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BOOK IV: CHAPTER 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.
Content of BOOK IV: CHAPTER XXVIII [Edith Wharton's novel: The Reef]
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