The Reef

by Edith Wharton

  XXX

  Anna Leath, three days later, sat in Miss Painter's drawing-room in therue de Matignon.

  Coming up precipitately that morning from the country, she had reachedParis at one o'clock and Miss Painter's landing some ten minutes later.Miss Painter's mouldy little man-servant, dissembling a napkin under hisarm, had mildly attempted to oppose her entrance; but Anna, insisting,had gone straight to the dining-room and surprised her friend--who ateas furtively as certain animals--over a strange meal of cold mutton andlemonade. Ignoring the embarrassment she caused, she had set forth theobject of her journey, and Miss Painter, always hatted and booted foraction, had immediately hastened out, leaving her to the solitude ofthe bare fireless drawing-room with its eternal slip-covers and "bowed"shutters.

  In this inhospitable obscurity Anna had sat alone for close upon twohours. Both obscurity and solitude were acceptable to her, and impatientas she was to hear the result of the errand on which she had despatchedher hostess, she desired still more to be alone. During her longmeditation in a white-swathed chair before the muffled hearth she hadbeen able for the first time to clear a way through the darkness andconfusion of her thoughts. The way did not go far, and her attempt totrace it was as weak and spasmodic as a convalescent's first effortsto pick up the thread of living. She seemed to herself like some onestruggling to rise from a long sickness of which it would have been somuch easier to die. At Givre she had fallen into a kind of torpor, adeadness of soul traversed by wild flashes of pain; but whether shesuffered or whether she was numb, she seemed equally remote from herreal living and doing self.

  It was only the discovery--that very morning--of Owen's unannounceddeparture for Paris that had caught her out of her dream and forced herback to action. The dread of what this flight might imply, and of theconsequences that might result from it, had roused her to the sense ofher responsibility, and from the moment when she had resolved to followher step-son, and had made her rapid preparations for pursuit, her mindhad begun to work again, feverishly, fitfully, but still with somethingof its normal order. In the train she had been too agitated, toopreoccupied with what might next await her, to give her thoughts toanything but the turning over of dread alternatives; but Miss Painter'simperviousness had steadied her, and while she waited for the sound ofthe latch-key she resolutely returned upon herself.

  With respect to her outward course she could at least tell herself thatshe had held to her purpose. She had, as people said, "kept up" duringthe twenty-four hours preceding George Darrow's departure; had gonewith a calm face about her usual business, and even contrived not tooobviously to avoid him. Then, the next day before dawn, from behindthe closed shutters where she had kept for half the night her dry-eyedvigil, she had heard him drive off to the train which brought itspassengers to Paris in time for the Calais express.

  The fact of his taking that train, of his travelling so straight andfar away from her, gave to what had happened the implacable outline ofreality. He was gone; he would not come back; and her life had endedjust as she had dreamed it was beginning. She had no doubt, at first, asto the absolute inevitability of this conclusion. The man who had drivenaway from her house in the autumn dawn was not the man she had loved; hewas a stranger with whom she had not a single thought in common. It wasterrible, indeed, that he wore the face and spoke in the voice of herfriend, and that, as long as he was under one roof with her, the mereway in which he moved and looked could bridge at a stroke the gulfbetween them. That, no doubt, was the fault of her exaggeratedsensibility to outward things: she was frightened to see how it enslavedher. A day or two before she had supposed the sense of honour was herdeepest sentiment: if she had smiled at the conventions of others it wasbecause they were too trivial, not because they were too grave. Therewere certain dishonours with which she had never dreamed that any pactcould be made: she had had an incorruptible passion for good faith andfairness.

  She had supposed that, once Darrow was gone, once she was safe from thedanger of seeing and hearing him, this high devotion would sustain her.She had believed it would be possible to separate the image of the manshe had thought him from that of the man he was. She had even foreseenthe hour when she might raise a mournful shrine to the memory of theDarrow she had loved, without fear that his double's shadow woulddesecrate it. But now she had begun to understand that the two men werereally one. The Darrow she worshipped was inseparable from the Darrowshe abhorred; and the inevitable conclusion was that both must go, andshe be left in the desert of a sorrow without memories...

  But if the future was thus void, the present was all too full. Never hadblow more complex repercussions; and to remember Owen was to cease tothink of herself. What impulse, what apprehension, had sent him suddenlyto Paris? And why had he thought it needful to conceal his going fromher? When Sophy Viner had left, it had been with the understanding thathe was to await her summons; and it seemed improbable that he wouldbreak his pledge, and seek her without leave, unless his lover'sintuition had warned him of some fresh danger. Anna recalled howquickly he had read the alarm in her face when he had rushed back to hersitting-room with the news that Miss Viner had promised to see him againin Paris. To be so promptly roused, his suspicions must have been buthalf-asleep; and since then, no doubt, if she and Darrow had dissembled,so had he. To her proud directness it was degrading to think thatthey had been living together like enemies who spy upon each other'smovements: she felt a desperate longing for the days which had seemed sodull and narrow, but in which she had walked with her head high and hereyes unguarded.

  She had come up to Paris hardly knowing what peril she feared, and stillless how she could avert it. If Owen meant to see Miss Viner--and whatother object could he have?--they must already be together, and it wastoo late to interfere. It had indeed occurred to Anna that Paris mightnot be his objective point: that his real purpose in leaving Givrewithout her knowledge had been to follow Darrow to London and exactthe truth of him. But even to her alarmed imagination this seemedimprobable. She and Darrow, to the last, had kept up so complete a feintof harmony that, whatever Owen had surmised, he could scarcely haverisked acting on his suspicions. If he still felt the need of anexplanation, it was almost certainly of Sophy Viner that he would askit; and it was in quest of Sophy Viner that Anna had despatched MissPainter.

  She had found a blessed refuge from her perplexities in the stolidAdelaide's unawareness. One could so absolutely count on Miss Painter'sguessing no more than one chose, and yet acting astutely on such hintsas one vouchsafed her! She was like a well-trained retriever whoseinterest in his prey ceases when he lays it at his master's feet. Anna,on arriving, had explained that Owen's unannounced flight had made herfear some fresh misunderstanding between himself and Miss Viner. Inthe interests of peace she had thought it best to follow him; but shehastily added that she did not wish to see Sophy, but only, if possible,to learn from her where Owen was. With these brief instructions MissPainter had started out; but she was a woman of many occupations, andhad given her visitor to understand that before returning she shouldhave to call on a friend who had just arrived from Boston, and afterwarddespatch to another exiled compatriot a supply of cranberries andbrandied peaches from the American grocery in the Champs Elysees.

  Gradually, as the moments passed, Anna began to feel the reaction which,in moments of extreme nervous tension, follows on any effort of thewill. She seemed to have gone as far as her courage would carry her,and she shrank more and more from the thought of Miss Painter's return,since whatever information the latter brought would necessitate somefresh decision. What should she say to Owen if she found him? What couldshe say that should not betray the one thing she would give her lifeto hide from him? "Give her life"--how the phrase derided her! It was agift she would not have bestowed on her worst enemy. She would not havehad Sophy Viner live the hours she was living now... She tried againto look steadily and calmly at the picture that the image of the girlevoked. She had an idea that she ought to accustom herself to itscontemplation. I
f life was like that, why the sooner one got used to itthe better...But no! Life was not like that. Her adventure was a hideousaccident. She dreaded above all the temptation to generalise from herown case, to doubt the high things she had lived by and seek a cheapsolace in belittling what fate had refused her. There was such love asshe had dreamed, and she meant to go on believing in it, and cherishingthe thought that she was worthy of it. What had happened to her wasgrotesque and mean and miserable; but she herself was none of thesethings, and never, never would she make of herself the mock that fatehad made of her...

  She could not, as yet, bear to think deliberately of Darrow; but shekept on repeating to herself "By and bye that will come too." Even nowshe was determined not to let his image be distorted by her suffering.As soon as she could, she would try to single out for remembrancethe individual things she had liked in him before she had loved himaltogether. No "spiritual exercise" devised by the discipline of pietycould have been more torturing; but its very cruelty attracted her. Shewanted to wear herself out with new pains...