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BOOK I: CHAPTER VII
Darrow was still standing on her threshold. As she put the
question he entered the room and closed the door behind him.
His heart was beating a little faster than usual and he had
no clear idea of what he was about to do or say, beyond the
definite conviction that, whatever passing impulse of
expiation moved him, he would not be fool enough to tell her
that he had not sent her letter. He knew that most
wrongdoing works, on the whole, less mischief than its
useless confession; and this was clearly a case where a
passing folly might be turned, by avowal, into a serious
offense.
"I'm so sorry--so sorry; but you must let me help you...You
will let me help you?" he said.
He took her hands and pressed them together between his,
counting on a friendly touch to help out the insufficiency
of words. He felt her yield slightly 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 anything you might have done to prevent our
having it?"
She drew back, freeing her hands. Her face, losing its look
of appealing confidence, was suddenly sharpened by distrust.
"You didn't forget to post my letter?"
Darrow stood before her, constrained and ashamed, and ever
more keenly aware that the betrayal of his distress must be
a greater offense than its 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; I won't regret anything except that our
good time is over!"
The words were so unexpected that they routed all his
resolves. If she had gone on doubting him he could probably
have gone on deceiving her; but her unhesitating acceptance
of his word made him hate the part he was playing. At the
same moment a doubt shot up its serpenthead in his own
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 all the tiresome question of the letter?
Considering what her experiences must have been, such
trustfulness seemed open to suspicion. But the moment his
eyes fell on her he was ashamed of the thought, and knew it
for 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 a little longer?"
She looked up, her lips parted in surprise; but before she
could speak he went on: "I want you to stay with me--I want
you, just for a few days, to have all the things you've
never had. It's not always May and Paris--why not make the
most of them now? You know me--we're not strangers--why
shouldn't you treat me like a friend?"
While he spoke she had drawn away a little, but her hand
still lay in his. She was pale, and her eyes were fixed on
him in a gaze in which there 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
tell you...I'll tell you I didn't post your letter...I
didn't post it because I wanted so much to give you a few
good hours...and because I couldn't bear to have you go."
He had the feeling that the words were being uttered in
spite of him by some malicious witness of the scene, and yet
that he was not sorry to have them spoken.
The girl had listened to him in silence. She remained
motionless for a moment 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 tell me so NOW, to prove to me that I'd better put
myself under your protection?" She burst into a laugh that
had in it all the piercing echoes of her Murrett past, and
her face, at the same moment, underwent the same change,
shrinking into a small malevolent white mask in which the
eyes burned black. "Thank you--thank you most awfully for
telling me! And for all your other kind intentions! The
plan's delightful--really quite delightful, and I'm
extremely flattered and obliged."
She dropped into a seat beside her dressing-table, resting
her chin on her lifted hands, and laughing out at him under
the elf-lock which had shaken itself down over her eyes.
Her outburst did not offend the young man; its immediate
effect was that of allaying his agitation. The theatrical
touch in her manner made his offense 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 a tone of good-humoured protest, "I needn't have
told you I'd kept back your letter; and my telling you seems
rather strong proof that I hadn't any very nefarious designs
on you."
She met this with a shrug, but he did not give her time to
answer. "My designs," he continued with a smile, "were not
nefarious. I saw you'd been through a bad time with Mrs.
Murrett, and that there didn't seem to be much fun ahead for
you; and I didn't see--and I don't yet see--the harm of
trying to give you a few hours of amusement between a
depressing past and a not particularly cheerful future." He
paused again, and then went on, in the same tone of friendly
reasonableness: "The mistake I made was not to tell you this
at once--not to ask you straight out to give me a day or
two, and let me try to make you forget all the things that
are troubling you. I was a fool not to see that if I'd put
it to you in that way you'd have accepted or refused, as you
chose; but that at least you wouldn't have mistaken my
intentions.--Intentions!" He stood up, walked the length of
the room, and turned back to where she still sat motionless,
her elbows propped on the dressing-table, her chin on her
hands. "What rubbish we talk about intentions! The truth is
I hadn't any: I just liked being with you. Perhaps you
don't know how extraordinarily one can like being with
you...I was depressed and adrift myself; and you made me
forget my bothers; and when I found you were going--and
going back to dreariness, as I was--I didn't see why we
shouldn't have a few hours together first; so I left your
letter in my pocket."
He saw her face melt as she listened, and suddenly she
unclasped her hands and leaned to him.
"But are YOU unhappy too? Oh, I never understood--I
never dreamed it! I thought you'd always had everything in
the world you wanted!"
Darrow broke into a laugh at this ingenuous picture of his
state. He was ashamed of trying to better his case by an
appeal to her pity, and annoyed with himself for alluding to
a subject he would rather have kept out of his thoughts.
But her look of sympathy had disarmed him; his heart was
bitter and distracted; she was near him, her eyes were
shining with 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 that people 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 to remember. But this IS good-
bye, you know. I must telegraph at once to say 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. Her gaze 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 put themselves 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 root of 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 laughed back sharply. "I might never be able to
pay up!"
His gesture brushed aside the allusion. "Money may be the
root of the matter; it can't be the whole of it, between
friends. Don't you think one friend may accept a small
service from another without looking too far ahead or
weighing too many chances? The question turns entirely on
what you think of me. If you like me well enough to be
willing to take a few days' holiday with me, just for the
pleasure of the thing, and the pleasure you'll be giving me,
let's shake hands on it. If you don't like me 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 of compunction, 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 which made it less and less
necessary for him to choose his words, and he went on, more
mindful of the inflections of his voice than of what he was
actually saying: "Why on earth should we say good-bye if
we're both sorry to? Won't you tell me your reason? It's not
a bit like you to let anything stand in the way of your
saying just what you feel. You mustn't mind offending me,
you know!"
She hung before him like a leaf on the meeting of cross-
currents, that the next ripple may sweep forward or whirl
back. Then she flung up her head with the odd boyish
movement habitual to her in moments of excitement. "What I
feel? Do you want to know what I feel? That you're giving me
the only chance I've ever had!"
She turned about on her heel and, dropping into the nearest
chair, sank forward, her face hidden against the dressing-
table.
Under the folds of her thin summer dress the modelling of
her back and of her lifted arms, and the slight hollow
between her shoulder-blades, recalled the faint curves of a
terra-cotta statuette, some young image of grace hardly more
than sketched in the clay. Darrow, as he stood looking at
her, reflected that her character, for all its seeming
firmness, its flashing edges of "opinion", was probably no
less immature. He had not expected her to yield so suddenly
to his suggestion, or to confess her yielding in that way.
At first he was slightly disconcerted; then he saw how her
attitude simplified his own. Her behaviour had all the
indecision and awkwardness of inexperience. It showed that
she was a child after all; and all he could do--all he had
ever 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 feet and had swept round on him a face she must have
turned away only to hide the first rush of her pleasure.
For a while they shone on each other without speaking; then
she sprang to 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 bound to happen"; but the words had a double sense that
made him wince, and instead he caught her proffered hands
and stood looking at her across the length of her arms,
without attempting to bend them or to draw her closer. He
wanted her to know how her words had moved him; but his
thoughts were blurred by the rush of the same emotion that
possessed her, 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!"
Content of BOOK I: CHAPTER VII [Edith Wharton's novel: The Reef]
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