Добавил:
ivanov666
Опубликованный материал нарушает ваши авторские права? Сообщите нам.
Вуз:
Предмет:
Файл:The Reef
.pdf
THE REEF
The curtness of retort roused Anna’s latent antagonism.
“It is,” she said, in a hard voice that startled her as she heard it.
Had she ever spoken so to any one before? She felt frightened,
as though her very nature had changed without her knowing
it . . . Feeling the girl’s astonished gaze still on her, she continued: “The suddenness of the change has naturally surprised
me. When I left you it was understood that you were to reserve
your decision — ”
“Yes.”
“And now — ?” Anna waited for a reply that did not come.
She did not understand the girl’s attitude, the edge of irony in
her short syllables, the plainly premeditated determination to
lay the burden of proof on her interlocutor. Anna felt the sudden need to lift their intercourse above this mean level of defi ance and distrust. She looked appealingly at Sophy.
“Isn’t it best that we should speak quite frankly? It’s this
change on your part that perplexes me. You can hardly be surprised at that. It’s true, I asked you not to break with Owen too
abruptly – and I asked it, believe me, as much for your sake as
for his: I wanted you to take time to think over the diffi culty
that seems to have arisen between you. The fact that you felt
it required thinking over seemed to show you wouldn’t take
the fi nal step lightly – wouldn’t, I mean, accept of Owen more
than you could give him. But your change of mind obliges
me to ask the question I thought you would have asked yourself. Is there any reason why you shouldn’t marry Owen?”
She stopped a little breathlessly, her eyes on Sophy
Viner’s burning face. “Any reason — ? What do you mean
by a reason?”
291
EDITH WHARTON
Anna continued to look at her gravely. “Do you love some
one else?” she asked.
Sophy’s fi rst look was one of wonder and a faint relief; then
she gave back the other’s scrutiny in a glance of indescribable
reproach. “Ah, you might have waited!” she exclaimed.
“Waited?”
“Till I’d gone: till I was out of the house. You might have
known . . . you might have guessed . . . ” She turned her eyes
again on Anna. “I only meant to let him hope a little longer,
so that he shouldn’t suspect anything; of course I can’t marry
him,” she said.
Anna stood motionless, silenced by the shock of the avowal. She too was trembling, less with anger than with a confused
compassion. But the feeling was so blent with others, less generous and more obscure, that she found no words to express it,
and the two women faced each other without speaking.
“I’d better go,” Sophy murmured at length with lowered
head.
The words roused in Anna a latent impulse of compunction. The girl looked so young, so exposed and desolate! And
what thoughts must she be hiding in her heart! It was impossible that they should part in such a spirit.
“I want you to know that no one said anything . . .
It was I who . . . ”
Sophy looked at her. “You mean that Mr. Darrow didn’t
tell you? Of course not: do you suppose I thought he did?
You found it out, that’s all – I knew you would. In your place
I should have guessed it sooner.”
292
THE REEF
The words were spoken simply, without irony or emphasis; but they went through Anna like a sword. Yes, the girl
would have had divinations, promptings that she had not had!
She felt half envious of such a sad precocity of wisdom.
“I’m so sorry . . . so sorry . . . ” she murmured.
“Things happen that way. Now I’d better go. I’d like to say
good-bye to Effi e.”
“Oh — ” it broke in a cry from Effi e’s mother. “Not like
this – you mustn’t! I feel – you make me feel too horribly: as
if I were driving you away . . . ” The words had rushed up from
the depths of her bewildered pity.
“No one is driving me away: I had to go,” she heard
the girl reply.
There was another silence, during which passionate impulses of magnanimity warred in Anna with her doubts and
dreads. At length, her eyes on Sophy’s face: “Yes, you must go
now,” she began; “but later on . . . after a while, when all this is
over . . . if there’s no reason why you shouldn’t marry Owen — ”
she paused a moment on the words – “I shouldn’t want you to
think I stood between you . . . ”
“You?” Sophy fl ushed again, and then grew pale.
She seemed to try to speak, but no words came. “Yes! It was not
true when I said just now that I was thinking only of Owen.
I’m sorry – oh, so sorry! – for you too. Your life – I know how
hard it’s been; and mine . . . mine’s so full . . . Happy women understand best!” Anna drew near and touched the girl’s hand;
then she began again, pouring all her soul into the broken
phrases: “It’s terrible now . . . you see no future; but if, by and
bye . . . you know best . . . but you’re so young . . . and at your age
293
EDITH WHARTON
things DO pass. If there’s no reason, no real reason, why you
shouldn’t marry Owen, I WANT him to hope, I’ll help him to
hope . . . if you say so . . . ”
With the urgency of her pleading her clasp tightened on
Sophy’s hand, but it warmed to no responsive tremor: the girl
seemed numb, and Anna was frightened by the stony silence of
her look. “I suppose I’m not more than half a woman,” she
mused, “for I don’t want my happiness to hurt her;” and aloud
she repeated: “If only you’ll tell me there’s no reason — ”
The girl did not speak; but suddenly, like a snapped
branch, she bent, stooped down to the hand that clasped her,
and laid her lips upon it in a stream of weeping. She cried silently, continuously, abundantly, as though Anna’s touch had
released the waters of some deep spring of pain; then, as Anna,
moved and half afraid, leaned over her with a sound of pity,
she stood up and turned away.
“You’re going, then – for good – like this?” Anna moved
toward her and stopped. Sophy stopped too, with eyes that
shrank from her.
“Oh — ” Anna cried, and hid her face.
The girl walked across the room and paused again in
the doorway. From there she fl ung back: “I wanted it – I chose
it. He was good to me – no one ever was so good!”
The door-handle turned, and Anna heard her go.
CHAPTER XXIX
Her fi rst thought was: “He’s going too in a few
hours – I needn’t see him again before he leaves . . . ” At that
moment the possibility of having to look in Darrow’s face and
hear him speak seemed to her more unendurable than anything else she could imagine. Then, on the next wave of feeling, came the desire to confront him at once and wring from
him she knew not what: avowal, denial, justifi cation, anything
that should open some channel of escape to the fl ood of her
pent-up anguish.
She had told Owen she was tired, and this seemed a suffi cient reason for remaining upstairs when the motor came to
the door and Miss Painter and Sophy Viner were borne off in
it; suffi cient also for sending word to Madame de Chantelle
that she would not come down till after luncheon. Having despatched her maid with this message, she lay down on her sofa
and stared before her into darkness . . .
She had been unhappy before, and the vision of old miseries fl ocked like hungry ghosts about her fresh pain: she recalled her youthful disappointment, the failure of her marriage, the wasted years that followed; but those were negative
sorrows, denials and postponements of life. She seemed in no
way related to their shadowy victim, she who was stretched on
295
EDITH WHARTON
this fi ery rack of the irreparable. She had suffered before – yes,
but lucidly, refl ectively, elegiacally: now she was suffering as
a hurt animal must, blindly, furiously, with the single fi erce
animal longing that the awful pain should stop . . .
She heard her maid knock, and she hid her face and made
no answer. The knocking continued, and the discipline of
habit at length made her lift her head, compose her face and
hold out her hand to the note the woman brought her. It was
a word from Darrow – “May I see you?” – and she said at
once, in a voice that sounded thin and empty: “Ask Mr. Darrow to come up.”
The maid enquired if she wished to have her hair smoothed
fi rst, and she answered that it didn’t matter; but when the door
had closed, the instinct of pride drew her to her feet and she
looked at herself in the glass above the mantelpiece and passed
her hands over her hair. Her eyes were burning and her face
looked tired and thinner; otherwise she could see no change in
her appearance, and she wondered that at such a moment her
body should seem as unrelated to the self that writhed within
her as if it had been a statue or a picture.
The maid reopened the door to show in Darrow, and he
paused a moment on the threshold, as if waiting for Anna to
speak. He was extremely pale, but he looked neither ashamed
nor uncertain, and she said to herself, with a perverse thrill of
appreciation: “He’s as proud as I am.”
Aloud she asked: “You wanted to see me?”
“Naturally,” he replied in a grave voice.
“Don’t! It’s useless. I know everything. Nothing you can say
will help.”
296
THE REEF
At the direct affi rmation he turned even paler, and his eyes,
which he kept resolutely fi xed on her, confessed his misery.
“You allow me no voice in deciding that?”
“Deciding what?”
“That there’s nothing more to be said?” He waited for
her to answer, and then went on: “I don’t even know what you
mean by ‘everything’.”
“Oh, I don’t know what more there is! I know enough.
I implored her to deny it, and she couldn’t . . . What can you
and I have to say to each other?” Her voice broke into a sob.
The animal anguish was upon her again – just a blind cry
against her pain!
Darrow kept his head high and his eyes steady. “It must be
as you wish; and yet it’s not like you to be afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“To talk things out – to face them.”
“It’s for YOU to face this – not me!”
“All I ask is to face it – but with you.” Once more he paused.
“Won’t you tell me what Miss Viner told you?”
“Oh, she’s generous – to the utmost!” The pain caught her
like a physical throe. It suddenly came to her how the girl must
have loved him to be so generous – what memories there must
be between them!
“Oh, go, please go. It’s too horrible. Why should I have to
see you?” she stammered, lifting her hands to her eyes.
With her face hidden she waited to hear him move away, to
hear the door open and close again, as, a few hours earlier, it
had opened and closed on Sophy Viner. But Darrow made no
sound or movement: he too was waiting. Anna felt a thrill of
297
EDITH WHARTON
resentment: his presence was an outrage on her sorrow, a humiliation to her pride. It was strange that he should wait for
her to tell him so!
“You want me to leave Givre?” he asked at length. She made
no answer, and he went on: “Of course I’ll do as you wish; but if
I go now am I not to see you again?”
His voice was fi rm: his pride was answering her pride!
She faltered: “You must see it’s useless — ”
“I might remind you that you’re dismissing me without
a hearing — ”
“Without a hearing? I’ve heard you both!”
— “but I won’t,” he continued, “remind you of that, or of
anything or any one but Owen.”
“Owen?”
“Yes; if we could somehow spare him — ”
She had dropped her hands and turned her startled eyes on
him. It seemed to her an age since she had thought of Owen!
“You see, don’t you,” Darrow continued, “that if you send
me away now — ”
She interrupted: “Yes, I see — ” and there was a long silence between them. At length she said, very low: “I don’t want
any one else to suffer as I’m suffering . . . ”
“Owen knows I meant to leave tomorrow,” Darrow went
on. “Any sudden change of plan may make him think . . . ”
Oh, she saw his inevitable logic: the horror of it was on every side of her! It had seemed possible to control her grief and
face Darrow calmly while she was upheld by the belief that
this was their last hour together, that after he had passed out of
the room there would be no fear of seeing him again, no fear
298
THE REEF
that his nearness, his look, his voice, and all the unseen infl uences that fl owed from him, would dissolve her soul to weakness. But her courage failed at the idea of having to conspire
with him to shield Owen, of keeping up with him, for Owen’s
sake, a feint of union and felicity. To live at Darrow’s side in
seeming intimacy and harmony for another twenty-four hours
seemed harder than to live without him for all the rest of her
days. Her strength failed her, and she threw herself down and
buried her sobs in the cushions where she had so often hidden
a face aglow with happiness.
“Anna — ” His voice was close to her. “Let me talk to you
quietly. It’s not worthy of either of us to be afraid.”
Words of endearment would have offended her; but her
heart rose at the call to her courage.
“I’ve no defense to make,” he went on. “The facts are miserable enough; but at least I want you to see them as they are.
Above all, I want you to know the truth about Miss Viner — ”
The name sent the blood to Anna’s forehead. She raised
her head and faced him. “Why should I know more of her than
what she’s told me? I never wish to hear her name again!”
“It’s because you feel about her in that way that I ask
you – in the name of common charity – to let me give
you the facts as they are, and not as you’ve probably
imagined them.”
“I’ve told you I don’t think uncharitably of her. I don’t
want to think of her at all!”
“That’s why I tell you you’re afraid.”
“Afraid?”
299
EDITH WHARTON
“Yes. You’ve always said you wanted, above all, to look at
life, at the human problem, as it is, without fear and without hypocrisy; and it’s not always a pleasant thing to look at.”
He broke off, and then began again: “Don’t think this a plea
for myself! I don’t want to say a word to lessen my offense.
I don’t want to talk of myself at all. Even if I did, I probably
couldn’t make you understand – I don’t, myself, as I look back.
Be just to me – it’s your right; all I ask you is to be generous to
Miss Viner . . . ”
She stood up trembling. “You’re free to be as generous to
her as you please!”
“Yes: you’ve made it clear to me that I’m free. But there’s
nothing I can do for her that will help her half as much as
your understanding her would.”
“Nothing you can do for her? You can marry her!”
His face hardened. “You certainly couldn’t wish her
a worse fate!”
“It must have been what she expected . . . relied on . . . ”
He was silent, and she broke out: “Or what is she? What are
you? It’s too horrible! On your way here . . . to ME . . . ” She felt
the tears in her throat and stopped.
“That was it,” he said bluntly. She stared at him.
“I was on my way to you – after repeated delays and postponements of your own making. At the very last you turned
me back with a mere word – and without explanation. I waited for a letter; and none came. I’m not saying this to justify
myself. I’m simply trying to make you understand. I felt hurt
and bitter and bewildered. I thought you meant to give me up.
And suddenly, in my way, I found some one to be sorry for, to
300
Соседние файлы в предмете [НЕСОРТИРОВАННОЕ]