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THE REEF
if she were here. What worse injury can you do her than to
make me hate her – to make me feel she’s plotted with you to
deceive us?”
“Oh, not that!” Darrow heard his own voice before he was
aware that he meant to speak. “Yes; I did see her in Paris,” he
went on after a pause; “but I was bound to respect her reason
for not wanting it known.”
Anna paled. “It was she at the theatre that night?”
“I was with her at the theatre one night.”
“Why should she have asked you not to say so?”
“She didn’t wish it known that I’d met her.”
“Why shouldn’t she have wished it known?”
“She had quarrelled with Mrs. Murrett and come over suddenly to Paris, and she didn’t want the Farlows to hear of it.
I came across her by accident, and she asked me not to speak of
having seen her.”
“Because of her quarrel? Because she was ashamed of her
part in it?”
“Oh, no. There was nothing for her to be ashamed of. But
the Farlows had found the place for her, and she didn’t want
them to know how suddenly she’d had to leave, and how badly Mrs. Murrett had behaved. She was in a terrible plight –
the woman had even kept back her month’s salary. She knew
the Farlows would be awfully upset, and she wanted more
time to prepare them.”
Darrow heard himself speak as though the words had
proceeded from other lips. His explanation sounded plausible enough, and he half-fancied Anna’s look grew lighter.
She waited a moment, as though to be sure he had no more to
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EDITH WHARTON
add; then she said: “But the Farlows DID know; they told me
all about it when they sent her to me.”
He fl ushed as if she had laid a deliberate trap for him.
“They may know NOW; they didn’t then — ”
“That’s no reason for her continuing now to make a mystery of having met you.”
“It’s the only reason I can give you.”
“Then I’ll go and ask her for one myself.” She turned and
took a few steps toward the door.
“Anna!” He started to follow her, and then checked himself. “Don’t do that!”
“Why not?”
“It’s not like you . . . not generous . . . ”
She stood before him straight and pale, but under her rigid
face he saw the tumult of her doubt and misery.
“I don’t want to be ungenerous; I don’t want to pry into her
secrets. But things can’t be left like this. Wouldn’t it be better
for me to go to her? Surely she’ll understand – she’ll explain
. . . It may be some mere trifl e she’s concealing: something that
would horrify the Farlows, but that I shouldn’t see any harm in
. . . ” She paused, her eyes searching his face. “A love affair,
I suppose . . . that’s it? You met her with some man at the theatre – and she was frightened and begged you to fi b about it?
Those poor young things that have to go about among us like
machines – oh, if you knew how I pity them!”
“If you pity her, why not let her go?”
She stared. “Let her go – go for good, you mean? Is that
the best you can say for her?”
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THE REEF
“Let things take their course. After all, it’s between
herself and Owen.”
“And you and me – and Effi e, if Owen marries her, and
I leave my child with them! Don’t you see the impossibility of
what you’re asking? We’re all bound together in this coil.”
Darrow turned away with a groan. “Oh, let her go –
let her go.”
“Then there IS something – something really bad?
She WAS with some one when you met her? Some one with
whom she was — ” She broke off, and he saw her struggling
with new thoughts. “If it’s THAT, of course . . . Oh, don’t you
see,” she desperately appealed to him, “that I must fi nd out,
and that it’s too late now for you not to speak? Don’t be afraid
that I’ll betray you . . . I’ll never, never let a soul suspect. But
I must know the truth, and surely it’s best for her that I should
fi nd it out from you.”
Darrow waited a moment; then he said slowly: “What you
imagine’s mere madness. She was at the theatre with me.”
“With you?” He saw a tremor pass through her, but she
controlled it instantly and faced him straight and motionless
as a wounded creature in the moment before it feels its wound.
“Why should you both have made a mystery of that?”
“I’ve told you the idea was not mine.” He cast about.
“She may have been afraid that Owen — ”
“But that was not a reason for her asking you to tell me
that you hardly knew her – that you hadn’t even seen her for
years.” She broke off and the blood rose to her face and forehead. “Even if SHE had other reasons, there could be only one
reason for your obeying her — ” Silence fell between them,
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EDITH WHARTON
a silence in which the room seemed to become suddenly resonant with voices. Darrow’s gaze wandered to the window and
he noticed that the gale of two days before had nearly stripped
the tops of the lime-trees in the court. Anna had moved away
and was resting her elbows against the mantel-piece, her
head in her hands. As she stood there he took in with a new
intensity of vision little details of her appearance that his eyes
had often cherished: the branching blue veins in the backs of
her hands, the warm shadow that her hair cast on her ear, and
the colour of the hair itself, dull black with a tawny undersurface, like the wings of certain birds. He felt it to be useless to speak.
After a while she lifted her head and said: “I shall not see
her again before she goes.”
He made no answer, and turning to him she added: “That
is why she’s going, I suppose? Because she loves you and won’t
give you up?”
Darrow waited. The paltriness of conventional denial was
so apparent to him that even if it could have delayed discovery
he could no longer have resorted to it. Under all his other
fears was the dread of dishonouring the hour.
“She HAS given me up,” he said at last.
CHAPTER XXVIII
When he had gone out of the room Anna stood where he
had left her. “I must believe him! I must believe him!” she said.
A moment before, at the moment when she had lifted her
arms to his neck, she had been wrapped in a sense of complete
security. All the spirits of doubt had been exorcised, and her
love was once more the clear habitation in which every thought
and feeling could move in blissful freedom. And then, as she
raised her face to Darrow’s and met his eyes, she had seemed to
look into the very ruins of his soul. That was the only way she
could express it. It was as though he and she had been looking at two sides of the same thing, and the side she had seen
had been all light and life, and his a place of graves . . .
She didn’t now recall who had spoken fi rst, or even, very
clearly, what had been said. It seemed to her only a moment
later that she had found herself standing at the other end of
the room – the room which had suddenly grown so small that,
even with its length between them, she felt as if he touched
her – crying out to him “It IS because of you she’s going!” and
reading the avowal in his face.
That was his secret, then, THEIR secret: he had met
the girl in Paris and helped her in her straits – lent her money, Anna vaguely conjectured – and she had fallen in love
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EDITH WHARTON
with him, and on meeting him again had been suddenly overmastered by her passion. Anna, dropping back into her sofacorner, sat staring these facts in the face.
The girl had been in a desperate plight – frightened, penniless, outraged by what had happened, and not knowing (with
a woman like Mrs. Murrett) what fresh injury might impend;
and Darrow, meeting her in this distracted hour, had pitied,
counselled, been kind to her, with the fatal, the inevitable result. There were the facts as Anna made them out: that, at least,
was their external aspect, was as much of them as she had been
suffered to see; and into the secret intricacies they might cover
she dared not yet project her thoughts.
“I must believe him . . . I must believe him . . . ” She kept on
repeating the words like a talisman. It was natural, after all,
that he should have behaved as he had: defended the girl’s piteous secret to the last. She too began to feel the contagion of his
pity – the stir, in her breast, of feelings deeper and more native to her than the pains of jealousy. From the security of her
blessedness she longed to lean over with compassionate hands
. . . But Owen? What was Owen’s part to be? She owed herself
fi rst to him – she was bound to protect him not only from
all knowledge of the secret she had surprised, but also – and
chiefl y! – from its consequences. Yes: the girl must go – there
could be no doubt of it – Darrow himself had seen it from
the fi rst; and at the thought she had a wild revulsion of relief,
as though she had been trying to create in her heart the delusion of a generosity she could not feel . . .
The one fact on which she could stay her mind was that Sophy was leaving immediately; would be out of the house within
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THE REEF
an hour. Once she was gone, it would be easier to bring Owen to
the point of understanding that the break was fi nal; if necessary, to work upon the girl to make him see it. But that, Anna
was sure, would not be necessary. It was clear that Sophy Viner
was leaving Givre with no thought of ever seeing it again . . .
Suddenly, as she tried to put some order in her thoughts,
she heard Owen’s call at the door: “Mother! — ” a name he
seldom gave her. There was a new note in his voice: the note of
a joyous impatience. It made her turn hastily to the glass to see
what face she was about to show him; but before she had had
time to compose it he was in the room and she was caught in
a school-boy hug.
“It’s all right! It’s all right! And it’s all your doing! I want to
do the worst kind of penance – bell and candle and the rest.
I’ve been through it with HER, and now she hands me on to
you, and you’re to call me any names you please.” He freed
her with his happy laugh. “I’m to be stood in the corner till
next week, and then I’m to go up to see her. And she says
I owe it all to you!”
“To me?” It was the fi rst phrase she found to clutch at as
she tried to steady herself in the eddies of his joy.
“Yes: you were so patient, and so dear to her; and you saw at
once what a damned ass I’d been!” She tried a smile, and it
seemed to pass muster with him, for he sent it back in a broad
beam. “That’s not so diffi cult to see? No, I admit it doesn’t take
a microscope. But you were so wise and wonderful – you always are. I’ve been mad these last days, simply mad – you and
she might well have washed your hands of me! And instead, it’s
all right – all right!”
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EDITH WHARTON
She drew back a little, trying to keep the smile on her lips
and not let him get the least glimpse of what it hid. Now if
ever, indeed, it behoved her to be wise and wonderful!
“I’m so glad, dear; so glad. If only you’ll always feel like that
about me . . . ” She stopped, hardly knowing what she said,
and aghast at the idea that her own hands should have retied the knot she imagined to be broken. But she saw he had
something more to say; something hard to get out, but absolutely necessary to express. He caught her hands, pulled her
close, and, with his forehead drawn into its whimsical smiling
wrinkles, “Look here,” he cried, “if Darrow wants to call me
a damned ass too you’re not to stop him!”
It brought her back to a sharper sense of her central peril: of the secret to be kept from him at whatever cost to her
racked nerves.
“Oh, you know, he doesn’t always wait for orders!” On
the whole it sounded better than she’d feared.
“You mean he’s called me one already?” He accepted
the fact with his gayest laugh. “Well, that saves a lot of trouble; now we can pass to the order of the day — ” he broke off
and glanced at the clock – “which is, you know, dear, that
she’s starting in about an hour; she and Adelaide must already be snatching a hasty sandwich. You’ll come down to
bid them good-bye?”
“Yes – of course.”
There had, in fact, grown upon her while he spoke the urgency of seeing Sophy Viner again before she left. The thought
was deeply distasteful: Anna shrank from encountering
the girl till she had cleared a way through her own perplexi-
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THE REEF
ties. But it was obvious that since they had separated, barely
an hour earlier, the situation had taken a new shape. Sophy
Viner had apparently reconsidered her decision to break
amicably but defi nitely with Owen, and stood again in their
path, a menace and a mystery; and confused impulses of resistance stirred in Anna’s mind. She felt Owen’s touch on her
arm. “Are you coming?”
“Yes . . . yes . . . presently.”
“What’s the matter? You look so strange.”
“What do you mean by strange?”
“I don’t know: startled – surprised.” She read what her
look must be by its sudden refl ection in his face.
“Do I? No wonder! You’ve given us all an exciting
morning.”
He held to his point. “You’re more excited now that there’s
no cause for it. What on earth has happened since I saw you?”
He looked about the room, as if seeking the clue to her agitation, and in her dread of what he might guess she answered:
“What has happened is simply that I’m rather tired. Will you
ask Sophy to come up and see me here?”
While she waited she tried to think what she should say
when the girl appeared; but she had never been more conscious of her inability to deal with the oblique and the tortuous. She had lacked the hard teachings of experience, and
an instinctive disdain for whatever was less clear and open
than her own conscience had kept her from learning anything of the intricacies and contradictions of other hearts.
She said to herself: “I must fi nd out — ” yet everything in her
recoiled from the means by which she felt it must be done . . .
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EDITH WHARTON
Sophy Viner appeared almost immediately, dressed for
departure, her little bag on her arm. She was still pale to
the point of haggardness, but with a light upon her that struck
Anna with surprise. Or was it, perhaps, that she was looking at the girl with new eyes: seeing her, for the fi rst time, not
as Effi e’s governess, not as Owen’s bride, but as the embodiment of that unknown peril lurking in the background of
every woman’s thoughts about her lover? Anna, at any rate,
with a sudden sense of estrangement, noted in her graces and
snares never before perceived. It was only the fl ash of a primitive instinct, but it lasted long enough to make her ashamed of
the darknesses it lit up in her heart . . .
She signed to Sophy to sit down on the sofa beside her.
“I asked you to come up to me because I wanted to say goodbye quietly,” she explained, feeling her lips tremble, but trying to speak in a tone of friendly naturalness.
The girl’s only answer was a faint smile of acquiescence,
and Anna, disconcerted by her silence, went on: “You’ve decided, then, not to break your engagement?”
Sophy Viner raised her head with a look of surprise. Evidently the question, thus abruptly put, must have sounded
strangely on the lips of so ardent a partisan as Mrs. Leath!
“I thought that was what you wished,” she said.
“What I wished?” Anna’s heart shook against her side.
“I wish, of course, whatever seems best for Owen . . . It’s natural, you must understand, that that consideration should come
fi rst with me . . . ”
Sophy was looking at her steadily. “I supposed it was
the only one that counted with you.”
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