The Reef

by Edith Wharton

  XXVI

  Darrow waited alone in the sitting-room.

  No place could have been more distasteful as the scene of the talk thatlay before him; but he had acceded to Anna's suggestion that it wouldseem more natural for her to summon Sophy Viner than for him to go insearch of her. As his troubled pacings carried him back and forth arelentless hand seemed to be tearing away all the tender fibres ofassociation that bound him to the peaceful room. Here, in this veryplace, he had drunk his deepest draughts of happiness, had had his lipsat the fountain-head of its overflowing rivers; but now that source waspoisoned and he would taste no more of an untainted cup.

  For a moment he felt an actual physical anguish; then his nerveshardened 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 urgentneed of another word with Sophy Viner. He had been insincere in lettingAnna think that he had consented to speak because she asked it. Inreality he had been feverishly casting about for the pretext she hadgiven him; and for some reason this trivial hypocrisy weighed on himmore than all his heavy burden of deceit.

  At length he heard a step behind him and Sophy Viner entered. When shesaw 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 herto let me see you first."

  He spoke very gently, and there was no insincerity in his gentleness. Hewas profoundly moved by the change in the girl's appearance. At sightof him she had forced a smile; but it lit up her wretchedness like acandle-flame held to a dead face.

  She made no reply, and Darrow went on: "You must understand my wantingto speak to you, after what I was told just now."

  She interposed, with a gesture of protest: "I'm not responsible forOwen's ravings!"

  "Of course----". He broke off and they stood facing each other. Shelifted a hand and pushed back her loose lock with the gesture that wasburnt into his memory; then she looked about her and dropped into thenearest 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'sbest I shouldn't marry him."

  Darrow broke into a despairing laugh. "At the very moment when you'dconvinced me to the contrary!"

  "Had I?" Her smile flickered up. "Well, I really believed it till youshowed 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 theother end of the room. He stopped before the writing-table, where hisphotograph, well-dressed, handsome, self-sufficient--the portrait of aman of the world, confident of his ability to deal adequately withthe most delicate situations--offered its huge fatuity to his gaze. Heturned back to her. "It's rather hard on Owen, isn't it, that you shouldhave 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 theireyes met in a long disastrous gaze.

  "Yes----" she said, and stood up.

  Below the window they heard Effie whistling for her dogs, and then, fromthe 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 Itell?"

  "You couldn't tell. We neither of us could." She seemed to turn theproblem over critically. "After all, it might have been YOU instead ofme!"

  He took another distracted turn about the room and coming back to hersat down in a chair at her side. A mocking hand seemed to dash the wordsfrom his lips. There was nothing on earth that he could say to her thatwasn'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; togive him a chance. He's madly in love with you; all the good that's inhim is in your hands. His step-mother felt that from the first. And shethought--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...morequickly than you think...Go away, but let him hope...I'm goingtoo--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 neverhappen. We may not all be here together again for years."

  She heard him out in silence, her hands clasped on her knee, her eyesbent 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 toforget--to rub out. At first I imagined I did; but that was a foolishmistake. As soon as I saw you again I knew it...It's not being herewith you that I'm afraid of--in the sense you think. It's being here, oranywhere, with Owen." She stood up and bent her tragic smile on him. "Iwant to keep you all to myself."

  The only words that came to him were futile denunciations of hisfolly; but the sense of their futility checked them on his lips. "Poorchild--you poor child!" he heard himself vainly repeating.

  Suddenly he felt the strong reaction of reality and its impetus broughthim 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'llfind a reason. But it's perfectly clear that I must go."

  She uttered a protesting cry. "Go away? You? Don't you see that thatwould tell everything--drag everybody into the horror?"

  He found no answer, and her voice dropped back to its calmer note. "Whatgood would your going do? Do you suppose it would change anything forme?" She looked at him with a musing wistfulness. "I wonder what yourfeeling for me was? It seems queer that I've never really known--Isuppose we DON'T know much about that kind of feeling. Is it like takinga drink when you're thirsty?...I used to feel as if all of me was in thepalm of your hand..."

  He bowed his humbled head, but she went on almost exultantly: "Don't fora minute think I'm sorry! It was worth every penny it cost. My mistakewas 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, andI tried to take your attitude about it, to 'play the game' and convincemyself that I hadn't risked any more on it than you. Then, when I metyou 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 Icould between us; now I want to sweep everything away. I'd been tryingto forget how you looked; now I want to remember you always. I'd beentrying not to hear your voice; now I never want to hear any other. I'vemade my choice--that's all: I've had you and I mean to keep you." Herface was shining like her eyes. "To keep you hidden away here," sheended, and put her hand upon her breast.

  After she had left him, Darrow continued to sit motionless, staring backinto their past. Hitherto it had lingered on the edge of his mind in avague pink blur, like one of the little rose-leaf clouds that a settingsun drops from its disk. Now it was a huge looming darkness, throughwhich his eyes vainly strained. The whole episode was still obscure tohim, save where here and there, as they talked, some phrase or gestu
reor 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 foundhimself wondering too...He remembered distinctly enough that he had notmeant the perilous passion--even in its most transient form--to playa part in their relation. In that respect his attitude had been abovereproach. She was an unusually original and attractive creature, to whomhe had wanted to give a few days of harmless pleasuring, and who wasalert and expert enough to understand his intention and spare him theboredom of hesitations and misinterpretations. That had been his firstimpression, and her subsequent demeanour had justified it. She had been,from the outset, just the frank and easy comrade he had expected to findher. Was it he, then, who, in the sequel, had grown impatient of thebounds he had set himself? Was it his wounded vanity that, seekingbalm for its hurt, yearned to dip deeper into the healing pool of hercompassion? In his confused memory of the situation he seemed not tohave been guiltless of such yearnings...Yet for the first few daysthe experiment had been perfectly successful. Her enjoyment had beenunclouded and his pleasure in it undisturbed. It was very gradually--heseemed to see--that a shade of lassitude had crept over theirintercourse. Perhaps it was because, when her light chatter about peoplefailed, he found she had no other fund to draw on, or perhaps simplybecause of the sweetness of her laugh, or of the charm of the gesturewith which, one day in the woods of Marly, she had tossed off her hatand tilted back her head at the call of a cuckoo; or because, wheneverhe looked at her unexpectedly, he found that she was looking at him anddid not want him to know it; or perhaps, in varying degrees, because ofall these things, that there had come a moment when no word seemed tofly high enough or dive deep enough to utter the sense of well-beingeach gave to the other, and the natural substitute for speech had been akiss.

  The kiss, at all events, had come at the precise moment to save theirventure from disaster. They had reached the point when her amazingreminiscences had begun to flag, when her future had been exhaustivelydiscussed, her theatrical prospects minutely studied, her quarrel withMrs. 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 wasunhappy, and entreating him to tell her why...

  From the brink of estranging confidences, and from the risk ofunfavourable comparisons, his gesture had snatched her back to safety;and as soon as he had kissed her he felt that she would never bore himagain. She was one of the elemental creatures whose emotion is all intheir pulses, and who become inexpressive or sentimental when theytry to turn sensation into speech. His caress had restored her to hernatural place in the scheme of things, and Darrow felt as if he hadclasped a tree and a nymph had bloomed from it...

  The mere fact of not having to listen to her any longer added immenselyto her charm. She continued, of course, to talk to him, but it didn'tmatter, because he no longer made any effort to follow her words, butlet 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 qualitiesthat create it in others; and in moments of heat the imagination doesnot always feel the difference...

  Lying beside her in the shade, Darrow felt her presence as a part ofthe charmed stillness of the summer woods, as the element of vaguewell-being that suffused his senses and lulled to sleep the ache ofwounded pride. All he asked of her, as yet, was a touch on the hand oron the lips--and that she should let him go on lying there through thelong warm hours, while a black-bird's song throbbed like a fountain, andthe summer wind stirred in the trees, and close by, between the nearestbranches and the brim of his tilted hat, a slight white figure gatheredup all the floating threads of joy...

  He recalled, too, having noticed, as he lay staring at a break in thetree-tops, a stream of mares'-tails coming up the sky. He had said tohimself: "It will rain to-morrow," and the thought had made the air seemwarmer and the sun more vivid on her hair...Perhaps if the mares'-tailshad not come up the sky their adventure might have had no sequel. Butthe cloud brought rain, and next morning he looked out of his windowinto a cold grey blur. They had planned an all-day excursion down theSeine, to the two Andelys and Rouen, and now, with the long hours ontheir 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 withher, she had first so persistently admired the worst things, and thenso frankly lapsed into indifference, that he had no wish to repeatthe experiment. So they went out, aimlessly, and took a cold wet walk,turning at length into the deserted arcades of the Palais Royal, andfinally drifting into one of its equally deserted restaurants, wherethey lunched alone and somewhat dolefully, served by a wan old waiterwith the look of a castaway who has given up watching for a sail...Itwas odd how the waiter's face came back to him...

  Perhaps but for the rain it might never have happened; but what wasthe use of thinking of that now? He tried to turn his thoughts to moreurgent issues; but, by a strange perversity of association, every detailof the day was forcing itself on his mind with an insistence from whichthere was no escape. Reluctantly he relived the long wet walk backto the hotel, after a tedious hour at a cinematograph show on theBoulevard. It was still raining when they withdrew from this stalespectacle, but she had obstinately refused to take a cab, had even,on the way, insisted on loitering under the dripping awnings ofshop-windows and poking into draughty passages, and finally, when theyhad nearly reached their destination, had gone so far as to suggest thatthey should turn back to hunt up some show she had heard of in a theatreat the Batignolles. But at that he had somewhat irritably protested: heremembered that, for the first time, they were both rather irritable,and vaguely disposed to resist one another's suggestions. His feetwere wet, and he was tired of walking, and sick of the smell of stuffyunaired theatres, and he had said he must really get back to write someletters--and so they had kept on to the hotel...