XXVIII
When he had gone out of the room Anna stood where he had left her. "Imust believe him! I must believe him!" she said.
A moment before, at the moment when she had lifted her arms to his neck,she had been wrapped in a sense of complete security. All the spiritsof doubt had been exorcised, and her love was once more the clearhabitation in which every thought and feeling could move in blissfulfreedom. And then, as she raised her face to Darrow's and met his eyes,she had seemed to look into the very ruins of his soul. That was theonly way she could express it. It was as though he and she had beenlooking at two sides of the same thing, and the side she had seen hadbeen all light and life, and his a place of graves...
She didn't now recall who had spoken first, or even, very clearly, whathad been said. It seemed to her only a moment later that she had foundherself standing at the other end of the room--the room which hadsuddenly grown so small that, even with its length between them, shefelt as if he touched her--crying out to him "It IS because of you she'sgoing!" and reading the avowal in his face.
That was his secret, then, THEIR secret: he had met the girl inParis and helped her in her straits--lent her money, Anna vaguelyconjectured--and she had fallen in love with him, and on meeting himagain had been suddenly overmastered by her passion. Anna, dropping backinto her sofa-corner, sat staring these facts in the face.
The girl had been in a desperate plight--frightened, penniless, outragedby what had happened, and not knowing (with a woman like Mrs. Murrett)what fresh injury might impend; and Darrow, meeting her in thisdistracted hour, had pitied, counselled, been kind to her, with thefatal, the inevitable result. There were the facts as Anna made themout: that, at least, was their external aspect, was as much of them asshe had been suffered to see; and into the secret intricacies they mightcover she dared not yet project her thoughts.
"I must believe him...I must believe him..." She kept on repeating thewords like a talisman. It was natural, after all, that he should havebehaved as he had: defended the girl's piteous secret to the last. Shetoo began to feel the contagion of his pity--the stir, in her breast, offeelings deeper and more native to her than the pains of jealousy.From the security of her blessedness she longed to lean over withcompassionate hands...But Owen? What was Owen's part to be? She owedherself first to him--she was bound to protect him not only from allknowledge of the secret she had surprised, but also--and chiefly!--fromits consequences. Yes: the girl must go--there could be no doubt ofit--Darrow himself had seen it from the first; and at the thought shehad a wild revulsion of relief, as though she had been trying to createin her heart the delusion of a generosity she could not feel...
The one fact on which she could stay her mind was that Sophy was leavingimmediately; would be out of the house within an hour. Once she wasgone, it would be easier to bring Owen to the point of understandingthat the break was final; if necessary, to work upon the girl to makehim see it. But that, Anna was sure, would not be necessary. It wasclear that Sophy Viner was leaving Givre with no thought of ever seeingit again...
Suddenly, as she tried to put some order in her thoughts, she heardOwen's call at the door: "Mother!----" a name he seldom gave her. Therewas a new note in his voice: the note of a joyous impatience. It madeher turn hastily to the glass to see what face she was about to showhim; but before she had had time to compose it he was in the room andshe was caught in a school-boy hug.
"It's all right! It's all right! And it's all your doing! I want todo the worst kind of penance--bell and candle and the rest. I've beenthrough it with HER, and now she hands me on to you, and you're to callme any names you please." He freed her with his happy laugh. "I'm to bestood in the corner till next week, and then I'm to go up to see her.And she says I owe it all to you!"
"To me?" It was the first phrase she found to clutch at as she tried tosteady herself in the eddies of his joy.
"Yes: you were so patient, and so dear to her; and you saw at once whata damned ass I'd been!" She tried a smile, and it seemed to pass musterwith him, for he sent it back in a broad beam. "That's not so difficultto see? No, I admit it doesn't take a microscope. But you were so wiseand wonderful--you always are. I've been mad these last days, simplymad--you and she might well have washed your hands of me! And instead,it's all right--all right!"
She drew back a little, trying to keep the smile on her lips and notlet him get the least glimpse of what it hid. Now if ever, indeed, itbehoved her to be wise and wonderful!
"I'm so glad, dear; so glad. If only you'll always feel like that aboutme..." She stopped, hardly knowing what she said, and aghast at theidea that her own hands should have retied the knot she imagined to bebroken. But she saw he had something more to say; something hard to getout, but absolutely necessary to express. He caught her hands, pulledher close, and, with his forehead drawn into its whimsical smilingwrinkles, "Look here," he cried, "if Darrow wants to call me a damnedass too you're not to stop him!"
It brought her back to a sharper sense of her central peril: of thesecret to be kept from him at whatever cost to her racked nerves.
"Oh, you know, he doesn't always wait for orders!" On the whole itsounded better than she'd feared.
"You mean he's called me one already?" He accepted the fact with hisgayest laugh. "Well, that saves a lot of trouble; now we can pass to theorder of the day----" he broke off and glanced at the clock--"which is,you know, dear, that she's starting in about an hour; she and Adelaidemust already be snatching a hasty sandwich. You'll come down to bid themgood-bye?"
"Yes--of course."
There had, in fact, grown upon her while he spoke the urgency of seeingSophy Viner again before she left. The thought was deeply distasteful:Anna shrank from encountering the girl till she had cleared a waythrough her own perplexities. But it was obvious that since they hadseparated, barely an hour earlier, the situation had taken a new shape.Sophy Viner had apparently reconsidered her decision to break amicablybut definitely with Owen, and stood again in their path, a menace and amystery; and confused impulses of resistance stirred in Anna's mind. Shefelt Owen's touch on her arm. "Are you coming?"
"Yes...yes...presently."
"What's the matter? You look so strange."
"What do you mean by strange?"
"I don't know: startled--surprised." She read what her look must be byits sudden reflection in his face.
"Do I? No wonder! You've given us all an exciting morning."
He held to his point. "You're more excited now that there's no cause forit. What on earth has happened since I saw you?"
He looked about the room, as if seeking the clue to her agitation, andin her dread of what he might guess she answered: "What has happened issimply that I'm rather tired. Will you ask Sophy to come up and see mehere?"
While she waited she tried to think what she should say when the girlappeared; but she had never been more conscious of her inability to dealwith the oblique and the tortuous. She had lacked the hard teachings ofexperience, and an instinctive disdain for whatever was less clear andopen than her own conscience had kept her from learning anything of theintricacies and contradictions of other hearts. She said to herself:"I must find out----" yet everything in her recoiled from the means bywhich she felt it must be done...
Sophy Viner appeared almost immediately, dressed for departure, herlittle bag on her arm. She was still pale to the point of haggardness,but with a light upon her that struck Anna with surprise. Or was it,perhaps, that she was looking at the girl with new eyes: seeing her, forthe first time, not as Effie's governess, not as Owen's bride, but asthe embodiment of that unknown peril lurking in the background of everywoman's thoughts about her lover? Anna, at any rate, with a sudden senseof estrangement, noted in her graces and snares never before perceived.It was only the flash of a primitive instinct, but it lasted long enoughto make her ashamed of the darknesses it lit up in her heart...
She signed to Sophy to sit down on the sofa beside her. "I asked you tocome up to me because I wanted
to say good-bye quietly," she explained,feeling her lips tremble, but trying to speak in a tone of friendlynaturalness.
The girl's only answer was a faint smile of acquiescence, and Anna,disconcerted by her silence, went on: "You've decided, then, not tobreak your engagement?"
Sophy Viner raised her head with a look of surprise. Evidently thequestion, thus abruptly put, must have sounded strangely on the lipsof so ardent a partisan as Mrs. Leath! "I thought that was what youwished," she said.
"What I wished?" Anna's heart shook against her side. "I wish,of course, whatever seems best for Owen...It's natural, you mustunderstand, that that consideration should come first with me..."
Sophy was looking at her steadily. "I supposed it was the only one thatcounted with you."
The curtness of retort roused Anna's latent antagonism. "It is," shesaid, in a hard voice that startled her as she heard it. Had she everspoken so to any one before? She felt frightened, as though hervery nature had changed without her knowing it...Feeling the girl'sastonished gaze still on her, she continued: "The suddenness of thechange has naturally surprised me. When I left you it was understoodthat you were to reserve your decision----"
"Yes."
"And now----?" Anna waited for a reply that did not come. She didnot understand the girl's attitude, the edge of irony in her shortsyllables, the plainly premeditated determination to lay the burdenof proof on her interlocutor. Anna felt the sudden need to lift theirintercourse above this mean level of defiance and distrust. She lookedappealingly at Sophy.
"Isn't it best that we should speak quite frankly? It's this change onyour part that perplexes me. You can hardly be surprised at that. It'strue, I asked you not to break with Owen too abruptly--and I asked it,believe me, as much for your sake as for his: I wanted you to take timeto think over the difficulty that seems to have arisen between you. Thefact that you felt it required thinking over seemed to show you wouldn'ttake the final step lightly--wouldn't, I mean, accept of Owen morethan you could give him. But your change of mind obliges me to ask thequestion I thought you would have asked yourself. Is there any reasonwhy you shouldn't marry Owen?"
She stopped a little breathlessly, her eyes on Sophy Viner's burningface. "Any reason----? What do you mean by a reason?"
Anna continued to look at her gravely. "Do you love some one else?" sheasked.
Sophy's first look was one of wonder and a faint relief; then she gaveback the other's scrutiny in a glance of indescribable reproach. "Ah,you might have waited!" she exclaimed.
"Waited?"
"Till I'd gone: till I was out of the house. You might have known...youmight have guessed..." She turned her eyes again on Anna. "I only meantto let him hope a little longer, so that he shouldn't suspect anything;of course I can't marry him," she said.
Anna stood motionless, silenced by the shock of the avowal. She toowas trembling, less with anger than with a confused compassion. But thefeeling was so blent with others, less generous and more obscure, thatshe found no words to express it, and the two women faced each otherwithout speaking.
"I'd better go," Sophy murmured at length with lowered head.
The words roused in Anna a latent impulse of compunction. The girllooked so young, so exposed and desolate! And what thoughts must she behiding in her heart! It was impossible that they should part in such aspirit.
"I want you to know that no one said anything...It was I who..."
Sophy looked at her. "You mean that Mr. Darrow didn't tell you? Ofcourse not: do you suppose I thought he did? You found it out, that'sall--I knew you would. In your place I should have guessed it sooner."
The words were spoken simply, without irony or emphasis; but they wentthrough Anna like a sword. Yes, the girl would have had divinations,promptings that she had not had! She felt half envious of such a sadprecocity of wisdom.
"I'm so sorry...so sorry..." she murmured.
"Things happen that way. Now I'd better go. I'd like to say good-bye toEffie."
"Oh----" it broke in a cry from Effie's mother. "Not like this--youmustn't! I feel--you make me feel too horribly: as if I were driving youaway..." The words had rushed up from the depths of her bewildered pity.
"No one is driving me away: I had to go," she heard the girl reply.
There was another silence, during which passionate impulses ofmagnanimity warred in Anna with her doubts and dreads. At length, hereyes on Sophy's face: "Yes, you must go now," she began; "but lateron...after a while, when all this is over...if there's no reason whyyou shouldn't marry Owen----" she paused a moment on the words-- "Ishouldn't want you to think I stood between you..."
"You?" Sophy flushed again, and then grew pale. She seemed to try tospeak, but no words came. "Yes! It was not true when I said just nowthat I was thinking only of Owen. I'm sorry--oh, so sorry!--for you too.Your life--I know how hard it's been; and mine...mine's so full...Happywomen understand best!" Anna drew near and touched the girl's hand; thenshe began again, pouring all her soul into the broken phrases: "It'sterrible now...you see no future; but if, by and bye...you knowbest...but you're so young...and at your age things DO pass. If there'sno reason, no real reason, why you shouldn't marry Owen, I WANT him tohope, I'll help him to hope...if you say so..."
With the urgency of her pleading her clasp tightened on Sophy's hand,but it warmed to no responsive tremor: the girl seemed numb, and Annawas frightened by the stony silence of her look. "I suppose I'm not morethan half a woman," she mused, "for I don't want my happiness tohurt her;" and aloud she repeated: "If only you'll tell me there's noreason----"
The girl did not speak; but suddenly, like a snapped branch, she bent,stooped down to the hand that clasped her, and laid her lips upon it ina stream of weeping. She cried silently, continuously, abundantly, asthough Anna's touch had released the waters of some deep spring of pain;then, as Anna, moved and half afraid, leaned over her with a sound ofpity, she stood up and turned away.
"You're going, then--for good--like this?" Anna moved toward her andstopped. Sophy stopped too, with eyes that shrank from her.
"Oh----" Anna cried, and hid her face.
The girl walked across the room and paused again in the doorway. Fromthere she flung back: "I wanted it--I chose it. He was good to me--noone ever was so good!"
The door-handle turned, and Anna heard her go.