to walk down to
- the river?”
- She seemed to listen to herself speaking from a far-off airy height, and
- yet to be wholly gathered into the circle of consciousness which drew
- its glowing ring about herself and Darrow. To the aerial listener her
- words sounded flat and colourless, but to the self within the ring each
- one beat with a separate heart.
- It was the day after Darrow’s arrival, and he had come down early, drawn
- by the sweetness of the light on the lawns and gardens below his window.
- Anna had heard the echo of his step on the stairs, his pause in the
- stone-flagged hall, his voice as he asked a servant where to find her.
- She was at the end of the house, in the brown-panelled sitting-room
- which she frequented at that season because it caught the sunlight first
- and kept it longest. She stood near the window, in the pale band of
- brightness, arranging some salmon-pink geraniums in a shallow porcelain
- bowl. Every sensation of touch and sight was thrice-alive in her. The
- grey-green fur of the geranium leaves caressed her fingers and the
- sunlight wavering across the irregular surface of the old parquet floor
- made it seem as bright and shifting as the brown bed of a stream.
- Darrow stood framed in the door-way of the farthest drawing-room, a
- light-grey figure against the black and white flagging of the hall; then
- he began to move toward her down the empty pale-panelled vista, crossing
- one after another the long reflections which a projecting cabinet or
- screen cast here and there upon the shining floors.
- As he drew nearer, his figure was suddenly displaced by that of her
- husband, whom, from the same point, she had so often seen advancing down
- the same perspective. Straight, spare, erect, looking to right and
- left with quick precise turns of the head, and stopping now and then to
- straighten a chair or alter the position of a vase, Fraser Leath used
- to march toward her through the double file of furniture like a general
- reviewing a regiment drawn up for his inspection. At a certain point,
- midway across the second room, he always stopped before the mantel-piece
- of pinkish-yellow marble and looked at himself in the tall garlanded
- glass that surmounted it. She could not remember that he had ever found
- anything to straighten or alter in his own studied attire, but she had
- never known him to omit the inspection when he passed that particular
- mirror.
- When it was over he continued more briskly on his way, and the resulting
- expression of satisfaction was still on his face when he entered the oak
- sitting-room to greet his wife...
- The spectral projection of this little daily scene hung but for a moment
- before Anna, but in that moment she had time to fling a wondering glance
- across the distance between her past and present. Then the footsteps of
- the present came close, and she had to drop the geraniums to give her
- hand to Darrow...
- “Yes, let us walk down to the river.”
- They had neither of them, as yet, found much to say to each other.
- Darrow had arrived late on the previous afternoon, and during the
- evening they had had between them Owen Leath and their own thoughts. Now
- they were alone for the first time and the fact was enough in itself.
- Yet Anna was intensely aware that as soon as they began to talk more
- intimately they would feel that they knew each other less well.
- They passed out onto the terrace and down the steps to the gravel walk
- below. The delicate frosting of dew gave the grass a bluish shimmer, and
- the sunlight, sliding in emerald streaks along the tree-boles, gathered
- itself into great luminous blurs at the end of the wood-walks, and hung
- above the fields a watery glory like the ring about an autumn moon.
- “It’s good to be here,” Darrow said.
- They took a turn to the left and stopped for a moment to look back at
- the long pink house-front, plainer, friendlier, less adorned than on the
- side toward the court. So prolonged yet delicate had been the friction
- of time upon its bricks that certain expanses had the bloom and texture
- of old red velvet, and the patches of gold lichen spreading over them
- looked like the last traces of a dim embroidery. The dome of the chapel,
- with its gilded cross, rose above one wing, and the other ended in a
- conical pigeon-house, above which the birds were flying, lustrous and
- slatey, their breasts merged in the blue of the roof when they dropped
- down on it.
- “And this is where you’ve been all these years.”
- They turned away and began to walk down a long tunnel of yellowing
- trees. Benches with mossy feet stood against the mossy edges of the
- path, and at its farther end it widened into a circle about a basin
- rimmed with stone, in which the opaque water strewn with leaves looked
- like a slab of gold-flecked agate. The path, growing narrower, wound on
- circuitously through the woods, between slender serried trunks twined
- with ivy. Patches of blue appeared above them through the dwindling
- leaves, and presently the trees drew back and showed the open fields
- along the river.
- They walked on across the fields to the tow-path. In a curve of the wall
- some steps led up to a crumbling pavilion with openings choked with ivy.
- Anna and Darrow seated themselves on the bench projecting from the inner
- wall of the pavilion and looked across the river at the slopes divided
- into blocks of green and fawn-colour, and at the chalk-tinted village
- lifting its squat church-tower and grey roofs against the precisely
- drawn lines of the landscape. Anna sat silent, so intensely aware of
- Darrow’s nearness that there was no surprise in the touch he laid on her
- hand. They looked at each other, and he smiled and said: “There are to
- be no more obstacles now.”
- “Obstacles?” The word startled her. “What obstacles?”
- “Don’t you remember the wording of the telegram that turned me back
- last May? ‘Unforeseen obstacle’: that was it. What was the earth-shaking
- problem, by the way? Finding a governess for Effie, wasn’t it?”
- “But I gave you my reason: the reason why it was an obstacle. I wrote
- you fully about it.”
- “Yes, I know you did.” He lifted her hand and kissed it. “How far off it
- all seems, and how little it all matters today!”
- She looked at him quickly. “Do you feel that? I suppose I’m different. I
- want to draw all those wasted months into today--to make them a part of
- it.”
- “But they are, to me. You reach back and take everything--back to the
- first days of all.”
- She frowned a little, as if struggling with an inarticulate perplexity.
- “It’s curious how, in those first days, too, something that I didn’t
- understand came between us.”
- “Oh, in those days we neither of us understood, did we? It’s part of
- what’s called the bliss of being young.”
- “Yes, I thought that, too: thought it, I mean, in looking back. But it
- couldn’t, even then, have been as true of you as of me; and now----”
- “Now,” he said, “the only thing that matters is that we’re sitting here
- together.”
- He dismissed the rest with a lightness that might have seemed conclusive
- evidence of her power over him. But she took no pride in such triumphs.
- It seemed to her that she wanted his allegiance and his adoration not so
- much for herself as for their mutual love, and that in treating lightly
- any past phase of their relation he took something from its present
- beauty. The colour rose to her face.
- “Between you and me everything matters.”
- “Of course!” She felt the unperceiving sweetness of his smile. “That’s
- why,” he went on, “‘everything,’ for me, is here and now: on this bench,
- between you and me.”
- She caught at the phrase. “That’s what I meant: it’s here and now; we
- can’t get away from it.”
- “Get away from it? Do you want to? AGAIN?”
- Her heart was beating unsteadily. Something in her, fitfully and with
- reluctance, struggled to free itself, but the warmth of his nearness
- penetrated every sense as the sunlight steeped the landscape. Then,
- suddenly, she felt that she wanted no less than the whole of her
- happiness.
- “‘Again’? But wasn’t it YOU, the last time----?”
- She paused, the tremor in her of Psyche holding up the lamp. But in the
- interrogative light of her pause her companion’s features underwent no
- change.
- “The last time? Last spring? But it was you who--for the best of
- reasons, as you’ve told me--turned me back from your very door last
- spring!”
- She saw that he was good-humouredly ready to “thresh out,” for her
- sentimental satisfaction, a question which, for his own, Time had so
- conclusively dealt with; and the sense of his readiness reassured her.
- “I wrote as soon as I could,” she rejoined. “I explained the delay and
- asked you to come. And you never even answered my letter.”
- “It was impossible to come then. I had to go back to my post.”
- “And impossible to write and tell me so?”
- “Your letter was a long time coming. I had waited a week--ten days. I
- had some excuse for thinking, when it came, that you were in no great
- hurry for an answer.”
- “You thought that--really--after reading it?”
- “I thought it.”
- Her heart leaped up to her throat. “Then why are you here today?”
- He turned on her with a quick look of wonder. “God knows--if you can ask
- me that!”
- “You see I was right to say I didn’t understand.”
- He stood up abruptly and stood facing her, blocking the view over the
- river and the checkered slopes. “Perhaps I might say so too.”
- “No, no: we must neither of us have any reason for saying it again.”
- She looked at him gravely. “Surely you and I needn’t arrange the lights
- before we show ourselves to each other. I want you to see me just as I
- am, with all my irrational doubts and scruples; the old ones and the new
- ones too.”
- He came back to his seat beside her. “Never mind the old ones. They were
- justified--I’m willing to admit it. With the governess having suddenly
- to be packed off, and Effie on your hands, and your mother-in-law ill,
- I see the impossibility of your letting me come. I even see that, at the
- moment, it was difficult to write and explain. But what does all that
- matter now? The new scruples are the ones I want to tackle.”
- Again her heart trembled. She felt her happiness so near, so sure, that
- to strain it closer might be like a child’s crushing a pet bird in its
- caress. But her very security urged her on. For so long her doubts had
- been knife-edged: now they had turned into bright harmless toys that she
- could toss and catch without peril!
- “You didn’t come, and you didn’t answer my letter; and after waiting
- four months I wrote another.” “And I answered that one; and I’m here.”
- “Yes.” She held his eyes. “But in my last letter I repeated exactly what
- I’d said in the first--the one I wrote you last June. I told you then
- that I was ready to give you the answer to what you’d asked me in
- London; and in telling you that, I told you what the answer was.”
- “My dearest! My dearest!” Darrow murmured.
- “You ignored that letter. All summer you made no sign. And all I ask now
- is, that you should frankly tell me why.”
- “I can only repeat what I’ve just said. I was hurt and unhappy and
- I doubted you. I suppose if I’d cared less I should have been more
- confident. I cared so much that I couldn’t risk another failure. For
- you’d made me feel that I’d miserably failed. So I shut my eyes and set
- my teeth and turned my back. There’s the whole pusillanimous truth of
- it!”
- “Oh, if it’s the WHOLE truth!----” She let him clasp her. “There’s my
- torment, you see. I thought that was what your silence meant till I made
- you break it. Now I want to be sure that I was right.”
- “What can I tell you to make you sure?”
- “You can let me tell YOU everything first.” She drew away, but without
- taking her hands from him. “Owen saw you in Paris,” she began.
- She looked at him and he faced her steadily. The light was full on his
- pleasantly-browned face, his grey eyes, his frank white forehead. She
- noticed for the first time a seal-ring in a setting of twisted silver on
- the hand he had kept on hers.
- “In Paris? Oh, yes...So he did.”
- “He came back and told me. I think you talked to him a moment in a
- theatre. I asked if you’d spoken of my having put you off--or if you’d
- sent me any message. He didn’t remember that you had.”
- “In a crush--in a Paris foyer? My dear!”
- “It was absurd of me! But Owen and I have always been on odd kind of
- brother-and-sister terms. I think he guessed about us when he saw you
- with me in London. So he teased me a little and tried to make me curious
- about you; and when he saw he’d succeeded he told me he hadn’t had time
- to say much to you because you were in such a hurry to get back to the
- lady you were with.”
- He still held her hands, but she felt no tremor in his, and the blood
- did not stir in his brown cheek. He seemed to be honestly turning over
- his memories. “Yes: and what else did he tell you?”
- “Oh, not much, except that she was awfully pretty. When I asked him
- to describe her he said you had her tucked away in a baignoire and he
- hadn’t actually seen her; but he saw the tail of her cloak, and somehow
- knew from that that she was pretty. One DOES, you know...I think he said
- the cloak was pink.”
- Darrow broke into a laugh. “Of course it was--they always are! So that
- was at the bottom of your doubts?”
- “Not at first. I only laughed. But afterward, when I wrote you and you
- didn’t answer----Oh, you DO see?” she appealed to him.
- He was looking at her gently. “Yes: I see.”
- “It’s not as if this were a light thing between us. I want you to know
- me as I am. If I thought that at that moment ... when you were on your way
- here, almost----”
- He dropped her hand and stood up. “Yes, yes--I understand.”
- “But do you?” Her look followed him. “I’m not a goose of a girl. I
- know ... of course I KNOW...but there are things a woman feels ... when
- what she knows doesn’t make any difference. It’s not that I want you to
- explain--I mean about that particular evening. It’s only that I want you
- to have the whole of my feeling. I didn’t know what it was till I saw
- you again. I never dreamed I should say such things to you!”
- “I never dreamed I should be here to hear you say them!” He turned back
- and lifting a floating end of her scarf put his lips to it. “But now
- that you have, I know--I know,” he smiled down at her.
- “You know?”
- “That this is no light thing between us. Now you may ask me anything you
- please! That was all I wanted to ask YOU.”
- For a long moment they looked at each other without speaking. She saw
- the dancing spirit in his eyes turn grave and darken to a passionate
- sternness. He stooped and kissed her, and she sat as if folded in wings.
- XII
- It was in the natural order of things that, on the way back to the
- house, their talk should have turned to the future.
- Anna was not eager to define it. She had an extraordinary sensitiveness
- to the impalpable elements of happiness, and as she walked at Darrow’s
- side her imagination flew back and forth, spinning luminous webs of
- feeling between herself and the scene about her. Every heightening of
- emotion produced for her a new effusion of beauty in visible things, and
- with it the sense that such moments should be lingered over and absorbed
- like some unrenewable miracle. She understood Darrow’s impatience to see
- their plans take shape. She knew it must be so, she would not have had
- it otherwise; but to reach a point where she could fix her mind on his
- appeal for dates and decisions was like trying to break her way through
- the silver tangle of an April wood.
- Darrow wished to use his diplomatic opportunities as a means of studying
- certain economic and social problems with which he presently hoped to
- deal in print; and with this in view he had asked for, and obtained, a
- South American appointment. Anna was ready to follow where he led, and
- not reluctant to put new sights as well as new thoughts between herself
- and her past. She had, in a direct way, only Effie and Effie’s education
- to consider; and there seemed, after due reflection, no reason why the
- most anxious regard for these should not be conciliated with the demands
- of Darrow’s career. Effie, it was evident, could be left to Madame de
- Chantelle’s care till the couple should have organized their life; and
- she might even, as long as her future step-father’s work retained him
- in distant posts, continue to divide her year between Givre and the
- antipodes.
- As for Owen, who had reached his legal majority two years before, and
- was soon to attain the age fixed for the taking over of his paternal
- inheritance, the arrival of this date would reduce his step-mother’s
- responsibility to a friendly concern for his welfare. This made for the
- prompt realization of Darrow’s wishes, and there seemed no reason why
- the marriage should not take place within the six weeks that remained of
- his leave.
- They passed out of the wood-walk into the open brightness of the garden.
- The noon sunlight sheeted with gold the bronze flanks of the polygonal
- yews. Chrysanthemums, russet, saffron and orange, glowed like the
- efflorescence of an enchanted forest; belts of red begonia purpling to
- wine-colour ran like smouldering flame among the borders; and above
- this outspread tapestry the house extended its harmonious length, the
- soberness of its lines softened to grace in the luminous misty air.
- Darrow stood still, and Anna felt that his glance was travelling from
- her to the scene about them and then back to her face.
- “You’re sure you’re prepared to give up Givre? You look so made for each
- other!”
- “Oh, Givre----” She broke off suddenly, feeling as if her too careless
- tone had delivered all her past into his hands; and with one of her
- instinctive movements of recoil she added: “When Owen marries I shall
- have to give it up.”
- “When Owen marries? That’s looking some distance ahead! I want to be
- told that meanwhile you’ll have no regrets.”
- She hesitated. Why did he press her to uncover to him her poor starved
- past? A vague feeling of loyalty, a desire to spare what could no
- longer harm her, made her answer evasively: “There will probably be no
- ‘meanwhile.’ Owen may marry before long.”
- She had not meant to touch on the subject, for her step-son had sworn
- her to provisional secrecy; but since the shortness of Darrow’s leave
- necessitated a prompt adjustment of their own plans, it was, after all,
- inevitable that she should give him at least a hint of Owen’s.
- “Owen marry? Why, he always seems like a faun in flannels! I hope he’s
- found a dryad. There might easily be one left in these blue-and-gold
- woods.”
- “I can’t tell you yet where he found his dryad, but she IS one, I
- believe: at any rate she’ll become the Givre woods better than I do.
- Only there may be difficulties----”
- “Well! At that age they’re not always to be wished away.”
- She hesitated. “Owen, at any rate, has made up his mind to overcome
- them; and I’ve promised to see him through.”
- She went on, after a moment’s consideration, to explain that her
- step-son’s choice was, for various reasons, not likely to commend itself
- to his grandmother. “She must be prepared for it, and I’ve promised to
- do the preparing. You know I always HAVE seen him through things, and he
- rather counts on me now.”
- She fancied that Darrow’s exclamation had in it a faint note of
- annoyance, and wondered if he again suspected her of seeking a pretext
- for postponement.
- “But once Owen’s future is settled, you won’t, surely, for the sake
- of what you call seeing him through, ask that I should go away again
- without you?” He drew her closer as they walked. “Owen will understand,
- if you don’t. Since he’s in the same case himself I’ll throw myself on
- his mercy. He’ll see that I have the first claim on you; he won’t even
- want you not to see it.”
- “Owen sees everything: I’m not afraid of that. But his future isn’t
- settled. He’s very young to marry--too young, his grandmother is sure to
- think--and the marriage he wants to make is not likely to convince her
- to the contrary.”
- “You don’t mean that it’s like his first choice?”
- “Oh, no! But it’s not what Madame de Chantelle would call a good match;
- it’s not even what I call a wise one.”
- “Yet you’re backing him up?”
- “Yet I’m backing him up.” She paused. “I wonder if you’ll understand?
- What I’ve most wanted for him, and shall want for Effie, is that
- they shall always feel free to make their own mistakes, and never, if
- possible, be persuaded to make other people’s. Even if Owen’s marriage
- is a mistake, and has to be paid for, I believe he’ll learn and grow in
- the paying. Of course I can’t make Madame de Chantelle see this; but I
- can remind her that, with his character--his big rushes of impulse,
- his odd intervals of ebb and apathy--she may drive him into some worse
- blunder if she thwarts him now.”
- “And you mean to break the news to her as soon as she comes back from
- Ouchy?”
- “As soon as I see my way to it. She knows the girl and likes her: that’s
- our hope. And yet it may, in the end, prove our danger, make it harder
- for us all, when she learns the truth, than if Owen had chosen a
- stranger. I can’t tell you more till I’ve told her: I’ve promised Owen
- not to tell any one. All I ask you is to give me time, to give me a few
- days at any rate She’s been wonderfully ‘nice,’ as she would call it,
- about you, and about the fact of my having soon to leave Givre; but
- that, again, may make it harder for Owen. At any rate, you can see,
- can’t you, how it makes me want to stand by him? You see, I couldn’t
- bear it if the least fraction of my happiness seemed to be stolen from
- his--as if it were a little scrap of happiness that had to be pieced out
- with other people’s!” She clasped her hands on Darrow’s arm. “I want
- our life to be like a house with all the windows lit: I’d like to string
- lanterns from the roof and chimneys!”
- She ended with an inward tremor. All through her exposition and her
- appeal she had told herself that the moment could hardly have been less
- well chosen. In Darrow’s place she would have felt, as he doubtless
- did, that her carefully developed argument was only the disguise of an
- habitual indecision. It was the hour of all others when she would have
- liked to affirm herself by brushing aside every obstacle to his wishes;
- yet it was only by opposing them that she could show the strength of
- character she wanted him to feel in her.
- But as she talked she began to see that Darrow’s face gave back no
- reflection of her words, that he continued to wear the abstracted look
- of a man who is not listening to what is said to him. It caused her a
- slight pang to discover that his thoughts could wander at such a moment;
- then, with a flush of joy she perceived the reason.
- In some undefinable way she had become aware, without turning her
- head, that he was steeped in the sense of her nearness, absorbed in
- contemplating the details of her face and dress; and the discovery
- made the words throng to her lips. She felt herself speak with ease,
- authority, conviction. She said to herself: “He doesn’t care what I
- say--it’s enough that I say it--even if it’s stupid he’ll like me better
- for it...” She knew that every inflexion of her voice, every gesture,
- every characteristic of her person--its very defects, the fact that her
- forehead was too high, that her eyes were not large enough, that her
- hands, though slender, were not small, and that the fingers did not
- taper--she knew that these deficiencies were so many channels through
- which her influence streamed to him; that she pleased him in spite of
- them, perhaps because of them; that he wanted her as she was, and not as
- she would have liked to be; and for the first time she felt in her veins
- the security and lightness of happy love.
- They reached the court and walked under the limes toward the house. The
- hall door stood wide, and through the windows opening on the terrace the
- sun slanted across the black and white floor, the faded tapestry chairs,
- and Darrow’s travelling coat and cap, which lay among the cloaks and
- rugs piled on a bench against the wall.
- The sight of these garments, lying among her own wraps, gave her a sense
- of homely intimacy. It was as if her happiness came down from the skies
- and took on the plain dress of daily things. At last she seemed to hold
- it in her hand.
- As they entered the hall her eye lit on an unstamped note conspicuously
- placed on the table.
- “From Owen! He must have rushed off somewhere in the motor.”
- She felt a secret stir of pleasure at the immediate inference that she
- and Darrow would probably lunch alone. Then she opened the note and
- stared at it in wonder.
- “Dear,” Owen wrote, “after what you said yesterday I can’t wait another
- hour, and I’m off to Francheuil, to catch the Dijon express and travel
- back with them. Don’t be frightened; I won’t speak unless it’s safe to.
- Trust me for that--but I had to go.”
- She looked up slowly.
- “He’s gone to Dijon to meet his grandmother. Oh, I hope I haven’t made a
- mistake!”
- “You? Why, what have you to do with his going to Dijon?”
- She hesitated. “The day before yesterday I told him, for the first time,
- that I meant to see him through, no matter what happened. And I’m afraid
- he’s lost his head, and will be imprudent and spoil things. You see, I
- hadn’t meant to say a word to him till I’d had time to prepare Madame de
- Chantelle.”
- She felt that Darrow was looking at her and reading her thoughts, and
- the colour flew to her face. “Yes: it was when I heard you were coming
- that I told him. I wanted him to feel as I felt ... it seemed too unkind
- to make him wait!” Her hand was in his, and his arm rested for a moment
- on her shoulder.
- “It WOULD have been too unkind to make him wait.”
- They moved side by side toward the stairs. Through the haze of bliss
- enveloping her, Owen’s affairs seemed curiously unimportant and remote.
- Nothing really mattered but this torrent of light in her veins. She put
- her foot on the lowest step, saying: “It’s nearly luncheon time--I must
- take off my hat...” and as she started up the stairs Darrow stood below
- in the hall and watched her. But the distance between them did not make
- him seem less near: it was as if his thoughts moved with her and touched
- her like endearing hands.
- In her bedroom she shut the door and stood still, looking about her in
- a fit of dreamy wonder. Her feelings were unlike any she had ever known:
- richer, deeper, more complete. For the first time everything in her,
- from head to foot, seemed to be feeding the same full current of
- sensation.
- She took off her hat and went to the dressing-table to smooth her hair.
- The pressure of the hat had flattened the dark strands on her forehead;
- her face was paler than usual, with shadows about the eyes. She felt a
- pang of regret for the wasted years. “If I look like this today,” she
- said to herself, “what will he think of me when I’m ill or worried?” She
- began to run her fingers through her hair, rejoicing in its thickness;
- then she desisted and sat still, resting her chin on her hands.
- “I want him to see me as I am,” she thought.
- Deeper than the deepest fibre of her vanity was the triumphant sense
- that AS SHE WAS, with her flattened hair, her tired pallor, her thin
- sleeves a little tumbled by the weight of her jacket, he would like her
- even better, feel her nearer, dearer, more desirable, than in all the
- splendours she might put on for him. In the light of this discovery she
- studied her face with a new intentness, seeing its defects as she had
- never seen them, yet seeing them through a kind of radiance, as though
- love were a luminous medium into which she had been bodily plunged.
- She was glad now that she had confessed her doubts and her jealousy.
- She divined that a man in love may be flattered by such involuntary
- betrayals, that there are moments when respect for his liberty appeals
- to him less than the inability to respect it: moments so propitious
- that a woman’s very mistakes and indiscretions may help to establish her
- dominion. The sense of power she had been aware of in talking to Darrow
- came back with ten-fold force. She felt like testing him by the most
- fantastic exactions, and at the same moment she longed to humble herself
- before him, to make herself the shadow and echo of his mood. She wanted
- to linger with him in a world of fancy and yet to walk at his side in
- the world of fact. She wanted him to feel her power and yet to love her
- for her ignorance and humility. She felt like a slave, and a goddess,
- and a girl in her teens...
- XIII
- Darrow, late that evening, threw himself into an armchair before his
- fire and mused.
- The room was propitious to meditation. The red-veiled lamp, the corners
- of shadow, the splashes of firelight on the curves of old full-bodied
- wardrobes and cabinets, gave it an air of intimacy increased by its
- faded hangings, its slightly frayed and threadbare rugs. Everything in
- it was harmoniously shabby, with a subtle sought-for shabbiness in which
- Darrow fancied he discerned the touch of Fraser Leath. But Fraser Leath
- had grown so unimportant a factor in the scheme of things that these
- marks of his presence caused the young man no emotion beyond that of a
- faint retrospective amusement.
- The afternoon and evening had been perfect.
- After a moment of concern over her step-son’s departure, Anna had
- surrendered herself to her happiness with an impetuosity that Darrow had
- never suspected in her. Early in the afternoon they had gone out in the
- motor, traversing miles of sober-tinted landscape in which, here and
- there, a scarlet vineyard flamed, clattering through the streets of
- stony villages, coming out on low slopes above the river, or winding
- through the pale gold of narrow wood-roads with the blue of clear-cut
- hills at their end. Over everything lay a faint sunshine that seemed
- dissolved in the still air, and the smell of wet roots and decaying
- leaves was merged in the pungent scent of burning underbrush. Once, at
- the turn of a wall, they stopped the motor before a ruined gateway and,
- stumbling along a road full of ruts, stood before a little old deserted
- house, fantastically carved and chimneyed, which lay in a moat under the
- shade of ancient trees. They paced the paths between the trees, found
- a mouldy Temple of Love on an islet among reeds and plantains, and,
- sitting on a bench in the stable-yard, watched the pigeons circling
- against the sunset over their cot of patterned brick. Then the motor
- flew on into the dusk...
- When they came in they sat beside the fire in the oak drawing-room,
- and Darrow noticed how delicately her head stood out against the sombre
- panelling, and mused on the enjoyment there would always be in the mere
- fact of watching her hands as they moved about among the tea-things...
- They dined late, and facing her across the table, with its low lights
- and flowers, he felt an extraordinary pleasure in seeing her again in
- evening dress, and in letting his eyes dwell on the proud shy set of her
- head, the way her dark hair clasped it, and the girlish thinness of her
- neck above the slight swell of the breast. His imagination was struck
- by the quality of reticence in her beauty. She suggested a fine portrait
- kept down to a few tones, or a Greek vase on which the play of light is
- the only pattern.
- After dinner they went out on the terrace for a look at the moon-misted
- park. Through the crepuscular whiteness the trees hung in blotted
- masses. Below the terrace, the garden drew its dark diagrams between
- statues that stood like muffled conspirators on the edge of the shadow.
- Farther off, the meadows unrolled a silver-shot tissue to the mantling
- of mist above the river; and the autumn stars trembled overhead like
- their own reflections seen in dim water.
- He lit his cigar, and they walked slowly up and down the flags in the
- languid air, till he put an arm about her, saying: “You mustn’t stay
- till you’re chilled”; then they went back into the room and drew up
- their chairs to the fire.
- It seemed only a moment later that she said: “It must be after eleven,”
- and stood up and looked down on him, smiling faintly. He sat
- still, absorbing the look, and thinking: “There’ll be evenings and
- evenings”--till she came nearer, bent over him, and with a hand on his
- shoulder said: “Good night.”
- He got to his feet and put his arms about her.
- “Good night,” he answered, and held her fast; and they gave each other a
- long kiss of promise and communion.
- The memory of it glowed in him still as he sat over his crumbling fire;
- but beneath his physical exultation he felt a certain gravity of mood.
- His happiness was in some sort the rallying-point of many scattered
- purposes. He summed it up vaguely by saying to himself that to be loved
- by a woman like that made “all the difference”...He was a little tired
- of experimenting on life; he wanted to “take a line”, to follow things
- up, to centralize and concentrate, and produce results. Two or three
- more years of diplomacy--with her beside him!--and then their real life
- would begin: study, travel and book-making for him, and for her--well,
- the joy, at any rate, of getting out of an atmosphere of bric-a-brac and
- card-leaving into the open air of competing activities.
- The desire for change had for some time been latent in him, and his
- meeting with Mrs. Leath the previous spring had given it a definite
- direction. With such a comrade to focus and stimulate his energies he
- felt modestly but agreeably sure of “doing something”. And under this
- assurance was the lurking sense that he was somehow worthy of his
- opportunity. His life, on the whole, had been a creditable affair. Out
- of modest chances and middling talents he had built himself a fairly
- marked personality, known some exceptional people, done a number of
- interesting and a few rather difficult things, and found himself, at
- thirty-seven, possessed of an intellectual ambition sufficient to occupy
- the passage to a robust and energetic old age. As for the private and
- personal side of his life, it had come up to the current standards, and
- if it had dropped, now and then, below a more ideal measure, even these
- declines had been brief, parenthetic, incidental. In the recognized
- essentials he had always remained strictly within the limit of his
- scruples.
- From this reassuring survey of his case he came back to the
- contemplation of its crowning felicity. His mind turned again to his
- first meeting with Anna Summers and took up one by one the threads of
- their faintly sketched romance. He dwelt with pardonable pride on
- the fact that fate had so early marked him for the high privilege of
- possessing her: it seemed to mean that they had really, in the truest
- sense of the ill-used phrase, been made for each other.
- Deeper still than all these satisfactions was the mere elemental sense
- of well-being in her presence. That, after all, was what proved her to
- be the woman for him: the pleasure he took in the set of her head, the
- way her hair grew on her forehead and at the nape, her steady gaze when
- he spoke, the grave freedom of her gait and gestures. He recalled every
- detail of her face, the fine veinings of the temples, the bluish-brown
- shadows in her upper lids, and the way the reflections of two stars
- seemed to form and break up in her eyes when he held her close to him...
- If he had had any doubt as to the nature of her feeling for him those
- dissolving stars would have allayed it. She was reserved, she was shy
- even, was what the shallow and effusive would call “cold”. She was like
- a picture so hung that it can be seen only at a certain angle: an angle
- known to no one but its possessor. The thought flattered his sense
- of possessorship...He felt that the smile on his lips would have been
- fatuous had it had a witness. He was thinking of her look when she had
- questioned him about his meeting with Owen at the theatre: less of her
- words than of her look, and of the effort the question cost her: the
- reddening of her cheek, the deepening of the strained line between her
- brows, the way her eyes sought shelter and then turned and drew on him.
- Pride and passion were in the conflict--magnificent qualities in a wife!
- The sight almost made up for his momentary embarrassment at the rousing
- of a memory which had no place in his present picture of himself.
- Yes! It was worth a good deal to watch that fight between her instinct
- and her intelligence, and know one’s self the object of the struggle...
- Mingled with these sensations were considerations of another order. He
- reflected with satisfaction that she was the kind of woman with whom
- one would like to be seen in public. It would be distinctly agreeable
- to follow her into drawing-rooms, to walk after her down the aisle of a
- theatre, to get in and out of trains with her, to say “my wife” of her
- to all sorts of people. He draped these details in the handsome
- phrase “She’s a woman to be proud of”, and felt that this fact somehow
- justified and ennobled his instinctive boyish satisfaction in loving
- her.
- He stood up, rambled across the room and leaned out for a while into
- the starry night. Then he dropped again into his armchair with a sigh of
- deep content.
- “Oh, hang it,” he suddenly exclaimed, “it’s the best thing that’s ever
- happened to me, anyhow!”
- The next day was even better. He felt, and knew she felt, that they had
- reached a clearer understanding of each other. It was as if, after a
- swim through bright opposing waves, with a dazzle of sun in their eyes,
- they had gained an inlet in the shades of a cliff, where they could
- float on the still surface and gaze far down into the depths.
- Now and then, as they walked and talked, he felt a thrill of youthful
- wonder at the coincidence of their views and their experiences, at the
- way their minds leapt to the same point in the same instant.
- “The old delusion, I suppose,” he smiled to himself. “Will Nature never
- tire of the trick?”
- But he knew it was more than that. There were moments in their talk when
- he felt, distinctly and unmistakably, the solid ground of friendship
- underneath the whirling dance of his sensations. “How I should like her
- if I didn’t love her!” he summed it up, wondering at the miracle of such
- a union.
- In the course of the morning a telegram had come from Owen Leath,
- announcing that he, his grandmother and Effie would arrive from Dijon
- that afternoon at four. The station of the main line was eight or ten
- miles from Givre, and Anna, soon after three, left in the motor to meet
- the travellers.
- When she had gone Darrow started for a walk, planning to get back late,
- in order that the reunited family might have the end of the afternoon
- to themselves. He roamed the country-side till long after dark, and the
- stable-clock of Givre was striking seven as he walked up the avenue to
- the court.
- In the hall, coming down the stairs, he encountered Anna. Her face was
- serene, and his first glance showed him that Owen had kept his word and
- that none of her forebodings had been fulfilled.
- She had just come down from the school-room, where Effie and the
- governess were having supper; the little girl, she told him, looked
- immensely better for her Swiss holiday, but was dropping with sleep
- after the journey, and too tired to make her habitual appearance in the
- drawing-room before being put to bed. Madame de Chantelle was resting,
- but would be down for dinner; and as for Owen, Anna supposed he was off
- somewhere in the park--he had a passion for prowling about the park at
- nightfall...
- Darrow followed her into the brown room, where the tea-table had been
- left for him. He declined her offer of tea, but she lingered a moment
- to tell him that Owen had in fact kept his word, and that Madame de
- Chantelle had come back in the best of humours, and unsuspicious of the
- blow about to fall.
- “She has enjoyed her month at Ouchy, and it has given her a lot to talk
- about--her symptoms, and the rival doctors, and the people at the hotel.
- It seems she met your Ambassadress there, and Lady Wantley, and
- some other London friends of yours, and she’s heard what she calls
- ‘delightful things’ about you: she told me to tell you so. She attaches
- great importance to the fact that your grandmother was an Everard of
- Albany. She’s prepared to open her arms to you. I don’t know whether it
- won’t make it harder for poor Owen ... the contrast, I mean...There are no
- Ambassadresses or Everards to vouch for HIS choice! But you’ll help me,
- won’t you? You’ll help me to help him? To-morrow I’ll tell you the rest.
- Now I must rush up and tuck in Effie...”
- “Oh, you’ll see, we’ll pull it off for him!” he assured her; “together,
- we can’t fail to pull it off.”
- He stood and watched her with a smile as she fled down the half-lit
- vista to the hall.
- XIV
- If Darrow, on entering the drawing-room before dinner, examined its new
- occupant with unusual interest, it was more on Owen Leath’s account than
- his own.
- Anna’s hints had roused his interest in the lad’s love affair, and he
- wondered what manner of girl the heroine of the coming conflict might
- be. He had guessed that Owen’s rebellion symbolized for his step-mother
- her own long struggle against the Leath conventions, and he understood
- that if Anna so passionately abetted him it was partly because, as she
- owned, she wanted his liberation to coincide with hers.
- The lady who was to represent, in the impending struggle, the forces of
- order and tradition was seated by the fire when Darrow entered. Among
- the flowers and old furniture of the large pale-panelled room, Madame
- de Chantelle had the inanimate elegance of a figure introduced into a
- “still-life” to give the scale. And this, Darrow reflected, was exactly
- what she doubtless regarded as her chief obligation: he was sure she
- thought a great deal of “measure”, and approved of most things only
- up to a certain point. She was a woman of sixty, with a figure at once
- young and old-fashioned. Her fair faded tints, her quaint corseting,
- the passementerie on her tight-waisted dress, the velvet band on her
- tapering arm, made her resemble a “carte de visite” photograph of the
- middle ’sixties. One saw her, younger but no less invincibly lady-like,
- leaning on a chair with a fringed back, a curl in her neck, a locket
- on her tuckered bosom, toward the end of an embossed morocco album
- beginning with The Beauties of the Second Empire.
- She received her daughter-in-law’s suitor with an affability which
- implied her knowledge and approval of his suit. Darrow had already
- guessed her to be a person who would instinctively oppose any suggested
- changes, and then, after one had exhausted one’s main arguments,
- unexpectedly yield to some small incidental reason, and adhere doggedly
- to her new position. She boasted of her old-fashioned prejudices, talked
- a good deal of being a grandmother, and made a show of reaching up to
- tap Owen’s shoulder, though his height was little more than hers.
- She was full of a small pale prattle about the people she had seen
- at Ouchy, as to whom she had the minute statistical information of a
- gazetteer, without any apparent sense of personal differences. She said
- to Darrow: “They tell me things are very much changed in America...Of
- course in my youth there WAS a Society”...She had no desire to return
- there she was sure the standards must be so different. “There are
- charming people everywhere ... and one must always look on the best
- side ... but when one has lived among Traditions it’s difficult to adapt
- one’s self to the new ideas...These dreadful views of marriage ... it’s
- so hard to explain them to my French relations...I’m thankful to say I
- don’t pretend to understand them myself! But YOU’RE an Everard--I told
- Anna last spring in London that one sees that instantly”...
- She wandered off to the cooking and the service of the hotel at Ouchy.
- She attached great importance to gastronomic details and to the manners
- of hotel servants. There, too, there was a falling off, she said. “I don
- t know, of course; but people say it’s owing to the Americans. Certainly
- my waiter had a way of slapping down the dishes ... they tell me that many
- of them are Anarchists ... belong to Unions, you know.” She appealed
- to Darrow’s reported knowledge of economic conditions to confirm this
- ominous rumour.
- After dinner Owen Leath wandered into the next room, where the piano
- stood, and began to play among the shadows. His step-mother presently
- joined him, and Darrow sat alone with Madame de Chantelle.
- She took up the thread of her mild chat and carried it on at the
- same pace as her knitting. Her conversation resembled the large
- loose-stranded web between her fingers: now and then she dropped a
- stitch, and went on regardless of the gap in the pattern.
- Darrow listened with a lazy sense of well-being. In the mental lull of
- the after-dinner hour, with harmonious memories murmuring through
- his mind, and the soft tints and shadowy spaces of the fine old room
- charming his eyes to indolence, Madame de Chantelle’s discourse seemed
- not out of place. He could understand that, in the long run, the
- atmosphere of Givre might be suffocating; but in his present mood its
- very limitations had a grace.
- Presently he found the chance to say a word in his own behalf; and
- thereupon measured the advantage, never before particularly apparent to
- him, of being related to the Everards of Albany. Madame de Chantelle’s
- conception of her native country--to which she had not returned since
- her twentieth year--reminded him of an ancient geographer’s map of the
- Hyperborean regions. It was all a foggy blank, from which only one or
- two fixed outlines emerged; and one of these belonged to the Everards of
- Albany.
- The fact that they offered such firm footing--formed, so to speak,
- a friendly territory on which the opposing powers could meet and
- treat--helped him through the task of explaining and justifying himself
- as the successor of Fraser Leath. Madame de Chantelle could not resist
- such incontestable claims. She seemed to feel her son’s hovering and
- discriminating presence, and she gave Darrow the sense that he was being
- tested and approved as a last addition to the Leath Collection.
- She also made him aware of the immense advantage he possessed in
- belonging to the diplomatic profession. She spoke of this humdrum
- calling as a Career, and gave Darrow to understand that she supposed him
- to have been seducing Duchesses when he was not negotiating Treaties.
- He heard again quaint phrases which romantic old ladies had used in his
- youth: “Brilliant diplomatic society ... social advantages ... the entree
- everywhere ... nothing else FORMS a young man in the same way...” and she
- sighingly added that she could have wished her grandson had chosen the
- same path to glory.
- Darrow prudently suppressed his own view of the profession, as well
- as the fact that he had adopted it provisionally, and for reasons
- less social than sociological; and the talk presently passed on to the
- subject of his future plans.
- Here again, Madame de Chantelle’s awe of the Career made her admit
- the necessity of Anna’s consenting to an early marriage. The fact that
- Darrow was “ordered” to South America seemed to put him in the romantic
- light of a young soldier charged to lead a forlorn hope: she sighed and
- said: “At such moments a wife’s duty is at her husband’s side.”
- The problem of Effie’s future might have disturbed her, she added; but
- since Anna, for a time, consented to leave the little girl with her,
- that problem was at any rate deferred. She spoke plaintively of the
- responsibility of looking after her granddaughter, but Darrow divined
- that she enjoyed the flavour of the word more than she felt the weight
- of the fact.
- “Effie’s a perfect child. She’s more like my son, perhaps, than dear
- Owen. She’ll never intentionally give me the least trouble. But of
- course the responsibility will be great...I’m not sure I should dare
- to undertake it if it were not for her having such a treasure of a
- governess. Has Anna told you about our little governess? After all the
- worry we had last year, with one impossible creature after another, it
- seems providential, just now, to have found her. At first we were afraid
- she was too young; but now we’ve the greatest confidence in her. So
- clever and amusing--and SUCH a lady! I don’t say her education’s all it
- might be ... no drawing or singing ... but one can’t have everything; and
- she speaks Italian...”
- Madame de Chantelle’s fond insistence on the likeness between Effie
- Leath and her father, if not particularly gratifying to Darrow, had at
- least increased his desire to see the little girl. It gave him an
- odd feeling of discomfort to think that she should have any of the
- characteristics of the late Fraser Leath: he had, somehow, fantastically
- pictured her as the mystical offspring of the early tenderness between
- himself and Anna Summers.
- His encounter with Effie took place the next morning, on the lawn below
- the terrace, where he found her, in the early sunshine, knocking about
- golf balls with her brother. Almost at once, and with infinite relief,
- he saw that the resemblance of which Madame de Chantelle boasted was
- mainly external. Even that discovery was slightly distasteful, though
- Darrow was forced to own that Fraser Leath’s straight-featured fairness
- had lent itself to the production of a peculiarly finished image of
- childish purity. But it was evident that other elements had also gone
- to the making of Effie, and that another spirit sat in her eyes. Her
- serious handshake, her “pretty” greeting, were worthy of the Leath
- tradition, and he guessed her to be more malleable than Owen, more
- subject to the influences of Givre; but the shout with which she
- returned to her romp had in it the note of her mother’s emancipation.
- He had begged a holiday for her, and when Mrs. Leath appeared he and she
- and the little girl went off for a ramble. Anna wished her daughter to
- have time to make friends with Darrow before learning in what relation
- he was to stand to her; and the three roamed the woods and fields till
- the distant chime of the stable-clock made them turn back for luncheon.
- Effie, who was attended by a shaggy terrier, had picked up two or three
- subordinate dogs at the stable; and as she trotted on ahead with her
- yapping escort, Anna hung back to throw a look at Darrow.
- “Yes,” he answered it, “she’s exquisite...Oh, I see what I’m asking of
- you! But she’ll be quite happy here, won’t she? And you must remember it
- won’t be for long...”
- Anna sighed her acquiescence. “Oh, she’ll be happy here. It’s her nature
- to be happy. She’ll apply herself to it, conscientiously, as she does
- to her lessons, and to what she calls ‘being good’...In a way, you see,
- that’s just what worries me. Her idea of ‘being good’ is to please the
- person she’s with--she puts her whole dear little mind on it! And so, if
- ever she’s with the wrong person----”
- “But surely there’s no danger of that just now? Madame de Chantelle
- tells me that you’ve at last put your hand on a perfect governess----”
- Anna, without answering, glanced away from him toward her daughter.
- “It’s lucky, at any rate,” Darrow continued, “that Madame de Chantelle
- thinks her so.”
- “Oh, I think very highly of her too.”
- “Highly enough to feel quite satisfied to leave her with Effie?”
- “Yes. She’s just the person for Effie. Only, of course, one never
- knows...She’s young, and she might take it into her head to leave us...”
- After a pause she added: “I’m naturally anxious to know what you think
- of her.”
- When they entered the house the hands of the hall clock stood within a
- few minutes of the luncheon hour. Anna led Effie off to have her hair
- smoothed and Darrow wandered into the oak sitting-room, which he found
- untenanted. The sun lay pleasantly on its brown walls, on the scattered
- books and the flowers in old porcelain vases. In his eyes lingered the
- vision of the dark-haired mother mounting the stairs with her little
- fair daughter. The contrast between them seemed a last touch of grace
- in the complex harmony of things. He stood in the window, looking out at
- the park, and brooding inwardly upon his happiness...
- He was roused by Effie’s voice and the scamper of her feet down the long
- floors behind him.
- “Here he is! Here he is!” she cried, flying over the threshold.
- He turned and stooped to her with a smile, and as she caught his hand he
- perceived that she was trying to draw him toward some one who had paused
- behind her in the doorway, and whom he supposed to be her mother.
- “HERE he is!” Effie repeated, with her sweet impatience.
- The figure in the doorway came forward and Darrow, looking up, found
- himself face to face with Sophy Viner. They stood still, a yard or two
- apart, and looked at each other without speaking.
- As they paused there, a shadow fell across one of the terrace windows,
- and Owen Leath stepped whistling into the room. In his rough shooting
- clothes, with the glow of exercise under his fair skin, he looked
- extraordinarily light-hearted and happy. Darrow, with a quick
- side-glance, noticed this, and perceived also that the glow on the
- youth’s cheek had deepened suddenly to red. He too stopped short, and
- the three stood there motionless for a barely perceptible beat of time.
- During its lapse, Darrow’s eyes had turned back from Owen’s face to that
- of the girl between them. He had the sense that, whatever was done, it
- was he who must do it, and that it must be done immediately. He went
- forward and held out his hand.
- “How do you do, Miss Viner?”
- She answered: “How do you do?” in a voice that sounded clear and
- natural; and the next moment he again became aware of steps behind him,
- and knew that Mrs. Leath was in the room.
- To his strained senses there seemed to be another just measurable
- pause before Anna said, looking gaily about the little group: “Has Owen
- introduced you? This is Effie’s friend, Miss Viner.”
- Effie, still hanging on her governess’s arm, pressed herself closer with
- a little gesture of appropriation; and Miss Viner laid her hand on her
- pupil’s hair.
- Darrow felt that Anna’s eyes had turned to him.
- “I think Miss Viner and I have met already--several years ago in
- London.”
- “I remember,” said Sophy Viner, in the same clear voice.
- “How charming! Then we’re all friends. But luncheon must be ready,” said
- Mrs. Leath.
- She turned back to the door, and the little procession moved down the
- two long drawing-rooms, with Effie waltzing on ahead.
- XV
- Madame de Chantelle and Anna had planned, for the afternoon, a visit to
- a remotely situated acquaintance whom the introduction of the motor had
- transformed into a neighbour. Effie was to pay for her morning’s holiday
- by an hour or two in the school-room, and Owen suggested that he and
- Darrow should betake themselves to a distant covert in the desultory
- quest for pheasants.
- Darrow was not an ardent sportsman, but any pretext for physical
- activity would have been acceptable at the moment; and he was glad both
- to get away from the house and not to be left to himself.
- When he came downstairs the motor was at the door, and Anna stood before
- the hall mirror, swathing her hat in veils. She turned at the sound of
- his step and smiled at him for a long full moment.
- “I’d no idea you knew Miss Viner,” she said, as he helped her into her
- long coat.
- “It came back to me, luckily, that I’d seen her two or three times in
- London, several years ago. She was secretary, or something of the sort,
- in the background of a house where I used to dine.”
- He loathed the slighting indifference of the phrase, but he had uttered
- it deliberately, had been secretly practising it all through the
- interminable hour at the luncheon-table. Now that it was spoken, he
- shivered at its note of condescension. In such cases one was almost sure
- to overdo...But Anna seemed to notice nothing unusual.
- “Was she really? You must tell me all about it--tell me exactly how she
- struck you. I’m so glad it turns out that you know her.”
- “‘Know’ is rather exaggerated: we used to pass each other on the
- stairs.”
- Madame de Chantelle and Owen appeared together as he spoke, and Anna,
- gathering up her wraps, said: “You’ll tell me about that, then. Try and
- remember everything you can.”
- As he tramped through the woods at his young host’s side, Darrow felt
- the partial relief from thought produced by exercise and the obligation
- to talk. Little as he cared for shooting, he had the habit of
- concentration which makes it natural for a man to throw himself wholly
- into whatever business he has in hand, and there were moments of the
- afternoon when a sudden whirr in the undergrowth, a vivider gleam
- against the hazy browns and greys of the woods, was enough to fill the
- foreground of his attention. But all the while, behind these voluntarily
- emphasized sensations, his secret consciousness continued to revolve on
- a loud wheel of thought. For a time it seemed to be sweeping him through
- deep gulfs of darkness. His sensations were too swift and swarming to be
- disentangled. He had an almost physical sense of struggling for air,
- of battling helplessly with material obstructions, as though the russet
- covert through which he trudged were the heart of a maleficent jungle...
- Snatches of his companion’s talk drifted to him intermittently through
- the confusion of his thoughts. He caught eager self-revealing phrases,
- and understood that Owen was saying things about himself, perhaps
- hinting indirectly at the hopes for which Darrow had been prepared by
- Anna’s confidences. He had already become aware that the lad liked
- him, and had meant to take the first opportunity of showing that he
- reciprocated the feeling. But the effort of fixing his attention on
- Owen’s words was so great that it left no power for more than the
- briefest and most inexpressive replies.
- Young Leath, it appeared, felt that he had reached a turning-point in
- his career, a height from which he could impartially survey his past
- progress and projected endeavour. At one time he had had musical and
- literary yearnings, visions of desultory artistic indulgence; but these
- had of late been superseded by the resolute determination to plunge into
- practical life.
- “I don’t want, you see,” Darrow heard him explaining, “to drift into
- what my grandmother, poor dear, is trying to make of me: an adjunct of
- Givre. I don’t want--hang it all!--to slip into collecting sensations
- as my father collected snuff-boxes. I want Effie to have Givre--it’s my
- grandmother’s, you know, to do as she likes with; and I’ve understood
- lately that if it belonged to me it would gradually gobble me up. I want
- to get out of it, into a life that’s big and ugly and struggling. If
- I can extract beauty out of THAT, so much the better: that’ll prove my
- vocation. But I want to MAKE beauty, not be drowned in the ready-made,
- like a bee in a pot of honey.”
- Darrow knew that he was being appealed to for corroboration of these
- views and for encouragement in the course to which they pointed. To his
- own ears his answers sounded now curt, now irrelevant: at one moment he
- seemed chillingly indifferent, at another he heard himself launching out
- on a flood of hazy discursiveness. He dared not look at Owen, for fear
- of detecting the lad’s surprise at these senseless transitions. And
- through the confusion of his inward struggles and outward loquacity he
- heard the ceaseless trip-hammer beat of the question: “What in God’s
- name shall I do?”...
- To get back to the house before Anna’s return seemed his most pressing
- necessity. He did not clearly know why: he simply felt that he ought to
- be there. At one moment it occurred to him that Miss Viner might want to
- speak to him alone--and again, in the same flash, that it would probably
- be the last thing she would want...At any rate, he felt he ought to try
- to speak to HER; or at least be prepared to do so, if the chance should
- occur...
- Finally, toward four, he told his companion that he had some letters
- on his mind and must get back to the house and despatch them before the
- ladies returned. He left Owen with the beater and walked on to the edge
- of the covert. At the park gates he struck obliquely through the trees,
- following a grass avenue at the end of which he had caught a glimpse
- of the roof of the chapel. A grey haze had blotted out the sun and the
- still air clung about him tepidly. At length the house-front raised
- before him its expanse of damp-silvered brick, and he was struck afresh
- by the high decorum of its calm lines and soberly massed surfaces. It
- made him feel, in the turbid coil of his fears and passions, like a
- muddy tramp forcing his way into some pure sequestered shrine...
- By and bye, he knew, he should have to think the complex horror out,
- slowly, systematically, bit by bit; but for the moment it was whirling
- him about so fast that he could just clutch at its sharp spikes and
- be tossed off again. Only one definite immediate fact stuck in his
- quivering grasp. He must give the girl every chance--must hold himself
- passive till she had taken them...
- In the court Effie ran up to him with her leaping terrier.
- “I was coming out to meet you--you and Owen. Miss Viner was coming, too,
- and then she couldn’t because she’s got such a headache. I’m afraid I
- gave it to her because I did my division so disgracefully. It’s too bad,
- isn’t it? But won’t you walk back with me? Nurse won’t mind the least
- bit; she’d so much rather go in to tea.”
- Darrow excused himself laughingly, on the plea that he had letters to
- write, which was much worse than having a headache, and not infrequently
- resulted in one.
- “Oh, then you can go and write them in Owen’s study. That’s where
- gentlemen always write their letters.”
- She flew on with her dog and Darrow pursued his way to the house.
- Effie’s suggestion struck him as useful. He had pictured himself
- as vaguely drifting about the drawing-rooms, and had perceived the
- difficulty of Miss Viner’s having to seek him there; but the study,
- a small room on the right of the hall, was in easy sight from the
- staircase, and so situated that there would be nothing marked in his
- being found there in talk with her.
- He went in, leaving the door open, and sat down at the writing-table.
- The room was a friendly heterogeneous place, the one repository, in the
- well-ordered and amply-servanted house, of all its unclassified odds and
- ends: Effie’s croquet-box and fishing rods, Owen’s guns and golf-sticks
- and racquets, his step-mother’s flower-baskets and gardening implements,
- even Madame de Chantelle’s embroidery frame, and the back numbers of the
- Catholic Weekly. The early twilight had begun to fall, and presently
- a slanting ray across the desk showed Darrow that a servant was coming
- across the hall with a lamp. He pulled out a sheet of note-paper and
- began to write at random, while the man, entering, put the lamp at his
- elbow and vaguely “straightened” the heap of newspapers tossed on the
- divan. Then his steps died away and Darrow sat leaning his head on his
- locked hands.
- Presently another step sounded on the stairs, wavered a moment and then
- moved past the threshold of the study. Darrow got up and walked into
- the hall, which was still unlighted. In the dimness he saw Sophy Viner
- standing by the hall door in her hat and jacket. She stopped at sight
- of him, her hand on the door-bolt, and they stood for a second without
- speaking.
- “Have you seen Effie?” she suddenly asked. “She went out to meet you.”
- “She DID meet me, just now, in the court. She’s gone on to join her
- brother.”
- Darrow spoke as naturally as he could, but his voice sounded to his own
- ears like an amateur actor’s in a “light” part.
- Miss Viner, without answering, drew back the bolt. He watched her in
- silence as the door swung open; then he said: “She has her nurse with
- her. She won’t be long.”
- She stood irresolute, and he added: “I was writing in there--won’t you
- come and have a little talk? Every one’s out.”
- The last words struck him as not well-chosen, but there was no time to
- choose. She paused a second longer and then crossed the threshold of the
- study. At luncheon she had sat with her back to the window, and beyond
- noting that she had grown a little thinner, and had less colour and
- vivacity, he had seen no change in her; but now, as the lamplight fell
- on her face, its whiteness startled him.
- “Poor thing ... poor thing ... what in heaven’s name can she suppose?” he
- wondered.
- “Do sit down--I want to talk to you,” he said and pushed a chair toward
- her.
- She did not seem to see it, or, if she did, she deliberately chose
- another seat. He came back to his own chair and leaned his elbows on the
- blotter. She faced him from the farther side of the table.
- “You promised to let me hear from you now and then,” he began awkwardly,
- and with a sharp sense of his awkwardness.
- A faint smile made her face more tragic. “Did I? There was nothing to
- tell. I’ve had no history--like the happy countries...”
- He waited a moment before asking: “You ARE happy here?”
- “I WAS,” she said with a faint emphasis.
- “Why do you say ‘was’? You’re surely not thinking of going? There can’t
- be kinder people anywhere.” Darrow hardly knew what he was saying; but
- her answer came to him with deadly definiteness.
- “I suppose it depends on you whether I go or stay.”
- “On me?” He stared at her across Owen’s scattered papers. “Good God!
- What can you think of me, to say that?”
- The mockery of the question flashed back at him from her wretched face.
- She stood up, wandered away, and leaned an instant in the darkening
- window-frame. From there she turned to fling back at him: “Don’t imagine
- I’m the least bit sorry for anything!”
- He steadied his elbows on the table and hid his face in his hands.
- It was harder, oh, damnably harder, than he had expected! Arguments,
- expedients, palliations, evasions, all seemed to be slipping away
- from him: he was left face to face with the mere graceless fact of his
- inferiority. He lifted his head to ask at random: “You’ve been here,
- then, ever since?”
- “Since June; yes. It turned out that the Farlows were hunting for
- me--all the while--for this.”
- She stood facing him, her back to the window, evidently impatient to be
- gone, yet with something still to say, or that she expected to hear him
- say. The sense of her expectancy benumbed him. What in heaven’s name
- could he say to her that was not an offense or a mockery?
- “Your idea of the theatre--you gave that up at once, then?”
- “Oh, the theatre!” She gave a little laugh. “I couldn’t wait for the
- theatre. I had to take the first thing that offered; I took this.”
- He pushed on haltingly: “I’m glad--extremely glad--you’re happy
- here...I’d counted on your letting me know if there was anything I could
- do...The theatre, now--if you still regret it--if you’re not contented
- here...I know people in that line in London--I’m certain I can manage it
- for you when I get back----”
- She moved up to the table and leaned over it to ask, in a voice that was
- hardly above a whisper: “Then you DO want me to leave? Is that it?”
- He dropped his arms with a groan. “Good heavens! How can you think such
- things? At the time, you know, I begged you to let me do what I could,
- but you wouldn’t hear of it ... and ever since I’ve been wanting to be of
- use--to do something, anything, to help you...”
- She heard him through, motionless, without a quiver of the clasped hands
- she rested on the edge of the table.
- “If you want to help me, then--you can help me to stay here,” she
- brought out with low-toned intensity.
- Through the stillness of the pause which followed, the bray of a
- motor-horn sounded far down the drive. Instantly she turned, with a last
- white look at him, and fled from the room and up the stairs. He stood
- motionless, benumbed by the shock of her last words. She was afraid,
- then--afraid of him--sick with fear of him! The discovery beat him down
- to a lower depth...
- The motor-horn sounded again, close at hand, and he turned and went
- up to his room. His letter-writing was a sufficient pretext for not
- immediately joining the party about the tea-table, and he wanted to be
- alone and try to put a little order into his tumultuous thinking.
- Upstairs, the room held out the intimate welcome of its lamp and fire.
- Everything in it exhaled the same sense of peace and stability which,
- two evenings before, had lulled him to complacent meditation. His
- armchair again invited him from the hearth, but he was too agitated to
- sit still, and with sunk head and hands clasped behind his back he began
- to wander up and down the room.
- His five minutes with Sophy Viner had flashed strange lights into the
- shadowy corners of his consciousness. The girl’s absolute candour,
- her hard ardent honesty, was for the moment the vividest point in his
- thoughts. He wondered anew, as he had wondered before, at the way in
- which the harsh discipline of life had stripped her of false sentiment
- without laying the least touch on her pride. When they had parted, five
- months before, she had quietly but decidedly rejected all his offers
- of help, even to the suggestion of his trying to further her theatrical
- aims: she had made it clear that she wished their brief alliance to
- leave no trace on their lives save that of its own smiling memory. But
- now that they were unexpectedly confronted in a situation which seemed,
- to her terrified fancy, to put her at his mercy, her first impulse was
- to defend her right to the place she had won, and to learn as quickly
- as possible if he meant to dispute it. While he had pictured her as
- shrinking away from him in a tremor of self-effacement she had watched
- his movements, made sure of her opportunity, and come straight down to
- “have it out” with him. He was so struck by the frankness and energy of
- the proceeding that for a moment he lost sight of the view of his own
- character implied in it.
- “Poor thing ... poor thing!” he could only go on saying; and with the
- repetition of the words the picture of himself as she must see him
- pitiably took shape again.
- He understood then, for the first time, how vague, in comparison with
- hers, had been his own vision of the part he had played in the brief
- episode of their relation. The incident had left in him a sense of
- exasperation and self-contempt, but that, as he now perceived, was
- chiefly, if not altogether, as it bore on his preconceived ideal of his
- attitude toward another woman. He had fallen below his own standard of
- sentimental loyalty, and if he thought of Sophy Viner it was mainly
- as the chance instrument of his lapse. These considerations were not
- agreeable to his pride, but they were forced on him by the example of
- her valiant common-sense. If he had cut a sorry figure in the business,
- he owed it to her not to close his eyes to the fact any longer...
- But when he opened them, what did he see? The situation, detestable at
- best, would yet have been relatively simple if protecting Sophy Viner
- had been the only duty involved in it. The fact that that duty was
- paramount did not do away with the contingent obligations. It was
- Darrow’s instinct, in difficult moments, to go straight to the bottom
- of the difficulty; but he had never before had to take so dark a dive
- as this, and for the minute he shivered on the brink...Well, his first
- duty, at any rate, was to the girl: he must let her see that he meant to
- fulfill it to the last jot, and then try to find out how to square the
- fulfillment with the other problems already in his path...
- XVI
- In the oak room he found Mrs. Leath, her mother-in-law and Effie. The
- group, as he came toward it down the long drawing-rooms, composed itself
- prettily about the tea-table. The lamps and the fire crossed their
- gleams on silver and porcelain, on the bright haze of Effie’s hair and
- on the whiteness of Anna’s forehead, as she leaned back in her chair
- behind the tea-urn.
- She did not move at Darrow’s approach, but lifted to him a deep gaze of
- peace and confidence. The look seemed to throw about him the spell of
- a divine security: he felt the joy of a convalescent suddenly waking to
- find the sunlight on his face.
- Madame de Chantelle, across her knitting, discoursed of their
- afternoon’s excursion, with occasional pauses induced by the hypnotic
- effect of the fresh air; and Effie, kneeling, on the hearth, softly but
- insistently sought to implant in her terrier’s mind some notion of the
- relation between a vertical attitude and sugar.
- Darrow took a chair behind the little girl, so that he might look across
- at her mother. It was almost a necessity for him, at the moment, to
- let his eyes rest on Anna’s face, and to meet, now and then, the proud
- shyness of her gaze.
- Madame de Chantelle presently enquired what had become of Owen, and
- a moment later the window behind her opened, and her grandson, gun in
- hand, came in from the terrace. As he stood there in the lamp-light,
- with dead leaves and bits of bramble clinging to his mud-spattered
- clothes, the scent of the night about him and its chill on his pale
- bright face, he really had the look of a young faun strayed in from the
- forest.
- Effie abandoned the terrier to fly to him. “Oh, Owen, where in the world
- have you been? I walked miles and miles with Nurse and couldn’t find
- you, and we met Jean and he said he didn’t know where you’d gone.”
- “Nobody knows where I go, or what I see when I get there--that’s the
- beauty of it!” he laughed back at her. “But if you’re good,” he added,
- “I’ll tell you about it one of these days.”
- “Oh, now, Owen, now! I don’t really believe I’ll ever be much better
- than I am now.”
- “Let Owen have his tea first,” her mother suggested; but the young man,
- declining the offer, propped his gun against the wall, and, lighting
- a cigarette, began to pace up and down the room in a way that reminded
- Darrow of his own caged wanderings. Effie pursued him with her
- blandishments, and for a while he poured out to her a low-voiced stream
- of nonsense; then he sat down beside his step-mother and leaned over to
- help himself to tea.
- “Where’s Miss Viner?” he asked, as Effie climbed up on him. “Why isn’t
- she here to chain up this ungovernable infant?”
- “Poor Miss Viner has a headache. Effie says she went to her room as soon
- as lessons were over, and sent word that she wouldn’t be down for tea.”
- “Ah,” said Owen, abruptly setting down his cup. He stood up, lit another
- cigarette, and wandered away to the piano in the room beyond.
- From the twilight where he sat a lonely music, borne on fantastic
- chords, floated to the group about the tea-table. Under its influence
- Madame de Chantelle’s meditative pauses increased in length and
- frequency, and Effie stretched herself on the hearth, her drowsy head
- against the dog. Presently her nurse appeared, and Anna rose at the same
- time. “Stop a minute in my sitting-room on your way up,” she paused to
- say to Darrow as she went.
- A few hours earlier, her request would have brought him instantly to his
- feet. She had given him, on the day of his arrival, an inviting glimpse
- of the spacious book-lined room above stairs in which she had gathered
- together all the tokens of her personal tastes: the retreat in which,
- as one might fancy, Anna Leath had hidden the restless ghost of Anna
- Summers; and the thought of a talk with her there had been in his mind
- ever since. But now he sat motionless, as if spell-bound by the play of
- Madame de Chantelle’s needles and the pulsations of Owen’s fitful music.
- “She will want to ask me about the girl,” he repeated to himself, with a
- fresh sense of the insidious taint that embittered all his thoughts;
- the hand of the slender-columned clock on the mantel-piece had spanned
- a half-hour before shame at his own indecision finally drew him to his
- feet.
- From her writing-table, where she sat over a pile of letters, Anna
- lifted her happy smile. The impulse to press his lips to it made him
- come close and draw her upward. She threw her head back, as if surprised
- at the abruptness of the gesture; then her face leaned to his with the
- slow droop of a flower. He felt again the sweep of the secret tides, and
- all his fears went down in them.
- She sat down in the sofa-corner by the fire and he drew an armchair
- close to her. His gaze roamed peacefully about the quiet room.
- “It’s just like you--it is you,” he said, as his eyes came back to her.
- “It’s a good place to be alone in--I don’t think I’ve ever before cared
- to talk with any one here.”
- “Let’s be quiet, then: it’s the best way of talking.”
- “Yes; but we must save it up till later. There are things I want to say
- to you now.”
- He leaned back in his chair. “Say them, then, and I’ll listen.”
- “Oh, no. I want you to tell me about Miss Viner.”
- “About Miss Viner?” He summoned up a look of faint interrogation.
- He thought she seemed surprised at his surprise. “It’s important,
- naturally,” she explained, “that I should find out all I can about her
- before I leave.”
- “Important on Effie’s account?”
- “On Effie’s account--of course.”
- “Of course...But you’ve every reason to be satisfied, haven’t you?”
- “Every apparent reason. We all like her. Effie’s very fond of her, and
- she seems to have a delightful influence on the child. But we know so
- little, after all--about her antecedents, I mean, and her past history.
- That’s why I want you to try and recall everything you heard about her
- when you used to see her in London.”
- “Oh, on that score I’m afraid I sha’n’t be of much use. As I told you,
- she was a mere shadow in the background of the house I saw her in--and
- that was four or five years ago...”
- “When she was with a Mrs. Murrett?”
- “Yes; an appalling woman who runs a roaring dinner-factory that used now
- and then to catch me in its wheels. I escaped from them long ago; but
- in my time there used to be half a dozen fagged ‘hands’ to tend the
- machine, and Miss Viner was one of them. I’m glad she’s out of it, poor
- girl!” “Then you never really saw anything of her there?”
- “I never had the chance. Mrs. Murrett discouraged any competition on the
- part of her subordinates.”
- “Especially such pretty ones, I suppose?” Darrow made no comment, and
- she continued: “And Mrs. Murrett’s own opinion--if she’d offered you
- one--probably wouldn’t have been of much value?”
- “Only in so far as her disapproval would, on general principles, have
- been a good mark for Miss Viner. But surely,” he went on after a pause,
- “you could have found out about her from the people through whom you
- first heard of her?”
- Anna smiled. “Oh, we heard of her through Adelaide Painter--;” and in
- reply to his glance of interrogation she explained that the lady in
- question was a spinster of South Braintree, Massachusetts, who, having
- come to Paris some thirty years earlier, to nurse a brother through an
- illness, had ever since protestingly and provisionally camped there in a
- state of contemptuous protestation oddly manifested by her never taking
- the slip-covers off her drawing-room chairs. Her long residence on
- Gallic soil had not mitigated her hostility toward the creed and customs
- of the race, but though she always referred to the Catholic Church as
- the Scarlet Woman and took the darkest views of French private
- life, Madame de Chantelle placed great reliance on her judgment and
- experience, and in every domestic crisis the irreducible Adelaide was
- immediately summoned to Givre.
- “It’s all the odder because my mother-in-law, since her second marriage,
- has lived so much in the country that she’s practically lost sight
- of all her other American friends. Besides which, you can see how
- completely she has identified herself with Monsieur de Chantelle’s
- nationality and adopted French habits and prejudices. Yet when anything
- goes wrong she always sends for Adelaide Painter, who’s more American
- than the Stars and Stripes, and might have left South Braintree
- yesterday, if she hadn’t, rather, brought it over with her in her
- trunk.”
- Darrow laughed. “Well, then, if South Braintree vouches for Miss
- Viner----”
- “Oh, but only indirectly. When we had that odious adventure with
- Mademoiselle Grumeau, who’d been so highly recommended by Monsieur de
- Chantelle’s aunt, the Chanoinesse, Adelaide was of course sent for, and
- she said at once: ‘I’m not the least bit surprised. I’ve always told you
- that what you wanted for Effie was a sweet American girl, and not one of
- these nasty foreigners.’ Unluckily she couldn’t, at the moment, put her
- hand on a sweet American; but she presently heard of Miss Viner through
- the Farlows, an excellent couple who live in the Quartier Latin and
- write about French life for the American papers. I was only too thankful
- to find anyone who was vouched for by decent people; and so far I’ve had
- no cause to regret my choice. But I know, after all, very little about
- Miss Viner; and there are all kinds of reasons why I want, as soon as
- possible, to find out more--to find out all I can.”
- “Since you’ve got to leave Effie I understand your feeling in that way.
- But is there, in such a case, any recommendation worth half as much as
- your own direct experience?”
- “No; and it’s been so favourable that I was ready to accept it as
- conclusive. Only, naturally, when I found you’d known her in London I
- was in hopes you’d give me some more specific reasons for liking her as
- much as I do.”
- “I’m afraid I can give you nothing more specific than my general vague
- impression that she seems very plucky and extremely nice.”
- “You don’t, at any rate, know anything specific to the contrary?”
- “To the contrary? How should I? I’m not conscious of ever having heard
- any one say two words about her. I only infer that she must have pluck
- and character to have stuck it out so long at Mrs. Murrett’s.”
- “Yes, poor thing! She has pluck, certainly; and pride, too; which must
- have made it all the harder.” Anna rose to her feet. “You don’t know how
- glad I am that your impression’s on the whole so good. I particularly
- wanted you to like her.”
- He drew her to him with a smile. “On that condition I’m prepared to love
- even Adelaide Painter.”
- “I almost hope you wont have the chance to--poor Adelaide! Her
- appearance here always coincides with a catastrophe.”
- “Oh, then I must manage to meet her elsewhere.” He held Anna closer,
- saying to himself, as he smoothed back the hair from her forehead: “What
- does anything matter but just THIS?--Must I go now?” he added aloud.
- She answered absently: “It must be time to dress”; then she drew back a
- little and laid her hands on his shoulders. “My love--oh, my dear love!”
- she said.
- It came to him that they were the first words of endearment he had heard
- her speak, and their rareness gave them a magic quality of reassurance,
- as though no danger could strike through such a shield.
- A knock on the door made them draw apart. Anna lifted her hand to
- her hair and Darrow stooped to examine a photograph of Effie on the
- writing-table.
- “Come in!” Anna said.
- The door opened and Sophy Viner entered. Seeing Darrow, she drew back.
- “Do come in, Miss Viner,” Anna repeated, looking at her kindly.
- The girl, a quick red in her cheeks, still hesitated on the threshold.
- “I’m so sorry; but Effie has mislaid her Latin grammar, and I thought
- she might have left it here. I need it to prepare for tomorrow’s
- lesson.”
- “Is this it?” Darrow asked, picking up a book from the table.
- “Oh, thank you!”
- He held it out to her and she took it and moved to the door.
- “Wait a minute, please, Miss Viner,” Anna said; and as the girl turned
- back, she went on with her quiet smile: “Effie told us you’d gone to
- your room with a headache. You mustn’t sit up over tomorrow’s lessons if
- you don’t feel well.”
- Sophy’s blush deepened. “But you see I have to. Latin’s one of my weak
- points, and there’s generally only one page of this book between me and
- Effie.” She threw the words off with a half-ironic smile. “Do excuse my
- disturbing you,” she added.
- “You didn’t disturb me,” Anna answered. Darrow perceived that she was
- looking intently at the girl, as though struck by something tense and
- tremulous in her face, her voice, her whole mien and attitude. “You DO
- look tired. You’d much better go straight to bed. Effie won’t be sorry
- to skip her Latin.”
- “Thank you--but I’m really all right,” murmured Sophy Viner. Her glance,
- making a swift circuit of the room, dwelt for an appreciable instant on
- the intimate propinquity of arm-chair and sofa-corner; then she turned
- back to the door.
- BOOK III
- XVII
- At dinner that evening Madame de Chantelle’s slender monologue was
- thrown out over gulfs of silence. Owen was still in the same state of
- moody abstraction as when Darrow had left him at the piano; and even
- Anna’s face, to her friend’s vigilant eye, revealed not, perhaps, a
- personal preoccupation, but a vague sense of impending disturbance.
- She smiled, she bore a part in the talk, her eyes dwelt on Darrow’s with
- their usual deep reliance; but beneath the surface of her serenity his
- tense perceptions detected a hidden stir.
- He was sufficiently self-possessed to tell himself that it was doubtless
- due to causes with which he was not directly concerned. He knew the
- question of Owen’s marriage was soon to be raised, and the abrupt
- alteration in the young man’s mood made it seem probable that he was
- himself the centre of the atmospheric disturbance. For a moment it
- occurred to Darrow that Anna might have employed her afternoon in
- preparing Madame de Chantelle for her grandson’s impending announcement;
- but a glance at the elder lady’s unclouded brow showed that he must seek
- elsewhere the clue to Owen’s taciturnity and his step-mother’s concern.
- Possibly Anna had found reason to change her own attitude in the matter,
- and had made the change known to Owen. But this, again, was negatived by
- the fact that, during the afternoon’s shooting, young Leath had been in
- a mood of almost extravagant expansiveness, and that, from the moment of
- his late return to the house till just before dinner, there had been,
- to Darrow’s certain knowledge, no possibility of a private talk between
- himself and his step-mother.
- This obscured, if it narrowed, the field of conjecture; and Darrow’s
- gropings threw him back on the conclusion that he was probably reading
- too much significance into the moods of a lad he hardly knew, and who
- had been described to him as subject to sudden changes of humour. As to
- Anna’s fancied perturbation, it might simply be due to the fact that she
- had decided to plead Owen’s cause the next day, and had perhaps already
- had a glimpse of the difficulties awaiting her. But Darrow knew that he
- was too deep in his own perplexities to judge the mental state of those
- about him. It might be, after all, that the variations he felt in the
- currents of communication were caused by his own inward tremor.
- Such, at any rate, was the conclusion he had reached when, shortly after
- the two ladies left the drawing-room, he bade Owen good-night and went
- up to his room. Ever since the rapid self-colloquy which had followed on
- his first sight of Sophy Viner, he had known there were other questions
- to be faced behind the one immediately confronting him. On the score
- of that one, at least, his mind, if not easy, was relieved. He had
- done what was possible to reassure the girl, and she had apparently
- recognized the sincerity of his intention. He had patched up as decent a
- conclusion as he could to an incident that should obviously have had
- no sequel; but he had known all along that with the securing of Miss
- Viner’s peace of mind only a part of his obligation was discharged, and
- that with that part his remaining duty was in conflict. It had been his
- first business to convince the girl that their secret was safe with
- him; but it was far from easy to square this with the equally urgent
- obligation of safe-guarding Anna’s responsibility toward her child.
- Darrow was not much afraid of accidental disclosures. Both he and Sophy
- Viner had too much at stake not to be on their guard. The fear that
- beset him was of another kind, and had a profounder source. He wanted to
- do all he could for the girl, but the fact of having had to urge Anna
- to confide Effie to her was peculiarly repugnant to him. His own ideas
- about Sophy Viner were too mixed and indeterminate for him not to feel
- the risk of such an experiment; yet he found himself in the intolerable
- position of appearing to press it on the woman he desired above all
- others to protect...
- Till late in the night his thoughts revolved in a turmoil of indecision.
- His pride was humbled by the discrepancy between what Sophy Viner had
- been to him and what he had thought of her. This discrepancy, which at
- the time had seemed to simplify the incident, now turned out to be
- its most galling complication. The bare truth, indeed, was that he had
- hardly thought of her at all, either at the time or since, and that he
- was ashamed to base his judgement of her on his meagre memory of their
- adventure.
- The essential cheapness of the whole affair--as far as his share in it
- was concerned--came home to him with humiliating distinctness. He would
- have liked to be able to feel that, at the time at least, he had
- staked something more on it, and had somehow, in the sequel, had a more
- palpable loss to show. But the plain fact was that he hadn’t spent a
- penny on it; which was no doubt the reason of the prodigious score it
- had since been rolling up. At any rate, beat about the case as he would,
- it was clear that he owed it to Anna--and incidentally to his own peace
- of mind--to find some way of securing Sophy Viner’s future without
- leaving her installed at Givre when he and his wife should depart for
- their new post.
- The night brought no aid to the solving of this problem; but it gave
- him, at any rate, the clear conviction that no time was to be lost. His
- first step must be to obtain from Miss Viner the chance of another and
- calmer talk; and he resolved to seek it at the earliest hour.
- He had gathered that Effie’s lessons were preceded by an early scamper
- in the park, and conjecturing that her governess might be with her he
- betook himself the next morning to the terrace, whence he wandered on to
- the gardens and the walks beyond.
- The atmosphere was still and pale. The muffled sunlight gleamed like
- gold tissue through grey gauze, and the beech alleys tapered away to a
- blue haze blent of sky and forest. It was one of those elusive days
- when the familiar forms of things seem about to dissolve in a prismatic
- shimmer.
- The stillness was presently broken by joyful barks, and Darrow, tracking
- the sound, overtook Effie flying down one of the long alleys at the head
- of her pack. Beyond her he saw Miss Viner seated near the stone-rimmed
- basin beside which he and Anna had paused on their first walk to the
- river.
- The girl, coming forward at his approach, returned his greeting almost
- gaily. His first glance showed him that she had regained her composure,
- and the change in her appearance gave him the measure of her fears. For
- the first time he saw in her again the sidelong grace that had charmed
- his eyes in Paris; but he saw it now as in a painted picture.
- “Shall we sit down a minute?” he asked, as Effie trotted off.
- The girl looked away from him. “I’m afraid there’s not much time; we
- must be back at lessons at half-past nine.”
- “But it’s barely ten minutes past. Let’s at least walk a little way
- toward the river.”
- She glanced down the long walk ahead of them and then back in the
- direction of the house. “If you like,” she said in a low voice, with one
- of her quick fluctuations of colour; but instead of taking the way he
- proposed she turned toward a narrow path which branched off obliquely
- through the trees.
- Darrow was struck, and vaguely troubled, by the change in her look
- and tone. There was in them an undefinable appeal, whether for help or
- forbearance he could not tell. Then it occurred to him that there might
- have been something misleading in his so pointedly seeking her, and he
- felt a momentary constraint. To ease it he made an abrupt dash at the
- truth.
- “I came out to look for you because our talk of yesterday was so
- unsatisfactory. I want to hear more about you--about your plans and
- prospects. I’ve been wondering ever since why you’ve so completely given
- up the theatre.”
- Her face instantly sharpened to distrust. “I had to live,” she said in
- an off-hand tone.
- “I understand perfectly that you should like it here--for a time.”
- His glance strayed down the gold-roofed windings ahead of them. “It’s
- delightful: you couldn’t be better placed. Only I wonder a little at
- your having so completely given up any idea of a different future.”
- She waited for a moment before answering: “I suppose I’m less restless
- than I used to be.”
- “It’s certainly natural that you should be less restless here than at
- Mrs. Murrett’s; yet somehow I don’t seem to see you permanently given up
- to forming the young.”
- “What--exactly--DO you seem to see me permanently given up to? You know
- you warned me rather emphatically against the theatre.” She threw
- off the statement without impatience, as though they were discussing
- together the fate of a third person in whom both were benevolently
- interested. Darrow considered his reply. “If I did, it was because you
- so emphatically refused to let me help you to a start.”
- She stopped short and faced him “And you think I may let you now?”
- Darrow felt the blood in his cheek. He could not understand her
- attitude--if indeed she had consciously taken one, and her changes of
- tone did not merely reflect the involuntary alternations of her mood. It
- humbled him to perceive once more how little he had to guide him in his
- judgment of her. He said to himself: “If I’d ever cared a straw for
- her I should know how to avoid hurting her now”--and his insensibility
- struck him as no better than a vulgar obtuseness. But he had a fixed
- purpose ahead and could only push on to it.
- “I hope, at any rate, you’ll listen to my reasons. There’s been time,
- on both sides, to think them over since----” He caught himself back
- and hung helpless on the “since”: whatever words he chose, he seemed to
- stumble among reminders of their past.
- She walked on beside him, her eyes on the ground. “Then I’m to
- understand--definitely--that you DO renew your offer?” she asked
- “With all my heart! If you’ll only let me----”
- She raised a hand, as though to check him. “It’s extremely friendly of
- you--I DO believe you mean it as a friend--but I don’t quite understand
- why, finding me, as you say, so well placed here, you should show more
- anxiety about my future than at a time when I was actually, and rather
- desperately, adrift.”
- “Oh, no, not more!”
- “If you show any at all, it must, at any rate, be for different
- reasons.--In fact, it can only be,” she went on, with one of her
- disconcerting flashes of astuteness, “for one of two reasons; either
- because you feel you ought to help me, or because, for some reason, you
- think you owe it to Mrs. Leath to let her know what you know of me.”
- Darrow stood still in the path. Behind him he heard Effie’s call, and at
- the child’s voice he saw Sophy turn her head with the alertness of one
- who is obscurely on the watch. The look was so fugitive that he could
- not have said wherein it differed from her normal professional air of
- having her pupil on her mind.
- Effie sprang past them, and Darrow took up the girl’s challenge.
- “What you suggest about Mrs. Leath is hardly worth answering. As to my
- reasons for wanting to help you, a good deal depends on the words one
- uses to define rather indefinite things. It’s true enough that I want to
- help you; but the wish isn’t due to ... to any past kindness on your part,
- but simply to my own interest in you. Why not put it that our friendship
- gives me the right to intervene for what I believe to be your benefit?”
- She took a few hesitating steps and then paused again. Darrow noticed
- that she had grown pale and that there were rings of shade about her
- eyes.
- “You’ve known Mrs. Leath a long time?” she asked him suddenly.
- He paused with a sense of approaching peril. “A long time--yes.”
- “She told me you were friends--great friends”
- “Yes,” he admitted, “we’re great friends.”
- “Then you might naturally feel yourself justified in telling her that
- you don’t think I’m the right person for Effie.” He uttered a sound of
- protest, but she disregarded it. “I don’t say you’d LIKE to do it. You
- wouldn’t: you’d hate it. And the natural alternative would be to try
- to persuade me that I’d be better off somewhere else than here. But
- supposing that failed, and you saw I was determined to stay? THEN you
- might think it your duty to tell Mrs. Leath.”
- She laid the case before him with a cold lucidity. “I should, in your
- place, I believe,” she ended with a little laugh.
- “I shouldn’t feel justified in telling her, behind your back, if
- I thought you unsuited for the place; but I should certainly feel
- justified,” he rejoined after a pause, “in telling YOU if I thought the
- place unsuited to you.”
- “And that’s what you’re trying to tell me now?”
- “Yes; but not for the reasons you imagine.”
- “What, then, are your reasons, if you please?”
- “I’ve already implied them in advising you not to give up all idea
- of the theatre. You’re too various, too gifted, too personal, to tie
- yourself down, at your age, to the dismal drudgery of teaching.”
- “And is THAT what you’ve told Mrs. Leath?”
- She rushed the question out at him as if she expected to trip him up
- over it. He was moved by the simplicity of the stratagem.
- “I’ve told her exactly nothing,” he replied.
- “And what--exactly--do you mean by ‘nothing’? You and she were talking
- about me when I came into her sitting-room yesterday.”
- Darrow felt his blood rise at the thrust.
- “I’ve told her, simply, that I’d seen you once or twice at Mrs.
- Murrett’s.”
- “And not that you’ve ever seen me since?”
- “And not that I’ve ever seen you since...”
- “And she believes you--she completely believes you?”
- He uttered a protesting exclamation, and his flush reflected itself in
- the girl’s cheek.
- “Oh, I beg your pardon! I didn’t mean to ask you that.” She halted, and
- again cast a rapid glance behind and ahead of her. Then she held out her
- hand. “Well, then, thank you--and let me relieve your fears. I sha’n’t
- be Effie’s governess much longer.”
- At the announcement, Darrow tried to merge his look of relief into the
- expression of friendly interest with which he grasped her hand. “You
- really do agree with me, then? And you’ll give me a chance to talk
- things over with you?”
- She shook her head with a faint smile. “I’m not thinking of the stage.
- I’ve had another offer: that’s all.”
- The relief was hardly less great. After all, his personal responsibility
- ceased with her departure from Givre.
- “You’ll tell me about that, then--won’t you?”
- Her smile flickered up. “Oh, you’ll hear about it soon...I must catch
- Effie now and drag her back to the blackboard.”
- She walked on for a few yards, and then paused again and confronted him.
- “I’ve been odious to you--and not quite honest,” she broke out suddenly.
- “Not quite honest?” he repeated, caught in a fresh wave of wonder.
- “I mean, in seeming not to trust you. It’s come over me again as we
- talked that, at heart, I’ve always KNOWN I could...”
- Her colour rose in a bright wave, and her eyes clung to his for a swift
- instant of reminder and appeal. For the same space of time the past
- surged up in him confusedly; then a veil dropped between them.
- “Here’s Effie now!” she exclaimed.
- He turned and saw the little girl trotting back to them, her hand in
- Owen Leath’s. Even through the stir of his subsiding excitement Darrow
- was at once aware of the change effected by the young man’s approach.
- For a moment Sophy Viner’s cheeks burned redder; then they faded to
- the paleness of white petals. She lost, however, nothing of the bright
- bravery which it was her way to turn on the unexpected. Perhaps no one
- less familiar with her face than Darrow would have discerned the
- tension of the smile she transferred from himself to Owen Leath, or
- have remarked that her eyes had hardened from misty grey to a shining
- darkness. But her observer was less struck by this than by the
- corresponding change in Owen Leath. The latter, when he came in sight,
- had been laughing and talking unconcernedly with Effie; but as his eye
- fell on Miss Viner his expression altered as suddenly as hers.
- The change, for Darrow, was less definable; but, perhaps for that
- reason, it struck him as more sharply significant. Only--just what did
- it signify? Owen, like Sophy Viner, had the kind of face which seems
- less the stage on which emotions move than the very stuff they work
- in. In moments of excitement his odd irregular features seemed to grow
- fluid, to unmake and remake themselves like the shadows of clouds on a
- stream. Darrow, through the rapid flight of the shadows, could not seize
- on any specific indication of feeling: he merely perceived that the
- young man was unaccountably surprised at finding him with Miss
- Viner, and that the extent of his surprise might cover all manner of
- implications.
- Darrow’s first idea was that Owen, if he suspected that the conversation
- was not the result of an accidental encounter, might wonder at his
- step-mother’s suitor being engaged, at such an hour, in private talk
- with her little girl’s governess. The thought was so disturbing that,
- as the three turned back to the house, he was on the point of saying to
- Owen: “I came out to look for your mother.” But, in the contingency he
- feared, even so simple a phrase might seem like an awkward attempt at
- explanation; and he walked on in silence at Miss Viner’s side. Presently
- he was struck by the fact that Owen Leath and the girl were silent also;
- and this gave a new turn to his thoughts. Silence may be as variously
- shaded as speech; and that which enfolded Darrow and his two companions
- seemed to his watchful perceptions to be quivering with cross-threads of
- communication. At first he was aware only of those that centred in
- his own troubled consciousness; then it occurred to him that an equal
- activity of intercourse was going on outside of it. Something was in
- fact passing mutely and rapidly between young Leath and Sophy Viner; but
- what it was, and whither it tended, Darrow, when they reached the house,
- was but just beginning to divine...
- XVIII
- Anna Leath, from the terrace, watched the return of the little group.
- She looked down on them, as they advanced across the garden, from the
- serene height of her unassailable happiness. There they were, coming
- toward her in the mild morning light, her child, her step-son, her
- promised husband: the three beings who filled her life. She smiled a
- little at the happy picture they presented, Effie’s gambols encircling
- it in a moving frame within which the two men came slowly forward in the
- silence of friendly understanding. It seemed part of the deep intimacy
- of the scene that they should not be talking to each other, and it did
- not till afterward strike her as odd that neither of them apparently
- felt it necessary to address a word to Sophy Viner.
- Anna herself, at the moment, was floating in the mid-current of
- felicity, on a tide so bright and buoyant that she seemed to be one with
- its warm waves. The first rush of bliss had stunned and dazzled her;
- but now that, each morning, she woke to the calm certainty of its
- recurrence, she was growing used to the sense of security it gave.
- “I feel as if I could trust my happiness to carry me; as if it had grown
- out of me like wings.” So she phrased it to Darrow, as, later in the
- morning, they paced the garden-paths together. His answering look gave
- her the same assurance of safety. The evening before he had seemed
- preoccupied, and the shadow of his mood had faintly encroached on the
- great golden orb of their blessedness; but now it was uneclipsed again,
- and hung above them high and bright as the sun at noon.
- Upstairs in her sitting-room, that afternoon, she was thinking of
- these things. The morning mists had turned to rain, compelling the
- postponement of an excursion in which the whole party were to have
- joined. Effie, with her governess, had been despatched in the motor to
- do some shopping at Francheuil; and Anna had promised Darrow to join
- him, later in the afternoon, for a quick walk in the rain.
- He had gone to his room after luncheon to get some belated letters off
- his conscience; and when he had left her she had continued to sit in the
- same place, her hands crossed on her knees, her head slightly bent, in
- an attitude of brooding retrospection. As she looked back at her past
- life, it seemed to her to have consisted of one ceaseless effort to pack
- into each hour enough to fill out its slack folds; but now each moment
- was like a miser’s bag stretched to bursting with pure gold.
- She was roused by the sound of Owen’s step in the gallery outside her
- room. It paused at her door and in answer to his knock she called out
- “Come in!”
- As the door closed behind him she was struck by his look of pale
- excitement, and an impulse of compunction made her say: “You’ve come to
- ask me why I haven’t spoken to your grandmother!” He sent about him a
- glance vaguely reminding her of the strange look with which Sophy Viner
- had swept the room the night before; then his brilliant eyes came back
- to her.
- “I’ve spoken to her myself,” he said.
- Anna started up, incredulous.
- “You’ve spoken to her? When?”
- “Just now. I left her to come here.”
- Anna’s first feeling was one of annoyance. There was really something
- comically incongruous in this boyish surrender to impulse on the part of
- a young man so eager to assume the responsibilities of life. She looked
- at him with a faintly veiled amusement.
- “You asked me to help you and I promised you I would. It was hardly
- worth while to work out such an elaborate plan of action if you intended
- to take the matter out of my hands without telling me.”
- “Oh, don’t take that tone with me!” he broke out, almost angrily.
- “That tone? What tone?” She stared at his quivering face. “I might,” she
- pursued, still half-laughing, “more properly make that request of YOU!”
- Owen reddened and his vehemence suddenly subsided.
- “I meant that I HAD to speak--that’s all. You don’t give me a chance to
- explain...”
- She looked at him gently, wondering a little at her own impatience.
- “Owen! Don’t I always want to give you every chance? It’s because I DO
- that I wanted to talk to your grandmother first--that I was waiting and
- watching for the right moment...”
- “The right moment? So was I. That’s why I’ve spoken.” His voice rose
- again and took the sharp edge it had in moments of high pressure.
- His step-mother turned away and seated herself in her sofa-corner. “Oh,
- my dear, it’s not a privilege to quarrel over! You’ve taken a load off
- my shoulders. Sit down and tell me all about it.”
- He stood before her, irresolute. “I can’t sit down,” he said.
- “Walk about, then. Only tell me: I’m impatient.”
- His immediate response was to throw himself into the armchair at her
- side, where he lounged for a moment without speaking, his legs stretched
- out, his arms locked behind his thrown-back head. Anna, her eyes on his
- face, waited quietly for him to speak.
- “Well--of course it was just what one expected.”
- “She takes it so badly, you mean?”
- “All the heavy batteries were brought up: my father, Givre, Monsieur de
- Chantelle, the throne and the altar. Even my poor mother was dragged out
- of oblivion and armed with imaginary protests.”
- Anna sighed out her sympathy. “Well--you were prepared for all that?”
- “I thought I was, till I began to hear her say it. Then it sounded so
- incredibly silly that I told her so.”
- “Oh, Owen--Owen!”
- “Yes: I know. I was a fool; but I couldn’t help it.”
- “And you’ve mortally offended her, I suppose? That’s exactly what I
- wanted to prevent.” She laid a hand on his shoulder. “You tiresome boy,
- not to wait and let me speak for you!”
- He moved slightly away, so that her hand slipped from its place. “You
- don’t understand,” he said, frowning.
- “I don’t see how I can, till you explain. If you thought the time had
- come to tell your grandmother, why not have asked me to do it? I had my
- reasons for waiting; but if you’d told me to speak I should have done
- so, naturally.”
- He evaded her appeal by a sudden turn. “What WERE your reasons for
- waiting?”
- Anna did not immediately answer. Her step-son’s eyes were on her face,
- and under his gaze she felt a faint disquietude.
- “I was feeling my way...I wanted to be absolutely sure...”
- “Absolutely sure of what?”
- She delayed again for a just perceptible instant. “Why, simply of OUR
- side of the case.”
- “But you told me you were, the other day, when we talked it over before
- they came back from Ouchy.”
- “Oh, my dear--if you think that, in such a complicated matter, every
- day, every hour, doesn’t more or less modify one’s surest sureness!”
- “That’s just what I’m driving at. I want to know what has modified
- yours.”
- She made a slight gesture of impatience. “What does it matter, now the
- thing’s done? I don’t know that I could give any clear reason...”
- He got to his feet and stood looking down on her with a tormented brow.
- “But it’s absolutely necessary that you should.”
- At his tone her impatience flared up. “It’s not necessary that I should
- give you any explanation whatever, since you’ve taken the matter out of
- my hands. All I can say is that I was trying to help you: that no other
- thought ever entered my mind.” She paused a moment and then added: “If
- you doubted it, you were right to do what you’ve done.”
- “Oh, I never doubted YOU!” he retorted, with a fugitive stress on
- the pronoun. His face had cleared to its old look of trust. “Don’t be
- offended if I’ve seemed to,” he went on. “I can’t quite explain myself,
- either ... it’s all a kind of tangle, isn’t it? That’s why I thought I’d
- better speak at once; or rather why I didn’t think at all, but just
- suddenly blurted the thing out----”
- Anna gave him back his look of conciliation. “Well, the how and why
- don’t much matter now. The point is how to deal with your grandmother.
- You’ve not told me what she means to do.”
- “Oh, she means to send for Adelaide Painter.”
- The name drew a faint note of mirth from him and relaxed both their
- faces to a smile.
- “Perhaps,” Anna added, “it’s really the best thing for us all.”
- Owen shrugged his shoulders. “It’s too preposterous and humiliating.
- Dragging that woman into our secrets----!”
- “This could hardly be a secret much longer.”
- He had moved to the hearth, where he stood pushing about the small
- ornaments on the mantel-shelf; but at her answer he turned back to her.
- “You haven’t, of course, spoken of it to any one?”
- “No; but I intend to now.”
- She paused for his reply, and as it did not come she continued: “If
- Adelaide Painter’s to be told there’s no possible reason why I shouldn’t
- tell Mr. Darrow.” Owen abruptly set down the little statuette between
- his fingers. “None whatever: I want every one to know.”
- She smiled a little at his over-emphasis, and was about to meet it with
- a word of banter when he continued, facing her: “You haven’t, as yet,
- said a word to him?”
- “I’ve told him nothing, except what the discussion of our own plans--his
- and mine--obliged me to: that you were thinking of marrying, and that
- I wasn’t willing to leave France till I’d done what I could to see you
- through.”
- At her first words the colour had rushed to his forehead; but as she
- continued she saw his face compose itself and his blood subside.
- “You’re a brick, my dear!” he exclaimed.
- “You had my word, you know.”
- “Yes; yes--I know.” His face had clouded again. “And that’s
- all--positively all--you’ve ever said to him?”
- “Positively all. But why do you ask?”
- He had a moment’s embarrassed hesitation. “It was understood, wasn’t it,
- that my grandmother was to be the first to know?”
- “Well--and so she has been, hasn’t she, since you’ve told her?”
- He turned back to his restless shifting of the knick-knacks.
- “And you’re sure that nothing you’ve said to Darrow could possibly have
- given him a hint----?”
- “Nothing I’ve said to him--certainly.”
- He swung about on her. “Why do you put it in that way?”
- “In what way?”
- “Why--as if you thought some one else might have spoken...”
- “Some one else? Who else?” She rose to her feet. “What on earth, my dear
- boy, can you be driving at?”
- “I’m trying to find out whether you think he knows anything definite.”
- “Why should I think so? Do YOU?”
- “I don’t know. I want to find out.”
- She laughed at his obstinate insistence. “To test my veracity, I
- suppose?” At the sound of a step in the gallery she added: “Here he
- is--you can ask him yourself.”
- She met Darrow’s knock with an invitation to enter, and he came into the
- room and paused between herself and Owen. She was struck, as he stood
- there, by the contrast between his happy careless good-looks and her
- step-son’s frowning agitation.
- Darrow met her eyes with a smile. “Am I too soon? Or is our walk given
- up?”
- “No; I was just going to get ready.” She continued to linger between
- the two, looking slowly from one to the other. “But there’s something we
- want to tell you first: Owen is engaged to Miss Viner.”
- The sense of an indefinable interrogation in Owen’s mind made her, as
- she spoke, fix her eyes steadily on Darrow.
- He had paused just opposite the window, so that, even in the rainy
- afternoon light, his face was clearly open to her scrutiny. For a
- second, immense surprise was alone visible on it: so visible that
- she half turned to her step-son, with a faint smile for his refuted
- suspicions. Why, she wondered, should Owen have thought that Darrow had
- already guessed his secret, and what, after all, could be so disturbing
- to him in this not improbable contingency? At any rate, his doubt
- must have been dispelled: there was nothing feigned about Darrow’s
- astonishment. When her eyes turned back to him he was already crossing
- to Owen with outstretched hand, and she had, through an unaccountable
- faint flutter of misgiving, a mere confused sense of their exchanging
- the customary phrases. Her next perception was of Owen’s tranquillized
- look, and of his smiling return of Darrow’s congratulatory grasp. She
- had the eerie feeling of having been overswept by a shadow which there
- had been no cloud to cast...
- A moment later Owen had left the room and she and Darrow were alone. He
- had turned away to the window and stood staring out into the down-pour.
- “You’re surprised at Owen’s news?” she asked.
- “Yes: I am surprised,” he answered.
- “You hadn’t thought of its being Miss Viner?”
- “Why should I have thought of Miss Viner?”
- “You see now why I wanted so much to find out what you knew about her.”
- He made no comment, and she pursued: “Now that you DO know it’s she, if
- there’s anything----”
- He moved back into the room and went up to her. His face was serious,
- with a slight shade of annoyance. “What on earth should there be? As I
- told you, I’ve never in my life heard any one say two words about Miss
- Viner.”
- Anna made no answer and they continued to face each other without
- moving. For the moment she had ceased to think about Sophy Viner and
- Owen: the only thought in her mind was that Darrow was alone with her,
- close to her, and that, for the first time, their hands and lips had not
- met.
- He glanced back doubtfully at the window. “It’s pouring. Perhaps you’d
- rather not go out?”
- She hesitated, as if waiting for him to urge her. “I suppose I’d better
- not. I ought to go at once to my mother-in-law--Owen’s just been telling
- her,” she said.
- “Ah.” Darrow hazarded a smile. “That accounts for my having, on my way
- up, heard some one telephoning for Miss Painter!”
- At the allusion they laughed together, vaguely, and Anna moved toward
- the door. He held it open for her and followed her out.
- XIX
- He left her at the door of Madame de Chantelle’s sitting-room, and
- plunged out alone into the rain.
- The wind flung about the stripped tree-tops of the avenue and dashed the
- stinging streams into his face. He walked to the gate and then turned
- into the high-road and strode along in the open, buffeted by slanting
- gusts. The evenly ridged fields were a blurred waste of mud, and
- the russet coverts which he and Owen had shot through the day before
- shivered desolately against a driving sky.
- Darrow walked on and on, indifferent to the direction he was taking. His
- thoughts were tossing like the tree-tops. Anna’s announcement had not
- come to him as a complete surprise: that morning, as he strolled back
- to the house with Owen Leath and Miss Viner, he had had a momentary
- intuition of the truth. But it had been no more than an intuition, the
- merest faint cloud-puff of surmise; and now it was an attested fact,
- darkening over the whole sky.
- In respect of his own attitude, he saw at once that the discovery made
- no appreciable change. If he had been bound to silence before, he was no
- less bound to it now; the only difference lay in the fact that what he
- had just learned had rendered his bondage more intolerable. Hitherto
- he had felt for Sophy Viner’s defenseless state a sympathy profoundly
- tinged with compunction. But now he was half-conscious of an obscure
- indignation against her. Superior as he had fancied himself to
- ready-made judgments, he was aware of cherishing the common doubt as to
- the disinterestedness of the woman who tries to rise above her past. No
- wonder she had been sick with fear on meeting him! It was in his power
- to do her more harm than he had dreamed...
- Assuredly he did not want to harm her; but he did desperately want to
- prevent her marrying Owen Leath. He tried to get away from the feeling,
- to isolate and exteriorize it sufficiently to see what motives it
- was made of; but it remained a mere blind motion of his blood, the
- instinctive recoil from the thing that no amount of arguing can make
- “straight.” His tramp, prolonged as it was, carried him no nearer
- to enlightenment; and after trudging through two or three sallow
- mud-stained villages he turned about and wearily made his way back to
- Givre. As he walked up the black avenue, making for the lights that
- twinkled through its pitching branches, he had a sudden realisation
- of his utter helplessness. He might think and combine as he would; but
- there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he could do...
- He dropped his wet coat in the vestibule and began to mount the stairs
- to his room. But on the landing he was overtaken by a sober-faced maid
- who, in tones discreetly lowered, begged him to be so kind as to step,
- for a moment, into the Marquise’s sitting-room. Somewhat disconcerted
- by the summons, he followed its bearer to the door at which, a couple of
- hours earlier, he had taken leave of Mrs. Leath. It opened to admit him
- to a large lamp-lit room which he immediately perceived to be empty; and
- the fact gave him time to note, even through his disturbance of mind,
- the interesting degree to which Madame de Chantelle’s apartment “dated”
- and completed her. Its looped and corded curtains, its purple satin
- upholstery, the Sevres jardinieres, the rosewood fire-screen, the little
- velvet tables edged with lace and crowded with silver knick-knacks and
- simpering miniatures, reconstituted an almost perfect setting for the
- blonde beauty of the ’sixties. Darrow wondered that Fraser Leath’s
- filial respect should have prevailed over his aesthetic scruples to the
- extent of permitting such an anachronism among the eighteenth century
- graces of Givre; but a moment’s reflection made it clear that, to its
- late owner, the attitude would have seemed exactly in the traditions of
- the place.
- Madame de Chantelle’s emergence from an inner room snatched Darrow from
- these irrelevant musings. She was already beaded and bugled for the
- evening, and, save for a slight pinkness of the eye-lids, her elaborate
- appearance revealed no mark of agitation; but Darrow noticed that,
- in recognition of the solemnity of the occasion, she pinched a lace
- handkerchief between her thumb and forefinger.
- She plunged at once into the centre of the difficulty, appealing to him,
- in the name of all the Everards, to descend there with her to the rescue
- of her darling. She wasn’t, she was sure, addressing herself in vain to
- one whose person, whose “tone,” whose traditions so brilliantly declared
- his indebtedness to the principles she besought him to defend. Her own
- reception of Darrow, the confidence she had at once accorded him,
- must have shown him that she had instinctively felt their unanimity of
- sentiment on these fundamental questions. She had in fact recognized in
- him the one person whom, without pain to her maternal piety, she could
- welcome as her son’s successor; and it was almost as to Owen’s father
- that she now appealed to Darrow to aid in rescuing the wretched boy.
- “Don’t think, please, that I’m casting the least reflection on Anna,
- or showing any want of sympathy for her, when I say that I consider
- her partly responsible for what’s happened. Anna is ‘modern’--I believe
- that’s what it’s called when you read unsettling books and admire
- hideous pictures. Indeed,” Madame de Chantelle continued, leaning
- confidentially forward, “I myself have always more or less lived in that
- atmosphere: my son, you know, was very revolutionary. Only he didn’t, of
- course, apply his ideas: they were purely intellectual. That’s what dear
- Anna has always failed to understand. And I’m afraid she’s created the
- same kind of confusion in Owen’s mind--led him to mix up things you read
- about with things you do...You know, of course, that she sides with him
- in this wretched business?”
- Developing at length upon this theme, she finally narrowed down to
- the point of Darrow’s intervention. “My grandson, Mr. Darrow, calls me
- illogical and uncharitable because my feelings toward Miss Viner have
- changed since I’ve heard this news. Well! You’ve known her, it appears,
- for some years: Anna tells me you used to see her when she was a
- companion, or secretary or something, to a dreadfully vulgar Mrs.
- Murrett. And I ask you as a friend, I ask you as one of US, to tell me
- if you think a girl who has had to knock about the world in that kind
- of position, and at the orders of all kinds of people, is fitted to be
- Owen’s wife. I’m not implying anything against her! I LIKED the girl, Mr.
- Darrow...But what’s that got to do with it? I don’t want her to marry
- my grandson. If I’d been looking for a wife for Owen, I shouldn’t
- have applied to the Farlows to find me one. That’s what Anna won’t
- understand; and what you must help me to make her see.”
- Darrow, to this appeal, could oppose only the repeated assurance of his
- inability to interfere. He tried to make Madame de Chantelle see
- that the very position he hoped to take in the household made his
- intervention the more hazardous. He brought up the usual arguments, and
- sounded the expected note of sympathy; but Madame de Chantelle’s alarm
- had dispelled her habitual imprecision, and, though she had not many
- reasons to advance, her argument clung to its point like a frightened
- sharp-clawed animal.
- “Well, then,” she summed up, in response to his repeated assertions that
- he saw no way of helping her, “you can, at least, even if you won’t
- say a word to the others, tell me frankly and fairly--and quite between
- ourselves--your personal opinion of Miss Viner, since you’ve known her
- so much longer than we have.”
- He protested that, if he had known her longer, he had known her much
- less well, and that he had already, on this point, convinced Anna of his
- inability to pronounce an opinion.
- Madame de Chantelle drew a deep sigh of intelligence. “Your opinion of
- Mrs. Murrett is enough! I don’t suppose you pretend to conceal THAT? And
- heaven knows what other unspeakable people she’s been mixed up with. The
- only friends she can produce are called Hoke...Don’t try to reason with
- me, Mr. Darrow. There are feelings that go deeper than facts...And
- I KNOW she thought of studying for the stage...” Madame de Chantelle
- raised the corner of her lace handkerchief to her eyes. “I’m
- old-fashioned--like my furniture,” she murmured. “And I thought I could
- count on you, Mr. Darrow...”
- When Darrow, that night, regained his room, he reflected with a flash
- of irony that each time he entered it he brought a fresh troop of
- perplexities to trouble its serene seclusion. Since the day after his
- arrival, only forty-eight hours before, when he had set his window
- open to the night, and his hopes had seemed as many as its stars,
- each evening had brought its new problem and its renewed distress. But
- nothing, as yet, had approached the blank misery of mind with which he
- now set himself to face the fresh questions confronting him.
- Sophy Viner had not shown herself at dinner, so that he had had no
- glimpse of her in her new character, and no means of divining the real
- nature of the tie between herself and Owen Leath. One thing, however,
- was clear: whatever her real feelings were, and however much or little
- she had at stake, if she had made up her mind to marry Owen she had more
- than enough skill and tenacity to defeat any arts that poor Madame de
- Chantelle could oppose to her.
- Darrow himself was in fact the only person who might possibly turn her
- from her purpose: Madame de Chantelle, at haphazard, had hit on the
- surest means of saving Owen--if to prevent his marriage were to save
- him! Darrow, on this point, did not pretend to any fixed opinion; one
- feeling alone was clear and insistent in him: he did not mean, if he
- could help it, to let the marriage take place.
- How he was to prevent it he did not know: to his tormented imagination
- every issue seemed closed. For a fantastic instant he was moved to
- follow Madame de Chantelle’s suggestion and urge Anna to withdraw her
- approval. If his reticence, his efforts to avoid the subject, had not
- escaped her, she had doubtless set them down to the fact of his knowing
- more, and thinking less, of Sophy Viner than he had been willing to
- admit; and he might take advantage of this to turn her mind gradually
- from the project. Yet how do so without betraying his insincerity? If
- he had had nothing to hide he could easily have said: “It’s one thing to
- know nothing against the girl, it’s another to pretend that I think her
- a good match for Owen.” But could he say even so much without betraying
- more? It was not Anna’s questions, or his answers to them, that he
- feared, but what might cry aloud in the intervals between them. He
- understood now that ever since Sophy Viner’s arrival at Givre he had
- felt in Anna the lurking sense of something unexpressed, and perhaps
- inexpressible, between the girl and himself...When at last he fell
- asleep he had fatalistically committed his next step to the chances of
- the morrow.
- The first that offered itself was an encounter with Mrs. Leath as he
- descended the stairs the next morning. She had come down already hatted
- and shod for a dash to the park lodge, where one of the gatekeeper’s
- children had had an accident. In her compact dark dress she looked more
- than usually straight and slim, and her face wore the pale glow it took
- on at any call on her energy: a kind of warrior brightness that made her
- small head, with its strong chin and close-bound hair, like that of an
- amazon in a frieze.
- It was their first moment alone since she had left him, the afternoon
- before, at her mother-in-law’s door; and after a few words about the
- injured child their talk inevitably reverted to Owen.
- Anna spoke with a smile of her “scene” with Madame de Chantelle, who
- belonged, poor dear, to a generation when “scenes” (in the ladylike
- and lachrymal sense of the term) were the tribute which sensibility was
- expected to pay to the unusual. Their conversation had been, in every
- detail, so exactly what Anna had foreseen that it had clearly not made
- much impression on her; but she was eager to know the result of Darrow’s
- encounter with her mother-in-law.
- “She told me she’d sent for you: she always ‘sends for’ people in
- emergencies. That again, I suppose, is DE L’EPOQUE. And failing Adelaide
- Painter, who can’t get here till this afternoon, there was no one but
- poor you to turn to.”
- She put it all lightly, with a lightness that seemed to his tight-strung
- nerves slightly, undefinably over-done. But he was so aware of his own
- tension that he wondered, the next moment, whether anything would ever
- again seem to him quite usual and insignificant and in the common order
- of things.
- As they hastened on through the drizzle in which the storm of the night
- was weeping itself out, Anna drew close under his umbrella, and at the
- pressure of her arm against his he recalled his walk up the Dover
- pier with Sophy Viner. The memory gave him a startled vision of the
- inevitable occasions of contact, confidence, familiarity, which his
- future relationship to the girl would entail, and the countless chances
- of betrayal that every one of them involved.
- “Do tell me just what you said,” he heard Anna pleading; and with sudden
- resolution he affirmed: “I quite understand your mother-in-law’s feeling
- as she does.”
- The words, when uttered, seemed a good deal less significant than they
- had sounded to his inner ear; and Anna replied without surprise: “Of
- course. It’s inevitable that she should. But we shall bring her round
- in time.” Under the dripping dome she raised her face to his. “Don’t you
- remember what you said the day before yesterday? ‘Together we can’t
- fail to pull it off for him!’ I’ve told Owen that, so you’re pledged and
- there’s no going back.”
- The day before yesterday! Was it possible that, no longer ago, life
- had seemed a sufficiently simple business for a sane man to hazard such
- assurances?
- “Anna,” he questioned her abruptly, “why are you so anxious for this
- marriage?”
- She stopped short to face him. “Why? But surely I’ve explained to
- you--or rather I’ve hardly had to, you seemed so in sympathy with my
- reasons!”
- “I didn’t know, then, who it was that Owen wanted to marry.”
- The words were out with a spring and he felt a clearer air in his brain.
- But her logic hemmed him in.
- “You knew yesterday; and you assured me then that you hadn’t a word to
- say----”
- “Against Miss Viner?” The name, once uttered, sounded on and on in his
- ears. “Of course not. But that doesn’t necessarily imply that I think
- her a good match for Owen.”
- Anna made no immediate answer. When she spoke it was to question: “Why
- don’t you think her a good match for Owen?”
- “Well--Madame de Chantelle’s reasons seem to me not quite as negligible
- as you think.”
- “You mean the fact that she’s been Mrs. Murrett’s secretary, and that
- the people who employed her before were called Hoke? For, as far as Owen
- and I can make out, these are the gravest charges against her.”
- “Still, one can understand that the match is not what Madame de
- Chantelle had dreamed of.”
- “Oh, perfectly--if that’s all you mean.” The lodge was in sight, and she
- hastened her step. He strode on beside her in silence, but at the gate
- she checked him with the question: “Is it really all you mean?”
- “Of course,” he heard himself declare.
- “Oh, then I think I shall convince you--even if I can’t, like Madame
- de Chantelle, summon all the Everards to my aid!” She lifted to him
- the look of happy laughter that sometimes brushed her with a gleam of
- spring.
- Darrow watched her hasten along the path between the dripping
- chrysanthemums and enter the lodge. After she had gone in he paced up
- and down outside in the drizzle, waiting to learn if she had any message
- to send back to the house; and after the lapse of a few minutes she came
- out again.
- The child, she said, was badly, though not dangerously, hurt, and the
- village doctor, who was already on hand, had asked that the surgeon,
- already summoned from Francheuil, should be told to bring with him
- certain needful appliances. Owen had started by motor to fetch the
- surgeon, but there was still time to communicate with the latter by
- telephone. The doctor furthermore begged for an immediate provision of
- such bandages and disinfectants as Givre itself could furnish, and Anna
- bade Darrow address himself to Miss Viner, who would know where to find
- the necessary things, and would direct one of the servants to bicycle
- with them to the lodge.
- Darrow, as he hurried off on this errand, had at once perceived the
- opportunity it offered of a word with Sophy Viner. What that word was to
- be he did not know; but now, if ever, was the moment to make it urgent
- and conclusive. It was unlikely that he would again have such a chance
- of unobserved talk with her.
- He had supposed he should find her with her pupil in the school-room;
- but he learned from a servant that Effie had gone to Francheuil with her
- step-brother, and that Miss Viner was still in her room. Darrow sent her
- word that he was the bearer of a message from the lodge, and a moment
- later he heard her coming down the stairs.
- XX
- For a second, as she approached him, the quick tremor of her glance
- showed her all intent on the same thought as himself. He transmitted
- his instructions with mechanical precision, and she answered in the same
- tone, repeating his words with the intensity of attention of a child not
- quite sure of understanding. Then she disappeared up the stairs.
- Darrow lingered on in the hall, not knowing if she meant to return, yet
- inwardly sure she would. At length he saw her coming down in her hat and
- jacket. The rain still streaked the window panes, and, in order to say
- something, he said: “You’re not going to the lodge yourself?”
- “I’ve sent one of the men ahead with the things; but I thought Mrs.
- Leath might need me.”
- “She didn’t ask for you,” he returned, wondering how he could detain
- her; but she answered decidedly: “I’d better go.”
- He held open the door, picked up his umbrella and followed her out. As
- they went down the steps she glanced back at him. “You’ve forgotten your
- mackintosh.”
- “I sha’n’t need it.”
- She had no umbrella, and he opened his and held it out to her. She
- rejected it with a murmur of thanks and walked on through the thin
- drizzle, and he kept the umbrella over his own head, without offering to
- shelter her.
- Rapidly and in silence they crossed the court and began to walk down
- the avenue. They had traversed a third of its length before Darrow
- said abruptly: “Wouldn’t it have been fairer, when we talked together
- yesterday, to tell me what I’ve just heard from Mrs. Leath?”
- “Fairer----?” She stopped short with a startled look.
- “If I’d known that your future was already settled I should have spared
- you my gratuitous suggestions.”
- She walked on, more slowly, for a yard or two. “I couldn’t speak
- yesterday. I meant to have told you today.”
- “Oh, I’m not reproaching you for your lack of confidence. Only, if you
- HAD told me, I should have been more sure of your really meaning what
- you said to me yesterday.”
- She did not ask him to what he referred, and he saw that her parting
- words to him lived as vividly in her memory as in his.
- “Is it so important that you should be sure?” she finally questioned.
- “Not to you, naturally,” he returned with involuntary asperity. It was
- incredible, yet it was a fact, that for the moment his immediate purpose
- in seeking to speak to her was lost under a rush of resentment at
- counting for so little in her fate. Of what stuff, then, was his feeling
- for her made? A few hours earlier she had touched his thoughts as little
- as his senses; but now he felt old sleeping instincts stir in him...
- A rush of rain dashed against his face, and, catching Sophy’s hat,
- strained it back from her loosened hair. She put her hands to her head
- with a familiar gesture...He came closer and held his umbrella over
- her...
- At the lodge he waited while she went in. The rain continued to stream
- down on him and he shivered in the dampness and stamped his feet on the
- flags. It seemed to him that a long time elapsed before the door opened
- and she reappeared. He glanced into the house for a glimpse of Anna, but
- obtained none; yet the mere sense of her nearness had completely altered
- his mood.
- The child, Sophy told him, was doing well; but Mrs. Leath had decided to
- wait till the surgeon came. Darrow, as they turned away, looked through
- the gates, and saw the doctor’s old-fashioned carriage by the roadside.
- “Let me tell the doctor’s boy to drive you back,” he suggested; but
- Sophy answered: “No; I’ll walk,” and he moved on toward the house at her
- side. She expressed no surprise at his not remaining at the lodge, and
- again they walked on in silence through the rain. She had accepted
- the shelter of his umbrella, but she kept herself at such a carefully
- measured distance that even the slight swaying movements produced by
- their quick pace did not once bring her arm in touch with his; and,
- noticing this, he perceived that every drop of her blood must be alive
- to his nearness.
- “What I meant just now,” he began, “was that you ought to have been sure
- of my good wishes.”
- She seemed to weigh the words. “Sure enough for what?”
- “To trust me a little farther than you did.”
- “I’ve told you that yesterday I wasn’t free to speak.”
- “Well, since you are now, may I say a word to you?”
- She paused perceptibly, and when she spoke it was in so low a tone that
- he had to bend his head to catch her answer. “I can’t think what you can
- have to say.”
- “It’s not easy to say here, at any rate. And indoors I sha’n’t know
- where to say it.” He glanced about him in the rain. “Let’s walk over to
- the spring-house for a minute.”
- To the right of the drive, under a clump of trees, a little stucco
- pavilion crowned by a balustrade rose on arches of mouldering brick over
- a flight of steps that led down to a spring. Other steps curved up to a
- door above. Darrow mounted these, and opening the door entered a
- small circular room hung with loosened strips of painted paper whereon
- spectrally faded Mandarins executed elongated gestures. Some black and
- gold chairs with straw seats and an unsteady table of cracked lacquer
- stood on the floor of red-glazed tile.
- Sophy had followed him without comment. He closed the door after her,
- and she stood motionless, as though waiting for him to speak.
- “Now we can talk quietly,” he said, looking at her with a smile into
- which he tried to put an intention of the frankest friendliness.
- She merely repeated: “I can’t think what you can have to say.”
- Her voice had lost the note of half-wistful confidence on which their
- talk of the previous day had closed, and she looked at him with a kind
- of pale hostility. Her tone made it evident that his task would be
- difficult, but it did not shake his resolve to go on. He sat down, and
- mechanically she followed his example. The table was between them and
- she rested her arms on its cracked edge and her chin on her interlocked
- hands. He looked at her and she gave him back his look.
- “Have you nothing to say to ME?” he asked at length.
- A faint smile lifted, in the remembered way, the left corner of her
- narrowed lips.
- “About my marriage?”
- “About your marriage.”
- She continued to consider him between half-drawn lids. “What can I say
- that Mrs. Leath has not already told you?”
- “Mrs. Leath has told me nothing whatever but the fact--and her pleasure
- in it.”
- “Well; aren’t those the two essential points?”
- “The essential points to YOU? I should have thought----”
- “Oh, to YOU, I meant,” she put in keenly.
- He flushed at the retort, but steadied himself and rejoined: “The
- essential point to me is, of course, that you should be doing what’s
- really best for you.”
- She sat silent, with lowered lashes. At length she stretched out her arm
- and took up from the table a little threadbare Chinese hand-screen. She
- turned its ebony stem once or twice between her fingers, and as she did
- so Darrow was whimsically struck by the way in which their evanescent
- slight romance was symbolized by the fading lines on the frail silk.
- “Do you think my engagement to Mr. Leath not really best for me?” she
- asked at length.
- Darrow, before answering, waited long enough to get his words into the
- tersest shape--not without a sense, as he did so, of his likeness to the
- surgeon deliberately poising his lancet for a clean incision. “I’m not
- sure,” he replied, “of its being the best thing for either of you.”
- She took the stroke steadily, but a faint red swept her face like the
- reflection of a blush. She continued to keep her lowered eyes on the
- screen.
- “From whose point of view do you speak?”
- “Naturally, that of the persons most concerned.”
- “From Owen’s, then, of course? You don’t think me a good match for him?”
- “From yours, first of all. I don’t think him a good match for you.”
- He brought the answer out abruptly, his eyes on her face. It had grown
- extremely pale, but as the meaning of his words shaped itself in her
- mind he saw a curious inner light dawn through her set look. She lifted
- her lids just far enough for a veiled glance at him, and a smile slipped
- through them to her trembling lips. For a moment the change merely
- bewildered him; then it pulled him up with a sharp jerk of apprehension.
- “I don’t think him a good match for you,” he stammered, groping for the
- lost thread of his words.
- She threw a vague look about the chilly rain-dimmed room. “And you’ve
- brought me here to tell me why?”
- The question roused him to the sense that their minutes were numbered,
- and that if he did not immediately get to his point there might be no
- other chance of making it.
- “My chief reason is that I believe he’s too young and inexperienced to
- give you the kind of support you need.”
- At his words her face changed again, freezing to a tragic coldness. She
- stared straight ahead of her, perceptibly struggling with the tremor of
- her muscles; and when she had controlled it she flung out a pale-lipped
- pleasantry. “But you see I’ve always had to support myself!”
- “He’s a boy,” Darrow pushed on, “a charming, wonderful boy; but with
- no more notion than a boy how to deal with the inevitable daily
- problems ... the trivial stupid unimportant things that life is chiefly
- made up of.” “I’ll deal with them for him,” she rejoined.
- “They’ll be more than ordinarily difficult.”
- She shot a challenging glance at him. “You must have some special reason
- for saying so.”
- “Only my clear perception of the facts.”
- “What facts do you mean?”
- Darrow hesitated. “You must know better than I,” he returned at length,
- “that the way won’t be made easy to you.”
- “Mrs. Leath, at any rate, has made it so.”
- “Madame de Chantelle will not.”
- “How do YOU know that?” she flung back.
- He paused again, not sure how far it was prudent to reveal himself
- in the confidence of the household. Then, to avoid involving Anna, he
- answered: “Madame de Chantelle sent for me yesterday.”
- “Sent for you--to talk to you about me?” The colour rose to her forehead
- and her eyes burned black under lowered brows. “By what right, I should
- like to know? What have you to do with me, or with anything in the world
- that concerns me?”
- Darrow instantly perceived what dread suspicion again possessed her, and
- the sense that it was not wholly unjustified caused him a passing pang
- of shame. But it did not turn him from his purpose.
- “I’m an old friend of Mrs. Leath’s. It’s not unnatural that Madame de
- Chantelle should talk to me.”
- She dropped the screen on the table and stood up, turning on him the
- same small mask of wrath and scorn which had glared at him, in Paris,
- when he had confessed to his suppression of her letter. She walked away
- a step or two and then came back.
- “May I ask what Madame de Chantelle said to you?”
- “She made it clear that she should not encourage the marriage.”
- “And what was her object in making that clear to YOU?”
- Darrow hesitated. “I suppose she thought----”
- “That she could persuade you to turn Mrs. Leath against me?”
- He was silent, and she pressed him: “Was that it?” “That was it.”
- “But if you don’t--if you keep your promise----”
- “My promise?”
- “To say nothing ... nothing whatever...” Her strained look threw a haggard
- light along the pause.
- As she spoke, the whole odiousness of the scene rushed over him. “Of
- course I shall say nothing ... you know that...” He leaned to her and laid
- his hand on hers. “You know I wouldn’t for the world...”
- She drew back and hid her face with a sob. Then she sank again into her
- seat, stretched her arms across the table and laid her face upon them.
- He sat still, overwhelmed with compunction. After a long interval, in
- which he had painfully measured the seconds by her hard-drawn breathing,
- she looked up at him with a face washed clear of bitterness.
- “Don’t suppose I don’t know what you must have thought of me!”
- The cry struck him down to a lower depth of self-abasement. “My poor
- child,” he felt like answering, “the shame of it is that I’ve never
- thought of you at all!” But he could only uselessly repeat: “I’ll do
- anything I can to help you.”
- She sat silent, drumming the table with her hand. He saw that her doubt
- of him was allayed, and the perception made him more ashamed, as if her
- trust had first revealed to him how near he had come to not deserving
- it. Suddenly she began to speak.
- “You think, then, I’ve no right to marry him?”
- “No right? God forbid! I only meant----”
- “That you’d rather I didn’t marry any friend of yours.” She brought
- it out deliberately, not as a question, but as a mere dispassionate
- statement of fact.
- Darrow in turn stood up and wandered away helplessly to the window. He
- stood staring out through its small discoloured panes at the dim brown
- distances; then he moved back to the table.
- “I’ll tell you exactly what I meant. You’ll be wretched if you marry a
- man you’re not in love with.”
- He knew the risk of misapprehension that he ran, but he estimated his
- chances of success as precisely in proportion to his peril. If certain
- signs meant what he thought they did, he might yet--at what cost he
- would not stop to think--make his past pay for his future.
- The girl, at his words, had lifted her head with a movement of surprise.
- Her eyes slowly reached his face and rested there in a gaze of deep
- interrogation. He held the look for a moment; then his own eyes dropped
- and he waited.
- At length she began to speak. “You’re mistaken--you’re quite mistaken.”
- He waited a moment longer. “Mistaken----?”
- “In thinking what you think. I’m as happy as if I deserved it!” she
- suddenly proclaimed with a laugh.
- She stood up and moved toward the door. “NOW are you satisfied?” she
- asked, turning her vividest face to him from the threshold.
- XXI
- Down the avenue there came to them, with the opening of the door, the
- voice of Owen’s motor. It was the signal which had interrupted their
- first talk, and again, instinctively, they drew apart at the sound.
- Without a word Darrow turned back into the room, while Sophy Viner went
- down the steps and walked back alone toward the court.
- At luncheon the presence of the surgeon, and the non-appearance
- of Madame de Chantelle--who had excused herself on the plea of a
- headache--combined to shift the conversational centre of gravity; and
- Darrow, under shelter of the necessarily impersonal talk, had time to
- adjust his disguise and to perceive that the others were engaged in the
- same re-arrangement. It was the first time that he had seen young Leath
- and Sophy Viner together since he had learned of their engagement; but
- neither revealed more emotion than befitted the occasion. It was evident
- that Owen was deeply under the girl’s charm, and that at the least
- sign from her his bliss would have broken bounds; but her reticence
- was justified by the tacitly recognized fact of Madame de Chantelle’s
- disapproval. This also visibly weighed on Anna’s mind, making her manner
- to Sophy, if no less kind, yet a trifle more constrained than if the
- moment of final understanding had been reached. So Darrow interpreted
- the tension perceptible under the fluent exchange of commonplaces in
- which he was diligently sharing. But he was more and more aware of his
- inability to test the moral atmosphere about him: he was like a man in
- fever testing another’s temperature by the touch.
- After luncheon Anna, who was to motor the surgeon home, suggested to
- Darrow that he should accompany them. Effie was also of the party; and
- Darrow inferred that Anna wished to give her step-son a chance to be
- alone with his betrothed. On the way back, after the surgeon had been
- left at his door, the little girl sat between her mother and Darrow, and
- her presence kept their talk from taking a personal turn. Darrow knew
- that Mrs. Leath had not yet told Effie of the relation in which he was
- to stand to her. The premature divulging of Owen’s plans had thrown
- their own into the background, and by common consent they continued, in
- the little girl’s presence, on terms of an informal friendliness.
- The sky had cleared after luncheon, and to prolong their excursion they
- returned by way of the ivy-mantled ruin which was to have been the scene
- of the projected picnic. This circuit brought them back to the park
- gates not long before sunset, and as Anna wished to stop at the lodge
- for news of the injured child Darrow left her there with Effie and
- walked on alone to the house. He had the impression that she
- was slightly surprised at his not waiting for her; but his inner
- restlessness vented itself in an intense desire for bodily movement. He
- would have liked to walk himself into a state of torpor; to tramp on
- for hours through the moist winds and the healing darkness and come
- back staggering with fatigue and sleep. But he had no pretext for such
- a flight, and he feared that, at such a moment, his prolonged absence
- might seem singular to Anna.
- As he approached the house, the thought of her nearness produced a swift
- reaction of mood. It was as if an intenser vision of her had scattered
- his perplexities like morning mists. At this moment, wherever she was,
- he knew he was safely shut away in her thoughts, and the knowledge made
- every other fact dwindle away to a shadow. He and she loved each other,
- and their love arched over them open and ample as the day: in all its
- sunlit spaces there was no cranny for a fear to lurk. In a few minutes
- he would be in her presence and would read his reassurance in her eyes.
- And presently, before dinner, she would contrive that they should have
- an hour by themselves in her sitting-room, and he would sit by the
- hearth and watch her quiet movements, and the way the bluish lustre on
- her hair purpled a little as she bent above the fire.
- A carriage drove out of the court as he entered it, and in the hall his
- vision was dispelled by the exceedingly substantial presence of a lady
- in a waterproof and a tweed hat, who stood firmly planted in the centre
- of a pile of luggage, as to which she was giving involved but lucid
- directions to the footman who had just admitted her. She went on with
- these directions regardless of Darrow’s entrance, merely fixing her
- small pale eyes on him while she proceeded, in a deep contralto voice,
- and a fluent French pronounced with the purest Boston accent, to specify
- the destination of her bags; and this enabled Darrow to give her back a
- gaze protracted enough to take in all the details of her plain thick-set
- person, from the square sallow face beneath bands of grey hair to the
- blunt boot-toes protruding under her wide walking skirt.
- She submitted to this scrutiny with no more evidence of surprise than
- a monument examined by a tourist; but when the fate of her luggage had
- been settled she turned suddenly to Darrow and, dropping her eyes from
- his face to his feet, asked in trenchant accents: “What sort of boots
- have you got on?”
- Before he could summon his wits to the consideration of this question
- she continued in a tone of suppressed indignation: “Until Americans get
- used to the fact that France is under water for half the year they’re
- perpetually risking their lives by not being properly protected. I
- suppose you’ve been tramping through all this nasty clammy mud as if
- you’d been taking a stroll on Boston Common.”
- Darrow, with a laugh, affirmed his previous experience of French
- dampness, and the degree to which he was on his guard against it; but
- the lady, with a contemptuous snort, rejoined: “You young men are all
- alike----“; to which she appended, after another hard look at him:
- “I suppose you’re George Darrow? I used to know one of your mother’s
- cousins, who married a Tunstall of Mount Vernon Street. My name is
- Adelaide Painter. Have you been in Boston lately? No? I’m sorry for
- that. I hear there have been several new houses built at the lower
- end of Commonwealth Avenue and I hoped you could tell me about them. I
- haven’t been there for thirty years myself.”
- Miss Painter’s arrival at Givre produced the same effect as the wind’s
- hauling around to the north after days of languid weather. When Darrow
- joined the group about the tea-table she had already given a tingle to
- the air. Madame de Chantelle still remained invisible above stairs;
- but Darrow had the impression that even through her drawn curtains and
- bolted doors a stimulating whiff must have entered.
- Anna was in her usual seat behind the tea-tray, and Sophy Viner
- presently led in her pupil. Owen was also there, seated, as usual,
- a little apart from the others, and following Miss Painter’s massive
- movements and equally substantial utterances with a smile of secret
- intelligence which gave Darrow the idea of his having been in
- clandestine parley with the enemy. Darrow further took note that the
- girl and her suitor perceptibly avoided each other; but this might be a
- natural result of the tension Miss Painter had been summoned to relieve.
- Sophy Viner would evidently permit no recognition of the situation save
- that which it lay with Madame de Chantelle to accord; but meanwhile Miss
- Painter had proclaimed her tacit sense of it by summoning the girl to a
- seat at her side.
- Darrow, as he continued to observe the newcomer, who was perched on her
- arm-chair like a granite image on the edge of a cliff, was aware
- that, in a more detached frame of mind, he would have found an extreme
- interest in studying and classifying Miss Painter. It was not that she
- said anything remarkable, or betrayed any of those unspoken perceptions
- which give significance to the most commonplace utterances. She talked
- of the lateness of her train, of an impending crisis in international
- politics, of the difficulty of buying English tea in Paris and of the
- enormities of which French servants were capable; and her views on these
- subjects were enunciated with a uniformity of emphasis implying complete
- unconsciousness of any difference in their interest and importance. She
- always applied to the French race the distant epithet of “those people”,
- but she betrayed an intimate acquaintance with many of its members,
- and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the domestic habits, financial
- difficulties and private complications of various persons of social
- importance. Yet, as she evidently felt no incongruity in her
- attitude, so she revealed no desire to parade her familiarity with the
- fashionable, or indeed any sense of it as a fact to be paraded. It was
- evident that the titled ladies whom she spoke of as Mimi or Simone or
- Odette were as much “those people” to her as the bonne who tampered with
- her tea and steamed the stamps off her letters (“when, by a miracle,
- I don’t put them in the box myself.”) Her whole attitude was of a vast
- grim tolerance of things-as-they-came, as though she had been some
- wonderful automatic machine which recorded facts but had not yet been
- perfected to the point of sorting or labelling them.
- All this, as Darrow was aware, still fell short of accounting for the
- influence she obviously exerted on the persons in contact with her.
- It brought a slight relief to his state of tension to go on wondering,
- while he watched and listened, just where the mystery lurked.
- Perhaps, after all, it was in the fact of her blank insensibility,
- an insensibility so devoid of egotism that it had no hardness and no
- grimaces, but rather the freshness of a simpler mental state. After
- living, as he had, as they all had, for the last few days, in an
- atmosphere perpetually tremulous with echoes and implications, it was
- restful and fortifying merely to walk into the big blank area of Miss
- Painter’s mind, so vacuous for all its accumulated items, so echoless
- for all its vacuity.
- His hope of a word with Anna before dinner was dispelled by her rising
- to take Miss Painter up to Madame de Chantelle; and he wandered away
- to his own room, leaving Owen and Miss Viner engaged in working out a
- picture-puzzle for Effie.
- Madame de Chantelle--possibly as the result of her friend’s
- ministrations--was able to appear at the dinner-table, rather pale and
- pink-nosed, and casting tenderly reproachful glances at her grandson,
- who faced them with impervious serenity; and the situation was relieved
- by the fact that Miss Viner, as usual, had remained in the school-room
- with her pupil.
- Darrow conjectured that the real clash of arms would not take place till
- the morrow; and wishing to leave the field open to the contestants he
- set out early on a solitary walk. It was nearly luncheon-time when he
- returned from it and came upon Anna just emerging from the house. She
- had on her hat and jacket and was apparently coming forth to seek him,
- for she said at once: “Madame de Chantelle wants you to go up to her.”
- “To go up to her? Now?”
- “That’s the message she sent. She appears to rely on you to do
- something.” She added with a smile: “Whatever it is, let’s have it
- over!”
- Darrow, through his rising sense of apprehension, wondered why, instead
- of merely going for a walk, he had not jumped into the first train and
- got out of the way till Owen’s affairs were finally settled.
- “But what in the name of goodness can I do?” he protested, following
- Anna back into the hall.
- “I don’t know. But Owen seems so to rely on you, too----”
- “Owen! Is HE to be there?”
- “No. But you know I told him he could count on you.”
- “But I’ve said to your mother-in-law all I could.”
- “Well, then you can only repeat it.”
- This did not seem to Darrow to simplify his case as much as she appeared
- to think; and once more he had a movement of recoil. “There’s no
- possible reason for my being mixed up in this affair!”
- Anna gave him a reproachful glance. “Not the fact that I am?” she
- reminded him; but even this only stiffened his resistance.
- “Why should you be, either--to this extent?”
- The question made her pause. She glanced about the hall, as if to be
- sure they had it to themselves; and then, in a lowered voice: “I don’t
- know,” she suddenly confessed; “but, somehow, if THEY’RE not happy I
- feel as if we shouldn’t be.”
- “Oh, well--” Darrow acquiesced, in the tone of the man who perforce
- yields to so lovely an unreasonableness. Escape was, after all,
- impossible, and he could only resign himself to being led to Madame de
- Chantelle’s door.
- Within, among the bric-a-brac and furbelows, he found Miss Painter
- seated in a redundant purple armchair with the incongruous air of a
- horseman bestriding a heavy mount. Madame de Chantelle sat opposite,
- still a little wan and disordered under her elaborate hair, and clasping
- the handkerchief whose visibility symbolized her distress. On the
- young man’s entrance she sighed out a plaintive welcome, to which she
- immediately appended: “Mr. Darrow, I can’t help feeling that at heart
- you’re with me!”
- The directness of the challenge made it easier for Darrow to protest,
- and he reiterated his inability to give an opinion on either side.
- “But Anna declares you have--on hers!”
- He could not restrain a smile at this faint flaw in an impartiality so
- scrupulous. Every evidence of feminine inconsequence in Anna seemed to
- attest her deeper subjection to the most inconsequent of passions. He
- had certainly promised her his help--but before he knew what he was
- promising.
- He met Madame de Chantelle’s appeal by replying: “If there were anything
- I could possibly say I should want it to be in Miss Viner’s favour.”
- “You’d want it to be--yes! But could you make it so?”
- “As far as facts go, I don’t see how I can make it either for or against
- her. I’ve already said that I know nothing of her except that she’s
- charming.”
- “As if that weren’t enough--weren’t all there OUGHT to be!” Miss Painter
- put in impatiently. She seemed to address herself to Darrow, though her
- small eyes were fixed on her friend.
- “Madame de Chantelle seems to imagine,” she pursued, “that a young
- American girl ought to have a dossier--a police-record, or whatever you
- call it: what those awful women in the streets have here. In our country
- it’s enough to know that a young girl’s pure and lovely: people don’t
- immediately ask her to show her bank-account and her visiting-list.”
- Madame de Chantelle looked plaintively at her sturdy monitress. “You
- don’t expect me not to ask if she’s got a family?”
- “No; nor to think the worse of her if she hasn’t. The fact that she’s an
- orphan ought, with your ideas, to be a merit. You won’t have to invite
- her father and mother to Givre!”
- “Adelaide--Adelaide!” the mistress of Givre lamented.
- “Lucretia Mary,” the other returned--and Darrow spared an instant’s
- amusement to the quaint incongruity of the name--“you know you sent for
- Mr. Darrow to refute me; and how can he, till he knows what I think?”
- “You think it’s perfectly simple to let Owen marry a girl we know
- nothing about?”
- “No; but I don’t think it’s perfectly simple to prevent him.”
- The shrewdness of the answer increased Darrow’s interest in Miss
- Painter. She had not hitherto struck him as being a person of much
- penetration, but he now felt sure that her gimlet gaze might bore to the
- heart of any practical problem.
- Madame de Chantelle sighed out her recognition of the difficulty.
- “I haven’t a word to say against Miss Viner; but she’s knocked about
- so, as it’s called, that she must have been mixed up with some rather
- dreadful people. If only Owen could be made to see that--if one could
- get at a few facts, I mean. She says, for instance, that she has a
- sister; but it seems she doesn’t even know her address!”
- “If she does, she may not want to give it to you. I daresay the sister’s
- one of the dreadful people. I’ve no doubt that with a little time you
- could rake up dozens of them: have her ‘traced’, as they call it in
- detective stories. I don’t think you’d frighten Owen, but you might:
- it’s natural enough he should have been corrupted by those foreign
- ideas. You might even manage to part him from the girl; but you couldn’t
- keep him from being in love with her. I saw that when I looked them
- over last evening. I said to myself: ‘It’s a real old-fashioned American
- case, as sweet and sound as home-made bread.’ Well, if you take his loaf
- away from him, what are you going to feed him with instead? Which of
- your nasty Paris poisons do you think he’ll turn to? Supposing you
- succeed in keeping him out of a really bad mess--and, knowing the young
- man as I do, I rather think that, at this crisis, the only way to do it
- would be to marry him slap off to somebody else--well, then, who, may I
- ask, would you pick out? One of your sweet French ingenues, I suppose?
- With as much mind as a minnow and as much snap as a soft-boiled egg. You
- might hustle him into that kind of marriage; I daresay you could--but
- if I know Owen, the natural thing would happen before the first baby was
- weaned.”
- “I don’t know why you insinuate such odious things against Owen!”
- “Do you think it would be odious of him to return to his real love when
- he’d been forcibly parted from her? At any rate, it’s what your French
- friends do, every one of them! Only they don’t generally have the grace
- to go back to an old love; and I believe, upon my word, Owen would!”
- Madame de Chantelle looked at her with a mixture of awe and exultation.
- “Of course you realize, Adelaide, that in suggesting this you’re
- insinuating the most shocking things against Miss Viner?”
- “When I say that if you part two young things who are dying to be happy
- in the lawful way it’s ten to one they’ll come together in an unlawful
- one? I’m insinuating shocking things against YOU, Lucretia Mary, in
- suggesting for a moment that you’ll care to assume such a responsibility
- before your Maker. And you wouldn’t, if you talked things straight out
- with him, instead of merely sending him messages through a miserable
- sinner like yourself!”
- Darrow expected this assault on her adopted creed to provoke in Madame
- de Chantelle an explosion of pious indignation; but to his surprise she
- merely murmured: “I don’t know what Mr. Darrow’ll think of you!”
- “Mr. Darrow probably knows his Bible as well as I do,” Miss Painter
- calmly rejoined; adding a moment later, without the least perceptible
- change of voice or expression: “I suppose you’ve heard that Gisele
- de Folembray’s husband accuses her of being mixed up with the Duc
- d’Arcachon in that business of trying to sell a lot of imitation pearls
- to Mrs. Homer Pond, the Chicago woman the Duke’s engaged to? It seems
- the jeweller says Gisele brought Mrs. Pond there, and got twenty-five
- per cent--which of course she passed on to d’Arcachon. The poor old
- Duchess is in a fearful state--so afraid her son’ll lose Mrs. Pond!
- When I think that Gisele is old Bradford Wagstaff’s grand-daughter, I’m
- thankful he’s safe in Mount Auburn!”
- XXII
- It was not until late that afternoon that Darrow could claim his
- postponed hour with Anna. When at last he found her alone in her
- sitting-room it was with a sense of liberation so great that he sought
- no logical justification of it. He simply felt that all their destinies
- were in Miss Painter’s grasp, and that, resistance being useless, he
- could only enjoy the sweets of surrender.
- Anna herself seemed as happy, and for more explicable reasons. She had
- assisted, after luncheon, at another debate between Madame de Chantelle
- and her confidant, and had surmised, when she withdrew from it, that
- victory was permanently perched on Miss Painter’s banners.
- “I don’t know how she does it, unless it’s by the dead weight of her
- convictions. She detests the French so that she’d back up Owen even if
- she knew nothing--or knew too much--of Miss Viner. She somehow regards
- the match as a protest against the corruption of European morals. I told
- Owen that was his great chance, and he’s made the most of it.”
- “What a tactician you are! You make me feel that I hardly know the
- rudiments of diplomacy,” Darrow smiled at her, abandoning himself to a
- perilous sense of well-being.
- She gave him back his smile. “I’m afraid I think nothing short of my own
- happiness is worth wasting any diplomacy on!”
- “That’s why I mean to resign from the service of my country,” he
- rejoined with a laugh of deep content.
- The feeling that both resistance and apprehension were vain was working
- like wine in his veins. He had done what he could to deflect the course
- of events: now he could only stand aside and take his chance of safety.
- Underneath this fatalistic feeling was the deep sense of relief that
- he had, after all, said and done nothing that could in the least degree
- affect the welfare of Sophy Viner. That fact took a millstone off his
- neck.
- Meanwhile he gave himself up once more to the joy of Anna’s presence.
- They had not been alone together for two long days, and he had the
- lover’s sense that he had forgotten, or at least underestimated, the
- strength of the spell she cast. Once more her eyes and her smile seemed
- to bound his world. He felt that their light would always move with him
- as the sunset moves before a ship at sea.
- The next day his sense of security was increased by a decisive incident.
- It became known to the expectant household that Madame de Chantelle had
- yielded to the tremendous impact of Miss Painter’s determination and
- that Sophy Viner had been “sent for” to the purple satin sitting-room.
- At luncheon, Owen’s radiant countenance proclaimed the happy sequel, and
- Darrow, when the party had moved back to the oak-room for coffee, deemed
- it discreet to wander out alone to the terrace with his cigar. The
- conclusion of Owen’s romance brought his own plans once more to the
- front. Anna had promised that she would consider dates and settle
- details as soon as Madame de Chantelle and her grandson had been
- reconciled, and Darrow was eager to go into the question at once,
- since it was necessary that the preparations for his marriage should
- go forward as rapidly as possible. Anna, he knew, would not seek any
- farther pretext for delay; and he strolled up and down contentedly in
- the sunshine, certain that she would come out and reassure him as soon
- as the reunited family had claimed its due share of her attention.
- But when she finally joined him her first word was for the younger
- lovers.
- “I want to thank you for what you’ve done for Owen,” she began, with her
- happiest smile.
- “Who--I?” he laughed. “Are you confusing me with Miss Painter?”
- “Perhaps I ought to say for ME,” she corrected herself. “You’ve been
- even more of a help to us than Adelaide.”
- “My dear child! What on earth have I done?”
- “You’ve managed to hide from Madame de Chantelle that you don’t really
- like poor Sophy.”
- Darrow felt the pallour in his cheek. “Not like her? What put such an
- idea into your head?”
- “Oh, it’s more than an idea--it’s a feeling. But what difference does
- it make, after all? You saw her in such a different setting that it’s
- natural you should be a little doubtful. But when you know her better
- I’m sure you’ll feel about her as I do.”
- “It’s going to be hard for me not to feel about everything as you do.”
- “Well, then--please begin with my daughter-in-law!”
- He gave her back in the same tone of banter: “Agreed: if you ll agree to
- feel as I do about the pressing necessity of our getting married.”
- “I want to talk to you about that too. You don’t know what a weight is
- off my mind! With Sophy here for good, I shall feel so differently
- about leaving Effie. I’ve seen much more accomplished governesses--to
- my cost!--but I’ve never seen a young thing more gay and kind and human.
- You must have noticed, though you’ve seen them so little together, how
- Effie expands when she’s with her. And that, you know, is what I want.
- Madame de Chantelle will provide the necessary restraint.” She clasped
- her hands on his arm. “Yes, I’m ready to go with you now. But first of
- all--this very moment!--you must come with me to Effie. She knows, of
- course, nothing of what’s been happening; and I want her to be told
- first about YOU.”
- Effie, sought throughout the house, was presently traced to the
- school-room, and thither Darrow mounted with Anna. He had never seen
- her so alight with happiness, and he had caught her buoyancy of mood. He
- kept repeating to himself: “It’s over--it’s over,” as if some monstrous
- midnight hallucination had been routed by the return of day.
- As they approached the school-room door the terrier’s barks came to them
- through laughing remonstrances.
- “She’s giving him his dinner,” Anna whispered, her hand in Darrow’s.
- “Don’t forget the gold-fish!” they heard another voice call out.
- Darrow halted on the threshold. “Oh--not now!”
- “Not now?”
- “I mean--she’d rather have you tell her first. I’ll wait for you both
- downstairs.”
- He was aware that she glanced at him intently. “As you please. I’ll
- bring her down at once.”
- She opened the door, and as she went in he heard her say: “No, Sophy,
- don’t go! I want you both.”
- The rest of Darrow’s day was a succession of empty and agitating
- scenes. On his way down to Givre, before he had seen Effie Leath, he
- had pictured somewhat sentimentally the joy of the moment when he should
- take her in his arms and receive her first filial kiss. Everything
- in him that egotistically craved for rest, stability, a comfortably
- organized middle-age, all the home-building instincts of the man who
- has sufficiently wooed and wandered, combined to throw a charm about the
- figure of the child who might--who should--have been his. Effie came to
- him trailing the cloud of glory of his first romance, giving him
- back the magic hour he had missed and mourned. And how different the
- realization of his dream had been! The child’s radiant welcome, her
- unquestioning acceptance of, this new figure in the family group, had
- been all that he had hoped and fancied. If Mother was so awfully happy
- about it, and Owen and Granny, too, how nice and cosy and comfortable
- it was going to be for all of them, her beaming look seemed to say; and
- then, suddenly, the small pink fingers he had been kissing were laid
- on the one flaw in the circle, on the one point which must be settled
- before Effie could, with complete unqualified assurance, admit the
- new-comer to full equality with the other gods of her Olympus.
- “And is Sophy awfully happy about it too?” she had asked, loosening her
- hold on Darrow’s neck to tilt back her head and include her mother in
- her questioning look.
- “Why, dearest, didn’t you see she was?” Anna had exclaimed, leaning to
- the group with radiant eyes.
- “I think I should like to ask her,” the child rejoined, after a minute’s
- shy consideration; and as Darrow set her down her mother laughed: “Do,
- darling, do! Run off at once, and tell her we expect her to be awfully
- happy too.”
- The scene had been succeeded by others less poignant but almost as
- trying. Darrow cursed his luck in having, at such a moment, to run
- the gauntlet of a houseful of interested observers. The state of being
- “engaged”, in itself an absurd enough predicament, even to a man only
- intermittently exposed, became intolerable under the continuous scrutiny
- of a small circle quivering with participation. Darrow was furthermore
- aware that, though the case of the other couple ought to have made
- his own less conspicuous, it was rather they who found a refuge in the
- shadow of his prominence. Madame de Chantelle, though she had
- consented to Owen’s engagement and formally welcomed his betrothed,
- was nevertheless not sorry to show, by her reception of Darrow, of
- what finely-shaded degrees of cordiality she was capable. Miss Painter,
- having won the day for Owen, was also free to turn her attention to the
- newer candidate for her sympathy; and Darrow and Anna found themselves
- immersed in a warm bath of sentimental curiosity.
- It was a relief to Darrow that he was under a positive obligation to end
- his visit within the next forty-eight hours. When he left London, his
- Ambassador had accorded him a ten days’ leave. His fate being definitely
- settled and openly published he had no reason for asking to have the
- time prolonged, and when it was over he was to return to his post till
- the time fixed for taking up his new duties. Anna and he had therefore
- decided to be married, in Paris, a day or two before the departure of
- the steamer which was to take them to South America; and Anna, shortly
- after his return to England, was to go up to Paris and begin her own
- preparations.
- In honour of the double betrothal Effie and Miss Viner were to appear
- that evening at dinner; and Darrow, on leaving his room, met the little
- girl springing down the stairs, her white ruffles and coral-coloured
- bows making her look like a daisy with her yellow hair for its centre.
- Sophy Viner was behind her pupil, and as she came into the light Darrow
- noticed a change in her appearance and wondered vaguely why she looked
- suddenly younger, more vivid, more like the little luminous ghost of his
- Paris memories. Then it occurred to him that it was the first time she
- had appeared at dinner since his arrival at Givre, and the first time,
- consequently, that he had seen her in evening dress. She was still at
- the age when the least adornment embellishes; and no doubt the mere
- uncovering of her young throat and neck had given her back her former
- brightness. But a second glance showed a more precise reason for his
- impression. Vaguely though he retained such details, he felt sure she
- was wearing the dress he had seen her in every evening in Paris. It was
- a simple enough dress, black, and transparent on the arms and shoulders,
- and he would probably not have recognized it if she had not called his
- attention to it in Paris by confessing that she hadn’t any other. “The
- same dress? That proves that she’s forgotten!” was his first half-ironic
- thought; but the next moment, with a pang of compunction, he said to
- himself that she had probably put it on for the same reason as before:
- simply because she hadn’t any other.
- He looked at her in silence, and for an instant, above Effie’s bobbing
- head, she gave him back his look in a full bright gaze.
- “Oh, there’s Owen!” Effie cried, and whirled away down the gallery to
- the door from which her step-brother was emerging. As Owen bent to catch
- her, Sophy Viner turned abruptly back to Darrow.
- “You, too?” she said with a quick laugh. “I didn’t know----” And as Owen
- came up to them she added, in a tone that might have been meant to reach
- his ear: “I wish you all the luck that we can spare!”
- About the dinner-table, which Effie, with Miss Viner’s aid, had lavishly
- garlanded, the little party had an air of somewhat self-conscious
- festivity. In spite of flowers, champagne and a unanimous attempt at
- ease, there were frequent lapses in the talk, and moments of nervous
- groping for new subjects. Miss Painter alone seemed not only
- unaffected by the general perturbation but as tightly sealed up in
- her unconsciousness of it as a diver in his bell. To Darrow’s strained
- attention even Owen’s gusts of gaiety seemed to betray an inward sense
- of insecurity. After dinner, however, at the piano, he broke into a mood
- of extravagant hilarity and flooded the room with the splash and ripple
- of his music.
- Darrow, sunk in a sofa corner in the lee of Miss Painter’s granite
- bulk, smoked and listened in silence, his eyes moving from one figure to
- another. Madame de Chantelle, in her armchair near the fire, clasped her
- little granddaughter to her with the gesture of a drawing-room Niobe,
- and Anna, seated near them, had fallen into one of the attitudes of
- vivid calm which seemed to Darrow to express her inmost quality. Sophy
- Viner, after moving uncertainly about the room, had placed herself
- beyond Mrs. Leath, in a chair near the piano, where she sat with head
- thrown back and eyes attached to the musician, in the same rapt fixity
- of attention with which she had followed the players at the Francais.
- The accident of her having fallen into the same attitude, and of her
- wearing the same dress, gave Darrow, as he watched her, a strange sense
- of double consciousness. To escape from it, his glance turned back to
- Anna; but from the point at which he was placed his eyes could not
- take in the one face without the other, and that renewed the disturbing
- duality of the impression. Suddenly Owen broke off with a crash of
- chords and jumped to his feet.
- “What’s the use of this, with such a moon to say it for us?”
- Behind the uncurtained window a low golden orb hung like a ripe fruit
- against the glass.
- “Yes--let’s go out and listen,” Anna answered. Owen threw open the
- window, and with his gesture a fold of the heavy star-sprinkled sky
- seemed to droop into the room like a drawn-in curtain. The air that
- entered with it had a frosty edge, and Anna bade Effie run to the hall
- for wraps.
- Darrow said: “You must have one too,” and started toward the door;
- but Sophy, following her pupil, cried back: “We’ll bring things for
- everybody.”
- Owen had followed her, and in a moment the three reappeared, and the
- party went out on the terrace. The deep blue purity of the night was
- unveiled by mist, and the moonlight rimmed the edges of the trees with
- a silver blur and blanched to unnatural whiteness the statues against
- their walls of shade.
- Darrow and Anna, with Effie between them, strolled to the farther corner
- of the terrace. Below them, between the fringes of the park, the lawn
- sloped dimly to the fields above the river. For a few minutes they stood
- silently side by side, touched to peace beneath the trembling beauty of
- the sky. When they turned back, Darrow saw that Owen and Sophy Viner,
- who had gone down the steps to the garden, were also walking in the
- direction of the house. As they advanced, Sophy paused in a patch of
- moonlight, between the sharp shadows of the yews, and Darrow noticed
- that she had thrown over her shoulders a long cloak of some light
- colour, which suddenly evoked her image as she had entered the
- restaurant at his side on the night of their first dinner in Paris. A
- moment later they were all together again on the terrace, and when they
- re-entered the drawing-room the older ladies were on their way to bed.
- Effie, emboldened by the privileges of the evening, was for coaxing Owen
- to round it off with a game of forfeits or some such reckless climax;
- but Sophy, resuming her professional role, sounded the summons to bed.
- In her pupil’s wake she made her round of good-nights; but when she
- proffered her hand to Anna, the latter ignoring the gesture held out
- both arms.
- “Good-night, dear child,” she said impulsively, and drew the girl to her
- kiss.
- BOOK IV
- XXIII
- The next day was Darrow’s last at Givre and, foreseeing that the
- afternoon and evening would have to be given to the family, he had asked
- Anna to devote an early hour to the final consideration of their plans.
- He was to meet her in the brown sitting-room at ten, and they were to
- walk down to the river and talk over their future in the little pavilion
- abutting on the wall of the park.
- It was just a week since his arrival at Givre, and Anna wished, before
- he left, to return to the place where they had sat on their first
- afternoon together. Her sensitiveness to the appeal of inanimate things,
- to the colour and texture of whatever wove itself into the substance of
- her emotion, made her want to hear Darrow’s voice, and to feel his eyes
- on her, in the spot where bliss had first flowed into her heart.
- That bliss, in the interval, had wound itself into every fold of her
- being. Passing, in the first days, from a high shy tenderness to the
- rush of a secret surrender, it had gradually widened and deepened, to
- flow on in redoubled beauty. She thought she now knew exactly how and
- why she loved Darrow, and she could see her whole sky reflected in the
- deep and tranquil current of her love.
- Early the next day, in her sitting-room, she was glancing through the
- letters which it was Effie’s morning privilege to carry up to her. Effie
- meanwhile circled inquisitively about the room, where there was always
- something new to engage her infant fancy; and Anna, looking up, saw her
- suddenly arrested before a photograph of Darrow which, the day before,
- had taken its place on the writing-table.
- Anna held out her arms with a faint blush. “You do like him, don’t you,
- dear?”
- “Oh, most awfully, dearest,” Effie, against her breast, leaned back
- to assure her with a limpid look. “And so do Granny and Owen--and I DO
- think Sophy does too,” she added, after a moment’s earnest pondering.
- “I hope so,” Anna laughed. She checked the impulse to continue: “Has she
- talked to you about him, that you’re so sure?” She did not know what had
- made the question spring to her lips, but she was glad she had closed
- them before pronouncing it. Nothing could have been more distasteful to
- her than to clear up such obscurities by turning on them the tiny flame
- of her daughter’s observation. And what, after all, now that Owen’s
- happiness was secured, did it matter if there were certain reserves in
- Darrow’s approval of his marriage?
- A knock on the door made Anna glance at the clock. “There’s Nurse to
- carry you off.”
- “It’s Sophy’s knock,” the little girl answered, jumping down to open the
- door; and Miss Viner in fact stood on the threshold.
- “Come in,” Anna said with a smile, instantly remarking how pale she
- looked.
- “May Effie go out for a turn with Nurse?” the girl asked. “I should like
- to speak to you a moment.”
- “Of course. This ought to be YOUR holiday, as yesterday was Effie’s. Run
- off, dear,” she added, stooping to kiss the little girl.
- When the door had closed she turned back to Sophy Viner with a look that
- sought her confidence. “I’m so glad you came, my dear. We’ve got so many
- things to talk about, just you and I together.”
- The confused intercourse of the last days had, in fact, left little time
- for any speech with Sophy but such as related to her marriage and the
- means of overcoming Madame de Chantelle’s opposition to it. Anna had
- exacted of Owen that no one, not even Sophy Viner, should be given a
- hint of her own projects till all contingent questions had been disposed
- of. She had felt, from the outset, a secret reluctance to intrude her
- securer happiness on the doubts and fears of the young pair.
- From the sofa-corner to which she had dropped back she pointed to
- Darrow’s chair. “Come and sit by me, dear. I wanted to see you alone.
- There’s so much to say that I hardly know where to begin.”
- She leaned forward, her hands clasped on the arms of the sofa, her eyes
- bent smilingly on Sophy’s. As she did so, she noticed that the girl’s
- unusual pallour was partly due to the slight veil of powder on her
- face. The discovery was distinctly disagreeable. Anna had never before
- noticed, on Sophy’s part, any recourse to cosmetics, and, much as
- she wished to think herself exempt from old-fashioned prejudices, she
- suddenly became aware that she did not like her daughter’s governess to
- have a powdered face. Then she reflected that the girl who sat opposite
- her was no longer Effie’s governess, but her own future daughter-in-law;
- and she wondered whether Miss Viner had chosen this odd way of
- celebrating her independence, and whether, as Mrs. Owen Leath, she would
- present to the world a bedizened countenance. This idea was scarcely
- less distasteful than the other, and for a moment Anna continued to
- consider her without speaking. Then, in a flash, the truth came to her:
- Miss Viner had powdered her face because Miss Viner had been crying.
- Anna leaned forward impulsively. “My dear child, what’s the matter?”
- She saw the girl’s blood rush up under the white mask, and hastened on:
- “Please don’t be afraid to tell me. I do so want you to feel that you
- can trust me as Owen does. And you know you mustn’t mind if, just at
- first, Madame de Chantelle occasionally relapses.”
- She spoke eagerly, persuasively, almost on a note of pleading. She had,
- in truth, so many reasons for wanting Sophy to like her: her love for
- Owen, her solicitude for Effie, and her own sense of the girl’s fine
- mettle. She had always felt a romantic and almost humble admiration for
- those members of her sex who, from force of will, or the constraint
- of circumstances, had plunged into the conflict from which fate had
- so persistently excluded her. There were even moments when she fancied
- herself vaguely to blame for her immunity, and felt that she ought
- somehow to have affronted the perils and hardships which refused to come
- to her. And now, as she sat looking at Sophy Viner, so small, so slight,
- so visibly defenceless and undone, she still felt, through all the
- superiority of her worldly advantages and her seeming maturity, the same
- odd sense of ignorance and inexperience. She could not have said what
- there was in the girl’s manner and expression to give her this feeling,
- but she was reminded, as she looked at Sophy Viner, of the other girls
- she had known in her youth, the girls who seemed possessed of a secret
- she had missed. Yes, Sophy Viner had their look--almost the obscurely
- menacing look of Kitty Mayne...Anna, with an inward smile, brushed aside
- the image of this forgotten rival. But she had felt, deep down, a
- twinge of the old pain, and she was sorry that, even for the flash of
- a thought, Owen’s betrothed should have reminded her of so different a
- woman...
- She laid her hand on the girl’s. “When his grandmother sees how happy
- Owen is she’ll be quite happy herself. If it’s only that, don’t be
- distressed. Just trust to Owen--and the future.”
- Sophy Viner, with an almost imperceptible recoil of her whole slight
- person, had drawn her hand from under the palm enclosing it.
- “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about--the future.”
- “Of course! We’ve all so many plans to make--and to fit into each
- other’s. Please let’s begin with yours.”
- The girl paused a moment, her hands clasped on the arms of her chair,
- her lids dropped under Anna’s gaze; then she said: “I should like to
- make no plans at all ... just yet...”
- “No plans?”
- “No--I should like to go away ... my friends the Farlows would let me go
- to them...” Her voice grew firmer and she lifted her eyes to add: “I
- should like to leave today, if you don’t mind.”
- Anna listened with a rising wonder.
- “You want to leave Givre at once?” She gave the idea a moment’s swift
- consideration. “You prefer to be with your friends till your marriage?
- I understand that--but surely you needn’t rush off today? There are so
- many details to discuss; and before long, you know, I shall be going
- away too.”
- “Yes, I know.” The girl was evidently trying to steady her voice. “But I
- should like to wait a few days--to have a little more time to myself.”
- Anna continued to consider her kindly. It was evident that she did not
- care to say why she wished to leave Givre so suddenly, but her disturbed
- face and shaken voice betrayed a more pressing motive than the natural
- desire to spend the weeks before her marriage under her old friends’
- roof. Since she had made no response to the allusion to Madame de
- Chantelle, Anna could but conjecture that she had had a passing
- disagreement with Owen; and if this were so, random interference might
- do more harm than good.
- “My dear child, if you really want to go at once I sha’n’t, of course,
- urge you to stay. I suppose you have spoken to Owen?”
- “No. Not yet...”
- Anna threw an astonished glance at her. “You mean to say you haven’t
- told him?”
- “I wanted to tell you first. I thought I ought to, on account of Effie.”
- Her look cleared as she put forth this reason.
- “Oh, Effie!--” Anna’s smile brushed away the scruple. “Owen has a right
- to ask that you should consider him before you think of his sister...Of
- course you shall do just as you wish,” she went on, after another
- thoughtful interval.
- “Oh, thank you,” Sophy Viner murmured and rose to her feet.
- Anna rose also, vaguely seeking for some word that should break down the
- girl’s resistance. “You’ll tell Owen at once?” she finally asked.
- Miss Viner, instead of replying, stood before her in manifest
- uncertainty, and as she did so there was a light tap on the door, and
- Owen Leath walked into the room.
- Anna’s first glance told her that his face was unclouded. He met her
- greeting with his happiest smile and turned to lift Sophy’s hand to his
- lips. The perception that he was utterly unconscious of any cause for
- Miss Viner’s agitation came to his step-mother with a sharp thrill of
- surprise.
- “Darrow’s looking for you,” he said to her. “He asked me to remind you
- that you’d promised to go for a walk with him.”
- Anna glanced at the clock. “I’ll go down presently.” She waited and
- looked again at Sophy Viner, whose troubled eyes seemed to commit their
- message to her. “You’d better tell Owen, my dear.”
- Owen’s look also turned on the girl. “Tell me what? Why, what’s
- happened?”
- Anna summoned a laugh to ease the vague tension of the moment. “Don’t
- look so startled! Nothing, except that Sophy proposes to desert us for a
- while for the Farlows.”
- Owen’s brow cleared. “I was afraid she’d run off before long.” He
- glanced at Anna. “Do please keep her here as long as you can!”
- Sophy intervened: “Mrs. Leath’s already given me leave to go.”
- “Already? To go when?”
- “Today,” said Sophy in a low tone, her eyes on Anna’s.
- “Today? Why on earth should you go today?” Owen dropped back a step or
- two, flushing and paling under his bewildered frown. His eyes seemed to
- search the girl more closely. “Something’s happened.” He too looked at
- his step-mother. “I suppose she must have told you what it is?”
- Anna was struck by the suddenness and vehemence of his appeal. It was as
- though some smouldering apprehension had lain close under the surface of
- his security.
- “She’s told me nothing except that she wishes to be with her friends.
- It’s quite natural that she should want to go to them.”
- Owen visibly controlled himself. “Of course--quite natural.” He spoke
- to Sophy. “But why didn’t you tell me so? Why did you come first to my
- step-mother?”
- Anna intervened with her calm smile. “That seems to me quite natural,
- too. Sophy was considerate enough to tell me first because of Effie.”
- He weighed it. “Very well, then: that’s quite natural, as you say. And
- of course she must do exactly as she pleases.” He still kept his eyes on
- the girl. “Tomorrow,” he abruptly announced, “I shall go up to Paris to
- see you.”
- “Oh, no--no!” she protested.
- Owen turned back to Anna. “NOW do you say that nothing’s happened?”
- Under the influence of his agitation Anna felt a vague tightening of
- the heart. She seemed to herself like some one in a dark room about whom
- unseen presences are groping.
- “If it’s anything that Sophy wishes to tell you, no doubt she’ll do
- so. I’m going down now, and I’ll leave you here to talk it over by
- yourselves.”
- As she moved to the door the girl caught up with her. “But there’s
- nothing to tell: why should there be? I’ve explained that I simply want
- to be quiet.” Her look seemed to detain Mrs. Leath.
- Owen broke in: “Is that why I mayn’t go up tomorrow?”
- “Not tomorrow!”
- “Then when may I?”
- “Later ... in a little while ... a few days...”
- “In how many days?” “Owen!” his step-mother interposed; but he seemed
- no longer aware of her. “If you go away today, the day that our
- engagement’s made known, it’s only fair,” he persisted, “that you should
- tell me when I am to see you.”
- Sophy’s eyes wavered between the two and dropped down wearily. “It’s you
- who are not fair--when I’ve said I wanted to be quiet.”
- “But why should my coming disturb you? I’m not asking now to come
- tomorrow. I only ask you not to leave without telling me when I’m to see
- you.”
- “Owen, I don’t understand you!” his step-mother exclaimed.
- “You don’t understand my asking for some explanation, some assurance,
- when I’m left in this way, without a word, without a sign? All I ask her
- to tell me is when she’ll see me.”
- Anna turned back to Sophy Viner, who stood straight and tremulous
- between the two.
- “After all, my dear, he’s not unreasonable!”
- “I’ll write--I’ll write,” the girl repeated.
- “WHAT will you write?” he pressed her vehemently.
- “Owen,” Anna exclaimed, “you are unreasonable!”
- He turned from Sophy to his step-mother. “I only want her to say what
- she means: that she’s going to write to break off our engagement. Isn’t
- that what you’re going away for?”
- Anna felt the contagion of his excitement. She looked at Sophy, who
- stood motionless, her lips set, her whole face drawn to a silent fixity
- of resistance.
- “You ought to speak, my dear--you ought to answer him.”
- “I only ask him to wait----”
- “Yes,” Owen, broke in, “and you won’t say how long!”
- Both instinctively addressed themselves to Anna, who stood, nearly as
- shaken as themselves, between the double shock of their struggle. She
- looked again from Sophy’s inscrutable eyes to Owen’s stormy features;
- then she said: “What can I do, when there’s clearly something between
- you that I don’t know about?”
- “Oh, if it WERE between us! Can’t you see it’s outside of us--outside
- of her, dragging at her, dragging her away from me?” Owen wheeled round
- again upon his step-mother.
- Anna turned from him to the girl. “Is it true that you want to break
- your engagement? If you do, you ought to tell him now.”
- Owen burst into a laugh. “She doesn’t dare to--she’s afraid I’ll guess
- the reason!”
- A faint sound escaped from Sophy’s lips, but she kept them close on
- whatever answer she had ready.
- “If she doesn’t wish to marry you, why should she be afraid to have you
- know the reason?”
- “She’s afraid to have YOU know it--not me!”
- “To have ME know it?”
- He laughed again, and Anna, at his laugh, felt a sudden rush of
- indignation.
- “Owen, you must explain what you mean!”
- He looked at her hard before answering; then: “Ask Darrow!” he said.
- “Owen--Owen!” Sophy Viner murmured.
- XXIV
- Anna stood looking from one to the other. It had become apparent to her
- in a flash that Owen’s retort, though it startled Sophy, did not take
- her by surprise; and the discovery shot its light along dark distances
- of fear.
- The immediate inference was that Owen had guessed the reason of Darrow’s
- disapproval of his marriage, or that, at least, he suspected Sophy Viner
- of knowing and dreading it. This confirmation of her own obscure
- doubt sent a tremor of alarm through Anna. For a moment she felt like
- exclaiming: “All this is really no business of mine, and I refuse to
- have you mix me up in it--” but her secret fear held her fast.
- Sophy Viner was the first to speak.
- “I should like to go now,” she said in a low voice, taking a few steps
- toward the door.
- Her tone woke Anna to the sense of her own share in the situation.
- “I quite agree with you, my dear, that it’s useless to carry on this
- discussion. But since Mr. Darrow’s name has been brought into it, for
- reasons which I fail to guess, I want to tell you that you’re both
- mistaken if you think he’s not in sympathy with your marriage. If that’s
- what Owen means to imply, the idea’s a complete delusion.”
- She spoke the words deliberately and incisively, as if hoping that the
- sound of their utterance would stifle the whisper in her bosom.
- Sophy’s only answer was a vague murmur, and a movement that brought
- her nearer to the door; but before she could reach it Owen had placed
- himself in her way.
- “I don’t mean to imply what you think,” he said, addressing his
- step-mother but keeping his eyes on the girl. “I don’t say Darrow
- doesn’t like our marriage; I say it’s Sophy who’s hated it since
- Darrow’s been here!”
- He brought out the charge in a tone of forced composure, but his lips
- were white and he grasped the doorknob to hide the tremor of his hand.
- Anna’s anger surged up with her fears. “You’re absurd, Owen! I don’t
- know why I listen to you. Why should Sophy dislike Mr. Darrow, and if
- she does, why should that have anything to do with her wishing to break
- her engagement?”
- “I don’t say she dislikes him! I don’t say she likes him; I don’t know
- what it is they say to each other when they’re shut up together alone.”
- “Shut up together alone?” Anna stared. Owen seemed like a man in
- delirium; such an exhibition was degrading to them all. But he pushed on
- without seeing her look.
- “Yes--the first evening she came, in the study; the next morning, early,
- in the park; yesterday, again, in the spring-house, when you were at the
- lodge with the doctor...I don’t know what they say to each other, but
- they’ve taken every chance they could to say it ... and to say it when
- they thought that no one saw them.”
- Anna longed to silence him, but no words came to her. It was as though
- all her confused apprehensions had suddenly taken definite shape. There
- was “something”--yes, there was “something”...Darrow’s reticences and
- evasions had been more than a figment of her doubts.
- The next instant brought a recoil of pride. She turned indignantly on
- her step-son.
- “I don’t half understand what you’ve been saying; but what you seem to
- hint is so preposterous, and so insulting both to Sophy and to me, that
- I see no reason why we should listen to you any longer.”
- Though her tone steadied Owen, she perceived at once that it would not
- deflect him from his purpose. He spoke less vehemently, but with all the
- more precision.
- “How can it be preposterous, since it’s true? Or insulting, since I
- don’t know, any more than YOU, the meaning of what I’ve been seeing?
- If you’ll be patient with me I’ll try to put it quietly. What I mean is
- that Sophy has completely changed since she met Darrow here, and that,
- having noticed the change, I’m hardly to blame for having tried to find
- out its cause.”
- Anna made an effort to answer him with the same composure. “You’re to
- blame, at any rate, for so recklessly assuming that you HAVE found it
- out. You seem to forget that, till they met here, Sophy and Mr. Darrow
- hardly knew each other.”
- “If so, it’s all the stranger that they’ve been so often closeted
- together!”
- “Owen, Owen--” the girl sighed out.
- He turned his haggard face to her. “Can I help it, if I’ve seen and
- known what I wasn’t meant to? For God’s sake give me a reason--any
- reason I can decently make out with! Is it my fault if, the day after
- you arrived, when I came back late through the garden, the curtains of
- the study hadn’t been drawn, and I saw you there alone with Darrow?”
- Anna laughed impatiently. “Really, Owen, if you make it a grievance
- that two people who are staying in the same house should be seen talking
- together----!”
- “They were not talking. That’s the point----”
- “Not talking? How do you know? You could hardly hear them from the
- garden!”
- “No; but I could see. HE was sitting at my desk, with his face in his
- hands. SHE was standing in the window, looking away from him...”
- He waited, as if for Sophy Viner’s answer; but still she neither stirred
- nor spoke.
- “That was the first time,” he went on; “and the second was the next
- morning in the park. It was natural enough, their meeting there. Sophy
- had gone out with Effie, and Effie ran back to look for me. She told
- me she’d left Sophy and Darrow in the path that leads to the river, and
- presently we saw them ahead of us. They didn’t see us at first, because
- they were standing looking at each other; and this time they were not
- speaking either. We came up close before they heard us, and all that
- time they never spoke, or stopped looking at each other. After that I
- began to wonder; and so I watched them.”
- “Oh, Owen!” “Oh, I only had to wait. Yesterday, when I motored you
- and the doctor back from the lodge, I saw Sophy coming out of the
- spring-house. I supposed she’d taken shelter from the rain, and when you
- got out of the motor I strolled back down the avenue to meet her. But
- she’d disappeared--she must have taken a short cut and come into the
- house by the side door. I don’t know why I went on to the spring-house;
- I suppose it was what you’d call spying. I went up the steps and found
- the room empty; but two chairs had been moved out from the wall and were
- standing near the table; and one of the Chinese screens that lie on it
- had dropped to the floor.”
- Anna sounded a faint note of irony. “Really? Sophy’d gone there for
- shelter, and she dropped a screen and moved a chair?”
- “I said two chairs----”
- “Two? What damning evidence--of I don’t know what!”
- “Simply of the fact that Darrow’d been there with her. As I looked out
- of the window I saw him close by, walking away. He must have turned the
- corner of the spring-house just as I got to the door.”
- There was another silence, during which Anna paused, not only to collect
- her own words but to wait for Sophy Viner’s; then, as the girl made no
- sign, she turned to her.
- “I’ve absolutely nothing to say to all this; but perhaps you’d like me
- to wait and hear your answer?”
- Sophy raised her head with a quick flash of colour. “I’ve no answer
- either--except that Owen must be mad.”
- In the interval since she had last spoken she seemed to have regained
- her self-control, and her voice rang clear, with a cold edge of anger.
- Anna looked at her step-son. He had grown extremely pale, and his hand
- fell from the door with a discouraged gesture. “That’s all then? You
- won’t give me any reason?”
- “I didn’t suppose it was necessary to give you or any one else a reason
- for talking with a friend of Mrs. Leath’s under Mrs. Leath’s own roof.”
- Owen hardly seemed to feel the retort: he kept his dogged stare on her
- face.
- “I won’t ask for one, then. I’ll only ask you to give me your assurance
- that your talks with Darrow have had nothing to do with your suddenly
- deciding to leave Givre.”
- She hesitated, not so much with the air of weighing her answer as of
- questioning his right to exact any. “I give you my assurance; and now I
- should like to go,” she said.
- As she turned away, Anna intervened. “My dear, I think you ought to
- speak.”
- The girl drew herself up with a faint laugh. “To him--or to YOU?”
- “To him.”
- She stiffened. “I’ve said all there is to say.”
- Anna drew back, her eyes on her step-son. He had left the threshold and
- was advancing toward Sophy Viner with a motion of desperate appeal; but
- as he did so there was a knock on the door. A moment’s silence fell on
- the three; then Anna said: “Come in!”
- Darrow came into the room. Seeing the three together, he looked rapidly
- from one to the other; then he turned to Anna with a smile.
- “I came up to see if you were ready; but please send me off if I’m not
- wanted.”
- His look, his voice, the simple sense of his presence, restored Anna’s
- shaken balance. By Owen’s side he looked so strong, so urbane, so
- experienced, that the lad’s passionate charges dwindled to mere boyish
- vapourings. A moment ago she had dreaded Darrow’s coming; now she was
- glad that he was there.
- She turned to him with sudden decision. “Come in, please; I want you to
- hear what Owen has been saying.”
- She caught a murmur from Sophy Viner, but disregarded it. An
- illuminating impulse urged her on. She, habitually so aware of her
- own lack of penetration, her small skill in reading hidden motives and
- detecting secret signals, now felt herself mysteriously inspired. She
- addressed herself to Sophy Viner. “It’s much better for you both that
- this absurd question should be cleared up now.” Then, turning to Darrow,
- she continued: “For some reason that I don’t pretend to guess, Owen has
- taken it into his head that you’ve influenced Miss Viner to break her
- engagement.”
- She spoke slowly and deliberately, because she wished to give time and
- to gain it; time for Darrow and Sophy to receive the full impact of what
- she was saying, and time to observe its full effect on them. She had
- said to herself: “If there’s nothing between them, they’ll look at each
- other; if there IS something, they won’t;” and as she ceased to speak
- she felt as if all her life were in her eyes.
- Sophy, after a start of protest, remained motionless, her gaze on the
- ground. Darrow, his face grown grave, glanced slowly from Owen Leath to
- Anna. With his eyes on the latter he asked: “Has Miss Viner broken her
- engagement?”
- A moment’s silence followed his question; then the girl looked up and
- said: “Yes!”
- Owen, as she spoke, uttered a smothered exclamation and walked out of
- the room. She continued to stand in the same place, without appearing
- to notice his departure, and without vouchsafing an additional word of
- explanation; then, before Anna could find a cry to detain her, she too
- turned and went out.
- “For God’s sake, what’s happened?” Darrow asked; but Anna, with a drop
- of the heart, was saying to herself that he and Sophy Viner had not
- looked at each other.
- XXV
- Anna stood in the middle of the room, her eyes on the door. Darrow’s
- questioning gaze was still on her, and she said to herself with a
- quick-drawn breath: “If only he doesn’t come near me!”
- It seemed to her that she had been suddenly endowed with the fatal gift
- of reading the secret sense of every seemingly spontaneous look and
- movement, and that in his least gesture of affection she would detect a
- cold design.
- For a moment longer he continued to look at her enquiringly; then he
- turned away and took up his habitual stand by the mantel-piece. She drew
- a deep breath of relief.
- “Won’t you please explain?” he said.
- “I can’t explain: I don’t know. I didn’t even know--till she told
- you--that she really meant to break her engagement. All I know is that
- she came to me just now and said she wished to leave Givre today; and
- that Owen, when he heard of it--for she hadn’t told him--at once accused
- her of going away with the secret intention of throwing him over.”
- “And you think it’s a definite break?” She perceived, as she spoke, that
- his brow had cleared.
- “How should I know? Perhaps you can tell me.”
- “I?” She fancied his face clouded again, but he did not move from his
- tranquil attitude.
- “As I told you,” she went on, “Owen has worked himself up to imagining
- that for some mysterious reason you’ve influenced Sophy against him.”
- Darrow still visibly wondered. “It must indeed be a mysterious reason!
- He knows how slightly I know Miss Viner. Why should he imagine anything
- so wildly improbable?”
- “I don’t know that either.”
- “But he must have hinted at some reason.”
- “No: he admits he doesn’t know your reason. He simply says that Sophy’s
- manner to him has changed since she came back to Givre and that he’s
- seen you together several times--in the park, the spring-house, I don’t
- know where--talking alone in a way that seemed confidential--almost
- secret; and he draws the preposterous conclusion that you’ve used your
- influence to turn her against him.”
- “My influence? What kind of influence?”
- “He doesn’t say.”
- Darrow again seemed to turn over the facts she gave him. His face
- remained grave, but without the least trace of discomposure. “And what
- does Miss Viner say?”
- “She says it’s perfectly natural that she should occasionally talk to
- my friends when she’s under my roof--and refuses to give him any other
- explanation.”
- “That at least is perfectly natural!”
- Anna felt her cheeks flush as she answered: “Yes--but there is
- something----”
- “Something----?”
- “Some reason for her sudden decision to break her engagement. I can
- understand Owen’s feeling, sorry as I am for his way of showing it. The
- girl owes him some sort of explanation, and as long as she refuses to
- give it his imagination is sure to run wild.”
- “She would have given it, no doubt, if he’d asked it in a different
- tone.”
- “I don’t defend Owen’s tone--but she knew what it was before she
- accepted him. She knows he’s excitable and undisciplined.”
- “Well, she’s been disciplining him a little--probably the best thing
- that could happen. Why not let the matter rest there?”
- “Leave Owen with the idea that you HAVE been the cause of the break?”
- He met the question with his easy smile. “Oh, as to that--leave him with
- any idea of me he chooses! But leave him, at any rate, free.”
- “Free?” she echoed in surprise.
- “Simply let things be. You’ve surely done all you could for him and Miss
- Viner. If they don’t hit it off it’s their own affair. What possible
- motive can you have for trying to interfere now?”
- Her gaze widened to a deeper wonder. “Why--naturally, what he says of
- you!”
- “I don’t care a straw what he says of me! In such a situation a boy in
- love will snatch at the most far-fetched reason rather than face the
- mortifying fact that the lady may simply be tired of him.”
- “You don t quite understand Owen. Things go deep with him, and last
- long. It took him a long time to recover from his other unlucky love
- affair. He’s romantic and extravagant: he can’t live on the interest
- of his feelings. He worships Sophy and she seemed to be fond of him. If
- she’s changed it’s been very sudden. And if they part like this, angrily
- and inarticulately, it will hurt him horribly--hurt his very soul.
- But that, as you say, is between the two. What concerns me is his
- associating you with their quarrel. Owen’s like my own son--if you’d
- seen him when I first came here you’d know why. We were like two
- prisoners who talk to each other by tapping on the wall. He’s never
- forgotten it, nor I. Whether he breaks with Sophy, or whether they make
- it up, I can’t let him think you had anything to do with it.”
- She raised her eyes entreatingly to Darrow’s, and read in them the
- forbearance of the man resigned to the discussion of non-existent
- problems.
- “I’ll do whatever you want me to,” he said; “but I don’t yet know what
- it is.”
- His smile seemed to charge her with inconsequence, and the prick to her
- pride made her continue: “After all, it’s not so unnatural that Owen,
- knowing you and Sophy to be almost strangers, should wonder what you
- were saying to each other when he saw you talking together.”
- She felt a warning tremor as she spoke, as though some instinct deeper
- than reason surged up in defense of its treasure. But Darrow’s face was
- unstirred save by the flit of his half-amused smile.
- “Well, my dear--and couldn’t you have told him?” “I?” she faltered out
- through her blush.
- “You seem to forget, one and all of you, the position you put me in when
- I came down here: your appeal to me to see Owen through, your assurance
- to him that I would, Madame de Chantelle’s attempt to win me over; and
- most of all, my own sense of the fact you’ve just recalled to me: the
- importance, for both of us, that Owen should like me. It seemed to me
- that the first thing to do was to get as much light as I could on the
- whole situation; and the obvious way of doing it was to try to know Miss
- Viner better. Of course I’ve talked with her alone--I’ve talked with her
- as often as I could. I’ve tried my best to find out if you were right in
- encouraging Owen to marry her.”
- She listened with a growing sense of reassurance, struggling to separate
- the abstract sense of his words from the persuasion in which his eyes
- and voice enveloped them.
- “I see--I do see,” she murmured.
- “You must see, also, that I could hardly say this to Owen without
- offending him still more, and perhaps increasing the breach between Miss
- Viner and himself. What sort of figure should I cut if I told him I’d
- been trying to find out if he’d made a proper choice? In any case, it’s
- none of my business to offer an explanation of what she justly says
- doesn’t need one. If she declines to speak, it’s obviously on the ground
- that Owen’s insinuations are absurd; and that surely pledges me to
- silence.”
- “Yes, yes! I see,” Anna repeated. “But I don’t want you to explain
- anything to Owen.”
- “You haven’t yet told me what you do want.”
- She hesitated, conscious of the difficulty of justifying her request;
- then: “I want you to speak to Sophy,” she said.
- Darrow broke into an incredulous laugh. “Considering what my previous
- attempts have resulted in----!”
- She raised her eyes quickly. “They haven’t, at least, resulted in your
- liking her less, in your thinking less well of her than you’ve told me?”
- She fancied he frowned a little. “I wonder why you go back to that?”
- “I want to be sure--I owe it to Owen. Won’t you tell me the exact
- impression she’s produced on you?”
- “I have told you--I like Miss Viner.”
- “Do you still believe she’s in love with Owen?”
- “There was nothing in our short talks to throw any particular light on
- that.”
- “You still believe, though, that there’s no reason why he shouldn’t
- marry her?”
- Again he betrayed a restrained impatience. “How can I answer that
- without knowing her reasons for breaking with him?”
- “That’s just what I want you to find out from her.”
- “And why in the world should she tell me?”
- “Because, whatever grievance she has against Owen, she can certainly
- have none against me. She can’t want to have Owen connect me in his mind
- with this wretched quarrel; and she must see that he will until he’s
- convinced you’ve had no share in it.”
- Darrow’s elbow dropped from the mantel-piece and he took a restless step
- or two across the room. Then he halted before her.
- “Why can’t you tell her this yourself?”
- “Don’t you see?”
- He eyed her intently, and she pressed on: “You must have guessed that
- Owen’s jealous of you.”
- “Jealous of me?” The blood flew up under his brown skin.
- “Blind with it--what else would drive him to this folly? And I can’t
- have her think me jealous too! I’ve said all I could, short of making
- her think so; and she’s refused a word more to either of us. Our only
- chance now is that she should listen to you--that you should make her
- see the harm her silence may do.”
- Darrow uttered a protesting exclamation. “It’s all too
- preposterous--what you suggest! I can’t, at any rate, appeal to her on
- such a ground as that!”
- Anna laid her hand on his arm. “Appeal to her on the ground that I’m
- almost Owen’s mother, and that any estrangement between you and him
- would kill me. She knows what he is--she’ll understand. Tell her to say
- anything, do anything, she wishes; but not to go away without speaking,
- not to leave THAT between us when she goes!”
- She drew back a step and lifted her face to his, trying to look into his
- eyes more deeply than she had ever looked; but before she could discern
- what they expressed he had taken hold of her hands and bent his head to
- kiss them.
- “You’ll see her? You’ll see her?” she entreated; and he answered: “I’ll
- do anything in the world you want me to.”
- XXVI
- Darrow waited alone in the sitting-room.
- No place could have been more distasteful as the scene of the talk that
- lay before him; but he had acceded to Anna’s suggestion that it would
- seem more natural for her to summon Sophy Viner than for him to go in
- search of her. As his troubled pacings carried him back and forth a
- relentless hand seemed to be tearing away all the tender fibres of
- association that bound him to the peaceful room. Here, in this very
- place, he had drunk his deepest draughts of happiness, had had his lips
- at the fountain-head of its overflowing rivers; but now that source was
- poisoned and he would taste no more of an untainted cup.
- For a moment he felt an actual physical anguish; then his nerves
- hardened for the coming struggle. He had no notion of what awaited him;
- but after the first instinctive recoil he had seen in a flash the urgent
- need of another word with Sophy Viner. He had been insincere in letting
- Anna think that he had consented to speak because she asked it. In
- reality he had been feverishly casting about for the pretext she had
- given him; and for some reason this trivial hypocrisy weighed on him
- more than all his heavy burden of deceit.
- At length he heard a step behind him and Sophy Viner entered. When she
- saw him she paused on the threshold and half drew back.
- “I was told that Mrs. Leath had sent for me.”
- “Mrs. Leath DID send for you. She’ll be here presently; but I asked her
- to let me see you first.”
- He spoke very gently, and there was no insincerity in his gentleness. He
- was profoundly moved by the change in the girl’s appearance. At sight
- of him she had forced a smile; but it lit up her wretchedness like a
- candle-flame held to a dead face.
- She made no reply, and Darrow went on: “You must understand my wanting
- to speak to you, after what I was told just now.”
- She interposed, with a gesture of protest: “I’m not responsible for
- Owen’s ravings!”
- “Of course----”. He broke off and they stood facing each other. She
- lifted a hand and pushed back her loose lock with the gesture that was
- burnt into his memory; then she looked about her and dropped into the
- nearest chair.
- “Well, you’ve got what you wanted,” she said.
- “What do you mean by what I wanted?”
- “My engagement’s broken--you heard me say so.”
- “Why do you say that’s what I wanted? All I wished, from the beginning,
- was to advise you, to help you as best I could----”
- “That’s what you’ve done,” she rejoined. “You’ve convinced me that it’s
- best I shouldn’t marry him.”
- Darrow broke into a despairing laugh. “At the very moment when you’d
- convinced me to the contrary!”
- “Had I?” Her smile flickered up. “Well, I really believed it till you
- showed me ... warned me...”
- “Warned you?”
- “That I’d be miserable if I married a man I didn’t love.”
- “Don’t you love him?”
- She made no answer, and Darrow started up and walked away to the
- other end of the room. He stopped before the writing-table, where his
- photograph, well-dressed, handsome, self-sufficient--the portrait of a
- man of the world, confident of his ability to deal adequately with
- the most delicate situations--offered its huge fatuity to his gaze. He
- turned back to her. “It’s rather hard on Owen, isn’t it, that you should
- have waited until now to tell him?”
- She reflected a moment before answering. “I told him as soon as I knew.”
- “Knew that you couldn’t marry him?”
- “Knew that I could never live here with him.” She looked about the room,
- as though the very walls must speak for her.
- For a moment Darrow continued to search her face perplexedly; then their
- eyes met in a long disastrous gaze.
- “Yes----” she said, and stood up.
- Below the window they heard Effie whistling for her dogs, and then, from
- the terrace, her mother calling her.
- “There--THAT for instance,” Sophy Viner said.
- Darrow broke out: “It’s I who ought to go!”
- She kept her small pale smile. “What good would that do any of us--now?”
- He covered his face with his hands. “Good God!” he groaned. “How could I
- tell?”
- “You couldn’t tell. We neither of us could.” She seemed to turn the
- problem over critically. “After all, it might have been YOU instead of
- me!”
- He took another distracted turn about the room and coming back to her
- sat down in a chair at her side. A mocking hand seemed to dash the words
- from his lips. There was nothing on earth that he could say to her that
- wasn’t foolish or cruel or contemptible...
- “My dear,” he began at last, “oughtn’t you, at any rate, to try?”
- Her gaze grew grave. “Try to forget you?”
- He flushed to the forehead. “I meant, try to give Owen more time; to
- give him a chance. He’s madly in love with you; all the good that’s in
- him is in your hands. His step-mother felt that from the first. And she
- thought--she believed----”
- “She thought I could make him happy. Would she think so now?”
- “Now...? I don’t say now. But later? Time modifies ... rubs out ... more
- quickly than you think...Go away, but let him hope...I’m going
- too--WE’RE going--” he stumbled on the plural--“in a very few weeks:
- going for a long time, probably. What you’re thinking of now may never
- happen. We may not all be here together again for years.”
- She heard him out in silence, her hands clasped on her knee, her eyes
- bent on them. “For me,” she said, “you’ll always be here.”
- “Don’t say that--oh, don’t! Things change ... people change...You’ll see!”
- “You don’t understand. I don’t want anything to change. I don’t want to
- forget--to rub out. At first I imagined I did; but that was a foolish
- mistake. As soon as I saw you again I knew it... It’s not being here
- with you that I’m afraid of--in the sense you think. It’s being here, or
- anywhere, with Owen.” She stood up and bent her tragic smile on him. “I
- want to keep you all to myself.”
- The only words that came to him were futile denunciations of his
- folly; but the sense of their futility checked them on his lips. “Poor
- child--you poor child!” he heard himself vainly repeating.
- Suddenly he felt the strong reaction of reality and its impetus brought
- him to his feet. “Whatever happens, I intend to go--to go for good,”
- he exclaimed. “I want you to understand that. Oh, don’t be afraid--I’ll
- find a reason. But it’s perfectly clear that I must go.”
- She uttered a protesting cry. “Go away? You? Don’t you see that that
- would tell everything--drag everybody into the horror?”
- He found no answer, and her voice dropped back to its calmer note. “What
- good would your going do? Do you suppose it would change anything for
- me?” She looked at him with a musing wistfulness. “I wonder what your
- feeling for me was? It seems queer that I’ve never really known--I
- suppose we DON’T know much about that kind of feeling. Is it like taking
- a drink when you’re thirsty?... I used to feel as if all of me was in the
- palm of your hand...”
- He bowed his humbled head, but she went on almost exultantly: “Don’t for
- a minute think I’m sorry! It was worth every penny it cost. My mistake
- was in being ashamed, just at first, of its having cost such a lot.
- I tried to carry it off as a joke--to talk of it to myself as an
- ‘adventure’. I’d always wanted adventures, and you’d given me one, and
- I tried to take your attitude about it, to ‘play the game’ and convince
- myself that I hadn’t risked any more on it than you. Then, when I met
- you again, I suddenly saw that I HAD risked more, but that I’d won more,
- too--such worlds! I’d been trying all the while to put everything I
- could between us; now I want to sweep everything away. I’d been trying
- to forget how you looked; now I want to remember you always. I’d been
- trying not to hear your voice; now I never want to hear any other. I’ve
- made my choice--that’s all: I’ve had you and I mean to keep you.” Her
- face was shining like her eyes. “To keep you hidden away here,” she
- ended, and put her hand upon her breast.
- After she had left him, Darrow continued to sit motionless, staring back
- into their past. Hitherto it had lingered on the edge of his mind in a
- vague pink blur, like one of the little rose-leaf clouds that a setting
- sun drops from its disk. Now it was a huge looming darkness, through
- which his eyes vainly strained. The whole episode was still obscure to
- him, save where here and there, as they talked, some phrase or gesture
- or intonation of the girl’s had lit up a little spot in the night.
- She had said: “I wonder what your feeling for me was?” and he found
- himself wondering too...He remembered distinctly enough that he had not
- meant the perilous passion--even in its most transient form--to play
- a part in their relation. In that respect his attitude had been above
- reproach. She was an unusually original and attractive creature, to whom
- he had wanted to give a few days of harmless pleasuring, and who was
- alert and expert enough to understand his intention and spare him the
- boredom of hesitations and misinterpretations. That had been his first
- impression, and her subsequent demeanour had justified it. She had been,
- from the outset, just the frank and easy comrade he had expected to find
- her. Was it he, then, who, in the sequel, had grown impatient of the
- bounds he had set himself? Was it his wounded vanity that, seeking
- balm for its hurt, yearned to dip deeper into the healing pool of her
- compassion? In his confused memory of the situation he seemed not to
- have been guiltless of such yearnings...Yet for the first few days
- the experiment had been perfectly successful. Her enjoyment had been
- unclouded and his pleasure in it undisturbed. It was very gradually--he
- seemed to see--that a shade of lassitude had crept over their
- intercourse. Perhaps it was because, when her light chatter about people
- failed, he found she had no other fund to draw on, or perhaps simply
- because of the sweetness of her laugh, or of the charm of the gesture
- with which, one day in the woods of Marly, she had tossed off her hat
- and tilted back her head at the call of a cuckoo; or because, whenever
- he looked at her unexpectedly, he found that she was looking at him and
- did not want him to know it; or perhaps, in varying degrees, because of
- all these things, that there had come a moment when no word seemed to
- fly high enough or dive deep enough to utter the sense of well-being
- each gave to the other, and the natural substitute for speech had been a
- kiss.
- The kiss, at all events, had come at the precise moment to save their
- venture from disaster. They had reached the point when her amazing
- reminiscences had begun to flag, when her future had been exhaustively
- discussed, her theatrical prospects minutely studied, her quarrel with
- Mrs. Murrett retold with the last amplification of detail, and when,
- perhaps conscious of her exhausted resources and his dwindling interest,
- she had committed the fatal error of saying that she could see he was
- unhappy, and entreating him to tell her why...
- From the brink of estranging confidences, and from the risk of
- unfavourable comparisons, his gesture had snatched her back to safety;
- and as soon as he had kissed her he felt that she would never bore him
- again. She was one of the elemental creatures whose emotion is all in
- their pulses, and who become inexpressive or sentimental when they
- try to turn sensation into speech. His caress had restored her to her
- natural place in the scheme of things, and Darrow felt as if he had
- clasped a tree and a nymph had bloomed from it...
- The mere fact of not having to listen to her any longer added immensely
- to her charm. She continued, of course, to talk to him, but it didn’t
- matter, because he no longer made any effort to follow her words, but
- let her voice run on as a musical undercurrent to his thoughts.
- She hadn’t a drop of poetry in her, but she had some of the qualities
- that create it in others; and in moments of heat the imagination does
- not always feel the difference...
- Lying beside her in the shade, Darrow felt her presence as a part of
- the charmed stillness of the summer woods, as the element of vague
- well-being that suffused his senses and lulled to sleep the ache of
- wounded pride. All he asked of her, as yet, was a touch on the hand or
- on the lips--and that she should let him go on lying there through the
- long warm hours, while a black-bird’s song throbbed like a fountain, and
- the summer wind stirred in the trees, and close by, between the nearest
- branches and the brim of his tilted hat, a slight white figure gathered
- up all the floating threads of joy...
- He recalled, too, having noticed, as he lay staring at a break in the
- tree-tops, a stream of mares’-tails coming up the sky. He had said to
- himself: “It will rain to-morrow,” and the thought had made the air seem
- warmer and the sun more vivid on her hair...Perhaps if the mares’-tails
- had not come up the sky their adventure might have had no sequel. But
- the cloud brought rain, and next morning he looked out of his window
- into a cold grey blur. They had planned an all-day excursion down the
- Seine, to the two Andelys and Rouen, and now, with the long hours on
- their hands, they were both a little at a loss...There was the Louvre,
- of course, and the Luxembourg; but he had tried looking at pictures with
- her, she had first so persistently admired the worst things, and then
- so frankly lapsed into indifference, that he had no wish to repeat
- the experiment. So they went out, aimlessly, and took a cold wet walk,
- turning at length into the deserted arcades of the Palais Royal, and
- finally drifting into one of its equally deserted restaurants, where
- they lunched alone and somewhat dolefully, served by a wan old waiter
- with the look of a castaway who has given up watching for a sail... It
- was odd how the waiter’s face came back to him...
- Perhaps but for the rain it might never have happened; but what was
- the use of thinking of that now? He tried to turn his thoughts to more
- urgent issues; but, by a strange perversity of association, every detail
- of the day was forcing itself on his mind with an insistence from which
- there was no escape. Reluctantly he relived the long wet walk back
- to the hotel, after a tedious hour at a cinematograph show on the
- Boulevard. It was still raining when they withdrew from this stale
- spectacle, but she had obstinately refused to take a cab, had even,
- on the way, insisted on loitering under the dripping awnings of
- shop-windows and poking into draughty passages, and finally, when they
- had nearly reached their destination, had gone so far as to suggest that
- they should turn back to hunt up some show she had heard of in a theatre
- at the Batignolles. But at that he had somewhat irritably protested: he
- remembered that, for the first time, they were both rather irritable,
- and vaguely disposed to resist one another’s suggestions. His feet
- were wet, and he was tired of walking, and sick of the smell of stuffy
- unaired theatres, and he had said he must really get back to write some
- letters--and so they had kept on to the hotel...
- XXVII
- Darrow had no idea how long he had sat there when he heard Anna’s hand
- on the door. The effort of rising, and of composing his face to meet
- her, gave him a factitious sense of self-control. He said to himself: “I
- must decide on something----” and that lifted him a hair’s breadth above
- the whirling waters.
- She came in with a lighter step, and he instantly perceived that
- something unforeseen and reassuring had happened.
- “She’s been with me. She came and found me on the terrace. We’ve had a
- long talk and she’s explained everything. I feel as if I’d never known
- her before!”
- Her voice was so moved and tender that it checked his start of
- apprehension.
- “She’s explained----?”
- “It’s natural, isn’t it, that she should have felt a little sore at the
- kind of inspection she’s been subjected to? Oh, not from you--I don’t
- mean that! But Madame de Chantelle’s opposition--and her sending for
- Adelaide Painter! She told me frankly she didn’t care to owe her husband
- to Adelaide Painter...She thinks now that her annoyance at feeling
- herself so talked over and scrutinized may have shown itself in her
- manner to Owen, and set him imagining the insane things he did...I
- understand all she must have felt, and I agree with her that it’s best
- she should go away for a while. She’s made me,” Anna summed up, “feel as
- if I’d been dreadfully thick-skinned and obtuse!”
- “YOU?”
- “Yes. As if I’d treated her like the bric-a-brac that used to be sent
- down here ‘on approval,’ to see if it would look well with the other
- pieces.” She added, with a sudden flush of enthusiasm: “I’m glad she’s
- got it in her to make one feel like that!”
- She seemed to wait for Darrow to agree with her, or to put some other
- question, and he finally found voice to ask: “Then you think it’s not a
- final break?”
- “I hope not--I’ve never hoped it more! I had a word with Owen, too,
- after I left her, and I think he understands that he must let her go
- without insisting on any positive promise. She’s excited ... he must let
- her calm down...”
- Again she waited, and Darrow said: “Surely you can make him see that.”
- “She’ll help me to--she’s to see him, of course, before she goes. She
- starts immediately, by the way, with Adelaide Painter, who is motoring
- over to Francheuil to catch the one o’clock express--and who, of course,
- knows nothing of all this, and is simply to be told that Sophy has been
- sent for by the Farlows.”
- Darrow mutely signed his comprehension, and she went on: “Owen is
- particularly anxious that neither Adelaide nor his grandmother should
- have the least inkling of what’s happened. The need of shielding Sophy
- will help him to control himself. He’s coming to his senses, poor boy;
- he’s ashamed of his wild talk already. He asked me to tell you so; no
- doubt he’ll tell you so himself.”
- Darrow made a movement of protest. “Oh, as to that--the thing’s not
- worth another word.”
- “Or another thought, either?” She brightened. “Promise me you won’t even
- think of it--promise me you won’t be hard on him!”
- He was finding it easier to smile back at her. “Why should you think it
- necessary to ask my indulgence for Owen?”
- She hesitated a moment, her eyes wandering from him. Then they came back
- with a smile. “Perhaps because I need it for myself.”
- “For yourself?”
- “I mean, because I understand better how one can torture one’s self over
- unrealities.”
- As Darrow listened, the tension of his nerves began to relax. Her gaze,
- so grave and yet so sweet, was like a deep pool into which he could
- plunge and hide himself from the hard glare of his misery. As this
- ecstatic sense enveloped him he found it more and more difficult to
- follow her words and to frame an answer; but what did anything matter,
- except that her voice should go on, and the syllables fall like soft
- touches on his tortured brain?
- “Don’t you know,” she continued, “the bliss of waking from a bad dream
- in one’s own quiet room, and going slowly over all the horror without
- being afraid of it any more? That’s what I’m doing now. And that’s why
- I understand Owen...” She broke off, and he felt her touch on his arm.
- “BECAUSE I’D DREAMED THE HORROR TOO!”
- He understood her then, and stammered: “You?”
- “Forgive me! And let me tell you!... It will help you to understand
- Owen...There WERE little things ... little signs ... once I had begun to
- watch for them: your reluctance to speak about her ... her reserve with
- you ... a sort of constraint we’d never seen in her before...”
- She laughed up at him, and with her hands in his he contrived to say:
- “NOW you understand why?”
- “Oh, I understand; of course I understand; and I want you to laugh
- at me--with me! Because there were other things too ... crazier things
- still...There was even--last night on the terrace--her pink cloak...”
- “Her pink cloak?” Now he honestly wondered, and as she saw it she
- blushed.
- “You’ve forgotten about the cloak? The pink cloak that Owen saw you with
- at the play in Paris? Yes ... yes...I was mad enough for that!... It does
- me good to laugh about it now! But you ought to know that I’m going
- to be a jealous woman ... a ridiculously jealous woman ... you ought to be
- warned of it in time...”
- He had dropped her hands, and she leaned close and lifted her arms to
- his neck with one of her rare gestures of surrender.
- “I don’t know why it is; but it makes me happier now to have been so
- foolish!”
- Her lips were parted in a noiseless laugh and the tremor of her lashes
- made their shadow move on her cheek. He looked at her through a mist of
- pain and saw all her offered beauty held up like a cup to his lips; but
- as he stooped to it a darkness seemed to fall between them, her arms
- slipped from his shoulders and she drew away from him abruptly.
- “But she WAS with you, then?” she exclaimed; and then, as he stared at
- her: “Oh, don’t say no! Only go and look at your eyes!”
- He stood speechless, and she pressed on: “Don’t deny it--oh, don’t deny
- it! What will be left for me to imagine if you do? Don’t you see how
- every single thing cries it out? Owen sees it--he saw it again just now!
- When I told him she’d relented, and would see him, he said: ‘Is that
- Darrow’s doing too?’”
- Darrow took the onslaught in silence. He might have spoken, have
- summoned up the usual phrases of banter and denial; he was not even
- certain that they might not, for the moment, have served their purpose
- if he could have uttered them without being seen. But he was as
- conscious of what had happened to his face as if he had obeyed Anna’s
- bidding and looked at himself in the glass. He knew he could no more
- hide from her what was written there than he could efface from his soul
- the fiery record of what he had just lived through. There before him,
- staring him in the eyes, and reflecting itself in all his lineaments,
- was the overwhelming fact of Sophy Viner’s passion and of the act by
- which she had attested it.
- Anna was talking again, hurriedly, feverishly, and his soul was wrung
- by the anguish in her voice. “Do speak at last--you must speak! I don’t
- want to ask you to harm the girl; but you must see that your silence
- is doing her more harm than your answering my questions could. You’re
- leaving me only the worst things to think of her ... she’d see that
- herself if she were here. What worse injury can you do her than to make
- me hate her--to make me feel she’s plotted with you to deceive us?”
- “Oh, not that!” Darrow heard his own voice before he was aware that he
- meant to speak. “Yes; I did see her in Paris,” he went on after a pause;
- “but I was bound to respect her reason for not wanting it known.”
- Anna paled. “It was she at the theatre that night?”
- “I was with her at the theatre one night.”
- “Why should she have asked you not to say so?”
- “She didn’t wish it known that I’d met her.”
- “Why shouldn’t she have wished it known?”
- “She had quarrelled with Mrs. Murrett and come over suddenly to Paris,
- and she didn’t want the Farlows to hear of it. I came across her by
- accident, and she asked me not to speak of having seen her.”
- “Because of her quarrel? Because she was ashamed of her part in it?”
- “Oh, no. There was nothing for her to be ashamed of. But the Farlows had
- found the place for her, and she didn’t want them to know how suddenly
- she’d had to leave, and how badly Mrs. Murrett had behaved. She was in
- a terrible plight--the woman had even kept back her month’s salary. She
- knew the Farlows would be awfully upset, and she wanted more time to
- prepare them.”
- Darrow heard himself speak as though the words had proceeded from other
- lips. His explanation sounded plausible enough, and he half-fancied
- Anna’s look grew lighter. She waited a moment, as though to be sure he
- had no more to add; then she said: “But the Farlows DID know; they told
- me all about it when they sent her to me.”
- He flushed as if she had laid a deliberate trap for him. “They may know
- NOW; they didn’t then----”
- “That’s no reason for her continuing now to make a mystery of having met
- you.”
- “It’s the only reason I can give you.”
- “Then I’ll go and ask her for one myself.” She turned and took a few
- steps toward the door.
- “Anna!” He started to follow her, and then checked himself. “Don’t do
- that!”
- “Why not?”
- “It’s not like you ... not generous...”
- She stood before him straight and pale, but under her rigid face he saw
- the tumult of her doubt and misery.
- “I don’t want to be ungenerous; I don’t want to pry into her secrets.
- But things can’t be left like this. Wouldn’t it be better for me to go
- to her? Surely she’ll understand--she’ll explain... It may be some mere
- trifle she’s concealing: something that would horrify the Farlows, but
- that I shouldn’t see any harm in...” She paused, her eyes searching his
- face. “A love affair, I suppose ... that’s it? You met her with some man
- at the theatre--and she was frightened and begged you to fib about
- it? Those poor young things that have to go about among us like
- machines--oh, if you knew how I pity them!”
- “If you pity her, why not let her go?”
- She stared. “Let her go--go for good, you mean? Is that the best you can
- say for her?”
- “Let things take their course. After all, it’s between herself and
- Owen.”
- “And you and me--and Effie, if Owen marries her, and I leave my child
- with them! Don’t you see the impossibility of what you’re asking? We’re
- all bound together in this coil.”
- Darrow turned away with a groan. “Oh, let her go--let her go.”
- “Then there IS something--something really bad? She WAS with some one
- when you met her? Some one with whom she was----” She broke off, and
- he saw her struggling with new thoughts. “If it’s THAT, of course...Oh,
- don’t you see,” she desperately appealed to him, “that I must find out,
- and that it’s too late now for you not to speak? Don’t be afraid that
- I’ll betray you...I’ll never, never let a soul suspect. But I must know
- the truth, and surely it’s best for her that I should find it out from
- you.”
- Darrow waited a moment; then he said slowly: “What you imagine’s mere
- madness. She was at the theatre with me.”
- “With you?” He saw a tremor pass through her, but she controlled it
- instantly and faced him straight and motionless as a wounded creature in
- the moment before it feels its wound. “Why should you both have made a
- mystery of that?”
- “I’ve told you the idea was not mine.” He cast about. “She may have been
- afraid that Owen----”
- “But that was not a reason for her asking you to tell me that you hardly
- knew her--that you hadn’t even seen her for years.” She broke off and
- the blood rose to her face and forehead. “Even if SHE had other reasons,
- there could be only one reason for your obeying her----” Silence fell
- between them, a silence in which the room seemed to become suddenly
- resonant with voices. Darrow’s gaze wandered to the window and he
- noticed that the gale of two days before had nearly stripped the tops
- of the lime-trees in the court. Anna had moved away and was resting her
- elbows against the mantel-piece, her head in her hands. As she stood
- there he took in with a new intensity of vision little details of her
- appearance that his eyes had often cherished: the branching blue veins
- in the backs of her hands, the warm shadow that her hair cast on
- her ear, and the colour of the hair itself, dull black with a tawny
- under-surface, like the wings of certain birds. He felt it to be useless
- to speak.
- After a while she lifted her head and said: “I shall not see her again
- before she goes.”
- He made no answer, and turning to him she added: “That is why she’s
- going, I suppose? Because she loves you and won’t give you up?”
- Darrow waited. The paltriness of conventional denial was so apparent to
- him that even if it could have delayed discovery he could no longer have
- resorted to it. Under all his other fears was the dread of dishonouring
- the hour.
- “She HAS given me up,” he said at last.
- XXVIII
- When he had gone out of the room Anna stood where he had left her. “I
- must believe him! I must believe him!” she said.
- A moment before, at the moment when she had lifted her arms to his neck,
- she had been wrapped in a sense of complete security. All the spirits
- of doubt had been exorcised, and her love was once more the clear
- habitation in which every thought and feeling could move in blissful
- freedom. And then, as she raised her face to Darrow’s and met his eyes,
- she had seemed to look into the very ruins of his soul. That was the
- only way she could express it. It was as though he and she had been
- looking at two sides of the same thing, and the side she had seen had
- been all light and life, and his a place of graves...
- She didn’t now recall who had spoken first, or even, very clearly, what
- had been said. It seemed to her only a moment later that she had found
- herself standing at the other end of the room--the room which had
- suddenly grown so small that, even with its length between them, she
- felt as if he touched her--crying out to him “It IS because of you she’s
- going!” and reading the avowal in his face.
- That was his secret, then, THEIR secret: he had met the girl in
- Paris and helped her in her straits--lent her money, Anna vaguely
- conjectured--and she had fallen in love with him, and on meeting him
- again had been suddenly overmastered by her passion. Anna, dropping back
- into her sofa-corner, sat staring these facts in the face.
- The girl had been in a desperate plight--frightened, penniless, outraged
- by what had happened, and not knowing (with a woman like Mrs. Murrett)
- what fresh injury might impend; and Darrow, meeting her in this
- distracted hour, had pitied, counselled, been kind to her, with the
- fatal, the inevitable result. There were the facts as Anna made them
- out: that, at least, was their external aspect, was as much of them as
- she had been suffered to see; and into the secret intricacies they might
- cover she dared not yet project her thoughts.
- “I must believe him...I must believe him...” She kept on repeating the
- words like a talisman. It was natural, after all, that he should have
- behaved as he had: defended the girl’s piteous secret to the last. She
- too began to feel the contagion of his pity--the stir, in her breast, of
- feelings deeper and more native to her than the pains of jealousy.
- From the security of her blessedness she longed to lean over with
- compassionate hands...But Owen? What was Owen’s part to be? She owed
- herself first to him--she was bound to protect him not only from all
- knowledge of the secret she had surprised, but also--and chiefly!--from
- its consequences. Yes: the girl must go--there could be no doubt of
- it--Darrow himself had seen it from the first; and at the thought she
- had a wild revulsion of relief, as though she had been trying to create
- in her heart the delusion of a generosity she could not feel...
- The one fact on which she could stay her mind was that Sophy was leaving
- immediately; would be out of the house within an hour. Once she was
- gone, it would be easier to bring Owen to the point of understanding
- that the break was final; if necessary, to work upon the girl to make
- him see it. But that, Anna was sure, would not be necessary. It was
- clear that Sophy Viner was leaving Givre with no thought of ever seeing
- it again...
- Suddenly, as she tried to put some order in her thoughts, she heard
- Owen’s call at the door: “Mother!----” a name he seldom gave her. There
- was a new note in his voice: the note of a joyous impatience. It made
- her turn hastily to the glass to see what face she was about to show
- him; but before she had had time to compose it he was in the room and
- she was caught in a school-boy hug.
- “It’s all right! It’s all right! And it’s all your doing! I want to
- do the worst kind of penance--bell and candle and the rest. I’ve been
- through it with HER, and now she hands me on to you, and you’re to call
- me any names you please.” He freed her with his happy laugh. “I’m to be
- stood in the corner till next week, and then I’m to go up to see her.
- And she says I owe it all to you!”
- “To me?” It was the first phrase she found to clutch at as she tried to
- steady herself in the eddies of his joy.
- “Yes: you were so patient, and so dear to her; and you saw at once what
- a damned ass I’d been!” She tried a smile, and it seemed to pass muster
- with him, for he sent it back in a broad beam. “That’s not so difficult
- to see? No, I admit it doesn’t take a microscope. But you were so wise
- and wonderful--you always are. I’ve been mad these last days, simply
- mad--you and she might well have washed your hands of me! And instead,
- it’s all right--all right!”
- She drew back a little, trying to keep the smile on her lips and not
- let him get the least glimpse of what it hid. Now if ever, indeed, it
- behoved her to be wise and wonderful!
- “I’m so glad, dear; so glad. If only you’ll always feel like that about
- me...” She stopped, hardly knowing what she said, and aghast at the
- idea that her own hands should have retied the knot she imagined to be
- broken. But she saw he had something more to say; something hard to get
- out, but absolutely necessary to express. He caught her hands, pulled
- her close, and, with his forehead drawn into its whimsical smiling
- wrinkles, “Look here,” he cried, “if Darrow wants to call me a damned
- ass too you’re not to stop him!”
- It brought her back to a sharper sense of her central peril: of the
- secret to be kept from him at whatever cost to her racked nerves.
- “Oh, you know, he doesn’t always wait for orders!” On the whole it
- sounded better than she’d feared.
- “You mean he’s called me one already?” He accepted the fact with his
- gayest laugh. “Well, that saves a lot of trouble; now we can pass to the
- order of the day----” he broke off and glanced at the clock--“which is,
- you know, dear, that she’s starting in about an hour; she and Adelaide
- must already be snatching a hasty sandwich. You’ll come down to bid them
- good-bye?”
- “Yes--of course.”
- There had, in fact, grown upon her while he spoke the urgency of seeing
- Sophy Viner again before she left. The thought was deeply distasteful:
- Anna shrank from encountering the girl till she had cleared a way
- through her own perplexities. But it was obvious that since they had
- separated, barely an hour earlier, the situation had taken a new shape.
- Sophy Viner had apparently reconsidered her decision to break amicably
- but definitely with Owen, and stood again in their path, a menace and a
- mystery; and confused impulses of resistance stirred in Anna’s mind. She
- felt Owen’s touch on her arm. “Are you coming?”
- “Yes ... yes ... presently.”
- “What’s the matter? You look so strange.”
- “What do you mean by strange?”
- “I don’t know: startled--surprised.” She read what her look must be by
- its sudden reflection in his face.
- “Do I? No wonder! You’ve given us all an exciting morning.”
- He held to his point. “You’re more excited now that there’s no cause for
- it. What on earth has happened since I saw you?”
- He looked about the room, as if seeking the clue to her agitation, and
- in her dread of what he might guess she answered: “What has happened is
- simply that I’m rather tired. Will you ask Sophy to come up and see me
- here?”
- While she waited she tried to think what she should say when the girl
- appeared; but she had never been more conscious of her inability to deal
- with the oblique and the tortuous. She had lacked the hard teachings of
- experience, and an instinctive disdain for whatever was less clear and
- open than her own conscience had kept her from learning anything of the
- intricacies and contradictions of other hearts. She said to herself:
- “I must find out----” yet everything in her recoiled from the means by
- which she felt it must be done...
- Sophy Viner appeared almost immediately, dressed for departure, her
- little bag on her arm. She was still pale to the point of haggardness,
- but with a light upon her that struck Anna with surprise. Or was it,
- perhaps, that she was looking at the girl with new eyes: seeing her, for
- the first time, not as Effie’s governess, not as Owen’s bride, but as
- the embodiment of that unknown peril lurking in the background of every
- woman’s thoughts about her lover? Anna, at any rate, with a sudden sense
- of estrangement, noted in her graces and snares never before perceived.
- It was only the flash of a primitive instinct, but it lasted long enough
- to make her ashamed of the darknesses it lit up in her heart...
- She signed to Sophy to sit down on the sofa beside her. “I asked you to
- come up to me because I wanted to say good-bye quietly,” she explained,
- feeling her lips tremble, but trying to speak in a tone of friendly
- naturalness.
- The girl’s only answer was a faint smile of acquiescence, and Anna,
- disconcerted by her silence, went on: “You’ve decided, then, not to
- break your engagement?”
- Sophy Viner raised her head with a look of surprise. Evidently the
- question, thus abruptly put, must have sounded strangely on the lips
- of so ardent a partisan as Mrs. Leath! “I thought that was what you
- wished,” she said.
- “What I wished?” Anna’s heart shook against her side. “I wish,
- of course, whatever seems best for Owen... It’s natural, you must
- understand, that that consideration should come first with me...”
- Sophy was looking at her steadily. “I supposed it was the only one that
- counted with you.”
- The curtness of retort roused Anna’s latent antagonism. “It is,” she
- said, in a hard voice that startled her as she heard it. Had she ever
- spoken so to any one before? She felt frightened, as though her
- very nature had changed without her knowing it...Feeling the girl’s
- astonished gaze still on her, she continued: “The suddenness of the
- change has naturally surprised me. When I left you it was understood
- that you were to reserve your decision----”
- “Yes.”
- “And now----?” Anna waited for a reply that did not come. She did
- not understand the girl’s attitude, the edge of irony in her short
- syllables, the plainly premeditated determination to lay the burden
- of proof on her interlocutor. Anna felt the sudden need to lift their
- intercourse above this mean level of defiance and distrust. She looked
- appealingly at Sophy.
- “Isn’t it best that we should speak quite frankly? It’s this change on
- your part that perplexes me. You can hardly be surprised at that. It’s
- true, I asked you not to break with Owen too abruptly--and I asked it,
- believe me, as much for your sake as for his: I wanted you to take time
- to think over the difficulty that seems to have arisen between you. The
- fact that you felt it required thinking over seemed to show you wouldn’t
- take the final step lightly--wouldn’t, I mean, accept of Owen more
- than you could give him. But your change of mind obliges me to ask the
- question I thought you would have asked yourself. Is there any reason
- why you shouldn’t marry Owen?”
- She stopped a little breathlessly, her eyes on Sophy Viner’s burning
- face. “Any reason----? What do you mean by a reason?”
- Anna continued to look at her gravely. “Do you love some one else?” she
- asked.
- Sophy’s first look was one of wonder and a faint relief; then she gave
- back the other’s scrutiny in a glance of indescribable reproach. “Ah,
- you might have waited!” she exclaimed.
- “Waited?”
- “Till I’d gone: till I was out of the house. You might have known ... you
- might have guessed...” She turned her eyes again on Anna. “I only meant
- to let him hope a little longer, so that he shouldn’t suspect anything;
- of course I can’t marry him,” she said.
- Anna stood motionless, silenced by the shock of the avowal. She too
- was trembling, less with anger than with a confused compassion. But the
- feeling was so blent with others, less generous and more obscure, that
- she found no words to express it, and the two women faced each other
- without speaking.
- “I’d better go,” Sophy murmured at length with lowered head.
- The words roused in Anna a latent impulse of compunction. The girl
- looked so young, so exposed and desolate! And what thoughts must she be
- hiding in her heart! It was impossible that they should part in such a
- spirit.
- “I want you to know that no one said anything... It was I who...”
- Sophy looked at her. “You mean that Mr. Darrow didn’t tell you? Of
- course not: do you suppose I thought he did? You found it out, that’s
- all--I knew you would. In your place I should have guessed it sooner.”
- The words were spoken simply, without irony or emphasis; but they went
- through Anna like a sword. Yes, the girl would have had divinations,
- promptings that she had not had! She felt half envious of such a sad
- precocity of wisdom.
- “I’m so sorry ... so sorry...” she murmured.
- “Things happen that way. Now I’d better go. I’d like to say good-bye to
- Effie.”
- “Oh----” it broke in a cry from Effie’s mother. “Not like this--you
- mustn’t! I feel--you make me feel too horribly: as if I were driving you
- away...” The words had rushed up from the depths of her bewildered pity.
- “No one is driving me away: I had to go,” she heard the girl reply.
- There was another silence, during which passionate impulses of
- magnanimity warred in Anna with her doubts and dreads. At length, her
- eyes on Sophy’s face: “Yes, you must go now,” she began; “but later
- on ... after a while, when all this is over ... if there’s no reason why
- you shouldn’t marry Owen----” she paused a moment on the words-- “I
- shouldn’t want you to think I stood between you...”
- “You?” Sophy flushed again, and then grew pale. She seemed to try to
- speak, but no words came. “Yes! It was not true when I said just now
- that I was thinking only of Owen. I’m sorry--oh, so sorry!--for you too.
- Your life--I know how hard it’s been; and mine ... mine’s so full...Happy
- women understand best!” Anna drew near and touched the girl’s hand; then
- she began again, pouring all her soul into the broken phrases: “It’s
- terrible now ... you see no future; but if, by and bye ... you know
- best ... but you’re so young ... and at your age things DO pass. If there’s
- no reason, no real reason, why you shouldn’t marry Owen, I WANT him to
- hope, I’ll help him to hope ... if you say so....”
- With the urgency of her pleading her clasp tightened on Sophy’s hand,
- but it warmed to no responsive tremor: the girl seemed numb, and Anna
- was frightened by the stony silence of her look. “I suppose I’m not more
- than half a woman,” she mused, “for I don’t want my happiness to
- hurt her;” and aloud she repeated: “If only you’ll tell me there’s no
- reason----”
- The girl did not speak; but suddenly, like a snapped branch, she bent,
- stooped down to the hand that clasped her, and laid her lips upon it in
- a stream of weeping. She cried silently, continuously, abundantly, as
- though Anna’s touch had released the waters of some deep spring of pain;
- then, as Anna, moved and half afraid, leaned over her with a sound of
- pity, she stood up and turned away.
- “You’re going, then--for good--like this?” Anna moved toward her and
- stopped. Sophy stopped too, with eyes that shrank from her.
- “Oh----” Anna cried, and hid her face.
- The girl walked across the room and paused again in the doorway. From
- there she flung back: “I wanted it--I chose it. He was good to me--no
- one ever was so good!”
- The door-handle turned, and Anna heard her go.
- XXIX
- Her first thought was: “He’s going too in a few hours--I needn’t see him
- again before he leaves...” At that moment the possibility of having to
- look in Darrow’s face and hear him speak seemed to her more unendurable
- than anything else she could imagine. Then, on the next wave of feeling,
- came the desire to confront him at once and wring from him she knew
- not what: avowal, denial, justification, anything that should open some
- channel of escape to the flood of her pent-up anguish.
- She had told Owen she was tired, and this seemed a sufficient reason for
- remaining upstairs when the motor came to the door and Miss Painter and
- Sophy Viner were borne off in it; sufficient also for sending word to
- Madame de Chantelle that she would not come down till after luncheon.
- Having despatched her maid with this message, she lay down on her sofa
- and stared before her into darkness...
- She had been unhappy before, and the vision of old miseries flocked
- like hungry ghosts about her fresh pain: she recalled her youthful
- disappointment, the failure of her marriage, the wasted years that
- followed; but those were negative sorrows, denials and postponements of
- life. She seemed in no way related to their shadowy victim, she who
- was stretched on this fiery rack of the irreparable. She had suffered
- before--yes, but lucidly, reflectively, elegiacally: now she was
- suffering as a hurt animal must, blindly, furiously, with the single
- fierce animal longing that the awful pain should stop...
- She heard her maid knock, and she hid her face and made no answer. The
- knocking continued, and the discipline of habit at length made her lift
- her head, compose her face and hold out her hand to the note the woman
- brought her. It was a word from Darrow--“May I see you?”--and she said
- at once, in a voice that sounded thin and empty: “Ask Mr. Darrow to come
- up.”
- The maid enquired if she wished to have her hair smoothed first, and
- she answered that it didn’t matter; but when the door had closed, the
- instinct of pride drew her to her feet and she looked at herself in the
- glass above the mantelpiece and passed her hands over her hair. Her eyes
- were burning and her face looked tired and thinner; otherwise she could
- see no change in her appearance, and she wondered that at such a moment
- her body should seem as unrelated to the self that writhed within her as
- if it had been a statue or a picture.
- The maid reopened the door to show in Darrow, and he paused a moment on
- the threshold, as if waiting for Anna to speak. He was extremely pale,
- but he looked neither ashamed nor uncertain, and she said to herself,
- with a perverse thrill of appreciation: “He’s as proud as I am.”
- Aloud she asked: “You wanted to see me?”
- “Naturally,” he replied in a grave voice.
- “Don’t! It’s useless. I know everything. Nothing you can say will help.”
- At the direct affirmation he turned even paler, and his eyes, which he
- kept resolutely fixed on her, confessed his misery.
- “You allow me no voice in deciding that?”
- “Deciding what?”
- “That there’s nothing more to be said?” He waited for her to answer, and
- then went on: “I don’t even know what you mean by ‘everything’.”
- “Oh, I don’t know what more there is! I know enough. I implored her
- to deny it, and she couldn’t...What can you and I have to say to each
- other?” Her voice broke into a sob. The animal anguish was upon her
- again--just a blind cry against her pain!
- Darrow kept his head high and his eyes steady. “It must be as you wish;
- and yet it’s not like you to be afraid.”
- “Afraid?”
- “To talk things out--to face them.”
- “It’s for YOU to face this--not me!”
- “All I ask is to face it--but with you.” Once more he paused. “Won’t you
- tell me what Miss Viner told you?”
- “Oh, she’s generous--to the utmost!” The pain caught her like a physical
- throe. It suddenly came to her how the girl must have loved him to be so
- generous--what memories there must be between them!
- “Oh, go, please go. It’s too horrible. Why should I have to see you?”
- she stammered, lifting her hands to her eyes.
- With her face hidden she waited to hear him move away, to hear the door
- open and close again, as, a few hours earlier, it had opened and
- closed on Sophy Viner. But Darrow made no sound or movement: he too was
- waiting. Anna felt a thrill of resentment: his presence was an outrage
- on her sorrow, a humiliation to her pride. It was strange that he should
- wait for her to tell him so!
- “You want me to leave Givre?” he asked at length. She made no answer,
- and he went on: “Of course I’ll do as you wish; but if I go now am I not
- to see you again?”
- His voice was firm: his pride was answering her pride!
- She faltered: “You must see it’s useless----”
- “I might remind you that you’re dismissing me without a hearing----”
- “Without a hearing? I’ve heard you both!”
- ----“but I won’t,” he continued, “remind you of that, or of anything or
- any one but Owen.”
- “Owen?”
- “Yes; if we could somehow spare him----”
- She had dropped her hands and turned her startled eyes on him. It seemed
- to her an age since she had thought of Owen!
- “You see, don’t you,” Darrow continued, “that if you send me away
- now----”
- She interrupted: “Yes, I see----” and there was a long silence between
- them. At length she said, very low: “I don’t want any one else to suffer
- as I’m suffering...”
- “Owen knows I meant to leave tomorrow,” Darrow went on. “Any sudden
- change of plan may make him think...”
- Oh, she saw his inevitable logic: the horror of it was on every side of
- her! It had seemed possible to control her grief and face Darrow
- calmly while she was upheld by the belief that this was their last hour
- together, that after he had passed out of the room there would be no
- fear of seeing him again, no fear that his nearness, his look, his
- voice, and all the unseen influences that flowed from him, would
- dissolve her soul to weakness. But her courage failed at the idea of
- having to conspire with him to shield Owen, of keeping up with him, for
- Owen’s sake, a feint of union and felicity. To live at Darrow’s side in
- seeming intimacy and harmony for another twenty-four hours seemed harder
- than to live without him for all the rest of her days. Her strength
- failed her, and she threw herself down and buried her sobs in the
- cushions where she had so often hidden a face aglow with happiness.
- “Anna----” His voice was close to her. “Let me talk to you quietly. It’s
- not worthy of either of us to be afraid.”
- Words of endearment would have offended her; but her heart rose at the
- call to her courage.
- “I’ve no defense to make,” he went on. “The facts are miserable enough;
- but at least I want you to see them as they are. Above all, I want you
- to know the truth about Miss Viner----”
- The name sent the blood to Anna’s forehead. She raised her head and
- faced him. “Why should I know more of her than what she’s told me? I
- never wish to hear her name again!”
- “It’s because you feel about her in that way that I ask you--in the name
- of common charity--to let me give you the facts as they are, and not as
- you’ve probably imagined them.”
- “I’ve told you I don’t think uncharitably of her. I don’t want to think
- of her at all!”
- “That’s why I tell you you’re afraid.”
- “Afraid?”
- “Yes. You’ve always said you wanted, above all, to look at life, at the
- human problem, as it is, without fear and without hypocrisy; and it’s
- not always a pleasant thing to look at.” He broke off, and then began
- again: “Don’t think this a plea for myself! I don’t want to say a word
- to lessen my offense. I don’t want to talk of myself at all. Even if I
- did, I probably couldn’t make you understand--I don’t, myself, as I look
- back. Be just to me--it’s your right; all I ask you is to be generous to
- Miss Viner...”
- She stood up trembling. “You’re free to be as generous to her as you
- please!”
- “Yes: you’ve made it clear to me that I’m free. But there’s nothing I
- can do for her that will help her half as much as your understanding her
- would.”
- “Nothing you can do for her? You can marry her!”
- His face hardened. “You certainly couldn’t wish her a worse fate!”
- “It must have been what she expected ... relied on...” He was silent, and
- she broke out: “Or what is she? What are you? It’s too horrible! On your
- way here ... to ME...” She felt the tears in her throat and stopped.
- “That was it,” he said bluntly. She stared at him.
- “I was on my way to you--after repeated delays and postponements of your
- own making. At the very last you turned me back with a mere word--and
- without explanation. I waited for a letter; and none came. I’m not
- saying this to justify myself. I’m simply trying to make you understand.
- I felt hurt and bitter and bewildered. I thought you meant to give me
- up. And suddenly, in my way, I found some one to be sorry for, to be
- of use to. That, I swear to you, was the way it began. The rest was a
- moment’s folly ... a flash of madness ... as such things are. We’ve never
- seen each other since...”
- Anna was looking at him coldly. “You sufficiently describe her in saying
- that!”
- “Yes, if you measure her by conventional standards--which is what you
- always declare you never do.”
- “Conventional standards? A girl who----” She was checked by a sudden
- rush of almost physical repugnance. Suddenly she broke out: “I always
- thought her an adventuress!”
- “Always?”
- “I don’t mean always ... but after you came...”
- “She’s not an adventuress.”
- “You mean that she professes to act on the new theories? The stuff that
- awful women rave about on platforms?”
- “Oh, I don’t think she pretended to have a theory----”
- “She hadn’t even that excuse?”
- “She had the excuse of her loneliness, her unhappiness--of miseries and
- humiliations that a woman like you can’t even guess. She had nothing to
- look back to but indifference or unkindness--nothing to look forward to
- but anxiety. She saw I was sorry for her and it touched her. She made
- too much of it--she exaggerated it. I ought to have seen the danger, but
- I didn’t. There’s no possible excuse for what I did.”
- Anna listened to him in speechless misery. Every word he spoke threw
- back a disintegrating light on their own past. He had come to her with
- an open face and a clear conscience--come to her from this! If his
- security was the security of falsehood it was horrible; if it meant that
- he had forgotten, it was worse. She would have liked to stop her ears,
- to close her eyes, to shut out every sight and sound and suggestion of
- a world in which such things could be; and at the same time she was
- tormented by the desire to know more, to understand better, to feel
- herself less ignorant and inexpert in matters which made so much of
- the stuff of human experience. What did he mean by “a moment’s folly, a
- flash of madness”? How did people enter on such adventures, how pass
- out of them without more visible traces of their havoc? Her imagination
- recoiled from the vision of a sudden debasing familiarity: it seemed to
- her that her thoughts would never again be pure...
- “I swear to you,” she heard Darrow saying, “it was simply that, and
- nothing more.”
- She wondered at his composure, his competence, at his knowing so exactly
- what to say. No doubt men often had to make such explanations: they had
- the formulas by heart...A leaden lassitude descended on her. She passed
- from flame and torment into a colourless cold world where everything
- surrounding her seemed equally indifferent and remote. For a moment she
- simply ceased to feel.
- She became aware that Darrow was waiting for her to speak, and she made
- an effort to represent to herself the meaning of what he had just said;
- but her mind was as blank as a blurred mirror. Finally she brought out:
- “I don’t think I understand what you’ve told me.”
- “No; you don’t understand,” he returned with sudden bitterness; and on
- his lips the charge of incomprehension seemed an offense to her.
- “I don’t want to--about such things!”
- He answered almost harshly: “Don’t be afraid ... you never will...”
- and for an instant they faced each other like enemies. Then the tears
- swelled in her throat at his reproach.
- “You mean I don’t feel things--I’m too hard?”
- “No: you’re too high ... too fine ... such things are too far from you.”
- He paused, as if conscious of the futility of going on with whatever
- he had meant to say, and again, for a short space, they confronted
- each other, no longer as enemies--so it seemed to her--but as beings of
- different language who had forgotten the few words they had learned of
- each other’s speech.
- Darrow broke the silence. “It’s best, on all accounts, that I should
- stay till tomorrow; but I needn’t intrude on you; we needn’t meet again
- alone. I only want to be sure I know your wishes.” He spoke the short
- sentences in a level voice, as though he were summing up the results of
- a business conference.
- Anna looked at him vaguely. “My wishes?”
- “As to Owen----”
- At that she started. “They must never meet again!”
- “It’s not likely they will. What I meant was, that it depends on you to
- spare him...”
- She answered steadily: “He shall never know,” and after another interval
- Darrow said: “This is good-bye, then.”
- At the word she seemed to understand for the first time whither the
- flying moments had been leading them. Resentment and indignation died
- down, and all her consciousness resolved itself into the mere visual
- sense that he was there before her, near enough for her to lift her
- hand and touch him, and that in another instant the place where he stood
- would be empty.
- She felt a mortal weakness, a craven impulse to cry out to him to stay,
- a longing to throw herself into his arms, and take refuge there from the
- unendurable anguish he had caused her. Then the vision called up another
- thought: “I shall never know what that girl has known...” and the recoil
- of pride flung her back on the sharp edges of her anguish.
- “Good-bye,” she said, in dread lest he should read her face; and she
- stood motionless, her head high, while he walked to the door and went
- out.
- BOOK V
- XXX
- Anna Leath, three days later, sat in Miss Painter’s drawing-room in the
- rue de Matignon.
- Coming up precipitately that morning from the country, she had reached
- Paris at one o’clock and Miss Painter’s landing some ten minutes later.
- Miss Painter’s mouldy little man-servant, dissembling a napkin under his
- arm, had mildly attempted to oppose her entrance; but Anna, insisting,
- had gone straight to the dining-room and surprised her friend--who ate
- as furtively as certain animals--over a strange meal of cold mutton and
- lemonade. Ignoring the embarrassment she caused, she had set forth the
- object of her journey, and Miss Painter, always hatted and booted for
- action, had immediately hastened out, leaving her to the solitude of
- the bare fireless drawing-room with its eternal slip-covers and “bowed”
- shutters.
- In this inhospitable obscurity Anna had sat alone for close upon two
- hours. Both obscurity and solitude were acceptable to her, and impatient
- as she was to hear the result of the errand on which she had despatched
- her hostess, she desired still more to be alone. During her long
- meditation in a white-swathed chair before the muffled hearth she had
- been able for the first time to clear a way through the darkness and
- confusion of her thoughts. The way did not go far, and her attempt to
- trace it was as weak and spasmodic as a convalescent’s first efforts
- to pick up the thread of living. She seemed to herself like some one
- struggling to rise from a long sickness of which it would have been so
- much easier to die. At Givre she had fallen into a kind of torpor, a
- deadness of soul traversed by wild flashes of pain; but whether she
- suffered or whether she was numb, she seemed equally remote from her
- real living and doing self.
- It was only the discovery--that very morning--of Owen’s unannounced
- departure for Paris that had caught her out of her dream and forced her
- back to action. The dread of what this flight might imply, and of the
- consequences that might result from it, had roused her to the sense of
- her responsibility, and from the moment when she had resolved to follow
- her step-son, and had made her rapid preparations for pursuit, her mind
- had begun to work again, feverishly, fitfully, but still with something
- of its normal order. In the train she had been too agitated, too
- preoccupied with what might next await her, to give her thoughts to
- anything but the turning over of dread alternatives; but Miss Painter’s
- imperviousness had steadied her, and while she waited for the sound of
- the latch-key she resolutely returned upon herself.
- With respect to her outward course she could at least tell herself that
- she had held to her purpose. She had, as people said, “kept up” during
- the twenty-four hours preceding George Darrow’s departure; had gone
- with a calm face about her usual business, and even contrived not too
- obviously to avoid him. Then, the next day before dawn, from behind
- the closed shutters where she had kept for half the night her dry-eyed
- vigil, she had heard him drive off to the train which brought its
- passengers to Paris in time for the Calais express.
- The fact of his taking that train, of his travelling so straight and
- far away from her, gave to what had happened the implacable outline of
- reality. He was gone; he would not come back; and her life had ended
- just as she had dreamed it was beginning. She had no doubt, at first, as
- to the absolute inevitability of this conclusion. The man who had driven
- away from her house in the autumn dawn was not the man she had loved; he
- was a stranger with whom she had not a single thought in common. It was
- terrible, indeed, that he wore the face and spoke in the voice of her
- friend, and that, as long as he was under one roof with her, the mere
- way in which he moved and looked could bridge at a stroke the gulf
- between them. That, no doubt, was the fault of her exaggerated
- sensibility to outward things: she was frightened to see how it enslaved
- her. A day or two before she had supposed the sense of honour was her
- deepest sentiment: if she had smiled at the conventions of others it was
- because they were too trivial, not because they were too grave. There
- were certain dishonours with which she had never dreamed that any pact
- could be made: she had had an incorruptible passion for good faith and
- fairness.
- She had supposed that, once Darrow was gone, once she was safe from the
- danger of seeing and hearing him, this high devotion would sustain her.
- She had believed it would be possible to separate the image of the man
- she had thought him from that of the man he was. She had even foreseen
- the hour when she might raise a mournful shrine to the memory of the
- Darrow she had loved, without fear that his double’s shadow would
- desecrate it. But now she had begun to understand that the two men were
- really one. The Darrow she worshipped was inseparable from the Darrow
- she abhorred; and the inevitable conclusion was that both must go, and
- she be left in the desert of a sorrow without memories...
- But if the future was thus void, the present was all too full. Never had
- blow more complex repercussions; and to remember Owen was to cease to
- think of herself. What impulse, what apprehension, had sent him suddenly
- to Paris? And why had he thought it needful to conceal his going from
- her? When Sophy Viner had left, it had been with the understanding that
- he was to await her summons; and it seemed improbable that he would
- break his pledge, and seek her without leave, unless his lover’s
- intuition had warned him of some fresh danger. Anna recalled how
- quickly he had read the alarm in her face when he had rushed back to her
- sitting-room with the news that Miss Viner had promised to see him again
- in Paris. To be so promptly roused, his suspicions must have been but
- half-asleep; and since then, no doubt, if she and Darrow had dissembled,
- so had he. To her proud directness it was degrading to think that
- they had been living together like enemies who spy upon each other’s
- movements: she felt a desperate longing for the days which had seemed so
- dull and narrow, but in which she had walked with her head high and her
- eyes unguarded.
- She had come up to Paris hardly knowing what peril she feared, and still
- less how she could avert it. If Owen meant to see Miss Viner--and what
- other object could he have?--they must already be together, and it was
- too late to interfere. It had indeed occurred to Anna that Paris might
- not be his objective point: that his real purpose in leaving Givre
- without her knowledge had been to follow Darrow to London and exact
- the truth of him. But even to her alarmed imagination this seemed
- improbable. She and Darrow, to the last, had kept up so complete a feint
- of harmony that, whatever Owen had surmised, he could scarcely have
- risked acting on his suspicions. If he still felt the need of an
- explanation, it was almost certainly of Sophy Viner that he would ask
- it; and it was in quest of Sophy Viner that Anna had despatched Miss
- Painter.
- She had found a blessed refuge from her perplexities in the stolid
- Adelaide’s unawareness. One could so absolutely count on Miss Painter’s
- guessing no more than one chose, and yet acting astutely on such hints
- as one vouchsafed her! She was like a well-trained retriever whose
- interest in his prey ceases when he lays it at his master’s feet. Anna,
- on arriving, had explained that Owen’s unannounced flight had made her
- fear some fresh misunderstanding between himself and Miss Viner. In
- the interests of peace she had thought it best to follow him; but she
- hastily added that she did not wish to see Sophy, but only, if possible,
- to learn from her where Owen was. With these brief instructions Miss
- Painter had started out; but she was a woman of many occupations, and
- had given her visitor to understand that before returning she should
- have to call on a friend who had just arrived from Boston, and afterward
- despatch to another exiled compatriot a supply of cranberries and
- brandied peaches from the American grocery in the Champs Elysees.
- Gradually, as the moments passed, Anna began to feel the reaction which,
- in moments of extreme nervous tension, follows on any effort of the
- will. She seemed to have gone as far as her courage would carry her,
- and she shrank more and more from the thought of Miss Painter’s return,
- since whatever information the latter brought would necessitate some
- fresh decision. What should she say to Owen if she found him? What could
- she say that should not betray the one thing she would give her life
- to hide from him? “Give her life”--how the phrase derided her! It was a
- gift she would not have bestowed on her worst enemy. She would not have
- had Sophy Viner live the hours she was living now... She tried again
- to look steadily and calmly at the picture that the image of the girl
- evoked. She had an idea that she ought to accustom herself to its
- contemplation. If life was like that, why the sooner one got used to it
- the better...But no! Life was not like that. Her adventure was a hideous
- accident. She dreaded above all the temptation to generalise from her
- own case, to doubt the high things she had lived by and seek a cheap
- solace in belittling what fate had refused her. There was such love as
- she had dreamed, and she meant to go on believing in it, and cherishing
- the thought that she was worthy of it. What had happened to her was
- grotesque and mean and miserable; but she herself was none of these
- things, and never, never would she make of herself the mock that fate
- had made of her...
- She could not, as yet, bear to think deliberately of Darrow; but she
- kept on repeating to herself “By and bye that will come too.” Even now
- she was determined not to let his image be distorted by her suffering.
- As soon as she could, she would try to single out for remembrance
- the individual things she had liked in him before she had loved him
- altogether. No “spiritual exercise” devised by the discipline of piety
- could have been more torturing; but its very cruelty attracted her. She
- wanted to wear herself out with new pains...
- XXXI
- The sound of Miss Painter’s latch-key made her start. She was still a
- bundle of quivering fears to whom each coming moment seemed a menace.
- There was a slight interval, and a sound of voices in the hall; then
- Miss Painter’s vigorous hand was on the door.
- Anna stood up as she came in. “You’ve found him?”
- “I’ve found Sophy.”
- “And Owen?--has she seen him? Is he here?”
- “SHE’S here: in the hall. She wants to speak to you.”
- “Here--NOW?” Anna found no voice for more.
- “She drove back with me,” Miss Painter continued in the tone of
- impartial narrative. “The cabman was impertinent. I’ve got his number.”
- She fumbled in a stout black reticule.
- “Oh, I can’t--” broke from Anna; but she collected herself, remembering
- that to betray her unwillingness to see the girl was to risk revealing
- much more.
- “She thought you might be too tired to see her: she wouldn’t come in
- till I’d found out.”
- Anna drew a quick breath. An instant’s thought had told her that
- Sophy Viner would hardly have taken such a step unless something more
- important had happened. “Ask her to come, please,” she said.
- Miss Painter, from the threshold, turned back to announce her intention
- of going immediately to the police station to report the cabman’s
- delinquency; then she passed out, and Sophy Viner entered.
- The look in the girl’s face showed that she had indeed come unwillingly;
- yet she seemed animated by an eager resoluteness that made Anna ashamed
- of her tremors. For a moment they looked at each other in silence, as
- if the thoughts between them were packed too thick for speech; then Anna
- said, in a voice from which she strove to take the edge of hardness:
- “You know where Owen is, Miss Painter tells me.”
- “Yes; that was my reason for asking you to see me.” Sophy spoke simply,
- without constraint or hesitation.
- “I thought he’d promised you--” Anna interposed.
- “He did; but he broke his promise. That’s what I thought I ought to tell
- you.”
- “Thank you.” Anna went on tentatively: “He left Givre this morning
- without a word. I followed him because I was afraid...”
- She broke off again and the girl took up her phrase. “You were afraid
- he’d guessed? He HAS...”
- “What do you mean--guessed what?”
- “That you know something he doesn’t ... something that made you glad to
- have me go.”
- “Oh--” Anna moaned. If she had wanted more pain she had it now. “He’s
- told you this?” she faltered.
- “He hasn’t told me, because I haven’t seen him. I kept him off--I made
- Mrs. Farlow get rid of him. But he’s written me what he came to say; and
- that was it.”
- “Oh, poor Owen!” broke from Anna. Through all the intricacies of her
- suffering she felt the separate pang of his.
- “And I want to ask you,” the girl continued, “to let me see him; for
- of course,” she added in the same strange voice of energy, “I wouldn’t
- unless you consented.”
- “To see him?” Anna tried to gather together her startled thoughts. “What
- use would it be? What could you tell him?”
- “I want to tell him the truth,” said Sophy Viner.
- The two women looked at each other, and a burning blush rose to Anna’s
- forehead. “I don’t understand,” she faltered.
- Sophy waited a moment; then she lowered her voice to say: “I don’t want
- him to think worse of me than he need...”
- “Worse?”
- “Yes--to think such things as you’re thinking now...I want him to know
- exactly what happened ... then I want to bid him good-bye.”
- Anna tried to clear a way through her own wonder and confusion. She felt
- herself obscurely moved.
- “Wouldn’t it be worse for him?”
- “To hear the truth? It would be better, at any rate, for you and Mr.
- Darrow.”
- At the sound of the name Anna lifted her head quickly. “I’ve only my
- step-son to consider!”
- The girl threw a startled look at her. “You don’t mean--you’re not going
- to give him up?”
- Anna felt her lips harden. “I don’t think it’s of any use to talk of
- that.”
- “Oh, I know! It’s my fault for not knowing how to say what I want you to
- hear. Your words are different; you know how to choose them. Mine offend
- you ... and the dread of it makes me blunder. That’s why, the other day, I
- couldn’t say anything ... couldn’t make things clear to you. But now MUST,
- even if you hate it!” She drew a step nearer, her slender figure swayed
- forward in a passion of entreaty. “Do listen to me! What you’ve said is
- dreadful. How can you speak of him in that voice? Don’t you see that I
- went away so that he shouldn’t have to lose you?”
- Anna looked at her coldly. “Are you speaking of Mr. Darrow? I don’t
- know why you think your going or staying can in any way affect our
- relations.”
- “You mean that you HAVE given him up--because of me? Oh, how could you?
- You can’t really love him!--And yet,” the girl suddenly added, “you
- must, or you’d be more sorry for me!”
- “I’m very sorry for you,” Anna said, feeling as if the iron band about
- her heart pressed on it a little less inexorably.
- “Then why won’t you hear me? Why won’t you try to understand? It’s all
- so different from what you imagine!”
- “I’ve never judged you.”
- “I’m not thinking of myself. He loves you!”
- “I thought you’d come to speak of Owen.”
- Sophy Viner seemed not to hear her. “He’s never loved any one else. Even
- those few days...I knew it all the while ... he never cared for me.”
- “Please don’t say any more!” Anna said.
- “I know it must seem strange to you that I should say so much. I shock
- you, I offend you: you think me a creature without shame. So I am--but
- not in the sense you think! I’m not ashamed of having loved him; no; and
- I’m not ashamed of telling you so. It’s that that justifies me--and him
- too...Oh, let me tell you how it happened! He was sorry for me: he saw I
- cared. I KNEW that was all he ever felt. I could see he was thinking of
- some one else. I knew it was only for a week...He never said a word to
- mislead me...I wanted to be happy just once--and I didn’t dream of the
- harm I might be doing him!”
- Anna could not speak. She hardly knew, as yet, what the girl’s words
- conveyed to her, save the sense of their tragic fervour; but she was
- conscious of being in the presence of an intenser passion than she had
- ever felt.
- “I am sorry for you.” She paused. “But why do you say this to me?” After
- another interval she exclaimed: “You’d no right to let Owen love you.”
- “No; that was wrong. At least what’s happened since has made it so. If
- things had been different I think I could have made Owen happy. You were
- all so good to me--I wanted so to stay with you! I suppose you’ll say
- that makes it worse: my daring to dream I had the right...But all that
- doesn’t matter now. I won’t see Owen unless you’re willing. I should
- have liked to tell him what I’ve tried to tell you; but you must know
- better; you feel things in a finer way. Only you’ll have to help him if
- I can’t. He cares a great deal ... it’s going to hurt him...”
- Anna trembled. “Oh, I know! What can I do?”
- “You can go straight back to Givre--now, at once! So that Owen shall
- never know you’ve followed him.” Sophy’s clasped hands reached out
- urgently. “And you can send for Mr. Darrow--bring him back. Owen must
- be convinced that he’s mistaken, and nothing else will convince him.
- Afterward I’ll find a pretext--oh, I promise you! But first he must see
- for himself that nothing’s changed for you.”
- Anna stood motionless, subdued and dominated. The girl’s ardour swept
- her like a wind.
- “Oh, can’t I move you? Some day you’ll know!” Sophy pleaded, her eyes
- full of tears.
- Anna saw them, and felt a fullness in her throat. Again the band about
- her heart seemed loosened. She wanted to find a word, but could not:
- all within her was too dark and violent. She gave the girl a speechless
- look.
- “I do believe you,” she said suddenly; then she turned and walked out of
- the room.
- XXXII
- She drove from Miss Painter’s to her own apartment. The maid-servant who
- had it in charge had been apprised of her coming, and had opened one or
- two of the rooms, and prepared a fire in her bedroom. Anna shut herself
- in, refusing the woman’s ministrations. She felt cold and faint, and
- after she had taken off her hat and cloak she knelt down by the fire and
- stretched her hands to it.
- In one respect, at least, it was clear to her that she would do well
- to follow Sophy Viner’s counsel. It had been an act of folly to follow
- Owen, and her first business was to get back to Givre before him. But
- the only train leaving that evening was a slow one, which did not reach
- Francheuil till midnight, and she knew that her taking it would excite
- Madame de Chantelle’s wonder and lead to interminable talk. She had come
- up to Paris on the pretext of finding a new governess for Effie, and the
- natural thing was to defer her return till the next morning. She knew
- Owen well enough to be sure that he would make another attempt to see
- Miss Viner, and failing that, would write again and await her answer:
- so that there was no likelihood of his reaching Givre till the following
- evening.
- Her sense of relief at not having to start out at once showed her for
- the first time how tired she was. The bonne had suggested a cup of tea,
- but the dread of having any one about her had made Anna refuse, and she
- had eaten nothing since morning but a sandwich bought at a buffet. She
- was too tired to get up, but stretching out her arm she drew toward her
- the arm-chair which stood beside the hearth and rested her head against
- its cushions. Gradually the warmth of the fire stole into her veins and
- her heaviness of soul was replaced by a dreamy buoyancy. She seemed to
- be seated on the hearth in her sitting-room at Givre, and Darrow was
- beside her, in the chair against which she leaned. He put his arms about
- her shoulders and drawing her head back looked into her eyes. “Of all
- the ways you do your hair, that’s the way I like best,” he said...
- A log dropped, and she sat up with a start. There was a warmth in her
- heart, and she was smiling. Then she looked about her, and saw where she
- was, and the glory fell. She hid her face and sobbed.
- Presently she perceived that it was growing dark, and getting up
- stiffly she began to undo the things in her bag and spread them on the
- dressing-table. She shrank from lighting the lights, and groped her way
- about, trying to find what she needed. She seemed immeasurably far
- off from every one, and most of all from herself. It was as if her
- consciousness had been transmitted to some stranger whose thoughts and
- gestures were indifferent to her...
- Suddenly she heard a shrill tinkle, and with a beating heart she
- stood still in the middle of the room. It was the telephone in her
- dressing-room--a call, no doubt, from Adelaide Painter. Or could Owen
- have learned she was in town? The thought alarmed her and she opened the
- door and stumbled across the unlit room to the instrument. She held it
- to her ear, and heard Darrow’s voice pronounce her name.
- “Will you let me see you? I’ve come back--I had to come. Miss Painter
- told me you were here.”
- She began to tremble, and feared that he would guess it from her voice.
- She did not know what she answered: she heard him say: “I can’t
- hear.” She called “Yes!” and laid the telephone down, and caught it up
- again--but he was gone. She wondered if her “Yes” had reached him.
- She sat in her chair and listened. Why had she said that she would see
- him? What did she mean to say to him when he came? Now and then, as she
- sat there, the sense of his presence enveloped her as in her dream, and
- she shut her eyes and felt his arms about her. Then she woke to reality
- and shivered. A long time elapsed, and at length she said to herself:
- “He isn’t coming.”
- The door-bell rang as she said it, and she stood up, cold and trembling.
- She thought: “Can he imagine there’s any use in coming?” and moved
- forward to bid the servant say she could not see him.
- The door opened and she saw him standing in the drawing-room. The room
- was cold and fireless, and a hard glare fell from the wall-lights on the
- shrouded furniture and the white slips covering the curtains. He looked
- pale and stern, with a frown of fatigue between his eyes; and she
- remembered that in three days he had travelled from Givre to London and
- back. It seemed incredible that all that had befallen her should have
- been compressed within the space of three days!
- “Thank you,” he said as she came in.
- She answered: “It’s better, I suppose----”
- He came toward her and took her in his arms. She struggled a little,
- afraid of yielding, but he pressed her to him, not bending to her but
- holding her fast, as though he had found her after a long search: she
- heard his hurried breathing. It seemed to come from her own breast, so
- close he held her; and it was she who, at last, lifted up her face and
- drew down his.
- She freed herself and went and sat on a sofa at the other end of the
- room. A mirror between the shrouded window-curtains showed her crumpled
- travelling dress and the white face under her disordered hair.
- She found her voice, and asked him how he had been able to leave London.
- He answered that he had managed--he’d arranged it; and she saw he hardly
- heard what she was saying.
- “I had to see you,” he went on, and moved nearer, sitting down at her
- side.
- “Yes; we must think of Owen----”
- “Oh, Owen--!”
- Her mind had flown back to Sophy Viner’s plea that she should let Darrow
- return to Givre in order that Owen might be persuaded of the folly of
- his suspicions. The suggestion was absurd, of course. She could not ask
- Darrow to lend himself to such a fraud, even had she had the inhuman
- courage to play her part in it. She was suddenly overwhelmed by the
- futility of every attempt to reconstruct her ruined world. No, it was
- useless; and since it was useless, every moment with Darrow was pure
- pain...
- “I’ve come to talk of myself, not of Owen,” she heard him saying.
- “When you sent me away the other day I understood that it couldn’t be
- otherwise--then. But it’s not possible that you and I should part like
- that. If I’m to lose you, it must be for a better reason.”
- “A better reason?”
- “Yes: a deeper one. One that means a fundamental disaccord between us.
- This one doesn’t--in spite of everything it doesn’t. That’s what I want
- you to see, and have the courage to acknowledge.”
- “If I saw it I should have the courage!”
- “Yes: courage was the wrong word. You have that. That’s why I’m here.”
- “But I don’t see it,” she continued sadly. “So it’s useless, isn’t
- it?--and so cruel...” He was about to speak, but she went on: “I shall
- never understand it--never!”
- He looked at her. “You will some day: you were made to feel everything”
- “I should have thought this was a case of not feeling----”
- “On my part, you mean?” He faced her resolutely. “Yes, it was: to my
- shame...What I meant was that when you’ve lived a little longer
- you’ll see what complex blunderers we all are: how we’re struck blind
- sometimes, and mad sometimes--and then, when our sight and our senses
- come back, how we have to set to work, and build up, little by little,
- bit by bit, the precious things we’d smashed to atoms without knowing
- it. Life’s just a perpetual piecing together of broken bits.”
- She looked up quickly. “That’s what I feel: that you ought to----”
- He stood up, interrupting her with a gesture. “Oh, don’t--don’t say what
- you’re going to! Men don’t give their lives away like that. If you won’t
- have mine, it’s at least my own, to do the best I can with.”
- “The best you can--that’s what I mean! How can there be a ‘best’ for you
- that’s made of some one else’s worst?”
- He sat down again with a groan. “I don’t know! It seemed such a slight
- thing--all on the surface--and I’ve gone aground on it because it was on
- the surface. I see the horror of it just as you do. But I see, a little
- more clearly, the extent, and the limits, of my wrong. It’s not as black
- as you imagine.”
- She lowered her voice to say: “I suppose I shall never understand; but
- she seems to love you...”
- “There’s my shame! That I didn’t guess it, didn’t fly from it. You say
- you’ll never understand: but why shouldn’t you? Is it anything to be
- proud of, to know so little of the strings that pull us? If you knew a
- little more, I could tell you how such things happen without offending
- you; and perhaps you’d listen without condemning me.”
- “I don’t condemn you.” She was dizzy with struggling impulses. She
- longed to cry out: “I DO understand! I’ve understood ever since you’ve
- been here!” For she was aware, in her own bosom, of sensations so
- separate from her romantic thoughts of him that she saw her body and
- soul divided against themselves. She recalled having read somewhere that
- in ancient Rome the slaves were not allowed to wear a distinctive dress
- lest they should recognize each other and learn their numbers and their
- power. So, in herself, she discerned for the first time instincts
- and desires, which, mute and unmarked, had gone to and fro in the dim
- passages of her mind, and now hailed each other with a cry of mutiny.
- “Oh, I don’t know what to think!” she broke out. “You say you didn’t
- know she loved you. But you know it now. Doesn’t that show you how you
- can put the broken bits together?”
- “Can you seriously think it would be doing so to marry one woman while I
- care for another?”
- “Oh, I don’t know...I don’t know...” The sense of her weakness made her
- try to harden herself against his arguments.
- “You do know! We’ve often talked of such things: of the monstrousness of
- useless sacrifices. If I’m to expiate, it’s not in that way.” He added
- abruptly: “It’s in having to say this to you now...”
- She found no answer.
- Through the silent apartment they heard the sudden peal of the
- door-bell, and she rose to her feet. “Owen!” she instantly exclaimed.
- “Is Owen in Paris?”
- She explained in a rapid undertone what she had learned from Sophy
- Viner.
- “Shall I leave you?” Darrow asked.
- “Yes ... no...” She moved to the dining-room door, with the half-formed
- purpose of making him pass out, and then turned back. “It may be
- Adelaide.”
- They heard the outer door open, and a moment later Owen walked into the
- room. He was pale, with excited eyes: as they fell on Darrow, Anna saw
- his start of wonder. He made a slight sign of recognition, and then went
- up to his step-mother with an air of exaggerated gaiety.
- “You furtive person! I ran across the omniscient Adelaide and heard from
- her that you’d rushed up suddenly and secretly.” He stood between Anna
- and Darrow, strained, questioning, dangerously on edge.
- “I came up to meet Mr. Darrow,” Anna answered. “His leave’s been
- prolonged--he’s going back with me.”
- The words seemed to have uttered themselves without her will, yet she
- felt a great sense of freedom as she spoke them.
- The hard tension of Owen’s face changed to incredulous surprise. He
- looked at Darrow. “The merest luck ... a colleague whose wife was ill...I
- came straight back,” she heard the latter tranquilly explaining. His
- self-command helped to steady her, and she smiled at Owen.
- “We’ll all go back together tomorrow morning,” she said as she slipped
- her arm through his.
- XXXIII
- Owen Leath did not go back with his step-mother to Givre. In reply to
- her suggestion he announced his intention of staying on a day or two
- longer in Paris.
- Anna left alone by the first train the next morning. Darrow was to
- follow in the afternoon. When Owen had left them the evening before,
- Darrow waited a moment for her to speak; then, as she said nothing, he
- asked her if she really wished him to return to Givre. She made a mute
- sign of assent, and he added: “For you know that, much as I’m ready to
- do for Owen, I can’t do that for him--I can’t go back to be sent away
- again.”
- “No--no!”
- He came nearer, and looked at her, and she went to him. All her fears
- seemed to fall from her as he held her. It was a different feeling from
- any she had known before: confused and turbid, as if secret shames and
- rancours stirred in it, yet richer, deeper, more enslaving. She leaned
- her head back and shut her eyes beneath his kisses. She knew now that
- she could never give him up.
- Nevertheless she asked him, the next morning, to let her go back alone
- to Givre. She wanted time to think. She was convinced that what had
- happened was inevitable, that she and Darrow belonged to each other, and
- that he was right in saying no past folly could ever put them asunder.
- If there was a shade of difference in her feeling for him it was that
- of an added intensity. She felt restless, insecure out of his sight:
- she had a sense of incompleteness, of passionate dependence, that was
- somehow at variance with her own conception of her character.
- It was partly the consciousness of this change in herself that made her
- want to be alone. The solitude of her inner life had given her the habit
- of these hours of self-examination, and she needed them as she needed
- her morning plunge into cold water.
- During the journey she tried to review what had happened in the light
- of her new decision and of her sudden relief from pain. She seemed to
- herself to have passed through some fiery initiation from which she
- had emerged seared and quivering, but clutching to her breast a magic
- talisman. Sophy Viner had cried out to her: “Some day you’ll know!” and
- Darrow had used the same words. They meant, she supposed, that when
- she had explored the intricacies and darknesses of her own heart her
- judgment of others would be less absolute. Well, she knew now--knew
- weaknesses and strengths she had not dreamed of, and the deep discord
- and still deeper complicities between what thought in her and what
- blindly wanted...
- Her mind turned anxiously to Owen. At least the blow that was to fall on
- him would not seem to have been inflicted by her hand. He would be left
- with the impression that his breach with Sophy Viner was due to one of
- the ordinary causes of such disruptions: though he must lose her, his
- memory of her would not be poisoned. Anna never for a moment permitted
- herself the delusion that she had renewed her promise to Darrow in order
- to spare her step-son this last refinement of misery. She knew she had
- been prompted by the irresistible impulse to hold fast to what was
- most precious to her, and that Owen’s arrival on the scene had been
- the pretext for her decision, and not its cause; yet she felt herself
- fortified by the thought of what she had spared him. It was as though
- a star she had been used to follow had shed its familiar ray on ways
- unknown to her.
- All through these meditations ran the undercurrent of an absolute trust
- in Sophy Viner. She thought of the girl with a mingling of antipathy
- and confidence. It was humiliating to her pride to recognize kindred
- impulses in a character which she would have liked to feel completely
- alien to her. But what indeed was the girl really like? She seemed to
- have no scruples and a thousand delicacies. She had given herself to
- Darrow, and concealed the episode from Owen Leath, with no more apparent
- sense of debasement than the vulgarest of adventuresses; yet she had
- instantly obeyed the voice of her heart when it bade her part from the
- one and serve the other.
- Anna tried to picture what the girl’s life must have been: what
- experiences, what initiations, had formed her. But her own training had
- been too different: there were veils she could not lift. She looked back
- at her married life, and its colourless uniformity took on an air of
- high restraint and order. Was it because she had been so incurious that
- it had worn that look to her? It struck her with amazement that she had
- never given a thought to her husband’s past, or wondered what he did and
- where he went when he was away from her. If she had been asked what she
- supposed he thought about when they were apart, she would instantly have
- answered: his snuff-boxes. It had never occurred to her that he might
- have passions, interests, preoccupations of which she was absolutely
- ignorant. Yet he went up to Paris rather regularly: ostensibly to attend
- sales and exhibitions, or to confer with dealers and collectors. She
- tried to picture him, straight, trim, beautifully brushed and varnished,
- walking furtively down a quiet street, and looking about him before he
- slipped into a doorway. She understood now that she had been cold to
- him: what more likely than that he had sought compensations? All men
- were like that, she supposed--no doubt her simplicity had amused him.
- In the act of transposing Fraser Leath into a Don Juan she was pulled up
- by the ironic perception that she was simply trying to justify Darrow.
- She wanted to think that all men were “like that” because Darrow
- was “like that”: she wanted to justify her acceptance of the fact by
- persuading herself that only through such concessions could women like
- herself hope to keep what they could not give up. And suddenly she was
- filled with anger at her blindness, and then at her disastrous attempt
- to see. Why had she forced the truth out of Darrow? If only she had held
- her tongue nothing need ever have been known. Sophy Viner would have
- broken her engagement, Owen would have been sent around the world, and
- her own dream would have been unshattered. But she had probed, insisted,
- cross-examined, not rested till she had dragged the secret to the light.
- She was one of the luckless women who always have the wrong audacities,
- and who always know it...
- Was it she, Anna Leath, who was picturing herself to herself in that
- way? She recoiled from her thoughts as if with a sense of demoniac
- possession, and there flashed through her the longing to return to her
- old state of fearless ignorance. If at that moment she could have kept
- Darrow from following her to Givre she would have done so...
- But he came; and with the sight of him the turmoil fell and she felt
- herself reassured, rehabilitated. He arrived toward dusk, and she
- motored to Francheuil to meet him. She wanted to see him as soon as
- possible, for she had divined, through the new insight that was in her,
- that only his presence could restore her to a normal view of things.
- In the motor, as they left the town and turned into the high-road, he
- lifted her hand and kissed it, and she leaned against him, and felt
- the currents flow between them. She was grateful to him for not saying
- anything, and for not expecting her to speak. She said to herself: “He
- never makes a mistake--he always knows what to do”; and then she thought
- with a start that it was doubtless because he had so often been in such
- situations. The idea that his tact was a kind of professional expertness
- filled her with repugnance, and insensibly she drew away from him. He
- made no motion to bring her nearer, and she instantly thought that
- that was calculated too. She sat beside him in frozen misery, wondering
- whether, henceforth, she would measure in this way his every look and
- gesture. Neither of them spoke again till the motor turned under the
- dark arch of the avenue, and they saw the lights of Givre twinkling at
- its end. Then Darrow laid his hand on hers and said: “I know, dear--”
- and the hardness in her melted. “He’s suffering as I am,” she thought;
- and for a moment the baleful fact between them seemed to draw them
- closer instead of walling them up in their separate wretchedness.
- It was wonderful to be once more re-entering the doors of Givre with
- him, and as the old house received them into its mellow silence she had
- again the sense of passing out of a dreadful dream into the reassurance
- of kindly and familiar things. It did not seem possible that these quiet
- rooms, so full of the slowly-distilled accumulations of a fastidious
- taste, should have been the scene of tragic dissensions. The memory of
- them seemed to be shut out into the night with the closing and barring
- of its doors.
- At the tea-table in the oak-room they found Madame de Chantelle and
- Effie. The little girl, catching sight of Darrow, raced down the
- drawing-rooms to meet him, and returned in triumph on his shoulder. Anna
- looked at them with a smile. Effie, for all her graces, was chary of
- such favours, and her mother knew that in according them to Darrow she
- had admitted him to the circle where Owen had hitherto ruled.
- Over the tea-table Darrow gave Madame de Chantelle the explanation of
- his sudden return from England. On reaching London, he told her, he had
- found that the secretary he was to have replaced was detained there by
- the illness of his wife. The Ambassador, knowing Darrow’s urgent reasons
- for wishing to be in France, had immediately proposed his going back,
- and awaiting at Givre the summons to relieve his colleague; and he had
- jumped into the first train, without even waiting to telegraph the news
- of his release. He spoke naturally, easily, in his usual quiet voice,
- taking his tea from Effie, helping himself to the toast she handed, and
- stooping now and then to stroke the dozing terrier. And suddenly, as
- Anna listened to his explanation, she asked herself if it were true.
- The question, of course, was absurd. There was no possible reason why he
- should invent a false account of his return, and every probability that
- the version he gave was the real one. But he had looked and spoken in
- the same way when he had answered her probing questions about Sophy
- Viner, and she reflected with a chill of fear that she would never again
- know if he were speaking the truth or not. She was sure he loved her,
- and she did not fear his insincerity as much as her own distrust of him.
- For a moment it seemed to her that this must corrupt the very source of
- love; then she said to herself: “By and bye, when I am altogether his,
- we shall be so near each other that there will be no room for any
- doubts between us.” But the doubts were there now, one moment lulled to
- quiescence, the next more torturingly alert. When the nurse appeared to
- summon Effie, the little girl, after kissing her grandmother, entrenched
- herself on Darrow’s knee with the imperious demand to be carried up to
- bed; and Anna, while she laughingly protested, said to herself with a
- pang: “Can I give her a father about whom I think such things?”
- The thought of Effie, and of what she owed to Effie, had been the
- fundamental reason for her delays and hesitations when she and Darrow
- had come together again in England. Her own feeling was so clear that
- but for that scruple she would have put her hand in his at once. But
- till she had seen him again she had never considered the possibility
- of re-marriage, and when it suddenly confronted her it seemed, for the
- moment, to disorganize the life she had planned for herself and her
- child. She had not spoken of this to Darrow because it appeared to her a
- subject to be debated within her own conscience. The question, then, was
- not as to his fitness to become the guide and guardian of her child;
- nor did she fear that her love for him would deprive Effie of the least
- fraction of her tenderness, since she did not think of love as something
- measured and exhaustible but as a treasure perpetually renewed. What she
- questioned was her right to introduce into her life any interests
- and duties which might rob Effie of a part of her time, or lessen the
- closeness of their daily intercourse.
- She had decided this question as it was inevitable that she should; but
- now another was before her. Assuredly, at her age, there was no possible
- reason why she should cloister herself to bring up her daughter; but
- there was every reason for not marrying a man in whom her own faith was
- not complete...
- XXXIV
- When she woke the next morning she felt a great lightness of heart. She
- recalled her last awakening at Givre, three days before, when it had
- seemed as though all her life had gone down in darkness. Now Darrow
- was once more under the same roof with her, and once more his nearness
- sufficed to make the looming horror drop away. She could almost have
- smiled at her scruples of the night before: as she looked back on them
- they seemed to belong to the old ignorant timorous time when she had
- feared to look life in the face, and had been blind to the mysteries and
- contradictions of the human heart because her own had not been revealed
- to her. Darrow had said: “You were made to feel everything”; and to feel
- was surely better than to judge.
- When she came downstairs he was already in the oak-room with Effie and
- Madame de Chantelle, and the sense of reassurance which his presence
- gave her was merged in the relief of not being able to speak of what was
- between them. But there it was, inevitably, and whenever they looked at
- each other they saw it. In her dread of giving it a more tangible shape
- she tried to devise means of keeping the little girl with her, and,
- when the latter had been called away by the nurse, found an excuse for
- following Madame de Chantelle upstairs to the purple sitting-room. But
- a confidential talk with Madame de Chantelle implied the detailed
- discussion of plans of which Anna could hardly yet bear to consider the
- vaguest outline: the date of her marriage, the relative advantages of
- sailing from London or Lisbon, the possibility of hiring a habitable
- house at their new post; and, when these problems were exhausted, the
- application of the same method to the subject of Owen’s future.
- His grandmother, having no suspicion of the real reason of Sophy Viner’s
- departure, had thought it “extremely suitable” of the young girl to
- withdraw to the shelter of her old friends’ roof in the hour of bridal
- preparation. This maidenly retreat had in fact impressed Madame de
- Chantelle so favourably that she was disposed for the first time to talk
- over Owen’s projects; and as every human event translated itself for her
- into terms of social and domestic detail, Anna had perforce to travel
- the same round again. She felt a momentary relief when Darrow presently
- joined them; but his coming served only to draw the conversation back to
- the question of their own future, and Anna felt a new pang as she heard
- him calmly and lucidly discussing it. Did such self-possession imply
- indifference or insincerity? In that problem her mind perpetually
- revolved; and she dreaded the one answer as much as the other.
- She was resolved to keep on her course as though nothing had happened:
- to marry Darrow and never let the consciousness of the past intrude
- itself between them; but she was beginning to feel that the only way of
- attaining to this state of detachment from the irreparable was once for
- all to turn back with him to its contemplation. As soon as this desire
- had germinated it became so strong in her that she regretted having
- promised Effie to take her out for the afternoon. But she could think
- of no pretext for disappointing the little girl, and soon after luncheon
- the three set forth in the motor to show Darrow a chateau famous in the
- annals of the region. During their excursion Anna found it impossible to
- guess from his demeanour if Effie’s presence between them was as much
- of a strain to his composure as to hers. He remained imperturbably
- good-humoured and appreciative while they went the round of the
- monument, and she remarked only that when he thought himself unnoticed
- his face grew grave and his answers came less promptly.
- On the way back, two or three miles from Givre, she suddenly proposed
- that they should walk home through the forest which skirted that side of
- the park. Darrow acquiesced, and they got out and sent Effie on in the
- motor. Their way led through a bit of sober French woodland, flat as a
- faded tapestry, but with gleams of live emerald lingering here and there
- among its browns and ochres. The luminous grey air gave vividness to its
- dying colours, and veiled the distant glimpses of the landscape in soft
- uncertainty. In such a solitude Anna had fancied it would be easier to
- speak; but as she walked beside Darrow over the deep soundless flooring
- of brown moss the words on her lips took flight again. It seemed
- impossible to break the spell of quiet joy which his presence laid on
- her, and when he began to talk of the place they had just visited she
- answered his questions and then waited for what he should say next...No,
- decidedly she could not speak; she no longer even knew what she had
- meant to say...
- The same experience repeated itself several times that day and the
- next. When she and Darrow were apart she exhausted herself in appeal and
- interrogation, she formulated with a fervent lucidity every point in
- her imaginary argument. But as soon as she was alone with him something
- deeper than reason and subtler than shyness laid its benumbing touch
- upon her, and the desire to speak became merely a dim disquietude,
- through which his looks, his words, his touch, reached her as through
- a mist of bodily pain. Yet this inertia was torn by wild flashes of
- resistance, and when they were apart she began to prepare again what she
- meant to say to him.
- She knew he could not be with her without being aware of this inner
- turmoil, and she hoped he would break the spell by some releasing word.
- But she presently understood that he recognized the futility of words,
- and was resolutely bent on holding her to her own purpose of behaving
- as if nothing had happened. Once more she inwardly accused him of
- insensibility, and her imagination was beset by tormenting visions of
- his past...Had such things happened to him before? If the episode had
- been an isolated accident--“a moment of folly and madness”, as he had
- called it--she could understand, or at least begin to understand (for
- at a certain point her imagination always turned back); but if it were
- a mere link in a chain of similar experiments, the thought of it
- dishonoured her whole past...
- Effie, in the interregnum between governesses, had been given leave to
- dine downstairs; and Anna, on the evening of Darrow’s return, kept the
- little girl with her till long after the nurse had signalled from
- the drawing-room door. When at length she had been carried off, Anna
- proposed a game of cards, and after this diversion had drawn to its
- languid close she said good-night to Darrow and followed Madame de
- Chantelle upstairs. But Madame de Chantelle never sat up late, and the
- second evening, with the amiably implied intention of leaving Anna and
- Darrow to themselves, she took an earlier leave of them than usual.
- Anna sat silent, listening to her small stiff steps as they minced down
- the hall and died out in the distance. Madame de Chantelle had broken
- her wooden embroidery frame, and Darrow, having offered to repair it,
- had drawn his chair up to a table that held a lamp. Anna watched him
- as he sat with bent head and knitted brows, trying to fit together
- the disjoined pieces. The sight of him, so tranquilly absorbed in
- this trifling business, seemed to give to the quiet room a perfume of
- intimacy, to fill it with a sense of sweet familiar habit; and it came
- over her again that she knew nothing of the inner thoughts of this man
- who was sitting by her as a husband might. The lamplight fell on his
- white forehead, on the healthy brown of his cheek, the backs of his thin
- sunburnt hands. As she watched the hands her sense of them became as
- vivid as a touch, and she said to herself: “That other woman has sat
- and watched him as I am doing. She has known him as I have never known
- him...Perhaps he is thinking of that now. Or perhaps he has forgotten
- it all as completely as I have forgotten everything that happened to me
- before he came...”
- He looked young, active, stored with strength and energy; not the man
- for vain repinings or long memories. She wondered what she had to hold
- or satisfy him. He loved her now; she had no doubt of that; but how
- could she hope to keep him? They were so nearly of an age that already
- she felt herself his senior. As yet the difference was not visible;
- outwardly at least they were matched; but ill-health or unhappiness
- would soon do away with this equality. She thought with a pang of
- bitterness: “He won’t grow any older because he doesn’t feel things; and
- because he doesn’t, I SHALL...”
- And when she ceased to please him, what then? Had he the tradition of
- faith to the spoken vow, or the deeper piety of the unspoken dedication?
- What was his theory, what his inner conviction in such matters? But what
- did she care for his convictions or his theories? No doubt he loved her
- now, and believed he would always go on loving her, and was persuaded
- that, if he ceased to, his loyalty would be proof against the change.
- What she wanted to know was not what he thought about it in advance, but
- what would impel or restrain him at the crucial hour. She put no faith
- in her own arts: she was too sure of having none! And if some beneficent
- enchanter had bestowed them on her, she knew now that she would have
- rejected the gift. She could hardly conceive of wanting the kind of love
- that was a state one could be cozened into...
- Darrow, putting away the frame, walked across the room and sat down
- beside her; and she felt he had something special to say.
- “They’re sure to send for me in a day or two now,” he began.
- She made no answer, and he continued: “You’ll tell me before I go what
- day I’m to come back and get you?”
- It was the first time since his return to Givre that he had made any
- direct allusion to the date of their marriage; and instead of answering
- him she broke out: “There’s something I’ve been wanting you to know. The
- other day in Paris I saw Miss Viner.”
- She saw him flush with the intensity of his surprise.
- “You sent for her?”
- “No; she heard from Adelaide that I was in Paris and she came. She came
- because she wanted to urge me to marry you. I thought you ought to know
- what she had done.”
- Darrow stood up. “I’m glad you’ve told me.” He spoke with a visible
- effort at composure. Her eyes followed him as he moved away.
- “Is that all?” he asked after an interval.
- “It seems to me a great deal.”
- “It’s what she’d already asked me.” His voice showed her how deeply he
- was moved, and a throb of jealousy shot through her.
- “Oh, it was for your sake, I know!” He made no answer, and she added:
- “She’s been exceedingly generous...Why shouldn’t we speak of it?”
- She had lowered her head, but through her dropped lids she seemed to be
- watching the crowded scene of his face.
- “I’ve not shrunk from speaking of it.”
- “Speaking of her, then, I mean. It seems to me that if I could talk to
- you about her I should know better----”
- She broke off, confused, and he questioned: “What is it you want to know
- better?”
- The colour rose to her forehead. How could she tell him what she
- scarcely dared own to herself? There was nothing she did not want to
- know, no fold or cranny of his secret that her awakened imagination did
- not strain to penetrate; but she could not expose Sophy Viner to
- the base fingerings of a retrospective jealousy, nor Darrow to the
- temptation of belittling her in the effort to better his own case. The
- girl had been magnificent, and the only worthy return that Anna could
- make was to take Darrow from her without a question if she took him at
- all...
- She lifted her eyes to his face. “I think I only wanted to speak her
- name. It’s not right that we should seem so afraid of it. If I were
- really afraid of it I should have to give you up,” she said.
- He bent over her and caught her to him. “Ah, you can’t give me up now!”
- he exclaimed.
- She suffered him to hold her fast without speaking; but the old dread
- was between them again, and it was on her lips to cry out: “How can I
- help it, when I AM so afraid?”
- XXXV
- The next morning the dread was still there, and she understood that she
- must snatch herself out of the torpor of the will into which she had
- been gradually sinking, and tell Darrow that she could not be his wife.
- The knowledge came to her in the watches of a sleepless night, when,
- through the tears of disenchanted passion, she stared back upon her
- past. There it lay before her, her sole romance, in all its paltry
- poverty, the cheapest of cheap adventures, the most pitiful of
- sentimental blunders. She looked about her room, the room where, for so
- many years, if her heart had been quiescent her thoughts had been
- alive, and pictured herself henceforth cowering before a throng of mean
- suspicions, of unavowed compromises and concessions. In that moment of
- self-searching she saw that Sophy Viner had chosen the better part, and
- that certain renunciations might enrich where possession would have left
- a desert.
- Passionate reactions of instinct fought against these efforts of her
- will. Why should past or future coerce her, when the present was so
- securely hers? Why insanely surrender what the other would after all
- never have? Her sense of irony whispered that if she sent away Darrow
- it would not be to Sophy Viner, but to the first woman who crossed his
- path--as, in a similar hour, Sophy Viner herself had crossed it...But
- the mere fact that she could think such things of him sent her
- shuddering back to the opposite pole. She pictured herself gradually
- subdued to such a conception of life and love, she pictured
- Effie growing up under the influence of the woman she saw herself
- becoming--and she hid her eyes from the humiliation of the picture...
- They were at luncheon when the summons that Darrow expected was brought
- to him. He handed the telegram to Anna, and she learned that his
- Ambassador, on the way to a German cure, was to be in Paris the next
- evening and wished to confer with him there before he went back to
- London. The idea that the decisive moment was at hand was so agitating
- to her that when luncheon was over she slipped away to the terrace and
- thence went down alone to the garden. The day was grey but mild, with
- the heaviness of decay in the air. She rambled on aimlessly, following
- under the denuded boughs the path she and Darrow had taken on their
- first walk to the river. She was sure he would not try to overtake her:
- sure he would guess why she wished to be alone. There were moments when
- it seemed to double her loneliness to be so certain of his reading her
- heart while she was so desperately ignorant of his...
- She wandered on for more than an hour, and when she returned to the
- house she saw, as she entered the hall, that Darrow was seated at the
- desk in Owen’s study. He heard her step, and looking up turned in his
- chair without rising. Their eyes met, and she saw that his were clear
- and smiling. He had a heap of papers at his elbow and was evidently
- engaged in some official correspondence. She wondered that he could
- address himself so composedly to his task, and then ironically reflected
- that such detachment was a sign of his superiority. She crossed the
- threshold and went toward him; but as she advanced she had a sudden
- vision of Owen, standing outside in the cold autumn dusk and watching
- Darrow and Sophy Viner as they faced each other across the lamplit
- desk...The evocation was so vivid that it caught her breath like a blow,
- and she sank down helplessly on the divan among the piled-up books.
- Distinctly, at the moment, she understood that the end had come. “When
- he speaks to me I will tell him!” she thought...
- Darrow, laying aside his pen, looked at her for a moment in silence;
- then he stood up and shut the door.
- “I must go to-morrow early,” he said, sitting down beside her. His voice
- was grave, with a slight tinge of sadness. She said to herself: “He
- knows what I am feeling...” and now the thought made her feel less
- alone. The expression of his face was stern and yet tender: for the
- first time she understood what he had suffered.
- She had no doubt as to the necessity of giving him up, but it was
- impossible to tell him so then. She stood up and said: “I’ll leave you
- to your letters.” He made no protest, but merely answered: “You’ll come
- down presently for a walk?” and it occurred to her at once that she
- would walk down to the river with him, and give herself for the last
- time the tragic luxury of sitting at his side in the little pavilion.
- “Perhaps,” she thought, “it will be easier to tell him there.”
- It did not, on the way home from their walk, become any easier to tell
- him; but her secret decision to do so before he left gave her a kind
- of factitious calm and laid a melancholy ecstasy upon the hour. Still
- skirting the subject that fanned their very faces with its flame, they
- clung persistently to other topics, and it seemed to Anna that their
- minds had never been nearer together than in this hour when their hearts
- were so separate. In the glow of interchanged love she had grown less
- conscious of that other glow of interchanged thought which had once
- illumined her mind. She had forgotten how Darrow had widened her world
- and lengthened out all her perspectives, and with a pang of double
- destitution she saw herself alone among her shrunken thoughts.
- For the first time, then, she had a clear vision of what her life would
- be without him. She imagined herself trying to take up the daily round,
- and all that had lightened and animated it seemed equally lifeless and
- vain. She tried to think of herself as wholly absorbed in her daughter’s
- development, like other mothers she had seen; but she supposed those
- mothers must have had stored memories of happiness to nourish them. She
- had had nothing, and all her starved youth still claimed its due.
- When she went up to dress for dinner she said to herself: “I’ll have
- my last evening with him, and then, before we say good night, I’ll tell
- him.”
- This postponement did not seem unjustified. Darrow had shown her how
- he dreaded vain words, how resolved he was to avoid all fruitless
- discussion. He must have been intensely aware of what had been going on
- in her mind since his return, yet when she had attempted to reveal it
- to him he had turned from the revelation. She was therefore merely
- following the line he had traced in behaving, till the final moment
- came, as though there were nothing more to say...
- That moment seemed at last to be at hand when, at her usual hour after
- dinner, Madame de Chantelle rose to go upstairs. She lingered a little
- to bid good-bye to Darrow, whom she was not likely to see in the
- morning; and her affable allusions to his prompt return sounded in
- Anna’s ear like the note of destiny.
- A cold rain had fallen all day, and for greater warmth and intimacy they
- had gone after dinner to the oak-room, shutting out the chilly vista of
- the farther drawing-rooms. The autumn wind, coming up from the river,
- cried about the house with a voice of loss and separation; and Anna and
- Darrow sat silent, as if they feared to break the hush that shut them
- in. The solitude, the fire-light, the harmony of soft hangings and old
- dim pictures, wove about them a spell of security through which Anna
- felt, far down in her heart, the muffled beat of an inextinguishable
- bliss. How could she have thought that this last moment would be the
- moment to speak to him, when it seemed to have gathered up into its
- flight all the scattered splendours of her dream?
- XXXVI
- Darrow continued to stand by the door after it had closed. Anna felt
- that he was looking at her, and sat still, disdaining to seek refuge in
- any evasive word or movement. For the last time she wanted to let him
- take from her the fulness of what the sight of her could give.
- He crossed over and sat down on the sofa. For a moment neither of them
- spoke; then he said: “To-night, dearest, I must have my answer.”
- She straightened herself under the shock of his seeming to take the very
- words from her lips.
- “To-night?” was all that she could falter.
- “I must be off by the early train. There won’t be more than a moment in
- the morning.”
- He had taken her hand, and she said to herself that she must free it
- before she could go on with what she had to say. Then she rejected this
- concession to a weakness she was resolved to defy. To the end she would
- leave her hand in his hand, her eyes in his eyes: she would not, in
- their final hour together, be afraid of any part of her love for him.
- “You’ll tell me to-night, dear,” he insisted gently; and his insistence
- gave her the strength to speak.
- “There’s something I must ask you,” she broke out, perceiving, as she
- heard her words, that they were not in the least what she had meant to
- say.
- He sat still, waiting, and she pressed on: “Do such things happen to men
- often?”
- The quiet room seemed to resound with the long reverberations of her
- question. She looked away from him, and he released her and stood up.
- “I don’t know what happens to other men. Such a thing never happened to
- me...”
- She turned her eyes back to his face. She felt like a traveller on a
- giddy path between a cliff and a precipice: there was nothing for it now
- but to go on.
- “Had it ... had it begun ... before you met her in Paris?”
- “No; a thousand times no! I’ve told you the facts as they were.”
- “All the facts?”
- He turned abruptly. “What do you mean?”
- Her throat was dry and the loud pulses drummed in her temples.
- “I mean--about her...Perhaps you knew ... knew things about
- her ... beforehand.”
- She stopped. The room had grown profoundly still. A log dropped to the
- hearth and broke there in a hissing shower.
- Darrow spoke in a clear voice. “I knew nothing, absolutely nothing,” he
- said.
- She had the answer to her inmost doubt--to her last shameful unavowed
- hope. She sat powerless under her woe.
- He walked to the fireplace and pushed back the broken log with his foot.
- A flame shot out of it, and in the upward glare she saw his pale face,
- stern with misery.
- “Is that all?” he asked.
- She made a slight sign with her head and he came slowly back to her.
- “Then is this to be good-bye?”
- Again she signed a faint assent, and he made no effort to touch her or
- draw nearer. “You understand that I sha’n’t come back?”
- He was looking at her, and she tried to return his look, but her eyes
- were blind with tears, and in dread of his seeing them she got up and
- walked away. He did not follow her, and she stood with her back to him,
- staring at a bowl of carnations on a little table strewn with books. Her
- tears magnified everything she looked at, and the streaked petals of the
- carnations, their fringed edges and frail curled stamens, pressed upon
- her, huge and vivid. She noticed among the books a volume of verse he
- had sent her from England, and tried to remember whether it was before
- or after...
- She felt that he was waiting for her to speak, and at last she turned to
- him. “I shall see you to-morrow before you go...”
- He made no answer.
- She moved toward the door and he held it open for her. She saw his hand
- on the door, and his seal ring in its setting of twisted silver; and the
- sense of the end of all things came to her.
- They walked down the drawing-rooms, between the shadowy reflections of
- screens and cabinets, and mounted the stairs side by side. At the end of
- the gallery, a lamp brought out turbid gleams in the smoky battle-piece
- above it.
- On the landing Darrow stopped; his room was the nearest to the stairs.
- “Good night,” he said, holding out his hand.
- As Anna gave him hers the springs of grief broke loose in her. She
- struggled with her sobs, and subdued them; but her breath came unevenly,
- and to hide her agitation she leaned on him and pressed her face against
- his arm.
- “Don’t--don’t,” he whispered, soothing her.
- Her troubled breathing sounded loudly in the silence of the sleeping
- house. She pressed her lips tight, but could not stop the nervous
- pulsations in her throat, and he put an arm about her and, opening his
- door, drew her across the threshold of his room. The door shut
- behind her and she sat down on the lounge at the foot of the bed. The
- pulsations in her throat had ceased, but she knew they would begin again
- if she tried to speak.
- Darrow walked away and leaned against the mantelpiece. The red-veiled
- lamp shone on his books and papers, on the arm-chair by the fire, and
- the scattered objects on his dressing-table. A log glimmered on the
- hearth, and the room was warm and faintly smoke-scented. It was the
- first time she had ever been in a room he lived in, among his personal
- possessions and the traces of his daily usage. Every object about her
- seemed to contain a particle of himself: the whole air breathed of him,
- steeping her in the sense of his intimate presence.
- Suddenly she thought: “This is what Sophy Viner knew”...and with a
- torturing precision she pictured them alone in such a scene...Had he
- taken the girl to an hotel ... where did people go in such cases? Wherever
- they were, the silence of night had been around them, and the things he
- used had been strewn about the room...Anna, ashamed of dwelling on the
- detested vision, stood up with a confused impulse of flight; then a wave
- of contrary feeling arrested her and she paused with lowered head.
- Darrow had come forward as she rose, and she perceived that he was
- waiting for her to bid him good night. It was clear that no other
- possibility had even brushed his mind; and the fact, for some dim
- reason, humiliated her. “Why not ... why not?” something whispered in her,
- as though his forbearance, his tacit recognition of her pride, were a
- slight on other qualities she wanted him to feel in her.
- “In the morning, then?” she heard him say.
- “Yes, in the morning,” she repeated.
- She continued to stand in the same place, looking vaguely about the
- room. For once before they parted--since part they must--she longed to
- be to him all that Sophy Viner had been; but she remained rooted to the
- floor, unable to find a word or imagine a gesture that should express
- her meaning. Exasperated by her helplessness, she thought: “Don’t I feel
- things as other women do?”
- Her eye fell on a note-case she had given him. It was worn at the
- corners with the friction of his pocket and distended with thickly
- packed papers. She wondered if he carried her letters in it, and she put
- her hand out and touched it.
- All that he and she had ever felt or seen, their close encounters
- of word and look, and the closer contact of their silences, trembled
- through her at the touch. She remembered things he had said that had
- been like new skies above her head: ways he had that seemed a part of
- the air she breathed. The faint warmth of her girlish love came back
- to her, gathering heat as it passed through her thoughts; and her heart
- rocked like a boat on the surge of its long long memories. “It’s because
- I love him in too many ways,” she thought; and slowly she turned to the
- door.
- She was aware that Darrow was still silently watching her, but he
- neither stirred nor spoke till she had reached the threshold. Then he
- met her there and caught her in his arms.
- “Not to-night--don’t tell me to-night!” he whispered; and she leaned
- away from him, closing her eyes for an instant, and then slowly opening
- them to the flood of light in his.
- XXXVII
- Anna and Darrow, the next day, sat alone in a compartment of the Paris
- train.
- Anna, when they entered it, had put herself in the farthest corner
- and placed her bag on the adjoining seat. She had decided suddenly to
- accompany Darrow to Paris, had even persuaded him to wait for a later
- train in order that they might travel together. She had an intense
- longing to be with him, an almost morbid terror of losing sight of him
- for a moment: when he jumped out of the train and ran back along the
- platform to buy a newspaper for her she felt as though she should never
- see him again, and shivered with the cold misery of her last journey
- to Paris, when she had thought herself parted from him forever. Yet she
- wanted to keep him at a distance, on the other side of the compartment,
- and as the train moved out of the station she drew from her bag the
- letters she had thrust in it as she left the house, and began to glance
- over them so that her lowered lids should hide her eyes from him.
- She was his now, his for life: there could never again be any question
- of sacrificing herself to Effie’s welfare, or to any other abstract
- conception of duty. Effie of course would not suffer; Anna would pay for
- her bliss as a wife by redoubled devotion as a mother. Her scruples
- were not overcome; but for the time their voices were drowned in the
- tumultuous rumour of her happiness.
- As she opened her letters she was conscious that Darrow’s gaze was fixed
- on her, and gradually it drew her eyes upward, and she drank deep of the
- passionate tenderness in his. Then the blood rose to her face and she
- felt again the desire to shield herself. She turned back to her letters
- and her glance lit on an envelope inscribed in Owen’s hand.
- Her heart began to beat oppressively: she was in a mood when the
- simplest things seemed ominous. What could Owen have to say to her? Only
- the first page was covered, and it contained simply the announcement
- that, in the company of a young compatriot who was studying at the Beaux
- Arts, he had planned to leave for Spain the following evening.
- “He hasn’t seen her, then!” was Anna’s instant thought; and her feeling
- was a strange compound of humiliation and relief. The girl had kept her
- word, lived up to the line of conduct she had set herself; and Anna
- had failed in the same attempt. She did not reproach herself with
- her failure; but she would have been happier if there had been less
- discrepancy between her words to Sophy Viner and the act which had
- followed them. It irritated her obscurely that the girl should have been
- so much surer of her power to carry out her purpose...
- Anna looked up and saw that Darrow’s eyes were on the newspaper. He
- seemed calm and secure, almost indifferent to her presence. “Will it
- become a matter of course to him so soon?” she wondered with a twinge of
- jealousy. She sat motionless, her eyes fixed on him, trying to make him
- feel the attraction of her gaze as she felt his. It surprised and shamed
- her to detect a new element in her love for him: a sort of suspicious
- tyrannical tenderness that seemed to deprive it of all serenity. Finally
- he looked up, his smile enveloped her, and she felt herself his in every
- fibre, his so completely and inseparably that she saw the vanity of
- imagining any other fate for herself.
- To give herself a countenance she held out Owen’s letter. He took it and
- glanced down the page, his face grown grave. She waited nervously till
- he looked up.
- “That’s a good plan; the best thing that could happen,” he said, a just
- perceptible shade of constraint in his tone.
- “Oh, yes,” she hastily assented. She was aware of a faint current of
- relief silently circulating between them. They were both glad that Owen
- was going, that for a while he would be out of their way; and it seemed
- to her horrible that so much of the stuff of their happiness should be
- made of such unavowed feelings...
- “I shall see him this evening,” she said, wishing Darrow to feel that
- she was not afraid of meeting her step-son.
- “Yes, of course; perhaps he might dine with you.”
- The words struck her as strangely obtuse. Darrow was to meet his
- Ambassador at the station on the latter’s arrival, and would in all
- probability have to spend the evening with him, and Anna knew he had
- been concerned at the thought of having to leave her alone. But how
- could he speak in that careless tone of her dining with Owen? She
- lowered her voice to say: “I’m afraid he’s desperately unhappy.”
- He answered, with a tinge of impatience: “It’s much the best thing that
- he should travel.”
- “Yes--but don’t you feel...” She broke off. She knew how he disliked
- these idle returns on the irrevocable, and her fear of doing or saying
- what he disliked was tinged by a new instinct of subserviency against
- which her pride revolted. She thought to herself: “He will see the
- change, and grow indifferent to me as he did to HER...” and for a moment
- it seemed to her that she was reliving the experience of Sophy Viner.
- Darrow made no attempt to learn the end of her unfinished sentence. He
- handed back Owen’s letter and returned to his newspaper; and when he
- looked up from it a few minutes later it was with a clear brow and a
- smile that irresistibly drew her back to happier thoughts.
- The train was just entering a station, and a moment later their
- compartment was invaded by a commonplace couple preoccupied with
- the bestowal of bulging packages. Anna, at their approach, felt the
- possessive pride of the woman in love when strangers are between herself
- and the man she loves. She asked Darrow to open the window, to place her
- bag in the net, to roll her rug into a cushion for her feet; and while
- he was thus busied with her she was conscious of a new devotion in his
- tone, in his way of bending over her and meeting her eyes. He went back
- to his seat, and they looked at each other like lovers smiling at a
- happy secret.
- Anna, before going back to Givre, had suggested Owen’s moving into her
- apartment, but he had preferred to remain at the hotel to which he had
- sent his luggage, and on arriving in Paris she decided to drive there at
- once. She was impatient to have the meeting over, and glad that Darrow
- was obliged to leave her at the station in order to look up a colleague
- at the Embassy. She dreaded his seeing Owen again, and yet dared not
- tell him so, and to ensure his remaining away she mentioned an urgent
- engagement with her dress-maker and a long list of commissions to be
- executed for Madame de Chantelle.
- “I shall see you to-morrow morning,” she said; but he replied with a
- smile that he would certainly find time to come to her for a moment on
- his way back from meeting the Ambassador; and when he had put her in a
- cab he leaned through the window to press his lips to hers.
- She blushed like a girl, thinking, half vexed, half happy: “Yesterday he
- would not have done it...” and a dozen scarcely definable differences
- in his look and manner seemed all at once to be summed up in the boyish
- act. “After all, I’m engaged to him,” she reflected, and then smiled
- at the absurdity of the word. The next instant, with a pang of
- self-reproach, she remembered Sophy Viner’s cry: “I knew all the while
- he didn’t care...” “Poor thing, oh poor thing!” Anna murmured...
- At Owen’s hotel she waited in a tremor while the porter went in search
- of him. Word was presently brought back that he was in his room and
- begged her to come up, and as she crossed the hall she caught sight of
- his portmanteaux lying on the floor, already labelled for departure.
- Owen sat at a table writing, his back to the door; and when he stood up
- the window was behind him, so that, in the rainy afternoon light, his
- features were barely discernible.
- “Dearest--so you’re really off?” she said, hesitating a moment on the
- threshold.
- He pushed a chair forward, and they sat down, each waiting for the
- other to speak. Finally she put some random question about his
- travelling-companion, a slow shy meditative youth whom he had once or
- twice brought down to Givre. She reflected that it was natural he should
- have given this uncommunicative comrade the preference over his livelier
- acquaintances, and aloud she said: “I’m so glad Fred Rempson can go with
- you.”
- Owen answered in the same tone, and for a few minutes their talk dragged
- itself on over a dry waste of common-places. Anna noticed that, though
- ready enough to impart his own plans, Owen studiously abstained from
- putting any questions about hers. It was evident from his allusions that
- he meant to be away for some time, and he presently asked her if she
- would give instructions about packing and sending after him some winter
- clothes he had left at Givre. This gave her the opportunity to say that
- she expected to go back within a day or two and would attend to the
- matter as soon as she returned. She added: “I came up this morning with
- George, who is going on to London to-morrow,” intending, by the use
- of Darrow’s Christian name, to give Owen the chance to speak of her
- marriage. But he made no comment, and she continued to hear the name
- sounding on unfamiliarly between them.
- The room was almost dark, and she finally stood up and glanced about for
- the light-switch, saying: “I can’t see you, dear.”
- “Oh, don’t--I hate the light!” Owen exclaimed, catching her by the wrist
- and pushing her back into her seat. He gave a nervous laugh and added:
- “I’m half-blind with neuralgia. I suppose it’s this beastly rain.”
- “Yes; it will do you good to get down to Spain.”
- She asked if he had the remedies the doctor had given him for a previous
- attack, and on his replying that he didn’t know what he’d done with the
- stuff, she sprang up, offering to go to the chemist’s. It was a
- relief to have something to do for him, and she knew from his “Oh,
- thanks--would you?” that it was a relief to him to have a pretext for
- not detaining her. His natural impulse would have been to declare that
- he didn’t want any drugs, and would be all right in no time; and his
- acquiescence showed her how profoundly he felt the uselessness of their
- trying to prolong their talk. His face was now no more than a white blur
- in the dusk, but she felt its indistinctness as a veil drawn over aching
- intensities of expression. “He knows ... he knows...” she said to
- herself, and wondered whether the truth had been revealed to him by some
- corroborative fact or by the sheer force of divination.
- He had risen also, and was clearly waiting for her to go, and she turned
- to the door, saying: “I’ll be back in a moment.”
- “Oh, don’t come up again, please!” He paused, embarrassed. “I mean--I
- may not be here. I’ve got to go and pick up Rempson, and see about some
- final things with him.” She stopped on the threshold with a sinking
- heart. He meant this to be their leave-taking, then--and he had not
- even asked her when she was to be married, or spoken of seeing her again
- before she set out for the other side of the world.
- “Owen!” she cried, and turned back.
- He stood mutely before her in the dimness.
- “You haven’t told me how long you’re to be gone.”
- “How long? Oh, you see ... that’s rather vague...I hate definite dates,
- you know...”
- He paused and she saw he did not mean to help her out. She tried to say:
- “You’ll be here for my wedding?” but could not bring the words to her
- lips. Instead she murmured: “In six weeks I shall be going too...” and
- he rejoined, as if he had expected the announcement and prepared his
- answer: “Oh, by that time, very likely...”
- “At any rate, I won’t say good-bye,” she stammered, feeling the tears
- beneath her veil.
- “No, no; rather not!” he declared; but he made no movement, and she went
- up and threw her arms about him. “You’ll write me, won’t you?”
- “Of course, of course----”
- Her hands slipped down into his, and for a minute they held each other
- dumbly in the darkness; then he gave a vague laugh and said: “It’s
- really time to light up.” He pressed the electric button with one hand
- while with the other he opened the door; and she passed out without
- daring to turn back, lest the light on his face should show her what she
- feared to see.
- XXXVIII
- Anna drove to the chemist’s for Owen’s remedy. On the way she stopped
- her cab at a book-shop, and emerged from it laden with literature. She
- knew what would interest Owen, and what he was likely to have read,
- and she had made her choice among the newest publications with the
- promptness of a discriminating reader. But on the way back to the hotel
- she was overcome by the irony of adding this mental panacea to the
- other. There was something grotesque and almost mocking in the idea of
- offering a judicious selection of literature to a man setting out on
- such a journey. “He knows ... he knows...” she kept on repeating; and
- giving the porter the parcel from the chemist’s she drove away without
- leaving the books. She went to her apartment, whither her maid had
- preceded her. There was a fire in the drawing-room and the tea-table
- stood ready by the hearth. The stormy rain beat against the uncurtained
- windows, and she thought of Owen, who would soon be driving through it
- to the station, alone with his bitter thoughts. She had been proud of
- the fact that he had always sought her help in difficult hours; and now,
- in the most difficult of all, she was the one being to whom he could
- not turn. Between them, henceforth, there would always be the wall of an
- insurmountable silence...She strained her aching thoughts to guess how
- the truth had come to him. Had he seen the girl, and had she told him?
- Instinctively, Anna rejected this conjecture. But what need was there of
- assuming an explicit statement, when every breath they had drawn for the
- last weeks had been charged with the immanent secret? As she looked back
- over the days since Darrow’s first arrival at Givre she perceived
- that at no time had any one deliberately spoken, or anything been
- accidentally disclosed. The truth had come to light by the force of its
- irresistible pressure; and the perception gave her a startled sense of
- hidden powers, of a chaos of attractions and repulsions far beneath
- the ordered surfaces of intercourse. She looked back with melancholy
- derision on her old conception of life, as a kind of well-lit and well
- policed suburb to dark places one need never know about. Here they were,
- these dark places, in her own bosom, and henceforth she would always
- have to traverse them to reach the beings she loved best!
- She was still sitting beside the untouched tea-table when she heard
- Darrow’s voice in the hall. She started up, saying to herself: “I must
- tell him that Owen knows...” but when the door opened and she saw his
- face, still lit by the same smile of boyish triumph, she felt anew the
- uselessness of speaking...Had he ever supposed that Owen would not know?
- Probably, from the height of his greater experience, he had seen long
- since that all that happened was inevitable; and the thought of it, at
- any rate, was clearly not weighing on him now.
- He was already dressed for the evening, and as he came toward her he
- said: “The Ambassador’s booked for an official dinner and I’m free after
- all. Where shall we dine?”
- Anna had pictured herself sitting alone all the evening with her
- wretched thoughts, and the fact of having to put them out of her mind
- for the next few hours gave her an immediate sensation of relief.
- Already her pulses were dancing to the tune of Darrow’s, and as they
- smiled at each other she thought: “Nothing can ever change the fact that
- I belong to him.”
- “Where shall we dine?” he repeated gaily, and she named a well-known
- restaurant for which she had once heard him express a preference. But as
- she did so she fancied she saw a shadow on his face, and instantly she
- said to herself: “It was THERE he went with her!”
- “Oh, no, not there, after all!” she interrupted herself; and now she was
- sure his colour deepened.
- “Where shall it be, then?”
- She noticed that he did not ask the reason of her change, and this
- convinced her that she had guessed the truth, and that he knew she had
- guessed it. “He will always know what I am thinking, and he will
- never dare to ask me,” she thought; and she saw between them the same
- insurmountable wall of silence as between herself and Owen, a wall of
- glass through which they could watch each other’s faintest motions but
- which no sound could ever traverse...
- They drove to a restaurant on the Boulevard, and there, in their
- intimate corner of the serried scene, the sense of what was unspoken
- between them gradually ceased to oppress her. He looked so light-hearted
- and handsome, so ingenuously proud of her, so openly happy at being with
- her, that no other fact could seem real in his presence. He had learned
- that the Ambassador was to spend two days in Paris, and he had reason to
- hope that in consequence his own departure for London would be deferred.
- He was exhilarated by the prospect of being with Anna for a few hours
- longer, and she did not ask herself if his exhilaration were a sign of
- insensibility, for she was too conscious of his power of swaying her
- moods not to be secretly proud of affecting his.
- They lingered for some time over the fruit and coffee, and when they
- rose to go Darrow suggested that, if she felt disposed for the play,
- they were not too late for the second part of the programme at one of
- the smaller theatres.
- His mention of the hour recalled Owen to her thoughts. She saw his train
- rushing southward through the storm, and, in a corner of the swaying
- compartment, his face, white and indistinct as it had loomed on her in
- the rainy twilight. It was horrible to be thus perpetually paying for
- her happiness!
- Darrow had called for a theatrical journal, and he presently looked up
- from it to say: “I hear the second play at the Athenee is amusing.”
- It was on Anna’s lips to acquiesce; but as she was about to speak she
- wondered if it were not at the Athenee that Owen had seen Darrow with
- Sophy Viner. She was not sure he had even mentioned the theatre, but the
- mere possibility was enough to darken her sky. It was hateful to her to
- think of accompanying Darrow to places where the girl had been with him.
- She tried to reason away this scruple, she even reminded herself with
- a bitter irony that whenever she was in Darrow’s arms she was where the
- girl had been before her--but she could not shake off her superstitious
- dread of being with him in any of the scenes of the Parisian episode.
- She replied that she was too tired for the play, and they drove back
- to her apartment. At the foot of the stairs she half-turned to wish him
- good night, but he appeared not to notice her gesture and followed her
- up to her door.
- “This is ever so much better than the theatre,” he said as they entered
- the drawing-room.
- She had crossed the room and was bending over the hearth to light the
- fire. She knew he was approaching her, and that in a moment he would
- have drawn the cloak from her shoulders and laid his lips on her neck,
- just below the gathered-up hair. These privileges were his and, however
- deferently and tenderly he claimed them, the joyous ease of his manner
- marked a difference and proclaimed a right.
- “After the theatre they came home like this,” she thought; and at the
- same instant she felt his hands on her shoulders and shrank back.
- “Don’t--oh, don’t!” she cried, drawing her cloak about her. She saw from
- his astonished stare that her face must be quivering with pain.
- “Anna! What on earth is the matter?”
- “Owen knows!” she broke out, with a confused desire to justify herself.
- Darrow’s countenance changed. “Did he tell you so? What did he say?”
- “Nothing! I knew it from the things he didn’t say.”
- “You had a talk with him this afternoon?”
- “Yes: for a few minutes. I could see he didn’t want me to stay.”
- She had dropped into a chair, and sat there huddled, still holding her
- cloak about her shoulders.
- Darrow did not dispute her assumption, and she noticed that he expressed
- no surprise. He sat down at a little distance from her, turning about in
- his fingers the cigar-case he had drawn out as they came in. At length
- he said: “Had he seen Miss Viner?”
- She shrank from the sound of the name. “No...I don’t think so...I’m sure
- he hadn’t...”
- They remained silent, looking away from one another. Finally Darrow
- stood up and took a few steps across the room. He came back and paused
- before her, his eyes on her face.
- “I think you ought to tell me what you mean to do.” She raised her head
- and gave him back his look. “Nothing I do can help Owen!”
- “No; but things can’t go on like this.” He paused, as if to measure his
- words. “I fill you with aversion,” he exclaimed.
- She started up, half-sobbing. “No--oh, no!”
- “Poor child--you can’t see your face!”
- She lifted her hands as if to hide it, and turning away from him bowed
- her head upon the mantel-shelf. She felt that he was standing a little
- way behind her, but he made no attempt to touch her or come nearer.
- “I know you’ve felt as I’ve felt,” he said in a low voice--“that we
- belong to each other and that nothing can alter that. But other thoughts
- come, and you can’t banish them. Whenever you see me you remember ... you
- associate me with things you abhor...You’ve been generous--immeasurably.
- You’ve given me all the chances a woman could; but if it’s only made you
- suffer, what’s the use?”
- She turned to him with a tear-stained face. “It hasn’t only done that.”
- “Oh, no! I know...There’ve been moments...” He took her hand and raised
- it to his lips. “They’ll be with me as long as I live. But I can’t see
- you paying such a price for them. I’m not worth what I’m costing you.”
- She continued to gaze at him through tear-dilated eyes; and suddenly
- she flung out the question: “Wasn’t it the Athenee you took her to that
- evening?”
- “Anna--Anna!”
- “Yes; I want to know now: to know everything. Perhaps that will make
- me forget. I ought to have made you tell me before. Wherever we go, I
- imagine you’ve been there with her...I see you together. I want to know
- how it began, where you went, why you left her...I can’t go on in this
- darkness any longer!”
- She did not know what had prompted her passionate outburst, but already
- she felt lighter, freer, as if at last the evil spell were broken. “I
- want to know everything,” she repeated. “It’s the only way to make me
- forget.”
- After she had ceased speaking Darrow remained where he was, his arms
- folded, his eyes lowered, immovable. She waited, her gaze on his face.
- “Aren’t you going to tell me?”
- “No.” The blood rushed to her temples. “You won’t? Why not?”
- “If I did, do you suppose you’d forget THAT?”
- “Oh--” she moaned, and turned away from him.
- “You see it’s impossible,” he went on. “I’ve done a thing I loathe,
- and to atone for it you ask me to do another. What sort of satisfaction
- would that give you? It would put something irremediable between us.”
- She leaned her elbow against the mantel-shelf and hid her face in her
- hands. She had the sense that she was vainly throwing away her last hope
- of happiness, yet she could do nothing, think of nothing, to save it.
- The conjecture flashed through her: “Should I be at peace if I gave him
- up?” and she remembered the desolation of the days after she had sent
- him away, and understood that that hope was vain. The tears welled
- through her lids and ran slowly down between her fingers.
- “Good-bye,” she heard him say, and his footsteps turned to the door.
- She tried to raise her head, but the weight of her despair bowed it
- down. She said to herself: “This is the end ... he won’t try to appeal to
- me again...” and she remained in a sort of tranced rigidity, perceiving
- without feeling the fateful lapse of the seconds. Then the cords that
- bound her seemed to snap, and she lifted her head and saw him going.
- “Why, he’s mine--he’s mine! He’s no one else’s!” His face was turned to
- her and the look in his eyes swept away all her terrors. She no longer
- understood what had prompted her senseless outcry; and the mortal
- sweetness of loving him became again the one real fact in the world.
- XXXIX
- Anna, the next day, woke to a humiliated memory of the previous evening.
- Darrow had been right in saying that their sacrifice would benefit no
- one; yet she seemed dimly to discern that there were obligations not
- to be tested by that standard. She owed it, at any rate, as much to his
- pride as to hers to abstain from the repetition of such scenes; and
- she had learned that it was beyond her power to do so while they
- were together. Yet when he had given her the chance to free herself,
- everything had vanished from her mind but the blind fear of losing him;
- and she saw that he and she were as profoundly and inextricably bound
- together as two trees with interwoven roots. For a long time she brooded
- on her plight, vaguely conscious that the only escape from it must come
- from some external chance. And slowly the occasion shaped itself in her
- mind. It was Sophy Viner only who could save her--Sophy Viner only who
- could give her back her lost serenity. She would seek the girl out and
- tell her that she had given Darrow up; and that step once taken there
- would be no retracing it, and she would perforce have to go forward
- alone.
- Any pretext for action was a kind of anodyne, and she despatched her
- maid to the Farlows’ with a note asking if Miss Viner would receive her.
- There was a long delay before the maid returned, and when at last she
- appeared it was with a slip of paper on which an address was written,
- and a verbal message to the effect that Miss Viner had left some days
- previously, and was staying with her sister in a hotel near the Place de
- l’Etoile. The maid added that Mrs. Farlow, on the plea that Miss Viner’s
- plans were uncertain, had at first made some difficulty about giving
- this information; and Anna guessed that the girl had left her friends’
- roof, and instructed them to withhold her address, with the object
- of avoiding Owen. “She’s kept faith with herself and I haven’t,” Anna
- mused; and the thought was a fresh incentive to action.
- Darrow had announced his intention of coming soon after luncheon, and
- the morning was already so far advanced that Anna, still mistrustful of
- her strength, decided to drive immediately to the address Mrs. Farlow
- had given. On the way there she tried to recall what she had heard of
- Sophy Viner’s sister, but beyond the girl’s enthusiastic report of
- the absent Laura’s loveliness she could remember only certain vague
- allusions of Mrs. Farlow’s to her artistic endowments and matrimonial
- vicissitudes. Darrow had mentioned her but once, and in the briefest
- terms, as having apparently very little concern for Sophy’s welfare, and
- being, at any rate, too geographically remote to give her any practical
- support; and Anna wondered what chance had brought her to her sister’s
- side at this conjunction. Mrs. Farlow had spoken of her as a celebrity
- (in what line Anna failed to recall); but Mrs. Farlow’s celebrities were
- legion, and the name on the slip of paper--Mrs. McTarvie-Birch--did not
- seem to have any definite association with fame.
- While Anna waited in the dingy vestibule of the Hotel Chicago she had so
- distinct a vision of what she meant to say to Sophy Viner that the girl
- seemed already to be before her; and her heart dropped from all the
- height of its courage when the porter, after a long delay, returned
- with the announcement that Miss Viner was no longer in the hotel. Anna,
- doubtful if she understood, asked if he merely meant that the young lady
- was out at the moment; but he replied that she had gone away the
- day before. Beyond this he had no information to impart, and after a
- moment’s hesitation Anna sent him back to enquire if Mrs. McTarvie-Birch
- would receive her. She reflected that Sophy had probably pledged her
- sister to the same secrecy as Mrs. Farlow, and that a personal appeal to
- Mrs. Birch might lead to less negative results.
- There was another long interval of suspense before the porter reappeared
- with an affirmative answer; and a third while an exiguous and hesitating
- lift bore her up past a succession of shabby landings.
- When the last was reached, and her guide had directed her down a winding
- passage that smelt of sea-going luggage, she found herself before a door
- through which a strong odour of tobacco reached her simultaneously with
- the sounds of a suppressed altercation. Her knock was followed by a
- silence, and after a minute or two the door was opened by a handsome
- young man whose ruffled hair and general air of creased disorder led her
- to conclude that he had just risen from a long-limbed sprawl on a sofa
- strewn with tumbled cushions. This sofa, and a grand piano bearing a
- basket of faded roses, a biscuit-tin and a devastated breakfast tray,
- almost filled the narrow sitting-room, in the remaining corner of which
- another man, short, swarthy and humble, sat examining the lining of his
- hat.
- Anna paused in doubt; but on her naming Mrs. Birch the young man
- politely invited her to enter, at the same time casting an impatient
- glance at the mute spectator in the background.
- The latter, raising his eyes, which were round and bulging, fixed them,
- not on the young man but on Anna, whom, for a moment, he scrutinized as
- searchingly as the interior of his hat. Under his gaze she had the sense
- of being minutely catalogued and valued; and the impression, when he
- finally rose and moved toward the door, of having been accepted as
- a better guarantee than he had had any reason to hope for. On the
- threshold his glance crossed that of the young man in an exchange of
- intelligence as full as it was rapid; and this brief scene left Anna so
- oddly enlightened that she felt no surprise when her companion,
- pushing an arm-chair forward, sociably asked her if she wouldn’t have
- a cigarette. Her polite refusal provoked the remark that he would,
- if she’d no objection; and while he groped for matches in his loose
- pockets, and behind the photographs and letters crowding the narrow
- mantel-shelf, she ventured another enquiry for Mrs. Birch.
- “Just a minute,” he smiled; “I think the masseur’s with her.” He
- spoke in a smooth denationalized English, which, like the look in his
- long-lashed eyes and the promptness of his charming smile, suggested a
- long training in all the arts of expediency. Having finally discovered a
- match-box on the floor beside the sofa, he lit his cigarette and dropped
- back among the cushions; and on Anna’s remarking that she was sorry
- to disturb Mrs. Birch he replied that that was all right, and that she
- always kept everybody waiting.
- After this, through the haze of his perpetually renewed cigarettes, they
- continued to chat for some time of indifferent topics; but when at last
- Anna again suggested the possibility of her seeing Mrs. Birch he rose
- from his corner with a slight shrug, and murmuring: “She’s perfectly
- hopeless,” lounged off through an inner door.
- Anna was still wondering when and in what conjunction of circumstances
- the much-married Laura had acquired a partner so conspicuous for his
- personal charms, when the young man returned to announce: “She says it’s
- all right, if you don’t mind seeing her in bed.”
- He drew aside to let Anna pass, and she found herself in a dim untidy
- scented room, with a pink curtain pinned across its single window, and
- a lady with a great deal of fair hair and uncovered neck smiling at her
- from a pink bed on which an immense powder-puff trailed.
- “You don’t mind, do you? He costs such a frightful lot that I
- can’t afford to send him off,” Mrs. Birch explained, extending a
- thickly-ringed hand to Anna, and leaving her in doubt as to whether the
- person alluded to were her masseur or her husband. Before a reply was
- possible there was a convulsive stir beneath the pink expanse, and
- something that resembled another powder-puff hurled itself at Anna with
- a volley of sounds like the popping of Lilliputian champagne corks. Mrs.
- Birch, flinging herself forward, gasped out: “If you’d just give him
- a caramel ... there, in that box on the dressing-table ... it’s the only
- earthly thing to stop him...” and when Anna had proffered this sop to
- her assailant, and he had withdrawn with it beneath the bedspread, his
- mistress sank back with a laugh.
- “Isn’t he a beauty? The Prince gave him to me down at Nice the other
- day--but he’s perfectly awful,” she confessed, beaming intimately on her
- visitor. In the roseate penumbra of the bed-curtains she presented to
- Anna’s startled gaze an odd chromo-like resemblance to Sophy Viner, or
- a suggestion, rather, of what Sophy Viner might, with the years and in
- spite of the powder-puff, become. Larger, blonder, heavier-featured,
- she yet had glances and movements that disturbingly suggested what was
- freshest and most engaging in the girl; and as she stretched her bare
- plump arm across the bed she seemed to be pulling back the veil from
- dingy distances of family history.
- “Do sit down, if there’s a place to sit on,” she cordially advised;
- adding, as Anna took the edge of a chair hung with miscellaneous
- raiment: “My singing takes so much time that I don’t get a chance to
- walk the fat off--that’s the worst of being an artist.”
- Anna murmured an assent. “I hope it hasn’t inconvenienced you to see me;
- I told Mr. Birch--”
- “Mr. WHO?” the recumbent beauty asked; and then: “Oh, JIMMY!” she
- faintly laughed, as if more for her own enlightenment than Anna’s.
- The latter continued eagerly: “I understand from Mrs. Farlow that your
- sister was with you, and I ventured to come up because I wanted to ask
- you when I should have a chance of finding her.”
- Mrs. McTarvie-Birch threw back her head with a long stare. “Do you
- mean to say the idiot at the door didn’t tell you? Sophy went away last
- night.”
- “Last night?” Anna echoed. A sudden terror had possessed her. Could it
- be that the girl had tricked them all and gone with Owen? The idea was
- incredible, yet it took such hold of her that she could hardly steady
- her lips to say: “The porter did tell me, but I thought perhaps he was
- mistaken. Mrs. Farlow seemed to think that I should find her here.”
- “It was all so sudden that I don’t suppose she had time to let the
- Farlows know. She didn’t get Mrs. Murrett’s wire till yesterday, and she
- just pitched her things into a trunk and rushed----”
- “Mrs. Murrett?”
- “Why, yes. Sophy’s gone to India with Mrs. Murrett; they’re to meet at
- Brindisi,” Sophy’s sister said with a calm smile.
- Anna sat motionless, gazing at the disordered room, the pink bed, the
- trivial face among the pillows.
- Mrs. McTarvie-Birch pursued: “They had a fearful kick-up last spring--I
- daresay you knew about it--but I told Sophy she’d better lump it, as
- long as the old woman was willing to...As an artist, of course, it’s
- perfectly impossible for me to have her with me...”
- “Of course,” Anna mechanically assented.
- Through the confused pain of her thoughts she was hardly aware that
- Mrs. Birch’s explanations were still continuing. “Naturally I didn’t
- altogether approve of her going back to that beast of a woman. I said
- all I could...I told her she was a fool to chuck up such a place as
- yours. But Sophy’s restless--always was--and she’s taken it into her
- head she’d rather travel...”
- Anna rose from her seat, groping for some formula of leave-taking. The
- pushing back of her chair roused the white dog’s smouldering animosity,
- and he drowned his mistress’s further confidences in another outburst
- of hysterics. Through the tumult Anna signed an inaudible farewell, and
- Mrs. Birch, having momentarily succeeded in suppressing her pet under a
- pillow, called out: “Do come again! I’d love to sing to you.”
- Anna murmured a word of thanks and turned to the door. As she opened it
- she heard her hostess crying after her: “Jimmy! Do you hear me? Jimmy
- BRANCE!” and then, there being no response from the person summoned: “DO
- tell him he must go and call the lift for you!”
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