In the oak room he found Mrs. Leath, her mother-in-law and Effie. The group, as he came toward it down the long drawing-rooms, composed itself prettily about the tea-table. The lamps and the fire crossed their gleams on silver and porcelain, on the bright haze of Effie’s hair and on the whiteness of Anna’s forehead, as she leaned back in her chair behind the tea-urn.
She did not move at Darrow’s approach, but lifted to him a deep gaze of peace and confidence. The look seemed to throw about him the spell of a divine security: he felt the joy of a convalescent suddenly waking to find the sunlight on his face.
Madame de Chantelle, across her knitting, discoursed of their afternoon’s excursion, with occasional pauses induced by the hypnotic effect of the fresh air; and Effie, kneeling, on the hearth, softly but insistently sought to implant in her terrier’s mind some notion of the relation between a vertical attitude and sugar.
Darrow took a chair behind the little girl, so that he might look across at her mother. It was almost a necessity for him, at the moment, to let his eyes rest on Anna’s face, and to meet, now and then, the proud shyness of her gaze.
Madame de Chantelle presently enquired what had become of Owen, and a moment later the window behind her opened, and her grandson, gun in hand, came in from the terrace. As he stood there in the lamp-light, with dead leaves and bits of bramble clinging to his mud-spattered clothes, the scent of the night about him and its chill on his pale bright face, he really had the look of a young faun strayed in from the forest.
Effie abandoned the terrier to fly to him. “Oh, Owen, where in the world have you been? I walked miles and miles with Nurse and couldn’t find you, and we met Jean and he said he didn’t know where you’d gone.”
“Nobody knows where I go, or what I see when I get there—that’s the beauty of it!” he laughed back at her. “But if you’re good,” he added, “I’ll tell you about it one of these days.”
“Oh, now, Owen, now! I don’t really believe I’ll ever be much better than I am now.”
“Let Owen have his tea first,” her mother suggested; but the young man, declining the offer, propped his gun against the wall, and, lighting a cigarette, began to pace up and down the room in a way that reminded Darrow of his own caged wanderings. Effie pursued him with her blandishments, and for a while he poured out to her a low-voiced stream of nonsense; then he sat down beside his step-mother and leaned over to help himself to tea.
“Where’s Miss Viner?” he asked, as Effie climbed up on him. “Why isn’t she here to chain up this ungovernable infant?”
“Poor Miss Viner has a headache. Effie says she went to her room as soon as lessons were over, and sent word that she wouldn’t be down for tea.”
“Ah,” said Owen, abruptly setting down his cup. He stood up, lit another cigarette, and wandered away to the piano in the room beyond.
From the twilight where he sat a lonely music, borne on fantastic chords, floated to the group about the tea-table. Under its influence Madame de Chantelle’s meditative pauses increased in length and frequency, and Effie stretched herself on the hearth, her drowsy head against the dog. Presently her nurse appeared, and Anna rose at the same time. “Stop a minute in my sitting-room on your way up,” she paused to say to Darrow as she went.
A few hours earlier, her request would have brought him instantly to his feet. She had given him, on the day of his arrival, an inviting glimpse of the spacious book-lined room above stairs in which she had gathered together all the tokens of her personal tastes: the retreat in which, as one might fancy, Anna Leath had hidden the restless ghost of Anna Summers; and the thought of a talk with her there had been in his mind ever since. But now he sat motionless, as if spell-bound by the play of Madame de Chantelle’s needles and the pulsations of Owen’s fitful music.
“She will want to ask me about the girl,” he repeated to himself, with a fresh sense of the insidious taint that embittered all his thoughts; the hand of the slender-columned clock on the mantel-piece had spanned a half-hour before shame at his own indecision finally drew him to his feet.
From her writing-table, where she sat over a pile of letters, Anna lifted her happy smile. The impulse to press his lips to it made him come close and draw her upward. She threw her head back, as if surprised at the abruptness of the gesture; then her face leaned to his with the slow droop of a flower. He felt again the sweep of the secret tides, and all his fears went down in them.
She sat down in the sofa-corner by the fire and he drew an armchair close to her. His gaze roamed peacefully about the quiet room.
“It’s just like you—it is you,” he said, as his eyes came back to her.
“It’s a good place to be alone in—I don’t think I’ve ever before cared to talk with any one here.”
“Let’s be quiet, then: it’s the best way of talking.”
“Yes; but we must save it up till later. There are things I want to say to you now.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Say them, then, and I’ll listen.”
“Oh, no. I want you to tell me about Miss Viner.”
“About Miss Viner?” He summoned up a look of faint interrogation.
He thought she seemed surprised at his surprise. “It’s important, naturally,” she explained, “that I should find out all I can about her before I leave.”
“Important on Effie’s account?”
“On Effie’s account—of course.”
“Of course.... But you’ve every reason to be satisfied, haven’t you?”
“Every apparent reason. We all like her. Effie’s very fond of her, and she seems to have a delightful influence on the child. But we know so little, after all—about her antecedents, I mean, and her past history. That’s why I want you to try and recall everything you heard about her when you used to see her in London.”
“Oh, on that score I’m afraid I sha’n’t be of much use. As I told you, she was a mere shadow in the background of the house I saw her in—and that was four or five years ago...”
“When she was with a Mrs. Murrett?”
“Yes; an appalling woman who runs a roaring dinner-factory that used now and then to catch me in its wheels. I escaped from them long ago; but in my time there used to be half a dozen fagged ‘hands’ to tend the machine, and Miss Viner was one of them. I’m glad she’s out of it, poor girl!” “Then you never really saw anything of her there?”
“I never had the chance. Mrs. Murrett discouraged any competition on the part of her subordinates.”
“Especially such pretty ones, I suppose?” Darrow made no comment, and she continued: “And Mrs. Murrett’s own opinion—if she’d offered you one—probably wouldn’t have been of much value?”
“Only in so far as her disapproval would, on general principles, have been a good mark for Miss Viner. But surely,” he went on after a pause, “you could have found out about her from the people through whom you first heard of her?”
Anna smiled. “Oh, we heard of her through Adelaide Painter—;” and in reply to his glance of interrogation she explained that the lady in question was a spinster of South Braintree, Massachusetts, who, having come to Paris some thirty years earlier, to nurse a brother through an illness, had ever since protestingly and provisionally camped there in a state of contemptuous protestation oddly manifested by her never taking the slip-covers off her drawing-room chairs. Her long residence on Gallic soil had not mitigated her hostility toward the creed and customs of the race, but though she always referred to the Catholic Church as the Scarlet Woman and took the darkest views of French private life, Madame de Chantelle placed great reliance on her judgment and experience, and in every domestic crisis the irreducible Adelaide was immediately summoned to Givre.
“It’s all the odder because my mother-in-law, since her second marriage, has lived so much in the country that she’s practically lost sight of all her other American friends. Besides which, you can see how completely she has identified herself with Monsieur de Chantelle’s nationality and adopted French habits and prejudices. Yet when anything goes wrong she always sends for Adelaide Painter, who’s more American than the Stars and Stripes, and might have left South Braintree yesterday, if she hadn’t, rather, brought it over with her in her trunk.”
Darrow laughed. “Well, then, if South Braintree vouches for Miss Viner——”
“Oh, but only indirectly. When we had that odious adventure with Mademoiselle Grumeau, who’d been so highly recommended by Monsieur de Chantelle’s aunt, the Chanoinesse, Adelaide was of course sent for, and she said at once: ‘I’m not the least bit surprised. I’ve always told you that what you wanted for Effie was a sweet American girl, and not one of these nasty foreigners.’ Unluckily she couldn’t, at the moment, put her hand on a sweet American; but she presently heard of Miss Viner through the Farlows, an excellent couple who live in the Quartier Latin and write about French life for the American papers. I was only too thankful to find anyone who was vouched for by decent people; and so far I’ve had no cause to regret my choice. But I know, after all, very little about Miss Viner; and there are all kinds of reasons why I want, as soon as possible, to find out more—to find out all I can.”
“Since you’ve got to leave Effie I understand your feeling in that way. But is there, in such a case, any recommendation worth half as much as your own direct experience?”
“No; and it’s been so favourable that I was ready to accept it as conclusive. Only, naturally, when I found you’d known her in London I was in hopes you’d give me some more specific reasons for liking her as much as I do.”
“I’m afraid I can give you nothing more specific than my general vague impression that she seems very plucky and extremely nice.”
“You don’t, at any rate, know anything specific to the contrary?”
“To the contrary? How should I? I’m not conscious of ever having heard any one say two words about her. I only infer that she must have pluck and character to have stuck it out so long at Mrs. Murrett’s.”
“Yes, poor thing! She has pluck, certainly; and pride, too; which must have made it all the harder.” Anna rose to her feet. “You don’t know how glad I am that your impression’s on the whole so good. I particularly wanted you to like her.”
He drew her to him with a smile. “On that condition I’m prepared to love even Adelaide Painter.”
“I almost hope you wont have the chance to—poor Adelaide! Her appearance here always coincides with a catastrophe.”
“Oh, then I must manage to meet her elsewhere.” He held Anna closer, saying to himself, as he smoothed back the hair from her forehead: “What does anything matter but justthis?—Must I go now?” he added aloud.
She answered absently: “It must be time to dress”; then she drew back a little and laid her hands on his shoulders. “My love—oh, my dear love!” she said.
It came to him that they were the first words of endearment he had heard her speak, and their rareness gave them a magic quality of reassurance, as though no danger could strike through such a shield.
A knock on the door made them draw apart. Anna lifted her hand to her hair and Darrow stooped to examine a photograph of Effie on the writing-table.
“Come in!” Anna said.
The door opened and Sophy Viner entered. Seeing Darrow, she drew back.
“Do come in, Miss Viner,” Anna repeated, looking at her kindly.
The girl, a quick red in her cheeks, still hesitated on the threshold.
“I’m so sorry; but Effie has mislaid her Latin grammar, and I thought she might have left it here. I need it to prepare for tomorrow’s lesson.”
“Is this it?” Darrow asked, picking up a book from the table.
“Oh, thank you!”
He held it out to her and she took it and moved to the door.
“Wait a minute, please, Miss Viner,” Anna said; and as the girl turned back, she went on with her quiet smile: “Effie told us you’d gone to your room with a headache. You mustn’t sit up over tomorrow’s lessons if you don’t feel well.”
Sophy’s blush deepened. “But you see I have to. Latin’s one of my weak points, and there’s generally only one page of this book between me and Effie.” She threw the words off with a half-ironic smile. “Do excuse my disturbing you,” she added.
“You didn’t disturb me,” Anna answered. Darrow perceived that she was looking intently at the girl, as though struck by something tense and tremulous in her face, her voice, her whole mien and attitude. “Youdolook tired. You’d much better go straight to bed. Effie won’t be sorry to skip her Latin.”
“Thank you—but I’m really all right,” murmured Sophy Viner. Her glance, making a swift circuit of the room, dwelt for an appreciable instant on the intimate propinquity of arm-chair and sofa-corner; then she turned back to the door.
At dinner that evening Madame de Chantelle’s slender monologue was thrown out over gulfs of silence. Owen was still in the same state of moody abstraction as when Darrow had left him at the piano; and even Anna’s face, to her friend’s vigilant eye, revealed not, perhaps, a personal preoccupation, but a vague sense of impending disturbance.
She smiled, she bore a part in the talk, her eyes dwelt on Darrow’s with their usual deep reliance; but beneath the surface of her serenity his tense perceptions detected a hidden stir.
He was sufficiently self-possessed to tell himself that it was doubtless due to causes with which he was not directly concerned. He knew the question of Owen’s marriage was soon to be raised, and the abrupt alteration in the young man’s mood made it seem probable that he was himself the centre of the atmospheric disturbance. For a moment it occurred to Darrow that Anna might have employed her afternoon in preparing Madame de Chantelle for her grandson’s impending announcement; but a glance at the elder lady’s unclouded brow showed that he must seek elsewhere the clue to Owen’s taciturnity and his step-mother’s concern. Possibly Anna had found reason to change her own attitude in the matter, and had made the change known to Owen. But this, again, was negatived by the fact that, during the afternoon’s shooting, young Leath had been in a mood of almost extravagant expansiveness, and that, from the moment of his late return to the house till just before dinner, there had been, to Darrow’s certain knowledge, no possibility of a private talk between himself and his step-mother.
This obscured, if it narrowed, the field of conjecture; and Darrow’s gropings threw him back on the conclusion that he was probably reading too much significance into the moods of a lad he hardly knew, and who had been described to him as subject to sudden changes of humour. As to Anna’s fancied perturbation, it might simply be due to the fact that she had decided to plead Owen’s cause the next day, and had perhaps already had a glimpse of the difficulties awaiting her. But Darrow knew that he was too deep in his own perplexities to judge the mental state of those about him. It might be, after all, that the variations he felt in the currents of communication were caused by his own inward tremor.
Such, at any rate, was the conclusion he had reached when, shortly after the two ladies left the drawing-room, he bade Owen good-night and went up to his room. Ever since the rapid self-colloquy which had followed on his first sight of Sophy Viner, he had known there were other questions to be faced behind the one immediately confronting him. On the score of that one, at least, his mind, if not easy, was relieved. He had done what was possible to reassure the girl, and she had apparently recognized the sincerity of his intention. He had patched up as decent a conclusion as he could to an incident that should obviously have had no sequel; but he had known all along that with the securing of Miss Viner’s peace of mind only a part of his obligation was discharged, and that with that part his remaining duty was in conflict. It had been his first business to convince the girl that their secret was safe with him; but it was far from easy to square this with the equally urgent obligation of safe-guarding Anna’s responsibility toward her child. Darrow was not much afraid of accidental disclosures. Both he and Sophy Viner had too much at stake not to be on their guard. The fear that beset him was of another kind, and had a profounder source. He wanted to do all he could for the girl, but the fact of having had to urge Anna to confide Effie to her was peculiarly repugnant to him. His own ideas about Sophy Viner were too mixed and indeterminate for him not to feel the risk of such an experiment; yet he found himself in the intolerable position of appearing to press it on the woman he desired above all others to protect...
Till late in the night his thoughts revolved in a turmoil of indecision. His pride was humbled by the discrepancy between what Sophy Viner had been to him and what he had thought of her. This discrepancy, which at the time had seemed to simplify the incident, now turned out to be its most galling complication. The bare truth, indeed, was that he had hardly thought of her at all, either at the time or since, and that he was ashamed to base his judgement of her on his meagre memory of their adventure.
The essential cheapness of the whole affair—as far as his share in it was concerned—came home to him with humiliating distinctness. He would have liked to be able to feel that, at the time at least, he had staked something more on it, and had somehow, in the sequel, had a more palpable loss to show. But the plain fact was that he hadn’t spent a penny on it; which was no doubt the reason of the prodigious score it had since been rolling up. At any rate, beat about the case as he would, it was clear that he owed it to Anna—and incidentally to his own peace of mind—to find some way of securing Sophy Viner’s future without leaving her installed at Givre when he and his wife should depart for their new post.
The night brought no aid to the solving of this problem; but it gave him, at any rate, the clear conviction that no time was to be lost. His first step must be to obtain from Miss Viner the chance of another and calmer talk; and he resolved to seek it at the earliest hour.
He had gathered that Effie’s lessons were preceded by an early scamper in the park, and conjecturing that her governess might be with her he betook himself the next morning to the terrace, whence he wandered on to the gardens and the walks beyond.
The atmosphere was still and pale. The muffled sunlight gleamed like gold tissue through grey gauze, and the beech alleys tapered away to a blue haze blent of sky and forest. It was one of those elusive days when the familiar forms of things seem about to dissolve in a prismatic shimmer.
The stillness was presently broken by joyful barks, and Darrow, tracking the sound, overtook Effie flying down one of the long alleys at the head of her pack. Beyond her he saw Miss Viner seated near the stone-rimmed basin beside which he and Anna had paused on their first walk to the river.
The girl, coming forward at his approach, returned his greeting almost gaily. His first glance showed him that she had regained her composure, and the change in her appearance gave him the measure of her fears. For the first time he saw in her again the sidelong grace that had charmed his eyes in Paris; but he saw it now as in a painted picture.
“Shall we sit down a minute?” he asked, as Effie trotted off.
The girl looked away from him. “I’m afraid there’s not much time; we must be back at lessons at half-past nine.”
“But it’s barely ten minutes past. Let’s at least walk a little way toward the river.”
She glanced down the long walk ahead of them and then back in the direction of the house. “If you like,” she said in a low voice, with one of her quick fluctuations of colour; but instead of taking the way he proposed she turned toward a narrow path which branched off obliquely through the trees.
Darrow was struck, and vaguely troubled, by the change in her look and tone. There was in them an undefinable appeal, whether for help or forbearance he could not tell. Then it occurred to him that there might have been something misleading in his so pointedly seeking her, and he felt a momentary constraint. To ease it he made an abrupt dash at the truth.
“I came out to look for you because our talk of yesterday was so unsatisfactory. I want to hear more about you—about your plans and prospects. I’ve been wondering ever since why you’ve so completely given up the theatre.”
Her face instantly sharpened to distrust. “I had to live,” she said in an off-hand tone.
“I understand perfectly that you should like it here—for a time.” His glance strayed down the gold-roofed windings ahead of them. “It’s delightful: you couldn’t be better placed. Only I wonder a little at your having so completely given up any idea of a different future.”
She waited for a moment before answering: “I suppose I’m less restless than I used to be.”
“It’s certainly natural that you should be less restless here than at Mrs. Murrett’s; yet somehow I don’t seem to see you permanently given up to forming the young.”
“What—exactly—DO you seem to see me permanently given up to? You know you warned me rather emphatically against the theatre.” She threw off the statement without impatience, as though they were discussing together the fate of a third person in whom both were benevolently interested. Darrow considered his reply. “If I did, it was because you so emphatically refused to let me help you to a start.”
She stopped short and faced him “And you think I may let you now?”
Darrow felt the blood in his cheek. He could not understand her attitude—if indeed she had consciously taken one, and her changes of tone did not merely reflect the involuntary alternations of her mood. It humbled him to perceive once more how little he had to guide him in his judgment of her. He said to himself: “If I’d ever cared a straw for her I should know how to avoid hurting her now”—and his insensibility struck him as no better than a vulgar obtuseness. But he had a fixed purpose ahead and could only push on to it.
“I hope, at any rate, you’ll listen to my reasons. There’s been time, on both sides, to think them over since——” He caught himself back and hung helpless on the “since”: whatever words he chose, he seemed to stumble among reminders of their past.
She walked on beside him, her eyes on the ground. “Then I’m to understand—definitely—that youdorenew your offer?” she asked
“With all my heart! If you’ll only let me——”
She raised a hand, as though to check him. “It’s extremely friendly of you—Idobelieve you mean it as a friend—but I don’t quite understand why, finding me, as you say, so well placed here, you should show more anxiety about my future than at a time when I was actually, and rather desperately, adrift.”
“Oh, no, not more!”
“If you show any at all, it must, at any rate, be for different reasons.—In fact, it can only be,” she went on, with one of her disconcerting flashes of astuteness, “for one of two reasons; either because you feel you ought to help me, or because, for some reason, you think you owe it to Mrs. Leath to let her know what you know of me.”
Darrow stood still in the path. Behind him he heard Effie’s call, and at the child’s voice he saw Sophy turn her head with the alertness of one who is obscurely on the watch. The look was so fugitive that he could not have said wherein it differed from her normal professional air of having her pupil on her mind.
Effie sprang past them, and Darrow took up the girl’s challenge.
“What you suggest about Mrs. Leath is hardly worth answering. As to my reasons for wanting to help you, a good deal depends on the words one uses to define rather indefinite things. It’s true enough that I want to help you; but the wish isn’t due to ... to any past kindness on your part, but simply to my own interest in you. Why not put it that our friendship gives me the right to intervene for what I believe to be your benefit?”
She took a few hesitating steps and then paused again. Darrow noticed that she had grown pale and that there were rings of shade about her eyes.
“You’ve known Mrs. Leath a long time?” she asked him suddenly.
He paused with a sense of approaching peril. “A long time—yes.”
“She told me you were friends—great friends”
“Yes,” he admitted, “we’re great friends.”
“Then you might naturally feel yourself justified in telling her that you don’t think I’m the right person for Effie.” He uttered a sound of protest, but she disregarded it. “I don’t say you’dliketo do it. You wouldn’t: you’d hate it. And the natural alternative would be to try to persuade me that I’d be better off somewhere else than here. But supposing that failed, and you saw I was determined to stay?thenyou might think it your duty to tell Mrs. Leath.”
She laid the case before him with a cold lucidity. “I should, in your place, I believe,” she ended with a little laugh.
“I shouldn’t feel justified in telling her, behind your back, if I thought you unsuited for the place; but I should certainly feel justified,” he rejoined after a pause, “in tellingyouif I thought the place unsuited to you.”
“And that’s what you’re trying to tell me now?”
“Yes; but not for the reasons you imagine.”
“What, then, are your reasons, if you please?”
“I’ve already implied them in advising you not to give up all idea of the theatre. You’re too various, too gifted, too personal, to tie yourself down, at your age, to the dismal drudgery of teaching.”
“And isthatwhat you’ve told Mrs. Leath?”
She rushed the question out at him as if she expected to trip him up over it. He was moved by the simplicity of the stratagem.
“I’ve told her exactly nothing,” he replied.
“And what—exactly—do you mean by ‘nothing’? You and she were talking about me when I came into her sitting-room yesterday.”
Darrow felt his blood rise at the thrust.
“I’ve told her, simply, that I’d seen you once or twice at Mrs. Murrett’s.”
“And not that you’ve ever seen me since?”
“And not that I’ve ever seen you since...”
“And she believes you—she completely believes you?”
He uttered a protesting exclamation, and his flush reflected itself in the girl’s cheek.
“Oh, I beg your pardon! I didn’t mean to ask you that.” She halted, and again cast a rapid glance behind and ahead of her. Then she held out her hand. “Well, then, thank you—and let me relieve your fears. I sha’n’t be Effie’s governess much longer.”
At the announcement, Darrow tried to merge his look of relief into the expression of friendly interest with which he grasped her hand. “You really do agree with me, then? And you’ll give me a chance to talk things over with you?”
She shook her head with a faint smile. “I’m not thinking of the stage. I’ve had another offer: that’s all.”
The relief was hardly less great. After all, his personal responsibility ceased with her departure from Givre.
“You’ll tell me about that, then—won’t you?”
Her smile flickered up. “Oh, you’ll hear about it soon.... I must catch Effie now and drag her back to the blackboard.”
She walked on for a few yards, and then paused again and confronted him. “I’ve been odious to you—and not quite honest,” she broke out suddenly.
“Not quite honest?” he repeated, caught in a fresh wave of wonder.
“I mean, in seeming not to trust you. It’s come over me again as we talked that, at heart, I’ve alwaysknownI could...”
Her colour rose in a bright wave, and her eyes clung to his for a swift instant of reminder and appeal. For the same space of time the past surged up in him confusedly; then a veil dropped between them.
“Here’s Effie now!” she exclaimed.
He turned and saw the little girl trotting back to them, her hand in Owen Leath’s. Even through the stir of his subsiding excitement Darrow was at once aware of the change effected by the young man’s approach. For a moment Sophy Viner’s cheeks burned redder; then they faded to the paleness of white petals. She lost, however, nothing of the bright bravery which it was her way to turn on the unexpected. Perhaps no one less familiar with her face than Darrow would have discerned the tension of the smile she transferred from himself to Owen Leath, or have remarked that her eyes had hardened from misty grey to a shining darkness. But her observer was less struck by this than by the corresponding change in Owen Leath. The latter, when he came in sight, had been laughing and talking unconcernedly with Effie; but as his eye fell on Miss Viner his expression altered as suddenly as hers.
The change, for Darrow, was less definable; but, perhaps for that reason, it struck him as more sharply significant. Only—just what did it signify? Owen, like Sophy Viner, had the kind of face which seems less the stage on which emotions move than the very stuff they work in. In moments of excitement his odd irregular features seemed to grow fluid, to unmake and remake themselves like the shadows of clouds on a stream. Darrow, through the rapid flight of the shadows, could not seize on any specific indication of feeling: he merely perceived that the young man was unaccountably surprised at finding him with Miss Viner, and that the extent of his surprise might cover all manner of implications.
Darrow’s first idea was that Owen, if he suspected that the conversation was not the result of an accidental encounter, might wonder at his step-mother’s suitor being engaged, at such an hour, in private talk with her little girl’s governess. The thought was so disturbing that, as the three turned back to the house, he was on the point of saying to Owen: “I came out to look for your mother.” But, in the contingency he feared, even so simple a phrase might seem like an awkward attempt at explanation; and he walked on in silence at Miss Viner’s side. Presently he was struck by the fact that Owen Leath and the girl were silent also; and this gave a new turn to his thoughts. Silence may be as variously shaded as speech; and that which enfolded Darrow and his two companions seemed to his watchful perceptions to be quivering with cross-threads of communication. At first he was aware only of those that centred in his own troubled consciousness; then it occurred to him that an equal activity of intercourse was going on outside of it. Something was in fact passing mutely and rapidly between young Leath and Sophy Viner; but what it was, and whither it tended, Darrow, when they reached the house, was but just beginning to divine...
Anna Leath, from the terrace, watched the return of the little group.
She looked down on them, as they advanced across the garden, from the serene height of her unassailable happiness. There they were, coming toward her in the mild morning light, her child, her step-son, her promised husband: the three beings who filled her life. She smiled a little at the happy picture they presented, Effie’s gambols encircling it in a moving frame within which the two men came slowly forward in the silence of friendly understanding. It seemed part of the deep intimacy of the scene that they should not be talking to each other, and it did not till afterward strike her as odd that neither of them apparently felt it necessary to address a word to Sophy Viner.
Anna herself, at the moment, was floating in the mid-current of felicity, on a tide so bright and buoyant that she seemed to be one with its warm waves. The first rush of bliss had stunned and dazzled her; but now that, each morning, she woke to the calm certainty of its recurrence, she was growing used to the sense of security it gave.
“I feel as if I could trust my happiness to carry me; as if it had grown out of me like wings.” So she phrased it to Darrow, as, later in the morning, they paced the garden-paths together. His answering look gave her the same assurance of safety. The evening before he had seemed preoccupied, and the shadow of his mood had faintly encroached on the great golden orb of their blessedness; but now it was uneclipsed again, and hung above them high and bright as the sun at noon.
Upstairs in her sitting-room, that afternoon, she was thinking of these things. The morning mists had turned to rain, compelling the postponement of an excursion in which the whole party were to have joined. Effie, with her governess, had been despatched in the motor to do some shopping at Francheuil; and Anna had promised Darrow to join him, later in the afternoon, for a quick walk in the rain.
He had gone to his room after luncheon to get some belated letters off his conscience; and when he had left her she had continued to sit in the same place, her hands crossed on her knees, her head slightly bent, in an attitude of brooding retrospection. As she looked back at her past life, it seemed to her to have consisted of one ceaseless effort to pack into each hour enough to fill out its slack folds; but now each moment was like a miser’s bag stretched to bursting with pure gold.
She was roused by the sound of Owen’s step in the gallery outside her room. It paused at her door and in answer to his knock she called out “Come in!”
As the door closed behind him she was struck by his look of pale excitement, and an impulse of compunction made her say: “You’ve come to ask me why I haven’t spoken to your grandmother!” He sent about him a glance vaguely reminding her of the strange look with which Sophy Viner had swept the room the night before; then his brilliant eyes came back to her.
“I’ve spoken to her myself,” he said.
Anna started up, incredulous.
“You’ve spoken to her? When?”
“Just now. I left her to come here.”
Anna’s first feeling was one of annoyance. There was really something comically incongruous in this boyish surrender to impulse on the part of a young man so eager to assume the responsibilities of life. She looked at him with a faintly veiled amusement.
“You asked me to help you and I promised you I would. It was hardly worth while to work out such an elaborate plan of action if you intended to take the matter out of my hands without telling me.”
“Oh, don’t take that tone with me!” he broke out, almost angrily.
“That tone? What tone?” She stared at his quivering face. “I might,” she pursued, still half-laughing, “more properly make that request ofyou!”
Owen reddened and his vehemence suddenly subsided.
“I meant that Ihadto speak—that’s all. You don’t give me a chance to explain...”
She looked at him gently, wondering a little at her own impatience.
“Owen! Don’t I always want to give you every chance? It’s because Idothat I wanted to talk to your grandmother first—that I was waiting and watching for the right moment...”
“The right moment? So was I. That’s why I’ve spoken.” His voice rose again and took the sharp edge it had in moments of high pressure.
His step-mother turned away and seated herself in her sofa-corner. “Oh, my dear, it’s not a privilege to quarrel over! You’ve taken a load off my shoulders. Sit down and tell me all about it.”
He stood before her, irresolute. “I can’t sit down,” he said.
“Walk about, then. Only tell me: I’m impatient.”
His immediate response was to throw himself into the armchair at her side, where he lounged for a moment without speaking, his legs stretched out, his arms locked behind his thrown-back head. Anna, her eyes on his face, waited quietly for him to speak.
“Well—of course it was just what one expected.”
“She takes it so badly, you mean?”
“All the heavy batteries were brought up: my father, Givre, Monsieur de Chantelle, the throne and the altar. Even my poor mother was dragged out of oblivion and armed with imaginary protests.”
Anna sighed out her sympathy. “Well—you were prepared for all that?”
“I thought I was, till I began to hear her say it. Then it sounded so incredibly silly that I told her so.”
“Oh, Owen—Owen!”
“Yes: I know. I was a fool; but I couldn’t help it.”
“And you’ve mortally offended her, I suppose? That’s exactly what I wanted to prevent.” She laid a hand on his shoulder. “You tiresome boy, not to wait and let me speak for you!”
He moved slightly away, so that her hand slipped from its place. “You don’t understand,” he said, frowning.
“I don’t see how I can, till you explain. If you thought the time had come to tell your grandmother, why not have asked me to do it? I had my reasons for waiting; but if you’d told me to speak I should have done so, naturally.”
He evaded her appeal by a sudden turn. “Whatwereyour reasons for waiting?”
Anna did not immediately answer. Her step-son’s eyes were on her face, and under his gaze she felt a faint disquietude.
“I was feeling my way.... I wanted to be absolutely sure...”
“Absolutely sure of what?”
She delayed again for a just perceptible instant. “Why, simply ofourside of the case.”
“But you told me you were, the other day, when we talked it over before they came back from Ouchy.”
“Oh, my dear—if you think that, in such a complicated matter, every day, every hour, doesn’t more or less modify one’s surest sureness!”
“That’s just what I’m driving at. I want to know what has modified yours.”
She made a slight gesture of impatience. “What does it matter, now the thing’s done? I don’t know that I could give any clear reason...”
He got to his feet and stood looking down on her with a tormented brow. “But it’s absolutely necessary that you should.”
At his tone her impatience flared up. “It’s not necessary that I should give you any explanation whatever, since you’ve taken the matter out of my hands. All I can say is that I was trying to help you: that no other thought ever entered my mind.” She paused a moment and then added: “If you doubted it, you were right to do what you’ve done.”
“Oh, I never doubtedyou!” he retorted, with a fugitive stress on the pronoun. His face had cleared to its old look of trust. “Don’t be offended if I’ve seemed to,” he went on. “I can’t quite explain myself, either ... it’s all a kind of tangle, isn’t it? That’s why I thought I’d better speak at once; or rather why I didn’t think at all, but just suddenly blurted the thing out——”
Anna gave him back his look of conciliation. “Well, the how and why don’t much matter now. The point is how to deal with your grandmother. You’ve not told me what she means to do.”
“Oh, she means to send for Adelaide Painter.”
The name drew a faint note of mirth from him and relaxed both their faces to a smile.
“Perhaps,” Anna added, “it’s really the best thing for us all.”
Owen shrugged his shoulders. “It’s too preposterous and humiliating. Dragging that woman into our secrets——!”
“This could hardly be a secret much longer.”
He had moved to the hearth, where he stood pushing about the small ornaments on the mantel-shelf; but at her answer he turned back to her.
“You haven’t, of course, spoken of it to any one?”
“No; but I intend to now.”
She paused for his reply, and as it did not come she continued: “If Adelaide Painter’s to be told there’s no possible reason why I shouldn’t tell Mr. Darrow.” Owen abruptly set down the little statuette between his fingers. “None whatever: I want every one to know.”
She smiled a little at his over-emphasis, and was about to meet it with a word of banter when he continued, facing her: “You haven’t, as yet, said a word to him?”
“I’ve told him nothing, except what the discussion of our own plans—his and mine—obliged me to: that you were thinking of marrying, and that I wasn’t willing to leave France till I’d done what I could to see you through.”
At her first words the colour had rushed to his forehead; but as she continued she saw his face compose itself and his blood subside.
“You’re a brick, my dear!” he exclaimed.
“You had my word, you know.”
“Yes; yes—I know.” His face had clouded again. “And that’s all—positively all—you’ve ever said to him?”
“Positively all. But why do you ask?”
He had a moment’s embarrassed hesitation. “It was understood, wasn’t it, that my grandmother was to be the first to know?”
“Well—and so she has been, hasn’t she, since you’ve told her?”
He turned back to his restless shifting of the knick-knacks.
“And you’re sure that nothing you’ve said to Darrow could possibly have given him a hint——?”
“Nothing I’ve said to him—certainly.”
He swung about on her. “Why do you put it in that way?”
“In what way?”
“Why—as if you thought some one else might have spoken...”
“Some one else? Who else?” She rose to her feet. “What on earth, my dear boy, can you be driving at?”
“I’m trying to find out whether you think he knows anything definite.”
“Why should I think so? Doyou?”
“I don’t know. I want to find out.”
She laughed at his obstinate insistence. “To test my veracity, I suppose?” At the sound of a step in the gallery she added: “Here he is—you can ask him yourself.”
She met Darrow’s knock with an invitation to enter, and he came into the room and paused between herself and Owen. She was struck, as he stood there, by the contrast between his happy careless good-looks and her step-son’s frowning agitation.
Darrow met her eyes with a smile. “Am I too soon? Or is our walk given up?”
“No; I was just going to get ready.” She continued to linger between the two, looking slowly from one to the other. “But there’s something we want to tell you first: Owen is engaged to Miss Viner.”
The sense of an indefinable interrogation in Owen’s mind made her, as she spoke, fix her eyes steadily on Darrow.
He had paused just opposite the window, so that, even in the rainy afternoon light, his face was clearly open to her scrutiny. For a second, immense surprise was alone visible on it: so visible that she half turned to her step-son, with a faint smile for his refuted suspicions. Why, she wondered, should Owen have thought that Darrow had already guessed his secret, and what, after all, could be so disturbing to him in this not improbable contingency? At any rate, his doubt must have been dispelled: there was nothing feigned about Darrow’s astonishment. When her eyes turned back to him he was already crossing to Owen with outstretched hand, and she had, through an unaccountable faint flutter of misgiving, a mere confused sense of their exchanging the customary phrases. Her next perception was of Owen’s tranquillized look, and of his smiling return of Darrow’s congratulatory grasp. She had the eerie feeling of having been overswept by a shadow which there had been no cloud to cast...
A moment later Owen had left the room and she and Darrow were alone. He had turned away to the window and stood staring out into the down-pour.
“You’re surprised at Owen’s news?” she asked.
“Yes: I am surprised,” he answered.
“You hadn’t thought of its being Miss Viner?”
“Why should I have thought of Miss Viner?”
“You see now why I wanted so much to find out what you knew about her.” He made no comment, and she pursued: “Now that youdoknow it’s she, if there’s anything——”
He moved back into the room and went up to her. His face was serious, with a slight shade of annoyance. “What on earth should there be? As I told you, I’ve never in my life heard any one say two words about Miss Viner.”
Anna made no answer and they continued to face each other without moving. For the moment she had ceased to think about Sophy Viner and Owen: the only thought in her mind was that Darrow was alone with her, close to her, and that, for the first time, their hands and lips had not met.
He glanced back doubtfully at the window. “It’s pouring. Perhaps you’d rather not go out?”
She hesitated, as if waiting for him to urge her. “I suppose I’d better not. I ought to go at once to my mother-in-law—Owen’s just been telling her,” she said.
“Ah.” Darrow hazarded a smile. “That accounts for my having, on my way up, heard some one telephoning for Miss Painter!”
At the allusion they laughed together, vaguely, and Anna moved toward the door. He held it open for her and followed her out.