IX
The light of the October afternoon lay on an old high-roofed house whichenclosed in its long expanse of brick and yellowish stone the breadth ofa grassy court filled with the shadow and sound of limes.
From the escutcheoned piers at the entrance of the court a level drive,also shaded by limes, extended to a white-barred gate beyond whichan equally level avenue of grass, cut through a wood, dwindled to ablue-green blur against a sky banked with still white slopes of cloud.
In the court, half-way between house and drive, a lady stood. She helda parasol above her head, and looked now at the house-front, with itsdouble flight of steps meeting before a glazed door under sculpturedtrophies, now down the drive toward the grassy cutting through the wood.Her air was less of expectancy than of contemplation: she seemed not somuch to be watching for any one, or listening for an approaching sound,as letting the whole aspect of the place sink into her while she heldherself open to its influence. Yet it was no less apparent that thescene was not new to her. There was no eagerness of investigation in hersurvey: she seemed rather to be looking about her with eyes to which,for some intimate inward reason, details long since familiar hadsuddenly acquired an unwonted freshness.
This was in fact the exact sensation of which Mrs. Leath was consciousas she came forth from the house and descended into the sunlit court.She had come to meet her step-son, who was likely to be returningat that hour from an afternoon's shooting in one of the more distantplantations, and she carried in her hand the letter which had sent herin search of him; but with her first step out of the house all thoughtof him had been effaced by another series of impressions.
The scene about her was known to satiety. She had seen Givre at allseasons of the year, and for the greater part of every year, since thefar-off day of her marriage; the day when, ostensibly driving throughits gates at her husband's side, she had actually been carried there ona cloud of iris-winged visions.
The possibilities which the place had then represented were stillvividly present to her. The mere phrase "a French chateau" had calledup to her youthful fancy a throng of romantic associations, poetic,pictorial and emotional; and the serene face of the old house seated inits park among the poplar-bordered meadows of middle France, hadseemed, on her first sight of it, to hold out to her a fate as noble anddignified as its own mien.
Though she could still call up that phase of feeling it had long sincepassed, and the house had for a time become to her the very symbolof narrowness and monotony. Then, with the passing of years, it hadgradually acquired a less inimical character, had become, not again acastle of dreams, evoker of fair images and romantic legend, but theshell of a life slowly adjusted to its dwelling: the place one came backto, the place where one had one's duties, one's habits and one's books,the place one would naturally live in till one died: a dull house, aninconvenient house, of which one knew all the defects, the shabbinesses,the discomforts, but to which one was so used that one could hardly,after so long a time, think one's self away from it without suffering acertain loss of identity.
Now, as it lay before her in the autumn mildness, its mistress wassurprised at her own insensibility. She had been trying to see thehouse through the eyes of an old friend who, the next morning, would bedriving up to it for the first time; and in so doing she seemed to beopening her own eyes upon it after a long interval of blindness.
The court was very still, yet full of a latent life: the wheeling andrustling of pigeons about the rectangular yews and across the sunnygravel; the sweep of rooks above the lustrous greyish-purple slates ofthe roof, and the stir of the tree-tops as they met the breeze whichevery day, at that hour, came punctually up from the river.
Just such a latent animation glowed in Anna Leath. In every nerve andvein she was conscious of that equipoise of bliss which the fearfulhuman heart scarce dares acknowledge. She was not used to strong orfull emotions; but she had always known that she should not be afraid ofthem. She was not afraid now; but she felt a deep inward stillness.
The immediate effect of the feeling had been to send her forth in questof her step-son. She wanted to stroll back with him and have a quiettalk before they re-entered the house. It was always easy to talk tohim, and at this moment he was the one person to whom she could havespoken without fear of disturbing her inner stillness. She was glad, forall sorts of reasons, that Madame de Chantelle and Effie were stillat Ouchy with the governess, and that she and Owen had the house tothemselves. And she was glad that even he was not yet in sight. Shewanted to be alone a little longer; not to think, but to let the longslow waves of joy break over her one by one.
She walked out of the court and sat down on one of the benches thatbordered the drive. From her seat she had a diagonal view of the longhouse-front and of the domed chapel terminating one of the wings. Beyonda gate in the court-yard wall the flower-garden drew its dark-greensquares and raised its statues against the yellowing background of thepark. In the borders only a few late pinks and crimsons smouldered,but a peacock strutting in the sun seemed to have gathered into hisout-spread fan all the summer glories of the place.
In Mrs. Leath's hand was the letter which had opened her eyes to thesethings, and a smile rose to her lips at the mere feeling of the paperbetween her fingers. The thrill it sent through her gave a keener edgeto every sense. She felt, saw, breathed the shining world as though athin impenetrable veil had suddenly been removed from it.
Just such a veil, she now perceived, had always hung between herself andlife. It had been like the stage gauze which gives an illusive air ofreality to the painted scene behind it, yet proves it, after all, to beno more than a painted scene.
She had been hardly aware, in her girlhood, of differing from others inthis respect. In the well-regulated well-fed Summers world the unusualwas regarded as either immoral or ill-bred, and people with emotionswere not visited. Sometimes, with a sense of groping in a topsy-turvyuniverse, Anna had wondered why everybody about her seemed to ignore allthe passions and sensations which formed the stuff of great poetry andmemorable action. In a community composed entirely of people like herparents and her parents' friends she did not see how the magnificentthings one read about could ever have happened. She was sure that ifanything of the kind had occurred in her immediate circle her motherwould have consulted the family clergyman, and her father perhaps evenhave rung up the police; and her sense of humour compelled her to ownthat, in the given conditions, these precautions might not have beenunjustified.
Little by little the conditions conquered her, and she learned to regardthe substance of life as a mere canvas for the embroideries of poetand painter, and its little swept and fenced and tended surface as itsactual substance. It was in the visioned region of action and emotionthat her fullest hours were spent; but it hardly occurred to her thatthey might be translated into experience, or connected with anythinglikely to happen to a young lady living in West Fifty-fifth Street.
She perceived, indeed, that other girls, leading outwardly the same lifeas herself, and seemingly unaware of her world of hidden beauty, wereyet possessed of some vital secret which escaped her. There seemed to bea kind of freemasonry between them; they were wider awake than she, morealert, and surer of their wants if not of their opinions. She supposedthey were "cleverer", and accepted her inferiority good-humouredly, halfaware, within herself, of a reserve of unused power which the othersgave no sign of possessing.
This partly consoled her for missing so much of what made their "goodtime"; but the resulting sense of exclusion, of being somehow laughinglybut firmly debarred from a share of their privileges, threw her back onherself and deepened the reserve which made envious mothers cite her asa model of ladylike repression. Love, she told herself, would one dayrelease her from this spell of unreality. She was persuaded that thesublime passion was the key to the enigma; but it was difficult torelate her conception of love to the forms it wore in her experience.Two or three of the girls she had envied for their superior acquaintancewith the arts of life
had contracted, in the course of time, what werevariously described as "romantic" or "foolish" marriages; one even madea runaway match, and languished for a while under a cloud of socialreprobation. Here, then, was passion in action, romance convertedto reality; yet the heroines of these exploits returned from themuntransfigured, and their husbands were as dull as ever when one had tosit next to them at dinner.
Her own case, of course, would be different. Some day she would find themagic bridge between West Fifty-fifth Street and life; once or twice shehad even fancied that the clue was in her hand. The first time waswhen she had met young Darrow. She recalled even now the stir of theencounter. But his passion swept over her like a wind that shakes theroof of the forest without reaching its still glades or rippling itshidden pools. He was extraordinarily intelligent and agreeable, and herheart beat faster when he was with her. He had a tall fair easy presenceand a mind in which the lights of irony played pleasantly through theshades of feeling. She liked to hear his voice almost as much as tolisten to what he was saying, and to listen to what he was saying almostas much as to feel that he was looking at her; but he wanted to kissher, and she wanted to talk to him about books and pictures, and havehim insinuate the eternal theme of their love into every subject theydiscussed.
Whenever they were apart a reaction set in. She wondered how she couldhave been so cold, called herself a prude and an idiot, questioned ifany man could really care for her, and got up in the dead of night totry new ways of doing her hair. But as soon as he reappeared her headstraightened itself on her slim neck and she sped her little shafts ofirony, or flew her little kites of erudition, while hot and cold wavesswept over her, and the things she really wanted to say choked in herthroat and burned the palms of her hands.
Often she told herself that any silly girl who had waltzed through aseason would know better than she how to attract a man and hold him; butwhen she said "a man" she did not really mean George Darrow.
Then one day, at a dinner, she saw him sitting next to one of the sillygirls in question: the heroine of the elopement which had shaken WestFifty-fifth Street to its base. The young lady had come back from heradventure no less silly than when she went; and across the table thepartner of her flight, a fat young man with eye-glasses, sat stolidlyeating terrapin and talking about polo and investments.
The young woman was undoubtedly as silly as ever; yet after watchingher for a few minutes Miss Summers perceived that she had somehow grownluminous, perilous, obscurely menacing to nice girls and the young menthey intended eventually to accept. Suddenly, at the sight, a rage ofpossessorship awoke in her. She must save Darrow, assert her rightto him at any price. Pride and reticence went down in a hurricaneof jealousy. She heard him laugh, and there was something new in hislaugh...She watched him talking, talking...He sat slightly sideways, afaint smile beneath his lids, lowering his voice as he lowered it whenhe talked to her. She caught the same inflections, but his eyes weredifferent. It would have offended her once if he had looked at her likethat. Now her one thought was that none but she had a right to be solooked at. And that girl of all others! What illusions could he haveabout a girl who, hardly a year ago, had made a fool of herself overthe fat young man stolidly eating terrapin across the table? If thatwas where romance and passion ended, it was better to take to districtvisiting or algebra!
All night she lay awake and wondered: "What was she saying to him? Howshall I learn to say such things?" and she decided that her heart wouldtell her--that the next time they were alone together the irresistibleword would spring to her lips. He came the next day, and they werealone, and all she found was: "I didn't know that you and Kitty Maynewere such friends."
He answered with indifference that he didn't know it either, and in thereaction of relief she declared: "She's certainly ever so much prettierthan she was..."
"She's rather good fun," he admitted, as though he had not noticed herother advantages; and suddenly Anna saw in his eyes the look she hadseen there the previous evening.
She felt as if he were leagues and leagues away from her. All her hopesdissolved, and she was conscious of sitting rigidly, with high head andstraight lips, while the irresistible word fled with a last wing-beatinto the golden mist of her illusions...
She was still quivering with the pain and bewilderment of this adventurewhen Fraser Leath appeared. She met him first in Italy, where she wastravelling with her parents; and the following winter he came toNew York. In Italy he had seemed interesting: in New York he becameremarkable. He seldom spoke of his life in Europe, and let drop but themost incidental allusions to the friends, the tastes, the pursuits whichfilled his cosmopolitan days; but in the atmosphere of West Fifty-fifthStreet he seemed the embodiment of a storied past. He presented MissSummers with a prettily-bound anthology of the old French poets and,when she showed a discriminating pleasure in the gift, observed with hisgrave smile: "I didn't suppose I should find any one here who would feelabout these things as I do." On another occasion he asked her acceptanceof a half-effaced eighteenth century pastel which he had surprisinglypicked up in a New York auction-room. "I know no one but you who wouldreally appreciate it," he explained.
He permitted himself no other comments, but these conveyed withsufficient directness that he thought her worthy of a different setting.That she should be so regarded by a man living in an atmosphere of artand beauty, and esteeming them the vital elements of life, made herfeel for the first time that she was understood. Here was some one whosescale of values was the same as hers, and who thought her opinionworth hearing on the very matters which they both considered of supremeimportance. The discovery restored her self-confidence, and she revealedherself to Mr. Leath as she had never known how to reveal herself toDarrow.
As the courtship progressed, and they grew more confidential, hersuitor surprised and delighted her by little explosions of revolutionarysentiment. He said: "Shall you mind, I wonder, if I tell you that youlive in a dread-fully conventional atmosphere?" and, seeing that shemanifestly did not mind: "Of course I shall say things now and then thatwill horrify your dear delightful parents--I shall shock them awfully, Iwarn you."
In confirmation of this warning he permitted himself an occasionalplayful fling at the regular church-going of Mr. and Mrs. Summers, atthe innocuous character of the literature in their library, and at theirguileless appreciations in art. He even ventured to banter Mrs. Summerson her refusal to receive the irrepressible Kitty Mayne who, after arapid passage with George Darrow, was now involved in another and moreflagrant adventure.
"In Europe, you know, the husband is regarded as the only judge in suchmatters. As long as he accepts the situation--" Mr. Leath explainedto Anna, who took his view the more emphatically in order to convinceherself that, personally, she had none but the most tolerant sentimentstoward the lady.
The subversiveness of Mr. Leath's opinions was enhanced by thedistinction of his appearance and the reserve of his manners. He waslike the anarchist with a gardenia in his buttonhole who figures inthe higher melodrama. Every word, every allusion, every note of hisagreeably-modulated voice, gave Anna a glimpse of a society at oncefreer and finer, which observed the traditional forms but had discardedthe underlying prejudices; whereas the world she knew had discarded manyof the forms and kept almost all the prejudices.
In such an atmosphere as his an eager young woman, curious as to all themanifestations of life, yet instinctively desiring that they should cometo her in terms of beauty and fine feeling, must surely find the largestscope for self-expression. Study, travel, the contact of the world, thecomradeship of a polished and enlightened mind, would combine to enrichher days and form her character; and it was only in the rare momentswhen Mr. Leath's symmetrical blond mask bent over hers, and his kissdropped on her like a cold smooth pebble, that she questioned thecompleteness of the joys he offered.
There had been a time when the walls on which her gaze now rested hadshed a glare of irony on these early dreams. In the first years of hermarriage the sober s
ymmetry of Givre had suggested only her husband'sneatly-balanced mind. It was a mind, she soon learned, contentedlyabsorbed in formulating the conventions of the unconventional. WestFifty-fifth Street was no more conscientiously concerned than Givre withthe momentous question of "what people did"; it was only the type ofdeed investigated that was different. Mr. Leath collected his socialinstances with the same seriousness and patience as his snuff-boxes.He exacted a rigid conformity to his rules of non-conformity and hisscepticism had the absolute accent of a dogma. He even cherished certainexceptions to his rules as the book-collector prizes a "defective" firstedition. The Protestant church-going of Anna's parents had provokedhis gentle sarcasm; but he prided himself on his mother's devoutness,because Madame de Chantelle, in embracing her second husband's creed,had become part of a society which still observes the outward rites ofpiety.
Anna, in fact, had discovered in her amiable and elegant mother-in-lawan unexpected embodiment of the West Fifty-fifth Street ideal. Mrs.Summers and Madame de Chantelle, however strongly they would havedisagreed as to the authorized source of Christian dogma, would havefound themselves completely in accord on all the momentous minutiae ofdrawing-room conduct; yet Mr. Leath treated his mother's foibles with arespect which Anna's experience of him forbade her to attribute whollyto filial affection.
In the early days, when she was still questioning the Sphinx instead oftrying to find an answer to it, she ventured to tax her husband with hisinconsistency.
"You say your mother won't like it if I call on that amusing littlewoman who came here the other day, and was let in by mistake; butMadame de Chantelle tells me she lives with her husband, and when motherrefused to visit Kitty Mayne you said----"
Mr. Leath's smile arrested her. "My dear child, I don't pretend to applythe principles of logic to my poor mother's prejudices."
"But if you admit that they ARE prejudices----?"
"There are prejudices and prejudices. My mother, of course, got hersfrom Monsieur de Chantelle, and they seem to me as much in their placein this house as the pot-pourri in your hawthorn jar. They preserve asocial tradition of which I should be sorry to lose the least perfume.Of course I don't expect you, just at first, to feel the difference, tosee the nuance. In the case of little Madame de Vireville, for instance:you point out that she's still under her husband's roof. Very true; andif she were merely a Paris acquaintance--especially if you had met her,as one still might, in the RIGHT KIND of house in Paris--I should be thelast to object to your visiting her. But in the country it's different.Even the best provincial society is what you would call narrow: Idon't deny it; and if some of our friends met Madame de Vireville atGivre--well, it would produce a bad impression. You're inclined toridicule such considerations, but gradually you'll come to see theirimportance; and meanwhile, do trust me when I ask you to be guided bymy mother. It is always well for a stranger in an old society to err alittle on the side of what you call its prejudices but I should ratherdescribe as its traditions."
After that she no longer tried to laugh or argue her husband out of hisconvictions. They WERE convictions, and therefore unassailable. Norwas any insincerity implied in the fact that they sometimes seemed tocoincide with hers. There were occasions when he really did look atthings as she did; but for reasons so different as to make the distancebetween them all the greater. Life, to Mr. Leath, was like a walkthrough a carefully classified museum, where, in moments of doubt, onehad only to look at the number and refer to one's catalogue; to his wifeit was like groping about in a huge dark lumber-room where the exploringray of curiosity lit up now some shape of breathing beauty and now amummy's grin.
In the first bewilderment of her new state these discoveries had had theeffect of dropping another layer of gauze between herself and reality.She seemed farther than ever removed from the strong joys and pangs forwhich she felt herself made. She did not adopt her husband's views, butinsensibly she began to live his life. She tried to throw a compensatingardour into the secret excursions of her spirit, and thus the oldvicious distinction between romance and reality was re-established forher, and she resigned herself again to the belief that "real life" wasneither real nor alive.
The birth of her little girl swept away this delusion. At last she feltherself in contact with the actual business of living: but even thisimpression was not enduring.
Everything but the irreducible crude fact of child-bearing assumed, inthe Leath household, the same ghostly tinge of unreality. Her husband,at the time, was all that his own ideal of a husband required. He wasattentive, and even suitably moved: but as he sat by her bedside, andthoughtfully proffered to her the list of people who had "called toenquire", she looked first at him, and then at the child between them,and wondered at the blundering alchemy of Nature...
With the exception of the little girl herself, everything connected withthat time had grown curiously remote and unimportant. The days that hadmoved so slowly as they passed seemed now to have plunged down head-longsteeps of time; and as she sat in the autumn sun, with Darrow's letterin her hand, the history of Anna Leath appeared to its heroine like somegrey shadowy tale that she might have read in an old book, one night asshe was falling asleep...
The Reef Page 9