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THE REEF
suddenly, the small pink fi ngers he had been kissing were
laid on the one fl aw in the circle, on the one point which
must be settled before Effi e could, with complete unqualifi ed 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 fi nely-shaded degrees of cordiality she was capable.
231
EDITH WHARTON
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 defi nitely 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 fi xed
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 Effi e 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 ruffl es 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 fi rst time she had appeared at
dinner since his arrival at Givre, and the fi rst 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
232
THE REEF
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 fi rst 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 Effi e’s
bobbing head, she gave him back his look in a full bright gaze.
“Oh, there’s Owen!” Effi e 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 Effi e, with Miss Viner’s aid,
had lavishly garlanded, the little party had an air of somewhat
self-conscious festivity. In spite of fl owers, 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
233
EDITH WHARTON
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 fl ooded 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 fi gure to another. Madame de Chantelle, in her
armchair near the fi re, 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 fi xity 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.
234
THE REEF
“Yes – let’s go out and listen,” Anna answered. Owen threw
open the window, and with his gesture a fold of the heavy starsprinkled 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 Effi e 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 Effi e between them, strolled to
the farther corner of the terrace. Below them, between
the fringes of the park, the lawn sloped dimly to the fi elds
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 fi rst 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.
235
EDITH WHARTON
Effi e, 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
CHAPTER 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 fi nal
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 fi rst 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 fi rst fl owed into her heart.
That bliss, in the interval, had wound itself into every
fold of her being. Passing, in the fi rst days, from a high shy
tenderness to the rush of a secret surrender, it had gradually widened and deepened, to fl ow on in redoubled beauty.
She thought she now knew exactly how and why she loved
Darrow, and she could see her whole sky refl ected in the deep
and tranquil current of her love.
239
EDITH WHARTON
Early the next day, in her sitting-room, she was glancing
through the letters which it was Effi e’s morning privilege to
carry up to her. Effi e 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,” Effi e, 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 fl ame 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.
240
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