The Reef

by Edith Wharton

  VII

  Darrow was still standing on her threshold. As she put the question heentered the room and closed the door behind him.

  His heart was beating a little faster than usual and he had no clearidea of what he was about to do or say, beyond the definite convictionthat, whatever passing impulse of expiation moved him, he would not befool enough to tell her that he had not sent her letter. He knew thatmost wrongdoing works, on the whole, less mischief than its uselessconfession; and this was clearly a case where a passing folly might beturned, by avowal, into a serious offense.

  "I'm so sorry--so sorry; but you must let me help you...You will let mehelp you?" he said.

  He took her hands and pressed them together between his, counting on afriendly touch to help out the insufficiency of words. He felt her yieldslightly to his clasp, and hurried on without giving her time to answer.

  "Isn't it a pity to spoil our good time together by regretting anythingyou might have done to prevent our having it?"

  She drew back, freeing her hands. Her face, losing its look of appealingconfidence, was suddenly sharpened by distrust.

  "You didn't forget to post my letter?"

  Darrow stood before her, constrained and ashamed, and ever more keenlyaware that the betrayal of his distress must be a greater offense thanits concealment.

  "What an insinuation!" he cried, throwing out his hands with a laugh.

  Her face instantly melted to laughter. "Well, then--I WON'T be sorry; Iwon't regret anything except that our good time is over!"

  The words were so unexpected that they routed all his resolves. If shehad gone on doubting him he could probably have gone on deceiving her;but her unhesitating acceptance of his word made him hate the part hewas playing. At the same moment a doubt shot up its serpent-head in hisown bosom. Was it not he rather than she who was childishly trustful?Was she not almost too ready to take his word, and dismiss once for allthe tiresome question of the letter? Considering what her experiencesmust have been, such trustfulness seemed open to suspicion. But themoment his eyes fell on her he was ashamed of the thought, and knew itfor what it really was: another pretext to lessen his own delinquency.

  "Why should our good time be over?" he asked. "Why shouldn't it last alittle longer?"

  She looked up, her lips parted in surprise; but before she could speakhe went on: "I want you to stay with me--I want you, just for a fewdays, to have all the things you've never had. It's not always Mayand Paris--why not make the most of them now? You know me--we're notstrangers--why shouldn't you treat me like a friend?"

  While he spoke she had drawn away a little, but her hand still lay inhis. She was pale, and her eyes were fixed on him in a gaze in whichthere was neither distrust or resentment, but only an ingenuous wonder.He was extraordinarily touched by her expression.

  "Oh, do! You must. Listen: to prove that I'm sincere I'll tellyou...I'll tell you I didn't post your letter...I didn't post it becauseI wanted so much to give you a few good hours...and because I couldn'tbear to have you go."

  He had the feeling that the words were being uttered in spite of him bysome malicious witness of the scene, and yet that he was not sorry tohave them spoken.

  The girl had listened to him in silence. She remained motionless for amoment after he had ceased to speak; then she snatched away her hand.

  "You didn't post my letter? You kept it back on purpose? And you tellme so NOW, to prove to me that I'd better put myself under yourprotection?" She burst into a laugh that had in it all the piercingechoes of her Murrett past, and her face, at the same moment, underwentthe same change, shrinking into a small malevolent white mask in whichthe eyes burned black. "Thank you--thank you most awfully fortelling me! And for all your other kind intentions! The plan'sdelightful--really quite delightful, and I'm extremely flattered andobliged."

  She dropped into a seat beside her dressing-table, resting her chin onher lifted hands, and laughing out at him under the elf-lock which hadshaken itself down over her eyes.

  Her outburst did not offend the young man; its immediate effect was thatof allaying his agitation. The theatrical touch in her manner made hisoffense seem more venial than he had thought it a moment before.

  He drew up a chair and sat down beside her. "After all," he said, in atone of good-humoured protest, "I needn't have told you I'd kept backyour letter; and my telling you seems rather strong proof that I hadn'tany very nefarious designs on you."

  She met this with a shrug, but he did not give her time to answer. "Mydesigns," he continued with a smile, "were not nefarious. I saw you'dbeen through a bad time with Mrs. Murrett, and that there didn't seemto be much fun ahead for you; and I didn't see--and I don't yet see--theharm of trying to give you a few hours of amusement between a depressingpast and a not particularly cheerful future." He paused again, and thenwent on, in the same tone of friendly reasonableness: "The mistake Imade was not to tell you this at once--not to ask you straight out togive me a day or two, and let me try to make you forget all the thingsthat are troubling you. I was a fool not to see that if I'd put it toyou in that way you'd have accepted or refused, as you chose; but thatat least you wouldn't have mistaken my intentions.--Intentions!" Hestood up, walked the length of the room, and turned back to where shestill sat motionless, her elbows propped on the dressing-table, her chinon her hands. "What rubbish we talk about intentions! The truth is Ihadn't any: I just liked being with you. Perhaps you don't know howextraordinarily one can like being with you...I was depressed and adriftmyself; and you made me forget my bothers; and when I found you weregoing--and going back to dreariness, as I was--I didn't see why weshouldn't have a few hours together first; so I left your letter in mypocket."

  He saw her face melt as she listened, and suddenly she unclasped herhands and leaned to him.

  "But are YOU unhappy too? Oh, I never understood--I never dreamed it! Ithought you'd always had everything in the world you wanted!"

  Darrow broke into a laugh at this ingenuous picture of his state. Hewas ashamed of trying to better his case by an appeal to her pity, andannoyed with himself for alluding to a subject he would rather havekept out of his thoughts. But her look of sympathy had disarmed him; hisheart was bitter and distracted; she was near him, her eyes were shiningwith compassion--he bent over her and kissed her hand.

  "Forgive me--do forgive me," he said.

  She stood up with a smiling head-shake. "Oh, it's not so often thatpeople try to give me any pleasure--much less two whole days of it!I sha'n't forget how kind you've been. I shall have plenty of time toremember. But this IS good-bye, you know. I must telegraph at once tosay I'm coming."

  "To say you're coming? Then I'm not forgiven?"

  "Oh, you're forgiven--if that's any comfort."

  "It's not, the very least, if your way of proving it is to go away!"

  She hung her head in meditation. "But I can't stay.--How CAN I stay?"she broke out, as if arguing with some unseen monitor.

  "Why can't you? No one knows you're here...No one need ever know."

  She looked up, and their eyes exchanged meanings for a rapid minute. Hergaze was as clear as a boy's. "Oh, it's not THAT," she exclaimed,almost impatiently; "it's not people I'm afraid of! They've never putthemselves out for me--why on earth should I care about them?"

  He liked her directness as he had never liked it before. "Well, then,what is it? Not ME, I hope?"

  "No, not you: I like you. It's the money! With me that's always the rootof the matter. I could never yet afford a treat in my life!"

  "Is _THAT_ all?" He laughed, relieved by her naturalness. "Look here;since we re talking as man to man--can't you trust me about that too?"

  "Trust you? How do you mean? You'd better not trust ME!" she laughedback sharply. "I might never be able to pay up!"

  His gesture brushed aside the allusion. "Money may be the root of thematter; it can't be the whole of it, between friends. Don't you thinkone friend may accept a small service from another without looking toofar ahead
or weighing too many chances? The question turns entirely onwhat you think of me. If you like me well enough to be willing to takea few days' holiday with me, just for the pleasure of the thing, and thepleasure you'll be giving me, let's shake hands on it. If you don't likeme well enough we'll shake hands too; only I shall be sorry," he ended.

  "Oh, but I shall be sorry too!" Her face, as she lifted it to his,looked so small and young that Darrow felt a fugitive twinge ofcompunction, instantly effaced by the excitement of pursuit.

  "Well, then?" He stood looking down on her, his eyes persuading her.He was now intensely aware that his nearness was having an effect whichmade it less and less necessary for him to choose his words, and he wenton, more mindful of the inflections of his voice than of what he wasactually saying: "Why on earth should we say good-bye if we're bothsorry to? Won't you tell me your reason? It's not a bit like you to letanything stand in the way of your saying just what you feel. You mustn'tmind offending me, you know!"

  She hung before him like a leaf on the meeting of cross-currents, thatthe next ripple may sweep forward or whirl back. Then she flung upher head with the odd boyish movement habitual to her in moments ofexcitement. "What I feel? Do you want to know what I feel? That you'regiving me the only chance I've ever had!"

  She turned about on her heel and, dropping into the nearest chair, sankforward, her face hidden against the dressing-table.

  Under the folds of her thin summer dress the modelling of her back andof her lifted arms, and the slight hollow between her shoulder-blades,recalled the faint curves of a terra-cotta statuette, some young imageof grace hardly more than sketched in the clay. Darrow, as he stoodlooking at her, reflected that her character, for all its seemingfirmness, its flashing edges of "opinion", was probably no lessimmature. He had not expected her to yield so suddenly to hissuggestion, or to confess her yielding in that way. At first he wasslightly disconcerted; then he saw how her attitude simplified his own.Her behaviour had all the indecision and awkwardness of inexperience. Itshowed that she was a child after all; and all he could do--all he hadever meant to do--was to give her a child's holiday to look back to.

  For a moment he fancied she was crying; but the next she was on her feetand had swept round on him a face she must have turned away only to hidethe first rush of her pleasure.

  For a while they shone on each other without speaking; then she sprangto him and held out both hands.

  "Is it true? Is it really true? Is it really going to happen to ME?"

  He felt like answering: "You're the very creature to whom it was boundto happen"; but the words had a double sense that made him wince, andinstead he caught her proffered hands and stood looking at her acrossthe length of her arms, without attempting to bend them or to drawher closer. He wanted her to know how her words had moved him; but histhoughts were blurred by the rush of the same emotion that possessedher, and his own words came with an effort.

  He ended by giving her back a laugh as frank as her own, and declaring,as he dropped her hands: "All that and more too--you'll see!"