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THE REEF
tionship 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 affi rmed: “I quite understand
your mother-in-law’s feeling as she does.”
The words, when uttered, seemed a good deal less signifi cant 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 suffi ciently 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 — ”
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EDITH WHARTON
“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
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THE REEF
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 fi nd 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 fi nd her with her pupil in
the school-room; but he learned from a servant that Effi e 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.
CHAPTER 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
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THE REEF
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 confi dence.
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 fi nally
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
205
EDITH WHARTON
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 fl ags. 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?”
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THE REEF
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 fl ight 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 fl oor 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 confi dence 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 diffi cult, 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
207
EDITH WHARTON
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 fl ushed 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 fi ngers, 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 lan-
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THE REEF
cet 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 refl ection 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, fi rst 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.”
209
EDITH WHARTON
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 fl ung 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 chiefl y made up of.” “I’ll deal with them
for him,” she rejoined.
“They’ll be more than ordinarily diffi cult.”
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 fl ung back.
He paused again, not sure how far it was prudent to reveal
himself in the confi dence 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?”
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