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THE REEF
er’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 Effi e; but as his eye fell on
Miss Viner his expression altered as suddenly as hers.
The change, for Darrow, was less defi nable; but, perhaps
for that reason, it struck him as more sharply signifi cant.
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 fl uid, to unmake and remake themselves like the shadows of clouds on
a stream. Darrow, through the rapid fl ight of the shadows,
could not seize on any specifi c indication of feeling: he merely
perceived that the young man was unaccountably surprised at
fi nding him with Miss Viner, and that the extent of his surprise might cover all manner of implications.
Darrow’s fi rst 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:
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EDITH WHARTON
“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 fi rst 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 . . .
CHAPTER 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 fi lled her life. She smiled a little at
the happy picture they presented, Effi e’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 fl oating in the midcurrent of felicity, on a tide so bright and buoyant that she
seemed to be one with its warm waves. The fi rst 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,
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EDITH WHARTON
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. Effi e, 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 fi ll 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
184
THE REEF
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 fi rst 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 . . . ”
185
EDITH WHARTON
“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!”
186
THE REEF
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
modifi ed 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 fl ared up. “It’s not necessary
that I should give you any explanation whatever, since you’ve
187
EDITH WHARTON
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
188
THE REEF
the little statuette between his fi ngers. “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 fi rst 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 fi rst 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?”
189
EDITH WHARTON
“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 fi nd out whether you think he knows anything defi nite.”
“Why should I think so? Do YOU?”
“I don’t know. I want to fi nd 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 fi rst: Owen is engaged to
Miss Viner.”
The sense of an indefi nable interrogation in Owen’s mind
made her, as she spoke, fi x 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
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