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THE REEF
The one fi xed point in his immediate future was that his
leave was over and that he must be back at his post in London
the next morning. Within twenty-four hours he would again
be in a daylight world of recognized activities, himself a busy,
responsible, relatively necessary factor in the big whirring social and offi cial machine. That fi xed obligation was the fact he
could think of with the least discomfort, yet for some unaccountable reason it was the one on which he found it most
diffi cult to fi x his thoughts. Whenever he did so, the room
jerked him back into the circle of its insistent associations.
It was extraordinary with what a microscopic minuteness of
loathing he hated it all: the grimy carpet and wallpaper,
the black marble mantel-piece, the clock with a gilt allegory
under a dusty bell, the high-bolstered brown-counterpaned
bed, the framed card of printed rules under the electric light
switch, and the door of communication with the next room.
He hated the door most of all . . .
At the outset, he had felt no special sense of responsibility.
He was satisfi ed that he had struck the right note, and convinced of his power of sustaining it. The whole incident had
somehow seemed, in spite of its vulgar setting and its inevitable
prosaic propinquities, to be enacting itself in some unmapped
region outside the pale of the usual. It was not like anything
that had ever happened to him before, or in which he had ever
pictured himself as likely to be involved; but that, at fi rst, had
seemed no argument against his fi tness to deal with it.
Perhaps but for the three days’ rain he might have got away
without a doubt as to his adequacy. The rain had made all
the difference. It had thrown the whole picture out of perspec-
81
EDITH WHARTON
tive, blotted out the mystery of the remoter planes and the enchantment of the middle distance, and thrust into prominence
every commonplace fact of the foreground. It was the kind of
situation that was not helped by being thought over; and by
the perversity of circumstance he had been forced into the unwilling contemplation of its every aspect . . .
His cigar had gone out again, and he threw it into the fi re
and vaguely meditated getting up to fi nd another. But the mere
act of leaving his chair seemed to call for a greater exertion of
the will than he was capable of, and he leaned his head back
with closed eyes and listened to the drumming of the rain.
A different noise aroused him. It was the opening and
closing of the door leading from the corridor into the adjoining room. He sat motionless, without opening his eyes; but
now another sight forced itself under his lowered lids. It was
the precise photographic picture of that other room. Everything in it rose before him and pressed itself upon his vision
with the same acuity of distinctness as the objects surrounding him. A step sounded on the fl oor, and he knew which way
the step was directed, what pieces of furniture it had to skirt,
where it would probably pause, and what was likely to arrest it. He heard another sound, and recognized it as that of
a wet umbrella placed in the black marble jamb of the chimney-piece, against the hearth. He caught the creak of a hinge,
and instantly differentiated it as that of the wardrobe against
the opposite wall. Then he heard the mouse-like squeal of a reluctant drawer, and knew it was the upper one in the chest of
drawers beside the bed: the clatter which followed was caused
by the mahogany toilet-glass jumping on its loosened pivots . . .
82
THE REEF
The step crossed the fl oor again. It was strange how much
better he knew it than the person to whom it belonged! Now it
was drawing near the door of communication between the two
rooms. He opened his eyes and looked. The step had ceased
and for a moment there was silence. Then he heard a low
knock. He made no response, and after an interval he saw that
the door handle was being tentatively turned. He closed his
eyes once more . . .
The door opened, and the step was in the room, coming cautiously toward him. He kept his eyes shut, relaxing his body to
feign sleep. There was another pause, then a wavering soft advance, the rustle of a dress behind his chair, the warmth of two
hands pressed for a moment on his lids. The palms of the hands
had the lingering scent of some stuff that he had bought on
the Boulevard . . . He looked up and saw a letter falling over his
shoulder to his knee . . .
“Did I disturb you? I’m so sorry! They gave me this just now
when I came in.”
The letter, before he could catch it, had slipped between
his knees to the fl oor. It lay there, address upward, at his feet,
and while he sat staring down at the strong slender characters on the blue-gray envelope an arm reached out from behind to pick it up.
“Oh, don’t – DON’T” broke from him, and he bent over
and caught the arm. The face above it was close to his.
“Don’t what?”
— “take the trouble,” he stammered.
83
EDITH WHARTON
He dropped the arm and stooped down. His grasp closed
over the letter, he fi ngered its thickness and weight and calculated the number of sheets it must contain.
Suddenly he felt the pressure of the hand on his shoulder,
and became aware that the face was still leaning over him, and
that in a moment he would have to look up and kiss it . . .
He bent forward fi rst and threw the unopened letter into
the middle of the fi re.
BOOK II
CHAPTER IX
The light of the October afternoon lay on an old highroofed house which enclosed in its long expanse of brick
and yellowish stone the breadth of a grassy court fi lled with
the shadow and sound of limes.
From the escutcheoned piers at the entrance of the court
a level drive, also shaded by limes, extended to a white-barred
gate beyond which an equally level avenue of grass, cut
through a wood, dwindled to a blue-green blur against a sky
banked with still white slopes of cloud.
In the court, half-way between house and drive, a lady
stood. She held a parasol above her head, and looked now at
the house-front, with its double fl ight of steps meeting before
a glazed door under sculptured trophies, now down the drive
toward the grassy cutting through the wood. Her air was
less of expectancy than of contemplation: she seemed not so
much to be watching for any one, or listening for an approaching sound, as letting the whole aspect of the place sink into
her while she held herself open to its infl uence. Yet it was no
less apparent that the scene was not new to her. There was no
eagerness of investigation in her survey: she seemed rather to
be looking about her with eyes to which, for some intimate in-
87
EDITH WHARTON
ward reason, details long since familiar had suddenly acquired
an unwonted freshness.
This was in fact the exact sensation of which Mrs. Leath
was conscious as she came forth from the house and descended
into the sunlit court. She had come to meet her step-son, who
was likely to be returning at that hour from an afternoon’s
shooting in one of the more distant plantations, and she carried in her hand the letter which had sent her in search of
him; but with her fi rst step out of the house all thought of him
had been effaced by another series of impressions.
The scene about her was known to satiety. She had seen
Givre at all seasons of the year, and for the greater part of
every year, since the far-off day of her marriage; the day
when, ostensibly driving through its gates at her husband’s
side, she had actually been carried there on a cloud of iriswinged visions.
The possibilities which the place had then represented
were still vividly present to her. The mere phrase “a French
chateau” had called up to her youthful fancy a throng of
romantic associations, poetic, pictorial and emotional; and
the serene face of the old house seated in its park among
the poplar-bordered meadows of middle France, had
seemed, on her fi rst sight of it, to hold out to her a fate as
noble and dignifi ed as its own mien.
Though she could still call up that phase of feeling it had
long since passed, and the house had for a time become to her
the very symbol of narrowness and monotony. Then, with
the passing of years, it had gradually acquired a less inimical
character, had become, not again a castle of dreams, evoker of
88
THE REEF
fair images and romantic legend, but the shell of a life slowly
adjusted to its dwelling: the place one came back to, the place
where one had one’s duties, one’s habits and one’s books,
the place one would naturally live in till one died: a dull
house, an inconvenient house, of which one knew all the defects, the shabbinesses, the discomforts, but to which one was
so used that one could hardly, after so long a time, think one’s
self away from it without suffering a certain loss of identity.
Now, as it lay before her in the autumn mildness, its mistress was surprised at her own insensibility. She had been trying to see the house through the eyes of an old friend who,
the next morning, would be driving up to it for the fi rst time;
and in so doing she seemed to be opening her own eyes upon
it after a long interval of blindness.
The court was very still, yet full of a latent life: the wheeling and rustling of pigeons about the rectangular yews and
across the sunny gravel; the sweep of rooks above the lustrous
greyish-purple slates of the roof, and the stir of the tree-tops
as they met the breeze which every day, at that hour, came
punctually up from the river.
Just such a latent animation glowed in Anna Leath. In every nerve and vein she was conscious of that equipoise of bliss
which the fearful human heart scarce dares acknowledge.
She was not used to strong or full emotions; but she had always known that she should not be afraid of them. She was not
afraid now; but she felt a deep inward stillness.
The immediate effect of the feeling had been to send her
forth in quest of her step-son. She wanted to stroll back with
him and have a quiet talk before they re-entered the house.
89
EDITH WHARTON
It was always easy to talk to him, and at this moment he was
the one person to whom she could have spoken without fear of
disturbing her inner stillness. She was glad, for all sorts of reasons, that Madame de Chantelle and Effi e were still at Ouchy
with the governess, and that she and Owen had the house to
themselves. And she was glad that even he was not yet in sight.
She wanted to be alone a little longer; not to think, but to let
the long slow waves of joy break over her one by one.
She walked out of the court and sat down on one of
the benches that bordered the drive. From her seat she had
a diagonal view of the long house-front and of the domed chapel terminating one of the wings. Beyond a gate in the courtyard wall the fl ower-garden drew its dark-green squares and
raised its statues against the yellowing background of the park.
In the borders only a few late pinks and crimsons smouldered,
but a peacock strutting in the sun seemed to have gathered
into his out-spread fan all the summer glories of the place.
In Mrs. Leath’s hand was the letter which had opened her
eyes to these things, and a smile rose to her lips at the mere
feeling of the paper between her fi ngers. The thrill it sent
through her gave a keener edge to every sense. She felt, saw,
breathed the shining world as though a thin impenetrable veil
had suddenly been removed from it.
Just such a veil, she now perceived, had always hung between herself and life. It had been like the stage gauze which
gives an illusive air of reality to the painted scene behind it,
yet proves it, after all, to be no more than a painted scene.
She had been hardly aware, in her girlhood, of differing
from others in this respect. In the well-regulated well-fed
90
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