Добавил:
ivanov666
Опубликованный материал нарушает ваши авторские права? Сообщите нам.
Вуз:
Предмет:
Файл:The Reef
.pdf
THE REEF
the russet covert through which he trudged were the heart of
a malefi cent 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 confi dences.
He had already become aware that the lad liked him, and had
meant to take the fi rst opportunity of showing that he reciprocated the feeling. But the effort of fi xing 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time he had had musical and literary yearnings, visions of desultory artistic indulgence; but these had of late been superseded by the resolute determination to plunge into practical life.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
Effi e 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 readymade, like a bee in a pot of honey.”
151
EDITH WHARTON
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 fl ood 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 fl ash, 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
152
THE REEF
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
defi nite 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 Effi e 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 fl ew on with her dog and Darrow pursued his way to
the house. Effi e’s suggestion struck him as useful. He had pictured himself as vaguely drifting about the drawing-rooms,
and had perceived the diffi culty 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.
153
EDITH WHARTON
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 unclassifi ed odds and ends: Effi e’s croquet-box
and fi shing rods, Owen’s guns and golf-sticks and racquets,
his step-mother’s fl ower-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 Effi e?” 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.
154
THE REEF
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
155
EDITH WHARTON
knew what he was saying; but her answer came to him with
deadly defi niteness.
“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 fl ashed 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 fl ing 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 fi rst 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
156
THE REEF
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 fl ed 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 suffi cient 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.
157
EDITH WHARTON
Upstairs, the room held out the intimate welcome of its
lamp and fi re. 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 fi ve minutes with Sophy Viner had fl ashed 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, fi ve
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 terrifi ed
fancy, to put her at his mercy, her fi rst 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.
158
THE REEF
“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 fi rst 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 chiefl y, 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 fi gure 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 diffi cult moments, to go straight to the bottom of the diffi culty; 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 fi rst duty, at
any rate, was to the girl: he must let her see that he meant to
fulfi ll it to the last jot, and then try to fi nd out how to square
the fulfi llment with the other problems already in his path . . .
CHAPTER XVI
In the oak room he found Mrs. Leath, her mother-in-law
and Effi e. The group, as he came toward it down the long
drawing-rooms, composed itself prettily about the tea-table.
The lamps and the fi re crossed their gleams on silver and
porcelain, on the bright haze of Effi e’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 confi dence. The look seemed to throw
about him the spell of a divine security: he felt the joy of a convalescent suddenly waking to fi nd 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 Effi e, 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.
160
Соседние файлы в предмете [НЕСОРТИРОВАННОЕ]