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THE REEF
Was it she, Anna Leath, who was picturing herself to herself in that way? She recoiled from her thoughts as if with
a sense of demoniac possession, and there fl ashed through her
the longing to return to her old state of fearless ignorance.
If at that moment she could have kept Darrow from following
her to Givre she would have done so . . .
But he came; and with the sight of him the turmoil fell
and she felt herself reassured, rehabilitated. He arrived toward
dusk, and she motored to Francheuil to meet him. She wanted to see him as soon as possible, for she had divined, through
the new insight that was in her, that only his presence could
restore her to a normal view of things. In the motor, as they
left the town and turned into the high-road, he lifted her hand
and kissed it, and she leaned against him, and felt the currents
fl ow between them. She was grateful to him for not saying anything, and for not expecting her to speak. She said to herself:
“He never makes a mistake – he always knows what to do”;
and then she thought with a start that it was doubtless because he had so often been in such situations. The idea that
his tact was a kind of professional expertness fi lled her with
repugnance, and insensibly she drew away from him. He made
no motion to bring her nearer, and she instantly thought that
that was calculated too. She sat beside him in frozen misery,
wondering whether, henceforth, she would measure in this
way his every look and gesture. Neither of them spoke again
till the motor turned under the dark arch of the avenue, and
they saw the lights of Givre twinkling at its end. Then Darrow
laid his hand on hers and said: “I know, dear – ” and the hardness in her melted. “He’s suffering as I am,” she thought; and
331
EDITH WHARTON
for a moment the baleful fact between them seemed to draw
them closer instead of walling them up in their separate
wretchedness.
It was wonderful to be once more re-entering the doors of
Givre with him, and as the old house received them into
its mellow silence she had again the sense of passing out of
a dreadful dream into the reassurance of kindly and familiar
things. It did not seem possible that these quiet rooms, so full of
the slowly-distilled accumulations of a fastidious taste, should
have been the scene of tragic dissensions. The memory of them
seemed to be shut out into the night with the closing and barring of its doors.
At the tea-table in the oak-room they found Madame de
Chantelle and Effi e. The little girl, catching sight of Darrow,
raced down the drawing-rooms to meet him, and returned in
triumph on his shoulder. Anna looked at them with a smile.
Effi e, for all her graces, was chary of such favours, and her
mother knew that in according them to Darrow she had admitted him to the circle where Owen had hitherto ruled.
Over the tea-table Darrow gave Madame de Chantelle
the explanation of his sudden return from England. On reaching London, he told her, he had found that the secretary he
was to have replaced was detained there by the illness of his
wife. The Ambassador, knowing Darrow’s urgent reasons for
wishing to be in France, had immediately proposed his going
back, and awaiting at Givre the summons to relieve his colleague; and he had jumped into the fi rst train, without even
waiting to telegraph the news of his release. He spoke naturally, easily, in his usual quiet voice, taking his tea from Ef-
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THE REEF
fi e, helping himself to the toast she handed, and stooping now
and then to stroke the dozing terrier. And suddenly, as Anna
listened to his explanation, she asked herself if it were true.
The question, of course, was absurd. There was no possible
reason why he should invent a false account of his return, and
every probability that the version he gave was the real one.
But he had looked and spoken in the same way when he had
answered her probing questions about Sophy Viner, and she
refl ected with a chill of fear that she would never again know
if he were speaking the truth or not. She was sure he loved her,
and she did not fear his insincerity as much as her own distrust of him. For a moment it seemed to her that this must corrupt the very source of love; then she said to herself: “By and
bye, when I am altogether his, we shall be so near each other
that there will be no room for any doubts between us.” But
the doubts were there now, one moment lulled to quiescence,
the next more torturingly alert. When the nurse appeared to
summon Effi e, the little girl, after kissing her grandmother,
entrenched herself on Darrow’s knee with the imperious demand to be carried up to bed; and Anna, while she laughingly
protested, said to herself with a pang: “Can I give her a father
about whom I think such things?”
The thought of Effi e, and of what she owed to Effi e, had
been the fundamental reason for her delays and hesitations
when she and Darrow had come together again in England.
Her own feeling was so clear that but for that scruple she
would have put her hand in his at once. But till she had seen
him again she had never considered the possibility of remarriage, and when it suddenly confronted her it seemed, for
333
EDITH WHARTON
the moment, to disorganize the life she had planned for herself and her child. She had not spoken of this to Darrow because it appeared to her a subject to be debated within her own
conscience. The question, then, was not as to his fi tness to become the guide and guardian of her child; nor did she fear that
her love for him would deprive Effi e of the least fraction of her
tenderness, since she did not think of love as something measured and exhaustible but as a treasure perpetually renewed.
What she questioned was her right to introduce into her life
any interests and duties which might rob Effi e of a part of her
time, or lessen the closeness of their daily intercourse.
She had decided this question as it was inevitable that she
should; but now another was before her. Assuredly, at her age,
there was no possible reason why she should cloister herself to
bring up her daughter; but there was every reason for not marrying a man in whom her own faith was not complete . . .
CHAPTER XXXIV
When she woke the next morning she felt a great lightness of heart. She recalled her last awakening at Givre, three
days before, when it had seemed as though all her life had
gone down in darkness. Now Darrow was once more under the same roof with her, and once more his nearness suffi ced to make the looming horror drop away. She could almost
have smiled at her scruples of the night before: as she looked
back on them they seemed to belong to the old ignorant timorous time when she had feared to look life in the face, and had
been blind to the mysteries and contradictions of the human
heart because her own had not been revealed to her. Darrow
had said: “You were made to feel everything”; and to feel was
surely better than to judge.
When she came downstairs he was already in the oak-room
with Effi e and Madame de Chantelle, and the sense of reassurance which his presence gave her was merged in the relief of
not being able to speak of what was between them. But there
it was, inevitably, and whenever they looked at each other
they saw it. In her dread of giving it a more tangible shape
she tried to devise means of keeping the little girl with her,
and, when the latter had been called away by the nurse, found
an excuse for following Madame de Chantelle upstairs to
335
EDITH WHARTON
the purple sitting-room. But a confi dential talk with Madame
de Chantelle implied the detailed discussion of plans of which
Anna could hardly yet bear to consider the vaguest outline:
the date of her marriage, the relative advantages of sailing
from London or Lisbon, the possibility of hiring a habitable
house at their new post; and, when these problems were exhausted, the application of the same method to the subject of
Owen’s future.
His grandmother, having no suspicion of the real reason of
Sophy Viner’s departure, had thought it “extremely suitable” of the young girl to withdraw to the shelter of her old
friends’ roof in the hour of bridal preparation. This maidenly
retreat had in fact impressed Madame de Chantelle so favourably that she was disposed for the fi rst time to talk over Owen’s
projects; and as every human event translated itself for her
into terms of social and domestic detail, Anna had perforce to
travel the same round again. She felt a momentary relief when
Darrow presently joined them; but his coming served only to
draw the conversation back to the question of their own future, and Anna felt a new pang as she heard him calmly and
lucidly discussing it. Did such self-possession imply indifference or insincerity? In that problem her mind perpetually revolved; and she dreaded the one answer as much as the other.
She was resolved to keep on her course as though nothing
had happened: to marry Darrow and never let the consciousness of the past intrude itself between them; but she was beginning to feel that the only way of attaining to this state of
detachment from the irreparable was once for all to turn back
with him to its contemplation. As soon as this desire had ger-
336
THE REEF
minated it became so strong in her that she regretted having
promised Effi e to take her out for the afternoon. But she could
think of no pretext for disappointing the little girl, and soon
after luncheon the three set forth in the motor to show Darrow a chateau famous in the annals of the region. During their
excursion Anna found it impossible to guess from his demeanour if Effi e’s presence between them was as much of a strain to
his composure as to hers. He remained imperturbably goodhumoured and appreciative while they went the round of
the monument, and she remarked only that when he thought
himself unnoticed his face grew grave and his answers came
less promptly.
On the way back, two or three miles from Givre, she suddenly proposed that they should walk home through the forest which skirted that side of the park. Darrow acquiesced,
and they got out and sent Effi e on in the motor. Their way led
through a bit of sober French woodland, fl at as a faded tapestry, but with gleams of live emerald lingering here and there
among its browns and ochres. The luminous grey air gave vividness to its dying colours, and veiled the distant glimpses of
the landscape in soft uncertainty. In such a solitude Anna
had fancied it would be easier to speak; but as she walked beside Darrow over the deep soundless fl ooring of brown moss
the words on her lips took fl ight again. It seemed impossible to
break the spell of quiet joy which his presence laid on her, and
when he began to talk of the place they had just visited she answered his questions and then waited for what he should say
next . . . No, decidedly she could not speak; she no longer even
knew what she had meant to say . . .
337
EDITH WHARTON
The same experience repeated itself several times that day
and the next. When she and Darrow were apart she exhausted
herself in appeal and interrogation, she formulated with a fervent lucidity every point in her imaginary argument. But as
soon as she was alone with him something deeper than reason and subtler than shyness laid its benumbing touch upon
her, and the desire to speak became merely a dim disquietude,
through which his looks, his words, his touch, reached her as
through a mist of bodily pain. Yet this inertia was torn by wild
fl ashes of resistance, and when they were apart she began to
prepare again what she meant to say to him.
She knew he could not be with her without being aware of
this inner turmoil, and she hoped he would break the spell
by some releasing word. But she presently understood that he
recognized the futility of words, and was resolutely bent on
holding her to her own purpose of behaving as if nothing
had happened. Once more she inwardly accused him of insensibility, and her imagination was beset by tormenting visions of his past . . . Had such things happened to him before?
If the episode had been an isolated accident – “a moment of
folly and madness”, as he had called it – she could understand, or at least begin to understand (for at a certain point
her imagination always turned back); but if it were a mere
link in a chain of similar experiments, the thought of it dishonoured her whole past . . .
Effi e, in the interregnum between governesses, had been
given leave to dine downstairs; and Anna, on the evening of
Darrow’s return, kept the little girl with her till long after
the nurse had signalled from the drawing-room door. When at
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THE REEF
length she had been carried off, Anna proposed a game of
cards, and after this diversion had drawn to its languid close
she said good-night to Darrow and followed Madame de Chantelle upstairs. But Madame de Chantelle never sat up late,
and the second evening, with the amiably implied intention of
leaving Anna and Darrow to themselves, she took an earlier
leave of them than usual.
Anna sat silent, listening to her small stiff steps as they
minced down the hall and died out in the distance. Madame
de Chantelle had broken her wooden embroidery frame, and
Darrow, having offered to repair it, had drawn his chair up to
a table that held a lamp. Anna watched him as he sat with bent
head and knitted brows, trying to fi t together the disjoined
pieces. The sight of him, so tranquilly absorbed in this trifl ing
business, seemed to give to the quiet room a perfume of intimacy, to fi ll it with a sense of sweet familiar habit; and it came
over her again that she knew nothing of the inner thoughts of
this man who was sitting by her as a husband might. The lamplight fell on his white forehead, on the healthy brown of his
cheek, the backs of his thin sunburnt hands. As she watched
the hands her sense of them became as vivid as a touch, and
she said to herself: “That other woman has sat and watched
him as I am doing. She has known him as I have never known
him . . . Perhaps he is thinking of that now. Or perhaps he has
forgotten it all as completely as I have forgotten everything
that happened to me before he came . . . ”
He looked young, active, stored with strength and energy;
not the man for vain repinings or long memories. She wondered what she had to hold or satisfy him. He loved her now;
339
EDITH WHARTON
she had no doubt of that; but how could she hope to keep him?
They were so nearly of an age that already she felt herself his
senior. As yet the difference was not visible; outwardly at least
they were matched; but ill-health or unhappiness would soon
do away with this equality. She thought with a pang of bitterness: “He won’t grow any older because he doesn’t feel things;
and because he doesn’t, I SHALL . . . ”
And when she ceased to please him, what then? Had he
the tradition of faith to the spoken vow, or the deeper piety of the unspoken dedication? What was his theory, what
his inner conviction in such matters? But what did she care
for his convictions or his theories? No doubt he loved her
now, and believed he would always go on loving her, and
was persuaded that, if he ceased to, his loyalty would be proof
against the change. What she wanted to know was not what he
thought about it in advance, but what would impel or restrain
him at the crucial hour. She put no faith in her own arts: she
was too sure of having none! And if some benefi cent enchanter had bestowed them on her, she knew now that she would
have rejected the gift. She could hardly conceive of wanting
the kind of love that was a state one could be cozened into . . .
Darrow, putting away the frame, walked across the room
and sat down beside her; and she felt he had something special to say.
“They’re sure to send for me in a day or two now,” he began.
She made no answer, and he continued: “You’ll tell me before I go what day I’m to come back and get you?”
It was the fi rst time since his return to Givre that he had
made any direct allusion to the date of their marriage; and
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