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BOOK V: CHAPTER XXX
Anna Leath, three days later, sat in Miss Painter's drawing-
room in the rue de Matignon.
Coming up precipitately that morning from the country, she
had reached Paris at one o'clock and Miss Painter's landing
some ten minutes later. Miss Painter's mouldy little man-
servant, dissembling a napkin under his arm, had mildly
attempted to oppose her entrance; but Anna, insisting, had
gone straight to the dining-room and surprised her friend--
who ate as furtively as certain animals--over a strange meal
of cold mutton and lemonade. Ignoring the embarrassment she
caused, she had set forth the object of her journey, and
Miss Painter, always hatted and booted for action, had
immediately hastened out, leaving her to the solitude of the
bare fireless drawing-room with its eternal slip-covers and
"bowed" shutters.
In this inhospitable obscurity Anna had sat alone for close
upon two hours. Both obscurity and solitude were acceptable
to her, and impatient as she was to hear the result of the
errand on which she had despatched her hostess, she desired
still more to be alone. During her long meditation in a
white-swathed chair before the muffled hearth she had been
able for the first time to clear a way through the darkness
and confusion of her thoughts. The way did not go far, and
her attempt to trace it was as weak and spasmodic as a
convalescent's first efforts to pick up the thread of
living. She seemed to herself like some one struggling to
rise from a long sickness of which it would have been so
much easier to die. At Givre she had fallen into a kind of
torpor, a deadness of soul traversed by wild flashes of
pain; but whether she suffered or whether she was numb, she
seemed equally remote from her real living and doing self.
It was only the discovery--that very morning--of Owen's
unannounced departure for Paris that had caught her out of
her dream and forced her back to action. The dread of what
this flight might imply, and of the consequences that might
result from it, had roused her to the sense of her
responsibility, and from the moment when she had resolved to
follow her step-son, and had made her rapid preparations for
pursuit, her mind had begun to work again, feverishly,
fitfully, but still with something of its normal order. In
the train she had been too agitated, too preoccupied with
what might next await her, to give her thoughts to anything
but the turning over of dread alternatives; but Miss
Painter's imperviousness had steadied her, and while she
waited for the sound of the latch-key she resolutely
returned upon herself.
With respect to her outward course she could at least tell
herself that she had held to her purpose. She had, as
people said, "kept up" during the twenty-four hours
preceding George Darrow's departure; had gone with a calm
face about her usual business, and even contrived not too
obviously to avoid him. Then, the next day before dawn,
from behind the closed shutters where she had kept for half
the night her dry-eyed vigil, she had heard him drive off to
the train which brought its passengers to Paris in time for
the Calais express.
The fact of his taking that train, of his travelling so
straight and far away from her, gave to what had happened
the implacable outline of reality. He was gone; he would
not come back; and her life had ended just as she had
dreamed it was beginning. She had no doubt, at first, as to
the absolute inevitability of this conclusion. The man who
had driven away from her house in the autumn dawn was not
the man she had loved; he was a stranger with whom she had
not a single thought in common. It was terrible, indeed,
that he wore the face and spoke in the voice of her friend,
and that, as long as he was under one roof with her, the
mere way in which he moved and looked could bridge at a
stroke the gulf between them. That, no doubt, was the fault
of her exaggerated sensibility to outward things: she was
frightened to see how it enslaved her. A day or two before
she had supposed the sense of honour was her deepest
sentiment: if she had smiled at the conventions of others it
was because they were too trivial, not because they were too
grave. There were certain dishonours with which she had
never dreamed that any pact could be made: she had had an
incorruptible passion for good faith and fairness.
She had supposed that, once Darrow was gone, once she was
safe from the danger of seeing and hearing him, this high
devotion would sustain her. She had believed it would be
possible to separate the image of the man she had thought
him from that of the man he was. She had even foreseen the
hour when she might raise a mournful shrine to the memory of
the Darrow she had loved, without fear that his double's
shadow would desecrate it. But now she had begun to
understand that the two men were really one. The Darrow she
worshipped was inseparable from the Darrow she abhorred; and
the inevitable conclusion was that both must go, and she be
left in the desert of a sorrow without memories...
But if the future was thus void, the present was all too
full. Never had blow more complex repercussions; and to
remember Owen was to cease to think of herself. What
impulse, what apprehension, had sent him suddenly to Paris?
And why had he thought it needful to conceal his going from
her? When Sophy Viner had left, it had been with the
understanding that he was to await her summons; and it
seemed improbable that he would break his pledge, and seek
her without leave, unless his lover's intuition had warned
him of some fresh danger. Anna recalled how quickly he had
read the alarm in her face when he had rushed back to her
sitting-room with the news that Miss Viner had promised to
see him again in Paris. To be so promptly roused, his
suspicions must have been but half-asleep; and since then,
no doubt, if she and Darrow had dissembled, so had he. To
her proud directness it was degrading to think that they had
been living together like enemies who spy upon each other's
movements: she felt a desperate longing for the days which
had seemed so dull and narrow, but in which she had walked
with her head high and her eyes unguarded.
She had come up to Paris hardly knowing what peril she
feared, and still less how she could avert it. If Owen
meant to see Miss Viner--and what other object could he
have?--they must already be together, and it was too late to
interfere. It had indeed occurred to Anna that Paris might
not be his objective point: that his real purpose in leaving
Givre without her knowledge had been to follow Darrow to
London and exact the truth of him. But even to her alarmed
imagination this seemed improbable. She and Darrow, to the
last, had kept up so complete a feint of harmony that,
whatever Owen had surmised, he could scarcely have risked
acting on his suspicions. If he still felt the need of an
explanation, it was almost certainly of Sophy Viner that he
would ask it; and it was in quest of Sophy Viner that Anna
had despatched Miss Painter.
She had found a blessed refuge from her perplexities in the
stolid Adelaide's unawareness. One could so absolutely
count on Miss Painter's guessing no more than one chose, and
yet acting astutely on such hints as one vouchsafed her! She
was like a well-trained retriever whose interest 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 her fear some fresh misunderstanding between himself
and Miss Viner. In the interests of peace she had thought it
best to follow him; but she hastily added that she did not
wish to see Sophy, but only, if possible, to learn from her
where Owen was. With these brief instructions Miss Painter
had started out; but she was a woman of many occupations,
and had given her visitor to understand that before
returning she should have to call on a friend who had just
arrived from Boston, and afterward despatch to another
exiled compatriot a supply of cranberries and brandied
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 the will. 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
some fresh decision. What should she say to Owen if she
found him? What could she say that should not betray the one
thing she would give her life to hide from him? "Give her
life"--how the phrase derided her! It was a gift she would
not have bestowed on her worst enemy. She would not have
had Sophy Viner live the hours she was living now...
She tried again to look steadily and calmly at the picture
that the image of the girl evoked. She had an idea that she
ought to accustom herself to its contemplation. If life was
like that, why the sooner one got used to it the
better...But no! Life was not like that. Her adventure was
a hideous accident. She dreaded above all the temptation to
generalise from her own case, to doubt the high things she
had lived by and seek a cheap solace in belittling what fate
had refused her. There was such love as she had dreamed,
and she meant to go on believing in it, and cherishing the
thought that she was worthy of it. What had happened to her
was grotesque and mean and miserable; but she herself was
none of these things, and never, never would she make of
herself the mock that fate had made of her...
She could not, as yet, bear to think deliberately of Darrow;
but she kept on repeating to herself "By and bye that will
come too." Even now she was determined not to let his image
be distorted by her suffering. As soon as she could, she
would try to single out for remembrance the individual
things she had liked in him before she had loved him
altogether. No "spiritual exercise" devised by the
discipline of piety could have been more torturing; but its
very cruelty attracted her. She wanted to wear herself out
with new pains...
Content of BOOK V: CHAPTER XXX [Edith Wharton's novel: The Reef]
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Read next: BOOK V: CHAPTER XXXI
Read previous: BOOK IV: CHAPTER XXIX
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