The Reef

by Edith Wharton

  XXIX

  Her first thought was: "He's going too in a few hours--I needn't see himagain before he leaves..." At that moment the possibility of having tolook in Darrow's face and hear him speak seemed to her more unendurablethan anything else she could imagine. Then, on the next wave of feeling,came the desire to confront him at once and wring from him she knewnot what: avowal, denial, justification, anything that should open somechannel of escape to the flood of her pent-up anguish.

  She had told Owen she was tired, and this seemed a sufficient reason forremaining upstairs when the motor came to the door and Miss Painter andSophy Viner were borne off in it; sufficient also for sending word toMadame de Chantelle that she would not come down till after luncheon.Having despatched her maid with this message, she lay down on her sofaand stared before her into darkness...

  She had been unhappy before, and the vision of old miseries flockedlike hungry ghosts about her fresh pain: she recalled her youthfuldisappointment, the failure of her marriage, the wasted years thatfollowed; but those were negative sorrows, denials and postponements oflife. She seemed in no way related to their shadowy victim, she whowas stretched on this fiery rack of the irreparable. She had sufferedbefore--yes, but lucidly, reflectively, elegiacally: now she wassuffering as a hurt animal must, blindly, furiously, with the singlefierce animal longing that the awful pain should stop...

  She heard her maid knock, and she hid her face and made no answer. Theknocking continued, and the discipline of habit at length made her lifther head, compose her face and hold out her hand to the note the womanbrought her. It was a word from Darrow--"May I see you?"--and she saidat once, in a voice that sounded thin and empty: "Ask Mr. Darrow to comeup."

  The maid enquired if she wished to have her hair smoothed first, andshe answered that it didn't matter; but when the door had closed, theinstinct of pride drew her to her feet and she looked at herself in theglass above the mantelpiece and passed her hands over her hair. Her eyeswere burning and her face looked tired and thinner; otherwise she couldsee no change in her appearance, and she wondered that at such a momenther body should seem as unrelated to the self that writhed within her asif it had been a statue or a picture.

  The maid reopened the door to show in Darrow, and he paused a moment onthe threshold, as if waiting for Anna to speak. He was extremely pale,but he looked neither ashamed nor uncertain, and she said to herself,with a perverse thrill of appreciation: "He's as proud as I am."

  Aloud she asked: "You wanted to see me?"

  "Naturally," he replied in a grave voice.

  "Don't! It's useless. I know everything. Nothing you can say will help."

  At the direct affirmation he turned even paler, and his eyes, which hekept resolutely fixed on her, confessed his misery.

  "You allow me no voice in deciding that?"

  "Deciding what?"

  "That there's nothing more to be said?" He waited for her to answer, andthen went on: "I don't even know what you mean by 'everything'."

  "Oh, I don't know what more there is! I know enough. I implored herto deny it, and she couldn't...What can you and I have to say to eachother?" Her voice broke into a sob. The animal anguish was upon heragain--just a blind cry against her pain!

  Darrow kept his head high and his eyes steady. "It must be as you wish;and yet it's not like you to be afraid."

  "Afraid?"

  "To talk things out--to face them."

  "It's for YOU to face this--not me!"

  "All I ask is to face it--but with you." Once more he paused. "Won't youtell me what Miss Viner told you?"

  "Oh, she's generous--to the utmost!" The pain caught her like a physicalthroe. It suddenly came to her how the girl must have loved him to be sogenerous--what memories there must be between them!

  "Oh, go, please go. It's too horrible. Why should I have to see you?"she stammered, lifting her hands to her eyes.

  With her face hidden she waited to hear him move away, to hear the dooropen and close again, as, a few hours earlier, it had opened andclosed on Sophy Viner. But Darrow made no sound or movement: he too waswaiting. Anna felt a thrill of resentment: his presence was an outrageon her sorrow, a humiliation to her pride. It was strange that he shouldwait for her to tell him so!

  "You want me to leave Givre?" he asked at length. She made no answer,and he went on: "Of course I'll do as you wish; but if I go now am I notto see you again?"

  His voice was firm: his pride was answering her pride!

  She faltered: "You must see it's useless----"

  "I might remind you that you're dismissing me without a hearing----"

  "Without a hearing? I've heard you both!"

  ----"but I won't," he continued, "remind you of that, or of anything orany one but Owen."

  "Owen?"

  "Yes; if we could somehow spare him----"

  She had dropped her hands and turned her startled eyes on him. It seemedto her an age since she had thought of Owen!

  "You see, don't you," Darrow continued, "that if you send me awaynow----"

  She interrupted: "Yes, I see----" and there was a long silence betweenthem. At length she said, very low: "I don't want any one else to sufferas I'm suffering..."

  "Owen knows I meant to leave tomorrow," Darrow went on. "Any suddenchange of plan may make him think..."

  Oh, she saw his inevitable logic: the horror of it was on every side ofher! It had seemed possible to control her grief and face Darrowcalmly while she was upheld by the belief that this was their last hourtogether, that after he had passed out of the room there would be nofear of seeing him again, no fear that his nearness, his look, hisvoice, and all the unseen influences that flowed from him, woulddissolve her soul to weakness. But her courage failed at the idea ofhaving to conspire with him to shield Owen, of keeping up with him, forOwen's sake, a feint of union and felicity. To live at Darrow's side inseeming intimacy and harmony for another twenty-four hours seemed harderthan to live without him for all the rest of her days. Her strengthfailed her, and she threw herself down and buried her sobs in thecushions where she had so often hidden a face aglow with happiness.

  "Anna----" His voice was close to her. "Let me talk to you quietly. It'snot worthy of either of us to be afraid."

  Words of endearment would have offended her; but her heart rose at thecall to her courage.

  "I've no defense to make," he went on. "The facts are miserable enough;but at least I want you to see them as they are. Above all, I want youto know the truth about Miss Viner----"

  The name sent the blood to Anna's forehead. She raised her head andfaced him. "Why should I know more of her than what she's told me? Inever wish to hear her name again!"

  "It's because you feel about her in that way that I ask you--in the nameof common charity--to let me give you the facts as they are, and not asyou've probably imagined them."

  "I've told you I don't think uncharitably of her. I don't want to thinkof her at all!"

  "That's why I tell you you're afraid."

  "Afraid?"

  "Yes. You've always said you wanted, above all, to look at life, at thehuman problem, as it is, without fear and without hypocrisy; and it'snot always a pleasant thing to look at." He broke off, and then beganagain: "Don't think this a plea for myself! I don't want to say a wordto lessen my offense. I don't want to talk of myself at all. Even if Idid, I probably couldn't make you understand--I don't, myself, as I lookback. Be just to me--it's your right; all I ask you is to be generous toMiss Viner..."

  She stood up trembling. "You're free to be as generous to her as youplease!"

  "Yes: you've made it clear to me that I'm free. But there's nothing Ican do for her that will help her half as much as your understanding herwould."

  "Nothing you can do for her? You can marry her!"

  His face hardened. "You certainly couldn't wish her a worse fate!"

  "It must have been what she expected...relied on..." He was silent, andshe broke out: "Or what is she? What are you? It's too horribl
e! On yourway here...to ME..." She felt the tears in her throat and stopped.

  "That was it," he said bluntly. She stared at him.

  "I was on my way to you--after repeated delays and postponements of yourown making. At the very last you turned me back with a mere word--andwithout explanation. I waited for a letter; and none came. I'm notsaying this to justify myself. I'm simply trying to make you understand.I felt hurt and bitter and bewildered. I thought you meant to give meup. And suddenly, in my way, I found some one to be sorry for, to beof use to. That, I swear to you, was the way it began. The rest was amoment's folly...a flash of madness...as such things are. We've neverseen each other since..."

  Anna was looking at him coldly. "You sufficiently describe her in sayingthat!"

  "Yes, if you measure her by conventional standards--which is what youalways declare you never do."

  "Conventional standards? A girl who----" She was checked by a suddenrush of almost physical repugnance. Suddenly she broke out: "I alwaysthought her an adventuress!"

  "Always?"

  "I don't mean always...but after you came..."

  "She's not an adventuress."

  "You mean that she professes to act on the new theories? The stuff thatawful women rave about on platforms?"

  "Oh, I don't think she pretended to have a theory----"

  "She hadn't even that excuse?"

  "She had the excuse of her loneliness, her unhappiness--of miseries andhumiliations that a woman like you can't even guess. She had nothing tolook back to but indifference or unkindness--nothing to look forward tobut anxiety. She saw I was sorry for her and it touched her. She madetoo much of it--she exaggerated it. I ought to have seen the danger, butI didn't. There's no possible excuse for what I did."

  Anna listened to him in speechless misery. Every word he spoke threwback a disintegrating light on their own past. He had come to her withan open face and a clear conscience--come to her from this! If hissecurity was the security of falsehood it was horrible; if it meant thathe had forgotten, it was worse. She would have liked to stop her ears,to close her eyes, to shut out every sight and sound and suggestion ofa world in which such things could be; and at the same time she wastormented by the desire to know more, to understand better, to feelherself less ignorant and inexpert in matters which made so much ofthe stuff of human experience. What did he mean by "a moment's folly, aflash of madness"? How did people enter on such adventures, how passout of them without more visible traces of their havoc? Her imaginationrecoiled from the vision of a sudden debasing familiarity: it seemed toher that her thoughts would never again be pure...

  "I swear to you," she heard Darrow saying, "it was simply that, andnothing more."

  She wondered at his composure, his competence, at his knowing so exactlywhat to say. No doubt men often had to make such explanations: they hadthe formulas by heart...A leaden lassitude descended on her. She passedfrom flame and torment into a colourless cold world where everythingsurrounding her seemed equally indifferent and remote. For a moment shesimply ceased to feel.

  She became aware that Darrow was waiting for her to speak, and she madean effort to represent to herself the meaning of what he had just said;but her mind was as blank as a blurred mirror. Finally she brought out:"I don't think I understand what you've told me."

  "No; you don't understand," he returned with sudden bitterness; and onhis lips the charge of incomprehension seemed an offense to her.

  "I don't want to--about such things!"

  He answered almost harshly: "Don't be afraid...you never will..."and for an instant they faced each other like enemies. Then the tearsswelled in her throat at his reproach.

  "You mean I don't feel things--I'm too hard?"

  "No: you're too high...too fine...such things are too far from you."

  He paused, as if conscious of the futility of going on with whateverhe had meant to say, and again, for a short space, they confrontedeach other, no longer as enemies--so it seemed to her--but as beings ofdifferent language who had forgotten the few words they had learned ofeach other's speech.

  Darrow broke the silence. "It's best, on all accounts, that I shouldstay till tomorrow; but I needn't intrude on you; we needn't meet againalone. I only want to be sure I know your wishes." He spoke the shortsentences in a level voice, as though he were summing up the results ofa business conference.

  Anna looked at him vaguely. "My wishes?"

  "As to Owen----"

  At that she started. "They must never meet again!"

  "It's not likely they will. What I meant was, that it depends on you tospare him..."

  She answered steadily: "He shall never know," and after another intervalDarrow said: "This is good-bye, then."

  At the word she seemed to understand for the first time whither theflying moments had been leading them. Resentment and indignation dieddown, and all her consciousness resolved itself into the mere visualsense that he was there before her, near enough for her to lift herhand and touch him, and that in another instant the place where he stoodwould be empty.

  She felt a mortal weakness, a craven impulse to cry out to him to stay,a longing to throw herself into his arms, and take refuge there from theunendurable anguish he had caused her. Then the vision called up anotherthought: "I shall never know what that girl has known..." and the recoilof pride flung her back on the sharp edges of her anguish.

  "Good-bye," she said, in dread lest he should read her face; and shestood motionless, her head high, while he walked to the door and wentout.

  BOOK V