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THE REEF
She spoke the words deliberately and incisively, as if hoping that the sound of their utterance would stifl e 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 fi rst evening she came, in the study; the next
morning, early, in the park; yesterday, again, in the springhouse, 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.”
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EDITH WHARTON
Anna longed to silence him, but no words came to her.
It was as though all her confused apprehensions had suddenly
taken defi nite shape. There was “something” – yes, there was
“something” . . . Darrow’s reticences and evasions had been
more than a fi gment 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 defl ect 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 fi nd 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
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THE REEF
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 fi rst 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 Effi e, and Effi e 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 fi rst, 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
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EDITH WHARTON
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 fl oor.”
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 fl ash 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?”
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THE REEF
“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
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EDITH WHARTON
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 infl uenced 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!”
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THE REEF
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 vouchsafi ng an additional word of explanation; then, before Anna could fi nd 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.
CHAPTER 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 defi nite break?” She perceived, as she
spoke, that his brow had cleared.
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THE REEF
“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 infl uenced 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 confi dential – almost secret; and
he draws the preposterous conclusion that you’ve used your
infl uence to turn her against him.”
“My infl uence? What kind of infl uence?”
“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!”
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EDITH WHARTON
Anna felt her cheeks fl ush 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!”
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