XXIII
The next day was Darrow’s last at Givre and, foreseeing that the
afternoon and evening would have to be given to the family, he had asked
Anna to devote an early hour to the final consideration of their plans.
He was to meet her in the brown sitting-room at ten, and they were to
walk down to the river and talk over their future in the little pavilion
abutting on the wall of the park.
It was just a week since his arrival at Givre, and Anna wished, before
he left, to return to the place where they had sat on their first
afternoon together. Her sensitiveness to the appeal of inanimate things,
to the colour and texture of whatever wove itself into the substance of
her emotion, made her want to hear Darrow’s voice, and to feel his eyes
on her, in the spot where bliss had first flowed into her heart.
That bliss, in the interval, had wound itself into every fold of her
being. Passing, in the first days, from a high shy tenderness to the
rush of a secret surrender, it had gradually widened and deepened, to
flow on in redoubled beauty. She thought she now knew exactly how and
why she loved Darrow, and she could see her whole sky reflected in the
deep and tranquil current of her love.
Early the next day, in her sitting-room, she was glancing through the
letters which it was Effie’s morning privilege to carry up to her. Effie
meanwhile circled inquisitively about the room, where there was always
something new to engage her infant fancy; and Anna, looking up, saw her
suddenly arrested before a photograph of Darrow which, the day before,
had taken its place on the writing-table.
Anna held out her arms with a faint blush. “You do like him, don’t you,
dear?”
“Oh, most awfully, dearest,” Effie, against her breast, leaned back
to assure her with a limpid look. “And so do Granny and Owen--and I DO
think Sophy does too,” she added, after a moment’s earnest pondering.
“I hope so,” Anna laughed. She checked the impulse to continue: “Has she
talked to you about him, that you’re so sure?” She did not know what had
made the question spring to her lips, but she was glad she had closed
them before pronouncing it. Nothing could have been more distasteful to
her than to clear up such obscurities by turning on them the tiny flame
of her daughter’s observation. And what, after all, now that Owen’s
happiness was secured, did it matter if there were certain reserves in
Darrow’s approval of his marriage?
A knock on the door made Anna glance at the clock. “There’s Nurse to
carry you off.”
“It’s Sophy’s knock,” the little girl answered, jumping down to open the
door; and Miss Viner in fact stood on the threshold.
“Come in,” Anna said with a smile, instantly remarking how pale she
looked.
“May Effie go out for a turn with Nurse?” the girl asked. “I should like
to speak to you a moment.”
“Of course. This ought to be YOUR holiday, as yesterday was Effie’s. Run
off, dear,” she added, stooping to kiss the little girl.
When the door had closed she turned back to Sophy Viner with a look that
sought her confidence. “I’m so glad you came, my dear. We’ve got so many
things to talk about, just you and I together.”
The confused intercourse of the last days had, in fact, left little time
for any speech with Sophy but such as related to her marriage and the
means of overcoming Madame de Chantelle’s opposition to it. Anna had
exacted of Owen that no one, not even Sophy Viner, should be given a
hint of her own projects till all contingent questions had been disposed
of. She had felt, from the outset, a secret reluctance to intrude her
securer happiness on the doubts and fears of the young pair.
From the sofa-corner to which she had dropped back she pointed to
Darrow’s chair. “Come and sit by me, dear. I wanted to see you alone.
There’s so much to say that I hardly know where to begin.”
She leaned forward, her hands clasped on the arms of the sofa, her eyes
bent smilingly on Sophy’s. As she did so, she noticed that the girl’s
unusual pallour was partly due to the slight veil of powder on her
face. The discovery was distinctly disagreeable. Anna had never before
noticed, on Sophy’s part, any recourse to cosmetics, and, much as
she wished to think herself exempt from old-fashioned prejudices, she
suddenly became aware that she did not like her daughter’s governess to
have a powdered face. Then she reflected that the girl who sat opposite
her was no longer Effie’s governess, but her own future daughter-in-law;
and she wondered whether Miss Viner had chosen this odd way of
celebrating her independence, and whether, as Mrs. Owen Leath, she would
present to the world a bedizened countenance. This idea was scarcely
less distasteful than the other, and for a moment Anna continued to
consider her without speaking. Then, in a flash, the truth came to her:
Miss Viner had powdered her face because Miss Viner had been crying.
Anna leaned forward impulsively. “My dear child, what’s the matter?”
She saw the girl’s blood rush up under the white mask, and hastened on:
“Please don’t be afraid to tell me. I do so want you to feel that you
can trust me as Owen does. And you know you mustn’t mind if, just at
first, Madame de Chantelle occasionally relapses.”
She spoke eagerly, persuasively, almost on a note of pleading. She had,
in truth, so many reasons for wanting Sophy to like her: her love for
Owen, her solicitude for Effie, and her own sense of the girl’s fine
mettle. She had always felt a romantic and almost humble admiration for
those members of her sex who, from force of will, or the constraint
of circumstances, had plunged into the conflict from which fate had
so persistently excluded her. There were even moments when she fancied
herself vaguely to blame for her immunity, and felt that she ought
somehow to have affronted the perils and hardships which refused to come
to her. And now, as she sat looking at Sophy Viner, so small, so slight,
so visibly defenceless and undone, she still felt, through all the
superiority of her worldly advantages and her seeming maturity, the same
odd sense of ignorance and inexperience. She could not have said what
there was in the girl’s manner and expression to give her this feeling,
but she was reminded, as she looked at Sophy Viner, of the other girls
she had known in her youth, the girls who seemed possessed of a secret
she had missed. Yes, Sophy Viner had their look--almost the obscurely
menacing look of Kitty Mayne...Anna, with an inward smile, brushed aside
the image of this forgotten rival. But she had felt, deep down, a
twinge of the old pain, and she was sorry that, even for the flash of
a thought, Owen’s betrothed should have reminded her of so different a
woman...
She laid her hand on the girl’s. “When his grandmother sees how happy
Owen is she’ll be quite happy herself. If it’s only that, don’t be
distressed. Just trust to Owen--and the future.”
Sophy Viner, with an almost imperceptible recoil of her whole slight
person, had drawn her hand from under the palm enclosing it.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about--the future.”
“Of course! We’ve all so many plans to make--and to fit into each
other’s. Please let’s begin with yours.”
The girl paused a moment, her hands clasped on the arms of her chair,
her lids dropped under Anna’s gaze; then she said: “I should like to
make no plans at all ... just yet...”
“No plans?”
“No--I should like to go away ... my friends the Farlows would let me go
to them...” Her voice grew firmer and she lifted her eyes to add: “I
should like to leave today, if you don’t mind.”
Anna listened with a rising wonder.
“You want to leave Givre at once?” She gave the idea a moment’s swift
consideration. “You prefer to be with your friends till your marriage?
I understand that--but surely you needn’t rush off today? There are so
many details to discuss; and before long, you know, I shall be going
away too.”
“Yes, I know.” The girl was evidently trying to steady her voice. “But I
should like to wait a few days--to have a little more time to myself.”
Anna continued to consider her kindly. It was evident that she did not
care to say why she wished to leave Givre so suddenly, but her disturbed
face and shaken voice betrayed a more pressing motive than the natural
desire to spend the weeks before her marriage under her old friends’
roof. Since she had made no response to the allusion to Madame de
Chantelle, Anna could but conjecture that she had had a passing
disagreement with Owen; and if this were so, random interference might
do more harm than good.
“My dear child, if you really want to go at once I sha’n’t, of course,
urge you to stay. I suppose you have spoken to Owen?”
“No. Not yet...”
Anna threw an astonished glance at her. “You mean to say you haven’t
told him?”
“I wanted to tell you first. I thought I ought to, on account of Effie.”
Her look cleared as she put forth this reason.
“Oh, Effie!--” Anna’s smile brushed away the scruple. “Owen has a right
to ask that you should consider him before you think of his sister...Of
course you shall do just as you wish,” she went on, after another
thoughtful interval.
“Oh, thank you,” Sophy Viner murmured and rose to her feet.
Anna rose also, vaguely seeking for some word that should break down the
girl’s resistance. “You’ll tell Owen at once?” she finally asked.
Miss Viner, instead of replying, stood before her in manifest
uncertainty, and as she did so there was a light tap on the door, and
Owen Leath walked into the room.
Anna’s first glance told her that his face was unclouded. He met her
greeting with his happiest smile and turned to lift Sophy’s hand to his
lips. The perception that he was utterly unconscious of any cause for
Miss Viner’s agitation came to his step-mother with a sharp thrill of
surprise.
“Darrow’s looking for you,” he said to her. “He asked me to remind you
that you’d promised to go for a walk with him.”
Anna glanced at the clock. “I’ll go down presently.” She waited and
looked again at Sophy Viner, whose troubled eyes seemed to commit their
message to her. “You’d better tell Owen, my dear.”
Owen’s look also turned on the girl. “Tell me what? Why, what’s
happened?”
Anna summoned a laugh to ease the vague tension of the moment. “Don’t
look so startled! Nothing, except that Sophy proposes to desert us for a
while for the Farlows.”
Owen’s brow cleared. “I was afraid she’d run off before long.” He
glanced at Anna. “Do please keep her here as long as you can!”
Sophy intervened: “Mrs. Leath’s already given me leave to go.”
“Already? To go when?”
“Today,” said Sophy in a low tone, her eyes on Anna’s.
“Today? Why on earth should you go today?” Owen dropped back a step or
two, flushing and paling under his bewildered frown. His eyes seemed to
search the girl more closely. “Something’s happened.” He too looked at
his step-mother. “I suppose she must have told you what it is?”
Anna was struck by the suddenness and vehemence of his appeal. It was as
though some smouldering apprehension had lain close under the surface of
his security.
“She’s told me nothing except that she wishes to be with her friends.
It’s quite natural that she should want to go to them.”
Owen visibly controlled himself. “Of course--quite natural.” He spoke
to Sophy. “But why didn’t you tell me so? Why did you come first to my
step-mother?”
Anna intervened with her calm smile. “That seems to me quite natural,
too. Sophy was considerate enough to tell me first because of Effie.”
He weighed it. “Very well, then: that’s quite natural, as you say. And
of course she must do exactly as she pleases.” He still kept his eyes on
the girl. “Tomorrow,” he abruptly announced, “I shall go up to Paris to
see you.”
“Oh, no--no!” she protested.
Owen turned back to Anna. “NOW do you say that nothing’s happened?”
Under the influence of his agitation Anna felt a vague tightening of
the heart. She seemed to herself like some one in a dark room about whom
unseen presences are groping.
“If it’s anything that Sophy wishes to tell you, no doubt she’ll do
so. I’m going down now, and I’ll leave you here to talk it over by
yourselves.”
As she moved to the door the girl caught up with her. “But there’s
nothing to tell: why should there be? I’ve explained that I simply want
to be quiet.” Her look seemed to detain Mrs. Leath.
Owen broke in: “Is that why I mayn’t go up tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow!”
“Then when may I?”
“Later ... in a little while ... a few days...”
“In how many days?” “Owen!” his step-mother interposed; but he seemed
no longer aware of her. “If you go away today, the day that our
engagement’s made known, it’s only fair,” he persisted, “that you should
tell me when I am to see you.”
Sophy’s eyes wavered between the two and dropped down wearily. “It’s you
who are not fair--when I’ve said I wanted to be quiet.”
“But why should my coming disturb you? I’m not asking now to come
tomorrow. I only ask you not to leave without telling me when I’m to see
you.”
“Owen, I don’t understand you!” his step-mother exclaimed.
“You don’t understand my asking for some explanation, some assurance,
when I’m left in this way, without a word, without a sign? All I ask her
to tell me is when she’ll see me.”
Anna turned back to Sophy Viner, who stood straight and tremulous
between the two.
“After all, my dear, he’s not unreasonable!”
“I’ll write--I’ll write,” the girl repeated.
“WHAT will you write?” he pressed her vehemently.
“Owen,” Anna exclaimed, “you are unreasonable!”
He turned from Sophy to his step-mother. “I only want her to say what
she means: that she’s going to write to break off our engagement. Isn’t
that what you’re going away for?”
Anna felt the contagion of his excitement. She looked at Sophy, who
stood motionless, her lips set, her whole face drawn to a silent fixity
of resistance.
“You ought to speak, my dear--you ought to answer him.”
“I only ask him to wait----”
“Yes,” Owen, broke in, “and you won’t say how long!”
Both instinctively addressed themselves to Anna, who stood, nearly as
shaken as themselves, between the double shock of their struggle. She
looked again from Sophy’s inscrutable eyes to Owen’s stormy features;
then she said: “What can I do, when there’s clearly something between
you that I don’t know about?”
“Oh, if it WERE between us! Can’t you see it’s outside of us--outside
of her, dragging at her, dragging her away from me?” Owen wheeled round
again upon his step-mother.
Anna turned from him to the girl. “Is it true that you want to break
your engagement? If you do, you ought to tell him now.”
Owen burst into a laugh. “She doesn’t dare to--she’s afraid I’ll guess
the reason!”
A faint sound escaped from Sophy’s lips, but she kept them close on
whatever answer she had ready.
“If she doesn’t wish to marry you, why should she be afraid to have you
know the reason?”
“She’s afraid to have YOU know it--not me!”
“To have ME know it?”
He laughed again, and Anna, at his laugh, felt a sudden rush of
indignation.
“Owen, you must explain what you mean!”
He looked at her hard before answering; then: “Ask Darrow!” he said.
“Owen--Owen!” Sophy Viner murmured.
XXIV
Anna stood looking from one to the other. It had become apparent to her
in a flash that Owen’s retort, though it startled Sophy, did not take
her by surprise; and the discovery shot its light along dark distances
of fear.
The immediate inference was that Owen had guessed the reason of Darrow’s
disapproval of his marriage, or that, at least, he suspected Sophy Viner
of knowing and dreading it. This confirmation of her own obscure
doubt sent a tremor of alarm through Anna. For a moment she felt like
exclaiming: “All this is really no business of mine, and I refuse to
have you mix me up in it--” but her secret fear held her fast.
Sophy Viner was the first to speak.
“I should like to go now,” she said in a low voice, taking a few steps
toward the door.
Her tone woke Anna to the sense of her own share in the situation.
“I quite agree with you, my dear, that it’s useless to carry on this
discussion. But since Mr. Darrow’s name has been brought into it, for
reasons which I fail to guess, I want to tell you that you’re both
mistaken if you think he’s not in sympathy with your marriage. If that’s
what Owen means to imply, the idea’s a complete delusion.”
She spoke the words deliberately and incisively, as if hoping that the
sound of their utterance would stifle 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 first evening she came, in the study; the next morning, early,
in the park; yesterday, again, in the spring-house, 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.”
Anna longed to silence him, but no words came to her. It was as though
all her confused apprehensions had suddenly taken definite shape. There
was “something”--yes, there was “something”...Darrow’s reticences and
evasions had been more than a figment 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
deflect 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 find
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 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 first 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 Effie, and Effie 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 first, 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 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 floor.”
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 flash 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?”
“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 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 influenced 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!”
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 vouchsafing an additional word of
explanation; then, before Anna could find 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.
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 definite break?” She perceived, as she spoke, that
his brow had cleared.
“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 influenced 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 confidential--almost
secret; and he draws the preposterous conclusion that you’ve used your
influence to turn her against him.”
“My influence? What kind of influence?”
“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!”
Anna felt her cheeks flush 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!”
“I don’t care a straw what he says of me! In such a situation a boy in
love will snatch at the most far-fetched reason rather than face the
mortifying fact that the lady may simply be tired of him.”
“You don t quite understand Owen. Things go deep with him, and last
long. It took him a long time to recover from his other unlucky love
affair. He’s romantic and extravagant: he can’t live on the interest
of his feelings. He worships Sophy and she seemed to be fond of him. If
she’s changed it’s been very sudden. And if they part like this, angrily
and inarticulately, it will hurt him horribly--hurt his very soul.
But that, as you say, is between the two. What concerns me is his
associating you with their quarrel. Owen’s like my own son--if you’d
seen him when I first came here you’d know why. We were like two
prisoners who talk to each other by tapping on the wall. He’s never
forgotten it, nor I. Whether he breaks with Sophy, or whether they make
it up, I can’t let him think you had anything to do with it.”
She raised her eyes entreatingly to Darrow’s, and read in them the
forbearance of the man resigned to the discussion of non-existent
problems.
“I’ll do whatever you want me to,” he said; “but I don’t yet know what
it is.”
His smile seemed to charge her with inconsequence, and the prick to her
pride made her continue: “After all, it’s not so unnatural that Owen,
knowing you and Sophy to be almost strangers, should wonder what you
were saying to each other when he saw you talking together.”
She felt a warning tremor as she spoke, as though some instinct deeper
than reason surged up in defense of its treasure. But Darrow’s face was
unstirred save by the flit of his half-amused smile.
“Well, my dear--and couldn’t you have told him?” “I?” she faltered out
through her blush.
“You seem to forget, one and all of you, the position you put me in when
I came down here: your appeal to me to see Owen through, your assurance
to him that I would, Madame de Chantelle’s attempt to win me over; and
most of all, my own sense of the fact you’ve just recalled to me: the
importance, for both of us, that Owen should like me. It seemed to me
that the first thing to do was to get as much light as I could on the
whole situation; and the obvious way of doing it was to try to know Miss
Viner better. Of course I’ve talked with her alone--I’ve talked with her
as often as I could. I’ve tried my best to find out if you were right in
encouraging Owen to marry her.”
She listened with a growing sense of reassurance, struggling to separate
the abstract sense of his words from the persuasion in which his eyes
and voice enveloped them.
“I see--I do see,” she murmured.
“You must see, also, that I could hardly say this to Owen without
offending him still more, and perhaps increasing the breach between Miss
Viner and himself. What sort of figure should I cut if I told him I’d
been trying to find out if he’d made a proper choice? In any case, it’s
none of my business to offer an explanation of what she justly says
doesn’t need one. If she declines to speak, it’s obviously on the ground
that Owen’s insinuations are absurd; and that surely pledges me to
silence.”
“Yes, yes! I see,” Anna repeated. “But I don’t want you to explain
anything to Owen.”
“You haven’t yet told me what you do want.”
She hesitated, conscious of the difficulty of justifying her request;
then: “I want you to speak to Sophy,” she said.
Darrow broke into an incredulous laugh. “Considering what my previous
attempts have resulted in----!”
She raised her eyes quickly. “They haven’t, at least, resulted in your
liking her less, in your thinking less well of her than you’ve told me?”
She fancied he frowned a little. “I wonder why you go back to that?”
“I want to be sure--I owe it to Owen. Won’t you tell me the exact
impression she’s produced on you?”
“I have told you--I like Miss Viner.”
“Do you still believe she’s in love with Owen?”
“There was nothing in our short talks to throw any particular light on
that.”
“You still believe, though, that there’s no reason why he shouldn’t
marry her?”
Again he betrayed a restrained impatience. “How can I answer that
without knowing her reasons for breaking with him?”
“That’s just what I want you to find out from her.”
“And why in the world should she tell me?”
“Because, whatever grievance she has against Owen, she can certainly
have none against me. She can’t want to have Owen connect me in his mind
with this wretched quarrel; and she must see that he will until he’s
convinced you’ve had no share in it.”
Darrow’s elbow dropped from the mantel-piece and he took a restless step
or two across the room. Then he halted before her.
“Why can’t you tell her this yourself?”
“Don’t you see?”
He eyed her intently, and she pressed on: “You must have guessed that
Owen’s jealous of you.”
“Jealous of me?” The blood flew up under his brown skin.
“Blind with it--what else would drive him to this folly? And I can’t
have her think me jealous too! I’ve said all I could, short of making
her think so; and she’s refused a word more to either of us. Our only
chance now is that she should listen to you--that you should make her
see the harm her silence may do.”
Darrow uttered a protesting exclamation. “It’s all too
preposterous--what you suggest! I can’t, at any rate, appeal to her on
such a ground as that!”
Anna laid her hand on his arm. “Appeal to her on the ground that I’m
almost Owen’s mother, and that any estrangement between you and him
would kill me. She knows what he is--she’ll understand. Tell her to say
anything, do anything, she wishes; but not to go away without speaking,
not to leave THAT between us when she goes!”
She drew back a step and lifted her face to his, trying to look into his
eyes more deeply than she had ever looked; but before she could discern
what they expressed he had taken hold of her hands and bent his head to
kiss them.
“You’ll see her? You’ll see her?” she entreated; and he answered: “I’ll
do anything in the world you want me to.”
XXVI
Darrow waited alone in the sitting-room.
No place could have been more distasteful as the scene of the talk that
lay before him; but he had acceded to Anna’s suggestion that it would
seem more natural for her to summon Sophy Viner than for him to go in
search of her. As his troubled pacings carried him back and forth a
relentless hand seemed to be tearing away all the tender fibres of
association that bound him to the peaceful room. Here, in this very
place, he had drunk his deepest draughts of happiness, had had his lips
at the fountain-head of its overflowing rivers; but now that source was
poisoned and he would taste no more of an untainted cup.
For a moment he felt an actual physical anguish; then his nerves
hardened for the coming struggle. He had no notion of what awaited him;
but after the first instinctive recoil he had seen in a flash the urgent
need of another word with Sophy Viner. He had been insincere in letting
Anna think that he had consented to speak because she asked it. In
reality he had been feverishly casting about for the pretext she had
given him; and for some reason this trivial hypocrisy weighed on him
more than all his heavy burden of deceit.
At length he heard a step behind him and Sophy Viner entered. When she
saw him she paused on the threshold and half drew back.
“I was told that Mrs. Leath had sent for me.”
“Mrs. Leath DID send for you. She’ll be here presently; but I asked her
to let me see you first.”
He spoke very gently, and there was no insincerity in his gentleness. He
was profoundly moved by the change in the girl’s appearance. At sight
of him she had forced a smile; but it lit up her wretchedness like a
candle-flame held to a dead face.
She made no reply, and Darrow went on: “You must understand my wanting
to speak to you, after what I was told just now.”
She interposed, with a gesture of protest: “I’m not responsible for
Owen’s ravings!”
“Of course----”. He broke off and they stood facing each other. She
lifted a hand and pushed back her loose lock with the gesture that was
burnt into his memory; then she looked about her and dropped into the
nearest chair.
“Well, you’ve got what you wanted,” she said.
“What do you mean by what I wanted?”
“My engagement’s broken--you heard me say so.”
“Why do you say that’s what I wanted? All I wished, from the beginning,
was to advise you, to help you as best I could----”
“That’s what you’ve done,” she rejoined. “You’ve convinced me that it’s
best I shouldn’t marry him.”
Darrow broke into a despairing laugh. “At the very moment when you’d
convinced me to the contrary!”
“Had I?” Her smile flickered up. “Well, I really believed it till you
showed me ... warned me...”
“Warned you?”
“That I’d be miserable if I married a man I didn’t love.”
“Don’t you love him?”
She made no answer, and Darrow started up and walked away to the
other end of the room. He stopped before the writing-table, where his
photograph, well-dressed, handsome, self-sufficient--the portrait of a
man of the world, confident of his ability to deal adequately with
the most delicate situations--offered its huge fatuity to his gaze. He
turned back to her. “It’s rather hard on Owen, isn’t it, that you should
have waited until now to tell him?”
She reflected a moment before answering. “I told him as soon as I knew.”
“Knew that you couldn’t marry him?”
“Knew that I could never live here with him.” She looked about the room,
as though the very walls must speak for her.
For a moment Darrow continued to search her face perplexedly; then their
eyes met in a long disastrous gaze.
“Yes----” she said, and stood up.
Below the window they heard Effie whistling for her dogs, and then, from
the terrace, her mother calling her.
“There--THAT for instance,” Sophy Viner said.
Darrow broke out: “It’s I who ought to go!”
She kept her small pale smile. “What good would that do any of us--now?”
He covered his face with his hands. “Good God!” he groaned. “How could I
tell?”
“You couldn’t tell. We neither of us could.” She seemed to turn the
problem over critically. “After all, it might have been YOU instead of
me!”
He took another distracted turn about the room and coming back to her
sat down in a chair at her side. A mocking hand seemed to dash the words
from his lips. There was nothing on earth that he could say to her that
wasn’t foolish or cruel or contemptible...
“My dear,” he began at last, “oughtn’t you, at any rate, to try?”
Her gaze grew grave. “Try to forget you?”
He flushed to the forehead. “I meant, try to give Owen more time; to
give him a chance. He’s madly in love with you; all the good that’s in
him is in your hands. His step-mother felt that from the first. And she
thought--she believed----”
“She thought I could make him happy. Would she think so now?”
“Now...? I don’t say now. But later? Time modifies ... rubs out ... more
quickly than you think...Go away, but let him hope...I’m going
too--WE’RE going--” he stumbled on the plural--“in a very few weeks:
going for a long time, probably. What you’re thinking of now may never
happen. We may not all be here together again for years.”
She heard him out in silence, her hands clasped on her knee, her eyes
bent on them. “For me,” she said, “you’ll always be here.”
“Don’t say that--oh, don’t! Things change ... people change...You’ll see!”
“You don’t understand. I don’t want anything to change. I don’t want to
forget--to rub out. At first I imagined I did; but that was a foolish
mistake. As soon as I saw you again I knew it... It’s not being here
with you that I’m afraid of--in the sense you think. It’s being here, or
anywhere, with Owen.” She stood up and bent her tragic smile on him. “I
want to keep you all to myself.”
The only words that came to him were futile denunciations of his
folly; but the sense of their futility checked them on his lips. “Poor
child--you poor child!” he heard himself vainly repeating.
Suddenly he felt the strong reaction of reality and its impetus brought
him to his feet. “Whatever happens, I intend to go--to go for good,”
he exclaimed. “I want you to understand that. Oh, don’t be afraid--I’ll
find a reason. But it’s perfectly clear that I must go.”
She uttered a protesting cry. “Go away? You? Don’t you see that that
would tell everything--drag everybody into the horror?”
He found no answer, and her voice dropped back to its calmer note. “What
good would your going do? Do you suppose it would change anything for
me?” She looked at him with a musing wistfulness. “I wonder what your
feeling for me was? It seems queer that I’ve never really known--I
suppose we DON’T know much about that kind of feeling. Is it like taking
a drink when you’re thirsty?... I used to feel as if all of me was in the
palm of your hand...”
He bowed his humbled head, but she went on almost exultantly: “Don’t for
a minute think I’m sorry! It was worth every penny it cost. My mistake
was in being ashamed, just at first, of its having cost such a lot.
I tried to carry it off as a joke--to talk of it to myself as an
‘adventure’. I’d always wanted adventures, and you’d given me one, and
I tried to take your attitude about it, to ‘play the game’ and convince
myself that I hadn’t risked any more on it than you. Then, when I met
you again, I suddenly saw that I HAD risked more, but that I’d won more,
too--such worlds! I’d been trying all the while to put everything I
could between us; now I want to sweep everything away. I’d been trying
to forget how you looked; now I want to remember you always. I’d been
trying not to hear your voice; now I never want to hear any other. I’ve
made my choice--that’s all: I’ve had you and I mean to keep you.” Her
face was shining like her eyes. “To keep you hidden away here,” she
ended, and put her hand upon her breast.
After she had left him, Darrow continued to sit motionless, staring back
into their past. Hitherto it had lingered on the edge of his mind in a
vague pink blur, like one of the little rose-leaf clouds that a setting
sun drops from its disk. Now it was a huge looming darkness, through
which his eyes vainly strained. The whole episode was still obscure to
him, save where here and there, as they talked, some phrase or gesture
or intonation of the girl’s had lit up a little spot in the night.
She had said: “I wonder what your feeling for me was?” and he found
himself wondering too...He remembered distinctly enough that he had not
meant the perilous passion--even in its most transient form--to play
a part in their relation. In that respect his attitude had been above
reproach. She was an unusually original and attractive creature, to whom
he had wanted to give a few days of harmless pleasuring, and who was
alert and expert enough to understand his intention and spare him the
boredom of hesitations and misinterpretations. That had been his first
impression, and her subsequent demeanour had justified it. She had been,
from the outset, just the frank and easy comrade he had expected to find
her. Was it he, then, who, in the sequel, had grown impatient of the
bounds he had set himself? Was it his wounded vanity that, seeking
balm for its hurt, yearned to dip deeper into the healing pool of her
compassion? In his confused memory of the situation he seemed not to
have been guiltless of such yearnings...Yet for the first few days
the experiment had been perfectly successful. Her enjoyment had been
unclouded and his pleasure in it undisturbed. It was very gradually--he
seemed to see--that a shade of lassitude had crept over their
intercourse. Perhaps it was because, when her light chatter about people
failed, he found she had no other fund to draw on, or perhaps simply
because of the sweetness of her laugh, or of the charm of the gesture
with which, one day in the woods of Marly, she had tossed off her hat
and tilted back her head at the call of a cuckoo; or because, whenever
he looked at her unexpectedly, he found that she was looking at him and
did not want him to know it; or perhaps, in varying degrees, because of
all these things, that there had come a moment when no word seemed to
fly high enough or dive deep enough to utter the sense of well-being
each gave to the other, and the natural substitute for speech had been a
kiss.
The kiss, at all events, had come at the precise moment to save their
venture from disaster. They had reached the point when her amazing
reminiscences had begun to flag, when her future had been exhaustively
discussed, her theatrical prospects minutely studied, her quarrel with
Mrs. Murrett retold with the last amplification of detail, and when,
perhaps conscious of her exhausted resources and his dwindling interest,
she had committed the fatal error of saying that she could see he was
unhappy, and entreating him to tell her why...
From the brink of estranging confidences, and from the risk of
unfavourable comparisons, his gesture had snatched her back to safety;
and as soon as he had kissed her he felt that she would never bore him
again. She was one of the elemental creatures whose emotion is all in
their pulses, and who become inexpressive or sentimental when they
try to turn sensation into speech. His caress had restored her to her
natural place in the scheme of things, and Darrow felt as if he had
clasped a tree and a nymph had bloomed from it...
The mere fact of not having to listen to her any longer added immensely
to her charm. She continued, of course, to talk to him, but it didn’t
matter, because he no longer made any effort to follow her words, but
let her voice run on as a musical undercurrent to his thoughts.
She hadn’t a drop of poetry in her, but she had some of the qualities
that create it in others; and in moments of heat the imagination does
not always feel the difference...
Lying beside her in the shade, Darrow felt her presence as a part of
the charmed stillness of the summer woods, as the element of vague
well-being that suffused his senses and lulled to sleep the ache of
wounded pride. All he asked of her, as yet, was a touch on the hand or
on the lips--and that she should let him go on lying there through the
long warm hours, while a black-bird’s song throbbed like a fountain, and
the summer wind stirred in the trees, and close by, between the nearest
branches and the brim of his tilted hat, a slight white figure gathered
up all the floating threads of joy...
He recalled, too, having noticed, as he lay staring at a break in the
tree-tops, a stream of mares’-tails coming up the sky. He had said to
himself: “It will rain to-morrow,” and the thought had made the air seem
warmer and the sun more vivid on her hair...Perhaps if the mares’-tails
had not come up the sky their adventure might have had no sequel. But
the cloud brought rain, and next morning he looked out of his window
into a cold grey blur. They had planned an all-day excursion down the
Seine, to the two Andelys and Rouen, and now, with the long hours on
their hands, they were both a little at a loss...There was the Louvre,
of course, and the Luxembourg; but he had tried looking at pictures with
her, she had first so persistently admired the worst things, and then
so frankly lapsed into indifference, that he had no wish to repeat
the experiment. So they went out, aimlessly, and took a cold wet walk,
turning at length into the deserted arcades of the Palais Royal, and
finally drifting into one of its equally deserted restaurants, where
they lunched alone and somewhat dolefully, served by a wan old waiter
with the look of a castaway who has given up watching for a sail... It
was odd how the waiter’s face came back to him...
Perhaps but for the rain it might never have happened; but what was
the use of thinking of that now? He tried to turn his thoughts to more
urgent issues; but, by a strange perversity of association, every detail
of the day was forcing itself on his mind with an insistence from which
there was no escape. Reluctantly he relived the long wet walk back
to the hotel, after a tedious hour at a cinematograph show on the
Boulevard. It was still raining when they withdrew from this stale
spectacle, but she had obstinately refused to take a cab, had even,
on the way, insisted on loitering under the dripping awnings of
shop-windows and poking into draughty passages, and finally, when they
had nearly reached their destination, had gone so far as to suggest that
they should turn back to hunt up some show she had heard of in a theatre
at the Batignolles. But at that he had somewhat irritably protested: he
remembered that, for the first time, they were both rather irritable,
and vaguely disposed to resist one another’s suggestions. His feet
were wet, and he was tired of walking, and sick of the smell of stuffy
unaired theatres, and he had said he must really get back to write some
letters--and so they had kept on to the hotel...
XXVII
Darrow had no idea how long he had sat there when he heard Anna’s hand
on the door. The effort of rising, and of composing his face to meet
her, gave him a factitious sense of self-control. He said to himself: “I
must decide on something----” and that lifted him a hair’s breadth above
the whirling waters.
She came in with a lighter step, and he instantly perceived that
something unforeseen and reassuring had happened.
“She’s been with me. She came and found me on the terrace. We’ve had a
long talk and she’s explained everything. I feel as if I’d never known
her before!”
Her voice was so moved and tender that it checked his start of
apprehension.
“She’s explained----?”
“It’s natural, isn’t it, that she should have felt a little sore at the
kind of inspection she’s been subjected to? Oh, not from you--I don’t
mean that! But Madame de Chantelle’s opposition--and her sending for
Adelaide Painter! She told me frankly she didn’t care to owe her husband
to Adelaide Painter...She thinks now that her annoyance at feeling
herself so talked over and scrutinized may have shown itself in her
manner to Owen, and set him imagining the insane things he did...I
understand all she must have felt, and I agree with her that it’s best
she should go away for a while. She’s made me,” Anna summed up, “feel as
if I’d been dreadfully thick-skinned and obtuse!”
“YOU?”
“Yes. As if I’d treated her like the bric-a-brac that used to be sent
down here ‘on approval,’ to see if it would look well with the other
pieces.” She added, with a sudden flush of enthusiasm: “I’m glad she’s
got it in her to make one feel like that!”
She seemed to wait for Darrow to agree with her, or to put some other
question, and he finally found voice to ask: “Then you think it’s not a
final break?”
“I hope not--I’ve never hoped it more! I had a word with Owen, too,
after I left her, and I think he understands that he must let her go
without insisting on any positive promise. She’s excited ... he must let
her calm down...”
Again she waited, and Darrow said: “Surely you can make him see that.”
“She’ll help me to--she’s to see him, of course, before she goes. She
starts immediately, by the way, with Adelaide Painter, who is motoring
over to Francheuil to catch the one o’clock express--and who, of course,
knows nothing of all this, and is simply to be told that Sophy has been
sent for by the Farlows.”
Darrow mutely signed his comprehension, and she went on: “Owen is
particularly anxious that neither Adelaide nor his grandmother should
have the least inkling of what’s happened. The need of shielding Sophy
will help him to control himself. He’s coming to his senses, poor boy;
he’s ashamed of his wild talk already. He asked me to tell you so; no
doubt he’ll tell you so himself.”
Darrow made a movement of protest. “Oh, as to that--the thing’s not
worth another word.”
“Or another thought, either?” She brightened. “Promise me you won’t even
think of it--promise me you won’t be hard on him!”
He was finding it easier to smile back at her. “Why should you think it
necessary to ask my indulgence for Owen?”
She hesitated a moment, her eyes wandering from him. Then they came back
with a smile. “Perhaps because I need it for myself.”
“For yourself?”
“I mean, because I understand better how one can torture one’s self over
unrealities.”
As Darrow listened, the tension of his nerves began to relax. Her gaze,
so grave and yet so sweet, was like a deep pool into which he could
plunge and hide himself from the hard glare of his misery. As this
ecstatic sense enveloped him he found it more and more difficult to
follow her words and to frame an answer; but what did anything matter,
except that her voice should go on, and the syllables fall like soft
touches on his tortured brain?
“Don’t you know,” she continued, “the bliss of waking from a bad dream
in one’s own quiet room, and going slowly over all the horror without
being afraid of it any more? That’s what I’m doing now. And that’s why
I understand Owen...” She broke off, and he felt her touch on his arm.
“BECAUSE I’D DREAMED THE HORROR TOO!”
He understood her then, and stammered: “You?”
“Forgive me! And let me tell you!... It will help you to understand
Owen...There WERE little things ... little signs ... once I had begun to
watch for them: your reluctance to speak about her ... her reserve with
you ... a sort of constraint we’d never seen in her before...”
She laughed up at him, and with her hands in his he contrived to say:
“NOW you understand why?”
“Oh, I understand; of course I understand; and I want you to laugh
at me--with me! Because there were other things too ... crazier things
still...There was even--last night on the terrace--her pink cloak...”
“Her pink cloak?” Now he honestly wondered, and as she saw it she
blushed.
“You’ve forgotten about the cloak? The pink cloak that Owen saw you with
at the play in Paris? Yes ... yes...I was mad enough for that!... It does
me good to laugh about it now! But you ought to know that I’m going
to be a jealous woman ... a ridiculously jealous woman ... you ought to be
warned of it in time...”
He had dropped her hands, and she leaned close and lifted her arms to
his neck with one of her rare gestures of surrender.
“I don’t know why it is; but it makes me happier now to have been so
foolish!”
Her lips were parted in a noiseless laugh and the tremor of her lashes
made their shadow move on her cheek. He looked at her through a mist of
pain and saw all her offered beauty held up like a cup to his lips; but
as he stooped to it a darkness seemed to fall between them, her arms
slipped from his shoulders and she drew away from him abruptly.
“But she WAS with you, then?” she exclaimed; and then, as he stared at
her: “Oh, don’t say no! Only go and look at your eyes!”
He stood speechless, and she pressed on: “Don’t deny it--oh, don’t deny
it! What will be left for me to imagine if you do? Don’t you see how
every single thing cries it out? Owen sees it--he saw it again just now!
When I told him she’d relented, and would see him, he said: ‘Is that
Darrow’s doing too?’”
Darrow took the onslaught in silence. He might have spoken, have
summoned up the usual phrases of banter and denial; he was not even
certain that they might not, for the moment, have served their purpose
if he could have uttered them without being seen. But he was as
conscious of what had happened to his face as if he had obeyed Anna’s
bidding and looked at himself in the glass. He knew he could no more
hide from her what was written there than he could efface from his soul
the fiery record of what he had just lived through. There before him,
staring him in the eyes, and reflecting itself in all his lineaments,
was the overwhelming fact of Sophy Viner’s passion and of the act by
which she had attested it.
Anna was talking again, hurriedly, feverishly, and his soul was wrung
by the anguish in her voice. “Do speak at last--you must speak! I don’t
want to ask you to harm the girl; but you must see that your silence
is doing her more harm than your answering my questions could. You’re
leaving me only the worst things to think of her ... she’d see that
herself 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 add; then she said: “But the Farlows DID know; they told
me all about it when they sent her to me.”
He flushed 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
trifle 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 fib 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?”
“Let things take their course. After all, it’s between herself and
Owen.”
“And you and me--and Effie, 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 find 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 find 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, 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
under-surface, 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.
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 first, 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 with him, and on meeting him
again had been suddenly overmastered by her passion. Anna, dropping back
into her sofa-corner, 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 first to him--she was bound to protect him not only from all
knowledge of the secret she had surprised, but also--and chiefly!--from
its consequences. Yes: the girl must go--there could be no doubt of
it--Darrow himself had seen it from the first; 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 an hour. Once she was
gone, it would be easier to bring Owen to the point of understanding
that the break was final; 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 first 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 difficult
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!”
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 perplexities. 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 definitely 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 reflection 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 find out----” yet everything in her recoiled from the means by
which she felt it must be done...
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 first time, not as Effie’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 flash 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 good-bye 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 first with me...”
Sophy was looking at her steadily. “I supposed it was the only one that
counted with you.”
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 defiance 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 difficulty that seems to have arisen between you. The
fact that you felt it required thinking over seemed to show you wouldn’t
take the final 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?”
Anna continued to look at her gravely. “Do you love some one else?” she
asked.
Sophy’s first 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.”
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
Effie.”
“Oh----” it broke in a cry from Effie’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 flushed 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 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 flung 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.
XXIX
Her first 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, justification, anything that should open some
channel of escape to the flood of her pent-up anguish.
She had told Owen she was tired, and this seemed a sufficient reason for
remaining upstairs when the motor came to the door and Miss Painter and
Sophy Viner were borne off in it; sufficient 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 flocked
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 this fiery rack of the irreparable. She had suffered
before--yes, but lucidly, reflectively, elegiacally: now she was
suffering as a hurt animal must, blindly, furiously, with the single
fierce 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 first, 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.”
At the direct affirmation he turned even paler, and his eyes, which he
kept resolutely fixed 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 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 firm: 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 that his nearness, his look, his
voice, and all the unseen influences that flowed 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?”
“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 be
of use to. That, I swear to you, was the way it began. The rest was a
moment’s folly ... a flash of madness ... as such things are. We’ve never
seen each other since...”
Anna was looking at him coldly. “You sufficiently describe her in saying
that!”
“Yes, if you measure her by conventional standards--which is what you
always declare you never do.”
“Conventional standards? A girl who----” She was checked by a sudden
rush of almost physical repugnance. Suddenly she broke out: “I always
thought her an adventuress!”
“Always?”
“I don’t mean always ... but after you came...”
“She’s not an adventuress.”
“You mean that she professes to act on the new theories? The stuff that
awful women rave about on platforms?”
“Oh, I don’t think she pretended to have a theory----”
“She hadn’t even that excuse?”
“She had the excuse of her loneliness, her unhappiness--of miseries and
humiliations that a woman like you can’t even guess. She had nothing to
look back to but indifference or unkindness--nothing to look forward to
but anxiety. She saw I was sorry for her and it touched her. She made
too much of it--she exaggerated it. I ought to have seen the danger, but
I didn’t. There’s no possible excuse for what I did.”
Anna listened to him in speechless misery. Every word he spoke threw
back a disintegrating light on their own past. He had come to her with
an open face and a clear conscience--come to her from this! If his
security was the security of falsehood it was horrible; if it meant that
he had forgotten, it was worse. She would have liked to stop her ears,
to close her eyes, to shut out every sight and sound and suggestion of
a world in which such things could be; and at the same time she was
tormented by the desire to know more, to understand better, to feel
herself less ignorant and inexpert in matters which made so much of
the stuff of human experience. What did he mean by “a moment’s folly, a
flash of madness”? How did people enter on such adventures, how pass
out of them without more visible traces of their havoc? Her imagination
recoiled from the vision of a sudden debasing familiarity: it seemed to
her that her thoughts would never again be pure...
“I swear to you,” she heard Darrow saying, “it was simply that, and
nothing more.”
She wondered at his composure, his competence, at his knowing so exactly
what to say. No doubt men often had to make such explanations: they had
the formulas by heart...A leaden lassitude descended on her. She passed
from flame and torment into a colourless cold world where everything
surrounding her seemed equally indifferent and remote. For a moment she
simply ceased to feel.
She became aware that Darrow was waiting for her to speak, and she made
an effort to represent to herself the meaning of what he had just said;
but her mind was as blank as a blurred mirror. Finally she brought out:
“I don’t think I understand what you’ve told me.”
“No; you don’t understand,” he returned with sudden bitterness; and on
his lips the charge of incomprehension seemed an offense to her.
“I don’t want to--about such things!”
He answered almost harshly: “Don’t be afraid ... you never will...”
and for an instant they faced each other like enemies. Then the tears
swelled in her throat at his reproach.
“You mean I don’t feel things--I’m too hard?”
“No: you’re too high ... too fine ... such things are too far from you.”
He paused, as if conscious of the futility of going on with whatever
he had meant to say, and again, for a short space, they confronted
each other, no longer as enemies--so it seemed to her--but as beings of
different language who had forgotten the few words they had learned of
each other’s speech.
Darrow broke the silence. “It’s best, on all accounts, that I should
stay till tomorrow; but I needn’t intrude on you; we needn’t meet again
alone. I only want to be sure I know your wishes.” He spoke the short
sentences in a level voice, as though he were summing up the results of
a business conference.
Anna looked at him vaguely. “My wishes?”
“As to Owen----”
At that she started. “They must never meet again!”
“It’s not likely they will. What I meant was, that it depends on you to
spare him...”
She answered steadily: “He shall never know,” and after another interval
Darrow said: “This is good-bye, then.”
At the word she seemed to understand for the first time whither the
flying moments had been leading them. Resentment and indignation died
down, and all her consciousness resolved itself into the mere visual
sense that he was there before her, near enough for her to lift her
hand and touch him, and that in another instant the place where he stood
would be empty.
She felt a mortal weakness, a craven impulse to cry out to him to stay,
a longing to throw herself into his arms, and take refuge there from the
unendurable anguish he had caused her. Then the vision called up another
thought: “I shall never know what that girl has known...” and the recoil
of pride flung her back on the sharp edges of her anguish.
“Good-bye,” she said, in dread lest he should read her face; and she
stood motionless, her head high, while he walked to the door and went
out.