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BOOK II: CHAPTER XVI
In the oak room he found Mrs. Leath, her mother-in-law and
Effie. The group, as he came toward it down the long
drawing-rooms, composed itself prettily about the tea-table.
The lamps and the fire crossed their gleams on silver and
porcelain, on the bright haze of Effie's hair and on the
whiteness of Anna's forehead, as she leaned back in her
chair behind the tea-urn.
She did not move at Darrow's approach, but lifted to him a
deep gaze of peace and confidence. The look seemed to throw
about him the spell of a divine security: he felt the joy of
a convalescent suddenly waking to find the sunlight on his
face.
Madame de Chantelle, across her knitting, discoursed of
their afternoon's excursion, with occasional pauses induced
by the hypnotic effect of the fresh air; and Effie,
kneeling, on the hearth, softly but insistently sought to
implant in her terrier's mind some notion of the relation
between a vertical attitude and sugar.
Darrow took a chair behind the little girl, so that he might
look across at her mother. It was almost a necessity for
him, at the moment, to let his eyes rest on Anna's face, and
to meet, now and then, the proud shyness of her gaze.
Madame de Chantelle presently enquired what had become of
Owen, and a moment later the window behind her opened, and
her grandson, gun in hand, came in from the terrace. As he
stood there in the lamp-light, with dead leaves and bits of
bramble clinging to his mud-spattered clothes, the scent of
the night about him and its chill on his pale bright face,
he really had the look of a young faun strayed in from the
forest.
Effie abandoned the terrier to fly to him. "Oh, Owen, where
in the world have you been? I walked miles and miles with
Nurse and couldn't find you, and we met Jean and he said he
didn't know where you'd gone."
"Nobody knows where I go, or what I see when I get there--
that's the beauty of it!" he laughed back at her. "But if
you're good," he added, "I'll tell you about it one of these
days."
"Oh, now, Owen, now! I don't really believe I'll ever be
much better than I am now."
"Let Owen have his tea first," her mother suggested; but the
young man, declining the offer, propped his gun against the
wall, and, lighting a cigarette, began to pace up and down
the room in a way that reminded Darrow of his own caged
wanderings. Effie pursued him with her blandishments, and
for a while he poured out to her a low-voiced stream of
nonsense; then he sat down beside his step-mother and leaned
over to help himself to tea.
"Where's Miss Viner?" he asked, as Effie climbed up on him.
"Why isn't she here to chain up this ungovernable infant?"
"Poor Miss Viner has a headache. Effie says she went to her
room as soon as lessons were over, and sent word that she
wouldn't be down for tea."
"Ah," said Owen, abruptly setting down his cup. He stood
up, lit another cigarette, and wandered away to the piano in
the room beyond.
From the twilight where he sat a lonely music, borne on
fantastic chords, floated to the group about the tea-table.
Under its influence Madame de Chantelle's meditative pauses
increased in length and frequency, and Effie stretched
herself on the hearth, her drowsy head against the dog.
Presently her nurse appeared, and Anna rose at the same
time. "Stop a minute in my sitting-room on your way up,"
she paused to say to Darrow as she went.
A few hours earlier, her request would have brought him
instantly to his feet. She had given him, on the day of his
arrival, an inviting glimpse of the spacious book-lined room
above stairs in which she had gathered together all the
tokens of her personal tastes: the retreat in which, as one
might fancy, Anna Leath had hidden the restless ghost of
Anna Summers; and the thought of a talk with her there had
been in his mind ever since. But now he sat motionless, as
if spell-bound by the play of Madame de Chantelle's needles
and the pulsations of Owen's fitful music.
"She will want to ask me about the girl," he repeated to
himself, with a fresh sense of the insidious taint that
embittered all his thoughts; the hand of the slender-
columned clock on the mantel-piece had spanned a half-hour
before shame at his own indecision finally drew him to his
feet.
From her writing-table, where she sat over a pile of
letters, Anna lifted her happy smile. The impulse to press
his lips to it made him come close and draw her upward. She
threw her head back, as if surprised at the abruptness of
the gesture; then her face leaned to his with the slow droop
of a flower. He felt again the sweep of the secret tides,
and all his fears went down in them.
She sat down in the sofa-corner by the fire and he drew an
armchair close to her. His gaze roamed peacefully about the
quiet room.
"It's just like you--it is you," he said, as his eyes came
back to her.
"It's a good place to be alone in--I don't think I've ever
before cared to talk with any one here."
"Let's be quiet, then: it's the best way of talking."
"Yes; but we must save it up till later. There are things I
want to say to you now."
He leaned back in his chair. "Say them, then, and I'll
listen."
"Oh, no. I want you to tell me about Miss Viner."
"About Miss Viner?" He summoned up a look of faint
interrogation.
He thought she seemed surprised at his surprise. "It's
important, naturally," she explained, "that I should find
out all I can about her before I leave."
"Important on Effie's account?"
"On Effie's account--of course."
"Of course...But you've every reason to be satisfied,
haven't you?"
"Every apparent reason. We all like her. Effie's very fond
of her, and she seems to have a delightful influence on the
child. But we know so little, after all--about her
antecedents, I mean, and her past history. That's why I
want you to try and recall everything you heard about her
when you used to see her in London."
"Oh, on that score I'm afraid I sha'n't be of much use. As I
told you, she was a mere shadow in the background of the
house I saw her in--and that was four or five years ago..."
"When she was with a Mrs. Murrett?"
"Yes; an appalling woman who runs a roaring dinner-factory
that used now and then to catch me in its wheels. I escaped
from them long ago; but in my time there used to be half a
dozen fagged 'hands' to tend the machine, and Miss Viner was
one of them. I'm glad she's out of it, poor girl!"
"Then you never really saw anything of her there?"
"I never had the chance. Mrs. Murrett discouraged any
competition on the part of her subordinates."
"Especially such pretty ones, I suppose?" Darrow made no
comment, and she continued: "And Mrs. Murrett's own opinion
--if she'd offered you one--probably wouldn't have been of
much value?"
"Only in so far as her disapproval would, on general
principles, have been a good mark for Miss Viner. But
surely," he went on after a pause, "you could have found out
about her from the people through whom you first heard of
her?"
Anna smiled. "Oh, we heard of her through Adelaide Painter
--;" and in reply to his glance of interrogation she
explained that the lady in question was a spinster of South
Braintree, Massachusetts, who, having come to Paris some
thirty years earlier, to nurse a brother through an illness,
had ever since protestingly and provisionally camped there
in a state of contemptuous protestation oddly manifested by
her never taking the slip-covers off her drawing-room
chairs. Her long residence on Gallic soil had not mitigated
her hostility toward the creed and customs of the race, but
though she always referred to the Catholic Church as the
Scarlet Woman and took the darkest views of French private
life, Madame de Chantelle placed great reliance on her
judgment and experience, and in every domestic crisis the
irreducible Adelaide was immediately summoned to Givre.
"It's all the odder because my mother-in-law, since her
second marriage, has lived so much in the country that she's
practically lost sight of all her other American friends.
Besides which, you can see how completely she has identified
herself with Monsieur de Chantelle's nationality and adopted
French habits and prejudices. Yet when anything goes wrong
she always sends for Adelaide Painter, who's more American
than the Stars and Stripes, and might have left South
Braintree yesterday, if she hadn't, rather, brought it over
with her in her trunk."
Darrow laughed. "Well, then, if South Braintree vouches for
Miss Viner----"
"Oh, but only indirectly. When we had that odious adventure
with Mademoiselle Grumeau, who'd been so highly recommended
by Monsieur de Chantelle's aunt, the Chanoinesse, Adelaide
was of course sent for, and she said at once: 'I'm not the
least bit surprised. I've always told you that what you
wanted for Effie was a sweet American girl, and not one of
these nasty foreigners.' Unluckily she couldn't, at the
moment, put her hand on a sweet American; but she presently
heard of Miss Viner through the Farlows, an excellent couple
who live in the Quartier Latin and write about French life
for the American papers. I was only too thankful to find
anyone who was vouched for by decent people; and so far I've
had no cause to regret my choice. But I know, after all,
very little about Miss Viner; and there are all kinds of
reasons why I want, as soon as possible, to find out more--
to find out all I can."
"Since you've got to leave Effie I understand your feeling
in that way. But is there, in such a case, any
recommendation worth half as much as your own direct
experience?"
"No; and it's been so favourable that I was ready to accept
it as conclusive. Only, naturally, when I found you'd known
her in London I was in hopes you'd give me some more
specific reasons for liking her as much as I do."
"I'm afraid I can give you nothing more specific than my
general vague impression that she seems very plucky and
extremely nice."
"You don't, at any rate, know anything specific to the
contrary?"
"To the contrary? How should I? I'm not conscious of ever
having heard any one say two words about her. I only infer
that she must have pluck and character to have stuck it out
so long at Mrs. Murrett's."
"Yes, poor thing! She has pluck, certainly; and pride, too;
which must have made it all the harder." Anna rose to her
feet. "You don't know how glad I am that your impression's
on the whole so good. I particularly wanted you to like
her."
He drew her to him with a smile. "On that condition I'm
prepared to love even Adelaide Painter."
"I almost hope you wont have the chance to--poor Adelaide!
Her appearance here always coincides with a catastrophe."
"Oh, then I must manage to meet her elsewhere." He held Anna
closer, saying to himself, as he smoothed back the hair from
her forehead: "What does anything matter but just THIS?
--Must I go now?" he added aloud.
She answered absently: "It must be time to dress"; then she
drew back a little and laid her hands on his shoulders. "My
love--oh, my dear love!" she said.
It came to him that they were the first words of endearment
he had heard her speak, and their rareness gave them a magic
quality of reassurance, as though no danger could strike
through such a shield.
A knock on the door made them draw apart. Anna lifted her
hand to her hair and Darrow stooped to examine a photograph
of Effie on the writing-table.
"Come in!" Anna said.
The door opened and Sophy Viner entered. Seeing Darrow, she
drew back.
"Do come in, Miss Viner," Anna repeated, looking at her
kindly.
The girl, a quick red in her cheeks, still hesitated on the
threshold.
"I'm so sorry; but Effie has mislaid her Latin grammar, and
I thought she might have left it here. I need it to prepare
for tomorrow's lesson."
"Is this it?" Darrow asked, picking up a book from the
table.
"Oh, thank you!"
He held it out to her and she took it and moved to the door.
"Wait a minute, please, Miss Viner," Anna said; and as the
girl turned back, she went on with her quiet smile: "Effie
told us you'd gone to your room with a headache. You mustn't
sit up over tomorrow's lessons if you don't feel well."
Sophy's blush deepened. "But you see I have to. Latin's one
of my weak points, and there's generally only one page of
this book between me and Effie." She threw the words off
with a half-ironic smile. "Do excuse my disturbing you,"
she added.
"You didn't disturb me," Anna answered. Darrow perceived
that she was looking intently at the girl, as though struck
by something tense and tremulous in her face, her voice, her
whole mien and attitude. "You DO look tired. You'd
much better go straight to bed. Effie won't be sorry to skip
her Latin."
"Thank you--but I'm really all right," murmured Sophy Viner.
Her glance, making a swift circuit of the room, dwelt for an
appreciable instant on the intimate propinquity of arm-chair
and sofa-corner; then she turned back to the door.
Content of BOOK II: CHAPTER XVI [Edith Wharton's novel: The Reef]
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