 Chapter 1 of The Reef This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Ellie, The Reef by Denise Wharton, Chapter 1. Unexpected Obstacle Please don't come till 30th, Anna. All the way from Jerry and Cross to Dover, they trained and hammered the words of the telegram into George Darrow's ears, ringing every change of irony on its coming-place syllabus, rattling them out like a discharge of musketry, letting them one by one drip slowly and coldly into his brain, or shaking, tossing, transposing them like the dice in some game of the Gods of Meles. And now as he emerged from his compartment at the pier and stood facing the windswept platform that the angry sea beyond, they leapt out at him as if from the crest of the waves and stung and blinded him with a fresh fury of derision. Unexpected Obstacle Please don't come till 30th, Anna. She had put him off at the very last moment, and for the second time put him off with all her sweet reasonableness and for one of her usual good reasons. He was certain that this reason, like the other, the visit of her husband's uncle's widow would be good. But it was that very certainty that charred him. The fact of her dealing so reasonably with their case shed an ironic light on the idea that there had been any exceptional warmth in the greeting she had given him after the twelve years apart. They had found each other again in London, some three months previously, at the dinner at the American Embassy, and when she had caught sight of him her smile had been like a red rose pinned to a widow's mourning. Still felt the throb of surprise with which among the stereotyped faces of the seasoned diners he had come upon her unexpected face, with the dark hair banded above grave eyes, in which she had recognized every little curve and shadow as he would have recognized after half a lifetime the details of the room he had played in as a child. And as in the bloomed stared crowd she had stood out for him, slender secluded and different, so he had felt it. The instant the glances met that he as sharply detached himself for her. All that and more his smile had said, had said not merely a remember, but a remember just what you remember, almost indeed as though her memory had aided his. Her glances flung back on their recaptured moment its mourning brightness. Certainly when they had distracted the ambassador's, Mr. Gray, oh you know Mrs. Leith, that's perfect, the general found him his failed me and waved them together for the march to the dining-home. They all had felt a slight pressure of the arm on his, a pressure faintly but unmistakably emphasizing the exclamation. Isn't it wonderful in London in the season in the mob? It lay enough on the part of most women, but it was a sign of Mrs. Leith's quality that every movement, every syllable told with her. Even in the old days as an intent gray-fed girl she had seldom misplaced her light strokes and thereon on meeting her again had immediately felt how much finer and sureer an instrument of expression she had become. The evening together had been a long confirmation of this feeling. She had talked to him shyly yet frankly and what had happened to her during the years had so strange she failed to meet. She had told him of her marriage to Fraysia Leith and of her subsequent life in France where her husband's mother left a widow in his youth had been remarried to the Marquis de Chanteil and were partly in consequence of his second union the son had permanently settled himself. She had spoken also with an intense eagerness of affection of her little girl Effie, who was now nine years old and in a strained hardly less tender of Owen Leith, the charming clever young stepson whom her husband's death had left to her care. A porter stumbling against the arrow specks housed him to the fact that he still obstructed the platform in earth and encumbering as his luggage. Crossing, sir, was he crossing? He didn't really know, but for lack of any more compelling impulse he followed the porter to the luggage well, singled out his property and turned to march behind it down the gangway. As the fierce wind shouldered him against the crystal wall against his efforts he felt anew the direction of his case. Nasty weathered to cross, sir. The porter so back at him as to beat the way down the narrow walk to the pier. Nasty weathered indeed, but luckily as it had turned out there was no earthly reason why Dero should cross. While he pushed on in the wake of his luggage his sword slipped back into the old groove. He had once or twice run across the man whom Anna Summers had preferred to him and since he had met her again exercising his imagination on the picture of what her married life must have been. Her husband had struck him as a characteristic specimen of the kind of American as to whom one is not quite clear that he lives in Europe in order to cultivate an art or cultivates an art as a pretext for living in Europe. Mr. Lee's art was watercolor painting that he practiced defertively, almost clandestinely with the disdain of a man of the world for anything bordering on the profession now. While he devoted himself more openly and with religious seriousness to the collection of animal snuff boxes. He was blond and well dressed with the physical distinction that comes from having a straight figure, a thin nose and the habit of looking slightly disgusted as who should not in a world where authentic snuff boxes were growing daily harder to find and the market was flooded with flagrant forgeries. Dero had often wondered what possibilities of communion there could have been between Mr. Lee's and his wife. Now he concluded that there had probably been none. Mrs. Lee's words gave no hint of her husband's having failed to justify her choice. But her very reticence betrayed her. She spoke of him with the kind of impersonal seriousness as if he had been a character in a novel with a figure in history and what she said sounded as though it had been learned by heart and slightly dealt by repetition. This fact immensely increased Dero's impression that his meeting with her had annihilated the intervening years. She, who was always so illusive and inaccessible, had grown suddenly communicative and kind, had opened the doors of her past and tacitly left him to draw his own conclusions. As a result he had taken leave of her with the sense that he was being singled out and privileged to whom she had entrusted something precious to keep. It was her happiness in their meeting that she had given him. But frankly left him to do this as he wrote and the frankness of the gesture doubled the beauty of the gift. The next meeting had prolonged and deepened the impression. They had found each other again a few days later in an old country house full of books and pictures in the soft landscape of southern England. The presence of a large party with all its aimless and agitated displacements had served only to isolate the pair and give them, at least the young man's fancy, a deeper feeling of communion and their days had been like some musical prelude where the instruments, freezing low, seemed to hold back the waves of sound that pressed against them. Mrs. Lees, on this occasion, was no less kind than before but she contrived to make him understand that what was so inevitably coming was not to come too soon and it was not that she showed any hesitation as to the issue but rather that she seemed to wish not to miss any stage in the criteria of reflowering of the intimacy. Darrow for his part was content to wait if she wished it. He remembered at once in America when she was a girl and he had gone to stay with her family in the country. She had been out when he arrived and her mother told him to look for her in the garden. She was not in the garden but beyond it he had seen her approaching down a long shady path. Without hesitating her step she had smiled and signed to him to wait and jumped by the lights and shadows and played upon her as she moved and by the pleasure of watching her slow advance toward him he had obeyed her and stood still and so she seemed now to be walking to him down the years. The light and shade of old memories and new hopes playing variously on her and each step giving him the vision of a different grace. She did not waver but turn aside he knew she would come straight to where he stood but something in her eyes said wait and again he obeyed and waited. On the first day an unexpected event throughout his calculations summoned to down by the arrival in England of her husband's mother she had left without giving Daru the chance he accounted on and he cursed himself for a dilatory blunder. Still his disappointment was tempered by the certainty of being with her again before she left for France and they did in fact see each other in London there however the atmosphere had changed with the conditions. He could not say that she avoided him or even that she was a shade less glad to see him but she was beset by family duties and as he thought a little too readily resigned to him. The Marquis de Chantay as Daru soon perceived had some mild formidableness as to the late Mr. Lees a sort of insistent self-effacement before which everyone about her gave way it was perhaps the shadow of this lady's presence persuasive even during her actual brief eclipses that subdued and silenced Mrs. Lees. The later wars were over they occupied about her stepson who soon after receiving his decreed Harvard had been rescued from a stormy love affair and finally after some months of troubled drifting had yielded to his stepmother's counsel and gone to Oxford for a year of supplementary study. Tita, Mrs. Lees went once or twice to visit him and the remaining days were packed with family obligations getting, as she phrased it, frogs and cavernesses for her little girl who had been left in France and having to devote the remaining hours to long shopping expeditions with her mother-in-law. Nevertheless, during her brief escapes from duty Daru had had time to feel her safe in the custody of his devotion set the part for some inevitable hour and the last evening at the theater between the overshadowing Marquis and the unsuspicious Owen they had had an almost decisive exchange of words. Now, in the rattle of the wind about his ears Daru continued to hear the mocking echo of her message unexpected obstacle in such an existence as Mrs. Lees at once so ordered and so exposed he knew how small a complication might assume the magnitude of an obstacle yet even allowing as impartially as his state of mind permitted for the fact that with her mother-in-law always and her stepson intermittently under her roof her lot involved a hundred small accommodations in a very foreign to the freedom of widowhood even so he could not but think that the very ingenuity bred of such conditions might have helped her to find a way out of them. No, her reason whatever it was could in this case be nothing but the pretext unless he lean on the less flattering alternative that any reasons him good enough for postponing him certainly if her welcome had meant what he imagined she could not for the second time a few weeks have submitted so timely to the disarrangement of their plans a disarrangement which his official duties considered might for all she knew resolved in his not being able to go to her for months please don't come till 30th 30th and it was not the 15th she flung back the fortnight on his hands as if he had been an idler in different to-dates instead of an active young diplomatess who to respond to your call had had to you his way or a jungle of engagements please don't come till 30th that was all not the shadow of an excuse or a regret not even the perfunctory have written with which it is usual to soften such blows she didn't want him and had taken the shortest way to tell him so even in his first moment of exasperation it struck him as characteristic that she should not have padded her postponement with a fib certainly her moral anguish were not draped if I asked her to marry me she'd have refused in the same language but thank heaven I haven't reflected these considerations which had been with him every yard on the way from London reached a climax of irony as he was drawn into the crowd on the pier it did not soften his feelings to remember that but for a lack of forethought he might at this harsh end of the stormy mayday have been sitting before his clubfire in London instead of shivering in the human temp heard on the pier with his sex-traditional right to change she might at least have advised him of hers by telegraphing directly to his rooms but in spite of the exchange of letters she had apparently failed to notice his address and the pressless emissary had rushed from the embassy to pitch her telegram into his compartment as the train was moving from the station yes he had given her chance enough to learn where he lived and this minor proof of her indifference became as he jammed his way through the crowd the main point of his grievance against her and of his duration of himself half way down the pier the port of an umbrella increased his exasperation by rousing him to the fact that it was raining instantly the narrow ledge became a battle-ground of thrusting, slanting, burying domes the wind rose with the rain and the herried wretches exposed to this doubly salt freaked on the neighbour's revenge they could not take on the elements Darrow, whose healthy enjoyment of life made him in general a good traveller tolerant of eglutinated humanity felt himself obscuredly outraged by this promiscuous context it was as though all the people about him had taken his measure and known his plight as though they were contemptuously bumping and showing him like the inconsiderable thing he had become she doesn't want you doesn't want you doesn't want you the umbrellas and the airbows seemed to say he had rashly vowed when the telegram was flung into his window at any rate I won't turn back as though it might cause the sender a malicious joy to have him retrace his steps rather than keep on to Paris now he perceived the absurdity of the wall and thanked his stars that he need not blanch to no purpose into the fury of waves outside the harbour with this sword in his mind he turned back to look for his porter but the contiguity of tripping umbrellas made signaling impossible and perceiving that he had lost sight of the man he scrambled up again on the platform as he reached it, a descending umbrella caught him in the collarbone the next moment, bent sideways by the wind it turned inside out and saw it up, kite-wise at the end of a helpless female arm the arrow caught the umbrella lowered its inverted ribs and looked up at the face it exposed to him wait a minute he said you can't stay here as he spoke, a surge of the crowd drove the owner of the umbrella abruptly down on him the arrow stared at her with extended arms and regaining her footing she cried out oh dear, oh dear, it's in redmus her lifted face, fresh and flushed in the driving rain broken him in memory of having seen it at a distant time and in a vaguely unsympathetic setting but it was no moment to follow up such clues and the face was obviously run to make its way to its own merits its processor had dropped her bags and bundles to clutch at the tethered umbrella I bought it only yesterday at the store and, yes, it's utterly done for, she lamented Dero smiled at the intensity of her distress it was food for the moralists that, side by side with such catastrophes as his human nature was still agitating itself over its microscopic woes here's mine if you want it he shouted back it hurried through the shouting of the gale the offer caused the young lady to look at him more intensely well, it's Mr. Dero she exclaimed and then all radiant recognition oh, thank you, we'll share it if you will she knew him then and he knew her but how and where had they met he put aside the problem for subsequent solution in drawing her into a more sheltered corner bait her weight till he could find his porter when, a few minutes later, he came back with his recovered property and the news that the boat would not leave till the tide had turned she showed no concern not for two hours, how lucky then I can find my drunk ordinarily, Dero would have felt little disposed to involve himself in the adventure of a young female who had lost her drunk but at the moment he was glad for any pretext for activity even should he decide to take the next uptrain from Dova he still had a yearning hour to fill and the obvious remedy was to devote it to the loveliness in distress under his umbrella you have lost the drunk? let me see if I can find it it pleased him that she did not return the conventional or would you, instead, she corrected him with a laugh not the drunk, but my drunk I have no other and then, at it briskly you'd better first see to getting your own things to the boat this made him answer as if to give substance to his plans by discussing them I don't actually know that I'm going over not going over? well, perhaps not on this boat again, if I have the stealing in decision I may probably have to go back to London I'm, I'm waiting, expecting a letter she'll sink me a defraud, he reflected but meanwhile, there's plenty of time to find your drunk he picked up his companion's bundles and offered her an arm which enabled her to press a slight person more closely under his umbrella and as tussling, they beat the way back to the platform pulled together in the path like marionettes on the wires of the wind continued to wonder where he could have seen her he had immediately clasped her as a compatriot her small lows, her clear tints a kind of sketchy delicacy in her face as though she had been brightly but lightly washed in this watercolour all confirmed the evidence of a high-sweet voice and of her quick and sesent gestures she was clearly an American but with the close native quality strained through a closer roof of manners the composite product of an inquiring and adaptable race all this, however, did not help him to fit the name to her for just such instances were perpetually pouring through the London Embassy and the etched in Angular American was becoming rarer than the fluid type more puzzling than the fact of his being unable to identify her was the persistent sense connecting her with something uncomfortable and distasteful so pleasant the vision as that gleaming upper team between wet-brown hair and wet-brown boa should have evoked only associations as pleasing but each effort to fit her image into his past resulted in the same memories of boredom and the vague discomfort End of chapter 1, recording by Ellie, August 2009 Chapter 2 of The Reef This is a LibreVox recording All LibreVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreVox.org Recording by Ellie The Reef by Edis Wharton Chapter 2 Don't you remember me now? It Mrs. Muritz? She threw the question at Dero across the table of the quiet coffee room to which after a really prolonged quest for her drunk he had suggested taking her for a cup of tea In this musty retreat, she had removed her dripping head hung it on the fender to try and stretched herself on tiptoe in front of the round eagle-ground mirror above the mental vases of dried immortals as she ran her fingers corn-wise through her hair The gesture had acted on Dero's numb feelings as the glow of the fire acted on his circulation and when he had asked, aren't your feet wet too? End of the frank expectation of the stout short soul she had answered cheerfully No, luckily I had my new boots and he began to feel that human intercourse would still be tolerable if it were always as free from formality The removal of his companion's head besides provoking this reflection gave him the first full sight of her face and this was so favorable that the name she now pronounced fell on him with quite a disproportionate shock of dismay Oh, Miss Meretz, was it there? You remembered her now, of course remembered her as one of the shadowy sighting presences in the background of that awful house in Chersa one of the dumb appendages of the shrieking and escapable Mrs. Meret into whose talents he had fallen in the course of his headlong pursuit of Lady Ulrika Grespin Ah, the taste of stale folly how insipid it was, yet how it clung I used to pass you on the stairs, she reminded him Yes, he had seen her slip by he recalled now as he dashed up to the drawing-home in quest of Lady Ulrika the sword made him steal a longer look how could such a face have been merged in the Meret mob its fugitive slanting lines that lent themselves to all manner of tender tilts and foreshortenings the grace of some young head of the Italian comedy the hair stood up from her forehead in a bullish airflog and its color matched her urban eyes flecked with black and the little brown spot on her cheek between the ear that was meant to have a rose behind it and the chin that should have rested on a ruff when she smiled the left corner of her mouth went up a little higher than the right and her smile began in her eyes and ran down to her lips in two lines of light he had dashed past that to reach Lady Ulrika Grespin but of course you wouldn't remember me she was saying my name is Weiner Sophie Weiner not remember her? of course he did he was genuinely sure of it now you are Mrs. Meret's niece he declared she shook her head no, not even that only her reader her reader? do you mean to say she ever reads Mrs. Weiner enjoyed his wonder dear no but they wrote notes and made up the visiting book and walked the dog and saw bars for her they were crowned that must have been rather bad yes but nothing like his bed spilling her knees that I can well believe I'm glad to hear he added that you put it all in the past tense she seemed to droop a little at the illusion then she lifted her chin with a jerk of defiance yes all is it an end between us we have just parted in tears but not in silence just parted? do you mean to say you have been there all this time ever since you used to come there to see Lady Ulrica? does it seem to you so awfully long ago? the unexpectedness of the thrust as well as its doubtful taste chilled his growing enjoyment of her chatter he had really been getting to like her had recovered under the candid approval of her eye his usual sense of being a personable young man with all the privileges pertaining to the state instead of the anonymous strike of humanity he had felt himself in the crowd on the prior it annoyed him at that particular moment to be reminded that naturalness is not always consonant with taste she seemed to guess his thought you don't like my saying that you came for Lady Ulrica? she asked leaning over the table to pour herself a second cup of tea he liked her quickness at any rate it's better he laughed than you're thinking it came from Mrs. Murrett oh you never thought anybody came from Mrs. Murrett it was always for something else the music or the cook and when there was a good one or the other people generally one of the other people I see she was amusing at that in his present mood was more to his purpose than the exact shade of her taste it was odd too to discover suddenly that the blood tapestry of Mrs. Murrett's background had all the while been alive and full of eyes now with a pair of them looking into his he was conscious of a queer reversal of perspective who weren't the we were you a cloud of witnesses? there were many good of us she smiled let me see who was there in your time? Mrs. Bolt and Mademoiselle and Professor Deidemus and the Polish Countess don't you remember the Polish Countess? she crystal gazed and played accompaniments and Mrs. Murrett chucked her because Mrs. Deonimus accused her of hypnotizing the professor but of course you don't remember we were all invisible to you but we could see and we all used to wonder about you again thereof felt a redness in his tempers what about me? well whether it was you or she who? he winced but he is disapprover it made the time pass to listen to her and what if I may ask was your conclusion? well Mrs. Bolt and Mademoiselle and the Countess naturally thought it was she but Professor Deidemus and Jimmy Prance especially Jimmy just a moment who on earth is Jimmy Prance? she exclaimed in wonder you were absorbed not to remember Jimmy Prance he must have been right about you after all she let her muse scrutiny turn him but how could you? she was false from head to foot false? in spite of time and the T.E.T. the male instinct of ownership rose up and her beauty aided the charge Mrs. Weiner caught his look and laughed oh I only meant externally you see she often used to come to my room after tennis or to touch up in the evenings and they were going on and I assure you she took a part like a pestle in fact I used to say to Jimmy just to make him wild I'll bet you anything you like there's nothing wrong because I know she'd never dare un she broke the word in two and her quick blush made her face like a shallow paddled rose shedding to a deeper pink of the center the situation was saved Fadero banned a prompt rush of memories and he gave way to a nurse which she has frankly echoed of course she gasped through her laughter I only said it to T.S. Jimmy her amusement obscurely annoyed him oh you're all alike exclaimed moved by an unaccountable sense of disappointment she caught up in a flash she didn't miss things you say that because you think I'm spiteful in envious yes I was envious of Lady Ulrica oh not on account of your Jimmy brands simply because she had almost all the things I've always wanted closest and fun and motors and admiration and yachting in Paris why Paris alone would be enough and how do you suppose a girl can see that sort of thing about her day of the day and never wonder why some women who don't seem to have any more right to it have it all tumbled into their laps while others are writing dinner invitations and straightening out accounts and copying visiting lists and finishing golf stockings and matching ribbons and seeing the dogs get the silver one looks in one's glass after all she launched a closing words a theme on a cry that lifted above them the petulance of vanity but this sense of her words was lost in the surprise of her face under the flying clouds of her excitement it was no longer a shallow flower cup but a darkening gleaming mirror that might give back strange depths of feeling the girl had stuff in her he saw it and she seemed to catch the perception in his eyes that's the kind of education I got at Mrs. Muritz and I never had any other she said with a shrug good lord were you there so long? five years I stuck it out longer than any of the others and she spoke as though it was something to be proud of well, thank god you are out of it now again, a just perceptible shadow crossed her face yes, I am out of it now fast enough and what, if I may ask are you going to do next? she prudited a moment behind two blitz then, with a touch of auteur I am going to Paris to study for the stage the stage? there was there the status made all his confused contradictory impressions assumed in your aspect a disannouncement and to hide his surprise he added lightly ah, then you will have Paris after all hardly, Lady Olricas Paris it's not likely to be roses roses all the way it's not indeed real compassion prompted him to continue have you any any influence you can count on? she gave a somewhat flippant little laugh none, but my own I've never had any other to count on he passed all the obvious reply but have you any idea how the profession is overcrowded? I know I'm right I have a very clear idea but I couldn't go on as I was of course not but since you say you'd stuck it out longer than any of the others couldn't you at least have held on till you were sure of some kind of an opening she made no reply for a moment then she turned a listless glance to the Rainbeaten window orderedly bestotting, she asked with a lofty assumption of indifference that might have been Lady Olricas Dero surprised by the change but accepting her above as a face of what he guessed to be a confused and tormented mood rose from his seat and lifted her jacket from the chair back on which she had hung it to dry as he held it toward her she looked up at him quickly the truth is, we quarreled she broke out and I left last night with her and without my salary ah, he conned with a sharp perception of all the sorry dangers that might attack such a break with Mrs. Murrett and without the character she added as she slipped her arms into the jacket and without the trunk as it appears but didn't you say that before going there'd be time for another look at the station there was time for another look at the station but the look again resulted in disappointment since her trunk was nowhere to be found in the huge heap disgorged by the newly arrived London Express the fact caused Mrs. Weiner a moment's perturbation but she promptly adjusted herself to the necessity of proceeding on her journey and her decision confirmed Dero's vague resolve to go to Paris instead of retracing his way to London Mrs. Weiner seemed cheered at the prospect of his company and sustained by his offer to telegraph to chairing cross for the missing trunk and he left her to wait in the fly while he hastened back to the telegraph office the inquiry dispatched he was turning away from the desk when another sort struck him and he went back and indicted the message to his servant in London if any letters his French postmark received since departure forward immediately to Terminus Hotel Gardinour Paris and he rejoined Mrs. Weiner and they drove off through the rain to the pier End of Chapter 2 Recording by Allie August 2009 Chapter 3 After the reef this is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Allie The reef be it is warden Chapter 3 Almost as soon as the drain left Calais her head had dropped back into the corner and she had fallen asleep sitting opposite in a compartment from which she had contrived to have other travelers excluded Dero looked at her curiously he had never seen a face that changed so quickly a moment since it had danced like a field of daisies in a summer breeze now under the pallet oscillating light of the lamp overhead it was a hard stamp of experience as of a soft thing children to shape before its curves had rounded and it moved him to see that care already stole upon her when she slept the story she had imparted to him in the wheezing shaking cabin and at the Calais buffet where he insisted on offering her the dinner she had missed at Mrs. Merritt's had given a distinct outline to her figure from the moment of entering the New York boarding school to which a preoccupied guardian had hastily consigned her after the death of her parents she had found herself alone in a busy and indifferent world her useful history might in fact have been summoned up in the statement that everybody had been too busy to look after her her guardian, a drudge in a big banking house absorbed by the office the guardian's wife by her hearse and her religion and an elder sister, Laura Merritt, unmerritt, remarritt and pursuing through all these alternating faces some vaguely artistic ideal on which the guardian and his wife looked as kins had a stereo conjectured taking the disapproval as a pretext for not troubling herself about poor Sophie to whom, perhaps for this reason she had remained the incarnation of remote romantic possibilities in the course of time a sudden stroke of her guardians had thrown his personal affairs into a state of confusion from which, after his widely lamented death it became evident that it would not be possible to extricate his wards in heritance no one deployed this more sincerely than his widow, who saw in it one more proof of her husband's life having been sacrificed to the innumerable duties imposed on him and who could hardly, but for the councils of religion, have brought herself to pardon the young girl for her indirect share in hastening his end Sophie did not present this point of view she was rarely much sorry for her guardian's death and for the loss of her insignificant fortune the latter had represented only the means of holding her in bondage and its disappearance was the occasion of her immediate plunge into the wide bright sea of life surrounding the island of her captivity she had first landed thanks to the invitation of the ladies who had directed her education in the fifth avenue schoolroom where, for a few months she acted as a buffer between three autocratic infants and the bodyguard of nurses and teachers the two pressing attentions of the father's wallet had caused her to fly the sheltered spot against the express evidence of her educational superiors who implied that in their own case refinement and self-respect had always sufficed to keep the most ungovernable passions at bay of her guardian's widow having been precisely similar and the deplorable president of Laura's career being present to older minds none of these ladies felt any obligation to intervene father in Sophie's affairs and she was accordingly left to her own resources a schoolmate from the hockey mountains who was taking her father and mother to Europe had suggested Sophie's accompanying them and going round with her while her progenitors in the care of the courier nursed their ailments at the fashion-able bath they all gathered that the going round with Mamie Hawk was a varied and diverting process but this relatively brilliant face of Sophie's career was cut short by the allotment of the inconsiderable Mamie with the Martini Idol who had followed her from New York and by the precipitate return of her parents to negotiate for the repurchase of their child it was then after an interval of repose was compassionate but impecunious American friends in Paris that Miss Weiner had been drawn into the turbid current of Mrs. Murrett's career the impecunious compatriots had found Mrs. Murrett for her and it was partly on their account because there were such tears and so unconscious poor confiding things of what they were letting her in for that Sophie had struck it out so long in the dreadful house in Chersa the follows she explained to Darrow where the best friend she had ever had and the only ones who had ever been decent about Laura whom they had once seen and intensely admired but even after 20 years of Paris they were the most inexperienced angels who quite persuaded that Mrs. Murrett was a woman of great intellectual eminence and the house at Chersa the last of the cellans Darrow knew what she meant and she hadn't liked to undeceive them knowing that to do so would be virtually to throw herself back on their hands and feeling more over after her precious experiences the urgent need of gaining the same of stability besides which she threw it off as a slight laugh no other chance in all these years had happened to come to her she had brushed in this outline of her career with light rapid strokes and in a tone of fatalism oddly untinched by bitterness Darrow perceived that she classified people according to their creator a less lucky life but she appeared to harbour no resentment against the undefined power which dispensed the gift in such an equal measure things came once way but it didn't and meanwhile one could only look on and make the most of small compensations such as watching the show at Mrs. Murrett's or talking over the lady Ulricas and other footlight figures and at any moment of course a turn of the kaleidoscope might suddenly toss a bright spangle into the grey pattern of one's days this light-hearted philosophy was not without charm to a young man accustomed to more traditional views Judge Darrow had had a fairly varied experience of feminine types but the women he had frequented had either been pronounced ladies or they had not grateful to both for ministering to the more complex masculine nature and disposed to assume that they had been evolved if not designed to that end he had instinctively kept the two groups apart in his mind avoiding that intermediate society which attempts to conciliate both series of life Bohemianism seemed to him a cheaper convention than the other two and he liked above all people who went as far as they could in their own line liked his ladies and their rivals to be equally unashamed of showing for exactly what they were he had not indeed the fact of Lady Ulrica was there to remind him being without his experience of a third type but that experience had left him with a contemptous taste for the woman who uses her privileges of one class to shelter the customs of the other as to young girls he had never thought much about them since his early life for a girl who had become Mrs. Leith that episode seemed as he looked back on it to be a no more relation to reality than a pale decorative design to the confused richness of a summer landscape he no longer understood the violent impulses and dreamy pauses of his own young heart or the inscrutable abandonments and reluctances of hers he had known a moment of anguish at losing her a mad plunge of useful instincts against the barrier of fate but the first wave of stronger sensation had swept away all but the outline of their story and the memory of Anna Sammas had made the image of the young girl sacred but the class uninteresting such generalizations belonged however to an early stage of his experience the more he saw of life the more incalculably he found it and learned to yield to his impressions without feeling the useful need of relating them to others it was the girl in the opposite seat who had roused in him the dormant habit of comparison she was distinguished from the daughters of theirs but her vowed a quaint tense with the real business of living a familiarity as different as possible from the theoretical proficiency yet it seemed to derode her experience had made her free without hardness and self-assured without assertiveness the rush into amience and the flash of the station lights into their compartment broke Miss Weiner's sleep and without changing her position she lifted her lids and looked at Darrow there was neither surprise nor bewilderment in the look she seemed instantly conscious not so much of where she was as of the fact that she was with him and that fact seemed enough to reassure her she did not even turn her head to look out her eyes continued to rest on him with a vague smile which appeared to light her face from within while her lips kept their sleepy droop shouts and the hurried dread of travelers came to them through the confusing crosslights of the platform a head appeared at the window and Darrow threw himself forward to defend their solitude but the intruder was only a drain hand going his round of inspection he passed on and the lights and cries of the station dropped away merged in a wider haze and a hollower resonance as the train gathered itself up with a long shake and hold out again into the darkness Miss Weiner's head sank back against the cushion pushing out a dusky wave of hair above her forehead the swaying of the train loosened the lock over her ear and she shook it back with a movement like a voice while her gaze rested on her companion you are not tired? she shook her head with a smile we shall be in before midnight we are very nearly on time he verified the statement by holding up the lamp, she nodded trembling it's all right, a telegraphed missus follow that they mustn't think of coming to the station but they'll have to hold the cosierge to look out for me you'll let me drive you out there she nodded again and her eyes closed it was pleasant to Darrow that she made no effort to talk or to disassemble her sleepiness he said watching her tell the upper lash she smet and mingled with the lower and the blend shadow lay on her cheek then he stood up and threw the curtain over the lamp drowning the compartment in a blueish twilight as he sank back into his seat he saw her differently in her summers or even in her leaves would have behaved she would not have talked too much she would not have been either restless or embarrassed but her adaptability, her appropriateness would not have been a job attacked the oddness of the situation would have made sleep impossible or if weariness would overcome her for a moment she would have waked with a start wondering where she was and how she had come there and if her hair were tidy and nothing short of hairpins and the glass would have restored her self-possession the reflection set him wondering whether the sheltered girls bringing up might not unfit all her subsequent contact with life how much nearer to it had Mrs. Lee been brought by marriage and motherhood in the passage of 14 years what were all her reticences and evations but the result of the deadening process of forming a lady the freshness he had marveled at was like the unnatural whiteness of flowers forced in the dark as he looked back at the few days together he saw that the intercourse had been marked on her part by the same hesitation and reserves which had chilled the earlier intimacy once more the head had the hour together and she had wasted it as in her girlhood her eyes had made promises which her lips had been afraid to keep she was still afraid of life of its ruthlessness, its danger and mystery there all the petted little girl who cannot be left in the dark his memory flew back to the useful story the long-forgotten details took shape before him how frail and faint the picture was they seemed he and she like the ghostly lover of the Kraikian urn for ever pursuing without ever grasping each other to this day he did not quite know what had parted them the break had been as fortuous as the fluttering apart of two seed vessels on the wave of summer air the very slightness and the weakness of the memory gave it an added poignancy he felt the mystic pain of the parent for a child which has just prized and died why had it happened thus when the last shifting of influences might have made it all so different if she had been given to him he would have put warmth in her veins light in her eyes would have made her woman through and through using thus he had the sense of face that is the bitterest harvest of experience her love like his might have given her the divine gift of self-renewal and now he saw her faded to rain into old age repeating the same gestures echoing the words she had always heard and perhaps never guessing that just outside her glazed and curtain consciousness life rolled away a vast blackness started with lights like the night landscape beyond the windows of the train the engine lowered its speed for a passage through a sleeping station in the light of the platform lamp it crossed at his companion her head had dropped toward one shoulder and her lips were just finer for part for the reflection of the upper one to deepen the color of the other the shoulder of the train had again shaken loose the lock above her ear it danced on her cheek like the flick of a brown wing above flowers and therefore felt an intense desire to lean forward and put it back behind her ear End of Chapter 3 Recording by Ellie, August 2009 of The Reef This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Reef by Edith Wharton Chapter 4 As their motor cab on the way from the Gare du Nord turned into the central glitter of the Boulevard Darrow had bent over to point out an incandescent threshold There! As the doorway, an arc of flame flashed out the name of a great actress whose closing performances in a play of unusual originality had been the theme of long articles in the Paris Papers which Darrow had tossed into their compartment at Calais That's what you must see before you're 24 hours older The girl followed his gesture eagerly She was all awake and alive now as if the heady rumors of the streets with their long effervescences of light had passed into her veins like wine Ser Dean, is that where she acts? She put her head out of the window straining back for a glimpse of the sacred threshold as they flew past that she sank into her seat with a satisfied sigh It's delicious enough just to know she's there I've never seen her, you know When I was here with Mamie Hoke we never went anywhere but to the music halls because she couldn't understand any French and when I came back afterward to the farlows and couldn't afford the play neither could they so the only chance we had was when friends of theirs invited us and once it was to see a tragedy by a Romanian lady and the other time it was for Lamie Fritz at the Français Darrow laughed You must do better than that now Le vertige is a fine thing and Ser Dean gets some wonderful effects out of it You must come with me tomorrow evening to see it with your friends, of course That is, he added if there's any sort of chance of getting seats the flash of a street lamp lit up her radiant face Oh, will you really take us? What fun to think that it's tomorrow already It was wonderfully pleasant to be able to give such pleasure Darrow was not rich but it was almost impossible for him to picture the state of persons with tastes and perceptions like his own to whom an evening at the theatre was an unattainable indulgence There floated through his mind an answer of Mrs. Leith's to his inquiry whether she had seen the playing question No, I meant to, of course but one is so overwhelmed with things in Paris and then I'm rather sick of Ser Dean one is always being dragged to sear That, among the people he frequented was the usual attitude towards such opportunities There were too many there were innocents one had to defend oneself He even remembered wondering at the moment whether to a really fine taste the exceptional thing could ever become indifferent through habit whether the appetite for beauty was so soon dulled that it could be only kept alive by privation Here, at any rate, was a fine chance to experiment with such a hunger He almost wished he might stay on in Paris long enough to take the measure of Miss Biner's receptivity She was still dwelling on his promise Oh, it's too beautiful of you Well, don't you think he'll be able to get seats? And then, after a pause of brimming appreciation I wonder if you'll think me horrid but it may be my only chance If you can't get places for us all wouldn't you perhaps just take me? After all, the Farlows may have seen it He had not, of course, thought her horrid but only the more engaging for being so natural and so unashamed of showing the frank greed of her famished youth Oh, you shall go somehow He had gaily promised her and she had dropped back with a sigh of pleasure as their cab passed into the dimly lit streets of the Farlow's quarter beyond the Seine This little passage came back to him as he opened his hotel window on the early roar of the northern terminus The girl was there in the room next to him That had been the first point in his waking consciousness The second was a sense of relief at the obligation imposed on him by this unexpected turn of events To wake to the necessity of action to postpone, perforce the fruitless contemplation of his private grievance was cause enough for gratitude even if the small adventure in which he had found himself involved had not on his own merits roused an instinctive curiosity to see it through When he and his companions the night before had reached the Farlow's door in the rude Lachaise it was only to find, after the repeated assaults on its panels, that the Farlows were no longer there They had moved away the week before not only from their apartment but from Paris and Miss Finer's breach with Mrs. Merritt had been too sudden to permit her letter and telegram to overtake them Both communications, no doubt were still reposed in a pigeon-hole of the lodge but its custodian when drawn from his lair sulkily declined to let Miss Finer verify the fact and only flung out and returned for Dero's bribe the statement that the Americans had gone to Joigny To pursue them there at that hour was manifestly impossible and Miss Finer disturbed but not disconcerted by this new obstacle had quite simply exceeded to Dero's suggestion that she should return for what remained of the night to the hotel that set his luggage The drive back through the dark hush before dawn with the nocturnal blaze of the boulevard fading around them like the false lights on a magician's palace had so played on her impressionability that she seemed to give no farther thought to her own predicament Dero noticed that she did not feel the beauty and mystery of the spectacle as much as its pressure of human significance all its hidden implications of emotion and adventure As they passed the shadowy colonnade of the Francais remote and temple-like in the pawling lights he felt the clutch on his arm and heard the cry There are things there that I want so desperately to see and all the way back to the hotel she continued to question him with shrewd precision and an artless thirst for detail about the theatrical life of Paris He was struck afresh as he listened by the way in which her naturalness eased the situation of constraint leaving it to only a pleasant savor of good fellowship It was the kind of episode that one might in advance have characterized this awkward yet that was proving in the event as much outside such definitions as a sunrise stroll with a dryad in a dew-drenched forest and Dero reflected that mankind would never have needed to invent tact if it had not first invented social complications It had been understood with this good night to Miss Viner that the next morning he was to look up and to see her safely to the station but while he breakfasted and waited for a timetable he recalled again her cry of joy at the prospect of seeing Sardine It was certainly a pity since that most elusive and incalculable of artists was leaving the next week for South America to miss what might be at the last sight of her in her greatest part and Dero, having dressed and made the requisite excerpts from the timetable decided to carry the result of his deliberations to his neighbor's door It instantly opened at his knock and she came forth looking as if she had been plunged into some sparkling element which had curled up all her drooping tendrils and wrapped her in a shimmer of fresh leaves Well, what do you think of me? She cried and with a hand at her waist she spun about as if to show off some miracle of Parisian dressmaking I think the missing trunk has come and that it was worth waiting for You do like my dress I adore it I always adore new dresses Why, you don't mean to say it's not a new one She laughed at her triumph No, no, no My trunk hasn't come and this is only my old rag of yesterday but I never knew the trick to fail and as he stared you see, she joyously explained I've always had to dress in all kinds of dreary leftovers and sometimes when everyone else was smart and new it used to make me awfully miserable So one day when Mrs. Murt dragged me down unexpectedly to fill a place at dinner I suddenly thought I'd try spinning around like that and say to everyone Well, what do you think of me? And do you know they were all taken in including Mrs. Murt who didn't recognize my old turned and dyed rags and told me afterwards it was awfully bad form to dress as if I were somebody that people would expect to know and ever since, whenever I've particularly wanted to look nice I've just asked people what they thought of my new frock and they're always, always taken in She dramatized her explanation so vividly that Darrow felt as if his point were gained Ah, but this confirms your vocation Of course, he cried You must see, Sardine and seeing her face fall at this reminder of the change in her prospects he hastened to set forth his plan As he did so, he saw how easy it was to explain things to her She would either accept a suggestion or she would not but at least she would waste no time on her objections or any vain sacrifice to the idols of conformity The conviction that one could, on any given point almost predicate this of her gave him the sense of having advanced far enough in her intimacy to urge his arguments against a hasty pursuit of her friends Yes, it would certainly be foolish she had once agreed in the case of such dear, indefinite angels as the farlows to dash off after them without more positive proof that they were established at Joigny and so established that they could take her in She owned it was but all too probable that they had gone there to cut down and might be doing so in quarters too contracted to receive her and it would be unfair, on that chance to impose herself on them unannounced The simplest way of getting Father Light on the question would be to go back to the Rue de la Chasse where at that more conversable hour the concierge might be less cherry of detail and she could decide on her next step in the light of such facts as he imparted Point by point she fell in with the suggestion recognizing in the light of their unexplained flight that the farlows might indeed be in a situation on which one could not too rashly intrude Her concern for her friends seemed to have effaced all thought of herself and this little indication of character gave Darrow quite disproportionate pleasure She agreed that it would be well to go at once to the Rue de la Chasse but met his proposal that they should drive by the declaration that it was a waste of time in Paris so they set off on foot through the cheerful tumult of the streets The walk was long enough for him to learn many things about her The storm of the previous night had cleared the air and Paris shone in morning beauty under a sky that was all broad wet washes of white and blue but Darrow again noticed that her visual sensitiveness was less keen than her feeling for what he was sure the good farlows whom he already seemed to know would have called the human interest She seemed highly conscious of sensations of form and color or of any imaginative suggestion and the spectacle before them always in its scenic splendor so moving to her companion broke up under her scrutiny into a thousand minor points the things in the shops the types of character and manner of occupation shown in the passing faces the street signs the names of the hotels they passed the motley brightness of the flower carts the identity of the churches and public buildings and her eye but what she liked best, he divined was the mere fact of being free to walk abroad in the bright air her tongue rattling on as it pleased while her feet kept time to the mighty orchestration in the city's sounds her delight in the fresh air in the freedom, light and sparkle of the morning gave him a sudden insight into her stifled past nor was it indifferent of him to perceive how much his presence evidently added to her enjoyment if only as a sympathetic ear he guessed what he must be worth to her the girl had been dying for someone to talk to someone before whom she can fold and shake out to the light her poor little shut-away emotions years of repression were revealed in her sudden bursts of confidence and the pity she inspired made Darrow long to fill her few free hours to the brim she had the gift of rapid definition and his questions as to the life she had led with the pharaohs during the interregnum between the Hoke and Mercerus called up before him a queer little corner of Parisian existence the pharaohs themselves, he a painter she a magazine writer rose before him in all their incorruptible simplicity an elderly New England couple with vague yearnings for enfranchisement who lived in Paris as if it were a Massachusetts suburb and dwelt hopefully on the higher side of the Gaulic nature with equal vividness she set before him the component figures of the circle from which Mrs. Farlow drew the inner glimpses of French life appearing over her name in leading New England journal the Romanian lady who had sent them tickets for her tragedy an elderly French gentleman who on the strength of a week stay at Folkstone translated English fiction for the provincial press the lady from Wichita, Kansas who advocated free love and the abolition of the corset, clergyman's widow from Torquay who had written an English lady's guide to foreign galleries and a Russian sculptor who lived on nuts and was almost certainly an anarchist it was this nucleus and its outer ring of musical, architectural and other American students which posed successively to Mrs. Farlow's versatile fancy as a center of university life a salon of the Folburg Saint-Germain a group of Parisian intellectuals or a cross section of a mormat but even her faculty for extracting from it the most varied literary effects had not suffice to create a permanent demand for the inner glimpses and there were days when Mr. Farlow's landscapes being equally unmarketable a temporary withdrawal into the country subsequently utilized as peeps into chateau life became necessary to the courageous couple five years of Mrs. Merritt's world while increasing Sophie's tenderness for the Farlow's had left her with few illusions of her power of advancing her fortunes and she did not conceal from Darrow that her theatrical projects were of the vaguest they hung mainly on the problematical goodwill of an ancient comedienne with whom Mrs. Farlow had a slight acquaintance extensively utilized in stars of the French footlights and behind the scenes at the Francais and who at once, with signs of approval heard Ms. Weiner recite the Nuit de Maie but of course I know how much that's worth but Mrs. Farlow broke off with one of her flashes of shrewdness and besides it isn't likely that a poor old fossil like Madame Dowell could get anybody to listen to her now even if she really thought I had talent but she might introduce mid-people or at least give me a few tips if I could manage to earn enough to pay for lessons I'd go straight to some of the big people and work with them I'm rather hoping the Farlow's may find me a chance of that kind an engagement with some American family in Paris who would want to be gone round with and who'd leave me with enough time to study in the Rue de la Chasse, they learned little except the exact address of the Farlow's and the fact that they had sublet their flat before leaving this information obtained Darrow proposed to Ms. Weiner that they should stroll along the quays to a little restaurant looking out on the Seine and there, over the plage du jour consider the next step to be taken the long walk had given her cheeks a glow indicative of wholesome hunger and she made no difficulty about satisfying it and she left the Farlow's company regaining the river, they walked on in the direction of Notre Dame delayed now and again by the young man's irresistible tendency to linger over the book stalls and by his ever fresh response to the shifting beauties of the Seine for two years his eyes had been subdued to the atmospheric effects of London to the mysterious fusion of darkly piled city in low lying bituminous sky and the transparency of the French air which left the green gardens and silvery stones so classically clear yet so softly harmonized struck him as having a kind of conscious intelligence every line of the architecture every arch of the bridges the very sweep of the strong right river between them while contributing to this effect sent forth each a separate appeal to some sensitive memory so that for Darrow a walk through the Paris streets was always like the unrolling of a vast tapestry from which countless stored fragrances were shaken out it was a proof of the richness the multiplicity of the spectacle that it served without incogruity for so different a purpose as the background of Miss Viner's enjoyment as a mere drop scene for her personal adventure it was just as much in its place as in the evocation of great perspectives of feeling for her, as he again perceived when they were seated at their table in a low window above the Seine, Paris was Paris by virtue of all of its entertaining details its endless ingenuities of pleasantness where else for instance could one find the dear little dishes of hors d'oeuvres the symmetrically laid anchovies and radishes the thin golden shells of butter or the wood strawberries and brown jars of cream that gave to their past the last refinement of rusticity hadn't he noticed, she asked that cooking always expressed the national character and that French food was clever and amusing just because the people were and in private houses everywhere how the dishes always resemble the talk how the very same platitudes seemed to go into people's mouths and come out of them couldn't he just see what kind of menu would make if a fairy waved a wand and suddenly turned the conversation at London dinner into joints and puddings she always thought it a good sign when people liked Irish stew it meant that they enjoyed changes and surprises and taking life as it came in such a beautiful Parisian version of the dish as the never-end that was just being set before them was like the very best kind of talk you never tell beforehand just what was going to be said Darrow, as he watched her enjoyment of the innocent feast wondered if her vividness and vivacity were signs of her calling she was the kind of girl in whom certain people would instantly recognize the histrionic gift but experience had led him to think that except at the creative moment the divine flame burns low in its possessors the one or two really intelligent actresses he had known had struck him in conversation as either bovine or primitively jolly he had a notion that save in the mind of genius the creative process absorbs too much of the whole stuff of being to leave much surplus for personal expression and the girl before him with her changing face and flexible fancies seemed destined to work in life itself rather than any of its counterfeits the coffee and liquors were already on the table when her mind suddenly sprang back to the farlos she jumped up with one of her subversive moments and just declared that she must telegraph it once Darrow called for writing materials and room was made at her elbow for the parched ink bottle and saturated bladder of the Parisian restaurant but the mere sight of these jaded implements seemed to paralyze Miss Viner's faculties she hung over the telegraph form with anxiously drawn brow the tip of the pen handle pressed against her lip and at length she raised her troubled eyes to Darrow's I simply can't think how to say it what? that you're staying over to see Ser Dean? but am I? am I really? the joy of it flamed over her face Darrow looked at his watch you could hardly get an answer to your telegram in time to take a train to Joigne this afternoon even if you find your friends could have you she mused for a moment tapping her lip with the pen but I must let them know I'm here I must find out as soon as possible if they can have me she laid the pen down despairingly I never could write a telegram she sighed try a letter then and tell them you'll arrive tomorrow this suggestion produced immediate relief and she gave an energetic dab at the ink bottle but after another interval of uncertain scratching she paused again oh it's fearful I don't know what on earth to say I wouldn't for the world have them know how beastly Mrs. Merritt's been Darrow did not think it necessary to answer it was no business of his after all he lit a cigar and leaned back in a seat letting his eyes take their fill of indolent pleasure in the throes of invention she had pushed back her hat loosening the stray lock which it invited his touch the night before after looking at it for a while he stood up and wandered to the window behind him he heard her pen scrape on I don't want to worry them I'm so certain they've got bothers of their own faltering scratches ceased again I wish I weren't such an idiot about writing all the words get frightened and scurry away when I try to catch them he glanced back at her with a smile as she bent above her task like a schoolgirl struggling with a composition her flushed cheek and frowning brow showed that her difficulty was genuine and not an artless device to draw him to her side she was really powerless to put her thoughts in writing and the inability seemed characteristic of her quick impressionable mind and of the incessant come-and-go of her sensations he thought of an elite's letters or rather of the few he had received years ago from the girl who had been Anna Summers he saw the slender firm strokes of the pen recalled the cleared structure of the phrases and by an abrupt association of ideas remembered that at that very hour just such a document might be awaiting him at the hotel what if it were there indeed and had brought a complete explanation of her telegram the revulsion of feeling produced by this thought made him look at the girl with sudden impatience she struck him as positively stupid and he wondered how he could have wasted half his day with her when all the while Mrs. Leith's letter might be lying on his table at that moment if he could have chosen he would have left his companion on the spot but he had her on his hands and must accept the consequences some odd intuition seemed to make her conscious of his change of mood for she sprang from a seat on her hand I'm too stupid but I won't keep you any longer I'll go back to the hotel and write there her colour deepened and for the first time as their eyes met he noticed a faint embarrassment in hers could it be that his nearness was after all the cause of her confusion the thought turned his vague impatience with her into a definite resentment toward himself there was really no excuse for his having blundered into such an adventure why not ship the girl off by the evening train instead of urging her to delay and using Seradine as a pretext Paris was full of people he knew and his annoyance was increased by the thought that some friend of Mrs. Leith's might see him at the play and report his presence there with a suspiciously good-looking companion the idea was distinctly disagreeable he did not want the woman he adored to think he could forget her for a moment and by this time he had fully persuaded himself that a letter from her was awaiting him so far as to imagine that its contents might annul the writer's telegraphed injunction and call him to her side at once End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 of The Reef This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Reef by Edith Wharton At the porter's desk a brief padelette fell destructively on the fabric of those hopes Mrs. Leith had not written she had not taken the trouble to explain her telegram Daryl turned away with a sharp pang of humiliation Her frugal silence mocked his prodigality of hopes and fears He had put his question to the porter once before on returning to the hotel after luncheon and now, coming back again in the late afternoon, he was met by the same denial and had brought him nothing A glance at his watch showed that he had barely time to dress before taking Miss Viner out to dine But as he turned to the lift a new thought struck him and hurrying back into the hall he dashed off another telegram to his servant Have you forwarded any letters with French postmark today? Telegraph answer, terminus Some kind of reply would be certain to reach him on his return from the theatre and he would then know definitely whether he was going to write or not He hastened up to the room and dressed with a lighter heart Miss Viner's vagrant trunk had finally found its way to its owner and clad in such modest splendour as it furnished, she shone at Daryl across their restaurant table In the reaction of his wounded vanity he found her prettier and more interesting than before Her dress, sloping away from the throat showed the graceful set of her head on its slender neck and some of her hat arched above her hair like a dusky halo Pleasure danced in her eyes and on her lips and as she shone on him between the candle shades Daryl felt that he should not at all be sorry to be seen with her in public He even sent a careless glance about him in the vague hope that it might fall on acquaintance At the theatre her vivacity sank into a breathless hush and she sat in tent in her corner of their benoir with the gaze of a neophyte about to be initiated Daryl placed himself behind her that he might catch a profile between himself and the stage He was touched by the youthful seriousness of her expression In spite of the experience that she must have had and of the twenty-four years to which she owned she struck him as intrinsically young and he wondered how so evanescent equality could have been preserved in the desiccating mirrored air As the play progressed he noticed that her immobility was traversed by swift flashes of perception Daryl was not missing anything and her intensity of attention when Serdine was on the stage drew an anxious line between her brows After the first act she remained for a few minutes wrapped in motionless then she turned to her companion with a quick pattern of questions He gathered from them that she had been less interested in following the general drift of the play than in observing the details of its interpretation Every gesture and inflection of the great actresses and Daryl felt a secret gratification in being appealed to as an authority on the histrionic art His interest in it had hitherto been merely that of the cultivated young man curious of all forms of artistic expression But in reply to her questions he found things to say about it which evidently struck his listener as impressive and original and with which he himself was not on the whole dissatisfied Miss Finer was much more concerned to hear his views than to express her own and the deference with which she received his comments called from him more ideas about the theatre than he had ever supposed himself to possess With the second act she began to give more attention to the development of the play though her interest was excited rather by what she called the story than by the conflict of character producing it Oddly combined with her sharp apprehension of things theatrical her knowledge of technical dodges and green room precedence her glibness about lines and curtains simplicity of her attitude toward the tale itself as toward something that was really happening and at which one assisted as a street accident or a quarrel over her in the next room She wanted to know if Darrow thought the lovers really would be involved in the catastrophe that threatened them and when he reminded her that his predictions were disqualified by his having already seen the play she exclaimed, oh then please don't tell me what's going to happen and the next moment was questioning him about Serdeen's theatrical situation in her private history On the latter point some of her inquiries were of a kind that it is not in the habit of young girls to make or even to know how to make but her apparent unconsciousness of the fact seemed rather to reflect on her past associates than on herself When the second act was over Darrow suggested they're taking a turn in the foyer and seated on one of its cramped red velvet sofas they watched the crowd surge up and down in a glare of lights and gilding Then as she complained of the heat he let her through the press to the congested cafe at the foot of the stairs where orange aids were thrust at them between the shoulders of packed consummeters and Darrow, lighting a cigarette while she sucked her straw, knew the primitive complacency of the man at whose companion are the men's stare On a corner of the table lay a smeared copy of a theatrical journal it caught Sophie's eye and after pouring over the page she looked up with an excited exclamation They're giving a deep tomorrow afternoon at the Francais OK, I suppose you've seen it heaps and heaps of times He smiled back at her You must see it too. We'll go tomorrow She sighed at his suggestion but without discarding it How can I? The last train for Joanie leaves at four But you don't know yet that your friends will want you I shall know tomorrow early I asked Mrs. Farlow to telegraph as soon as she got my letter A twinge of compunction shot through Darrow Her words recalled to him that on their return after luncheon, she had given him her letter to post and that he had never thought of it again No doubt it was still in the pocket of the coat he had taken off when he'd dressed for dinner In his perturbation, he pushed back his chair and the movement made her look up at him What's the matter? Nothing Only, you know I don't fancy that letter can have caught this afternoon's post Not caught it? Why not? Well, I'm afraid it will have been too late He bent his head to light another cigarette She struck her hands together with a gesture to his amusement he noticed she had caught from Serdine Oh dear, I hadn't thought of that But surely it will reach them in the morning Some time in the morning, I suppose You know the French provincial post is never in a hurry I don't believe your letter would have been delivered this evening in any case As this idea occurred to him he felt himself almost absolved Perhaps then I ought to have telegraphed I'll telegraph for you in the morning if you say so The bell announcing the close of the entourage shrilled through the café and she sprang to her feet Oh come come, we mustn't miss it Instantly forgetful of the farlows she slipped her arm through his and turned to push her way back to the theatre As soon as the curtain went up she has promptly forgot her companion Watching her from the corner to which she had returned Dara saw that great waves of sensation were beating deliciously against her brain It was as though every starved sensibility were throwing out feelers to the mounting tide as though every starved sensibility were throwing out feelers to the mounting tide as though everything she was seeing, hearing, imagining rushed in to fill the void of all she had always been denied Dara, as he observed her again felt a detached enjoyment in her pleasure She was an extraordinary conductor of sensation She seemed to transmit it physically in emanations that set the blood dancing in his veins He had not often had the opportunity of studying the effects of a perfectly fresh impression on so responsive a temperament but the fleeting desire to make its cords vibrate for his own amusement At the end of the next act she discovered with dismay that in their transit to the café she had lost the beautiful pictured program he had bought for her She wanted to go back and hunt for it but Dara assured her that he would have no trouble in getting her another When he went out in quest of it she followed him protestantly to the door of the box and he saw that she was distressed at the thought of his having to spend an additional fang for her by its contrast to her natural bright profusion and again he felt the desire to write so clumsy and injustice When he returned to the box she was still standing in the doorway and he noticed that his were not the only eyes attracted to her Then another impression sharply diverted his attention Above the fagged faces of the Parisian crowd he had caught the fresh fair countenance of Owen Leith signalling a joyful recognition The young man slim and eager had detached himself from two companions of his own type and was seeking to push through the press to his stepmother's front The encounter to Dara could hardly have been more inopportune it woken him a confusion of feelings of which only the uppermost was allayed by seeing Sophie Weiner as if instinctively warned melt back into the shadow of their box A minute later Owen Leith was at his side I was sure it was you such luck to run across you Won't you come off with us to supper after it's over Momat or wherever else you please those two chaps over there are friends of mine at the Beaux-Arts both of them rather good fellows and we'd be so glad for half a second Dara read in his hospitable eye the termination if you'd bring the lady too then it deflected into we'd all be so glad if you'd come Dara excusing himself with thanks lingered on for a few minutes chat in which every word and every tone of his companions voice was like a sharp light flashed into aching eyes he was glad when the bell called the audience to their seats and young Leith left him with a friendly question we'll see you at Jeeve later on when he rejoined Miss Weiner Dara's first care was to find out by a rapid inspection of the house where their Owen Leith's seat had been given him a view of their box but the young man was not visible from it and Dara concluded that he had been recognized in the corridor and not at his companion's side he scarcely knew why it seemed to him that it was important that this point should be settled certainly a sense of reassurance was less due to regard for Miss Weiner than to the persistent vision of grave offended eyes during the drive back to the hotel his vision was persistently kept before him by the thought that the evening post might have brought a letter from Mrs. Leith even if no letter had yet come his servant might have telegraphed to say that one was on its way and at the thought his interest in the girl at his side again cooled to the fraternal motherly she was no more to him after all than an appealing young creature to whom it was mildly agreeable to have offered an evening's diversion and when as they rolled into the illuminated court of the hotel she turned with a quick movement which brought her happy face close to his he leaned away affecting to be absorbed in opening the door of the cab at the desk the night porter after vain search through the pigeon holes was disposed to think that a letter or telegram had in fact been set up for the gentleman and Darrow at the announcement could hardly wait to ascend to his room upstairs he and his companion had a long dimly lit corridor to themselves and Sophie paused on her threshold gathering up in one hand the pale folds of her cloak while she held the other out to Darrow if the telegram comes early I shall be off by the first train so I suppose this is goodbye she said her eyes dimmed by a little shadow of regret Darrow with a renewed start of contrition perceived that he had again forgotten her letter and as their hands met he vowed to himself that the moment she had left him he would dash downstairs to post it oh I'll see you in the morning of chorus a tremor of pleasure crossed her face as he stood before her smiling a little uncertainly at any rate she said I want to thank you now for my good day he felt in her hand the same tremor he had seen in her face but it's you on the contrary he began lifting the hand to his lips as he dropped it and their eyes met something passed through hers that was like a light carried rapidly behind a curtain window good night you must be awfully tired he said with a friendly abruptness turning away without even waiting to see her pass into the room he unlocked his door and stumbling over the threshold groped in the darkness for the electric button the light showed him a telegram on the table and he forgot everything else as he caught it up no letter from France the message read it fell from Darrow's hand to the floor and he dropped into a chair by the table and sat gazing at the dingy drab and olive pattern of the carpet she had not written then she had not written and it was manifest now that she did not mean to write if she had had any intention of explaining her telegram she would certainly within 24 hours have followed it up by a letter but she evidently did not intend to explain it and her silence could mean only that she had no explanation to give or else that she was too indifferent to be aware that one was needed Darrow face to face with these alternatives felt a recudescence of boyish misery it was no longer his hurt vanity that cried out he told himself that he could have born an equal amount of pain if only it had left Mrs. Leith's image untouched but he could not bear to think of her as trivial or insincere the thought was so intolerable that he felt a blind desire to punish someone else for the pain it caused him as he sat moodily staring at the carpet its silly intricacies melted into a blur from which the eyes of Mrs. Leith again looked out at him he saw the fine seep of her brows and the deep look beneath them as she had turned from him on their last evening in London this will be goodbye then she had said and decurred to him that her parting phrase had been the same as Sophie Viner's at the thought he jumped to his feet and took down from its hook the coat in which he had left Mrs. Viner's letter marked the third quarter after midnight and he knew it would make no difference if he went down to the post box now or early the next morning but he wanted to clear his conscience and having found the letter he went to the door a sound in the next room made him pause he had become conscious again that a few feet off on the other side of a thin partition a small keen flame of life was quivering and agitating the air Sophie's face came back to him insistently it was as vivid now as Mrs. Leith's had been a moment earlier he recalled with a faint smile of retrospective pleasure the girl's enjoyment of her evening and the innumerable fine feelers of sensation she had thrown out to its impressions it gave him a curiously close sense of her presence to think that that moment she was living over her enjoyment as intensely as he was living over his unhappiness his own case was irremediable but it was easy enough to give her a few more hours of pleasure and did she not perhaps secretly expected of him? after all if she had been very anxious to join her friends she would have telegraphed them on reaching Paris instead of writing he wondered now that he had not been struck at the moment by so artless a device to gain more time the fact of her having practiced it did not make him think less well of her it merely strengthened the impulse to use his opportunity she was starving poor child for a little amusement a little personal life why not give her the chance of another day in Paris? if he did so she did not be merely falling in with her own hopes as a thought his sympathy for her revived she became of absorbing interest to him as an escape from himself and an object about which his thwarted activities could cluster he felt less drearily alone because of her being there on the other side of the door and as gratitude to her for giving him this relief he began with indolent amusement to plan new ways of detaining her he dropped back into his chair lit a cigar and smiled a little at the image of her smiling face he tried to imagine what incident of the day she was likely to be recalling at that particular moment and what part he probably played in it that it was not a small part he was certain and the knowledge was undeniably pleasant now and then a sound from her room brought before him more vividly the reality of the situation and the strangeness of the vast swarming solitude in which he and she were momentarily isolated amid long lines of rooms each holding its separate secret the nearness of all these other mysteries enclosing theirs gave Dara a more intimate sense of the girl's presence and through the fumes of his cigar his imagination continued to follow her to and fro traced the curve of her slim young arms as she raised them to undo her hair pictured the sliding down of her dress to the waist and then to the knees and the whiteness of her feet as she slipped across the floor to bed he stood up and shook himself with a yawn throwing away the end of his cigar his glance and following it lit on the telegram which had dropped to the floor the sounds in the next room had ceased and once more he felt alone and unhappy opening the window he folded his arms on the sill and looked out on the vast light-spangled mass of the city and then up at the dark sky in which the morning planet stood End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of the Reef This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Reef by Edith Wharton Chapter 6 At the Théâtre Français the next afternoon Darrow yawned and fidgeted in his seat The day was warm the theatre crowded and airless and the performance it seemed to him intolerably bad He stole a glance at his companion her rap profile betrayed no unrest but politeness might have caused her to feign an interest that she did not feel He leaned back impatiently stifling another yawn and trying to fix his attention on the stage Great things were going forward there and he was not insensible to the stern beauties of the ancient drama but the interpretation of the play seemed to him as airless and lifeless as the atmosphere, theatre The players were the same who he had often in his very parts and perhaps that fact added to the impression of staleness and conventionality produced by their performance Surely it was time to infuse new blood into the veins of the mooribund art He had the impression that the ghosts of the actors were giving a spectral performance on the shores of the sticks Certainly it was not the most profitable way for a young man with a pretty companion to pass the golden hours of a spring afternoon The freshness of the face it aside reflecting the freshness of the season suggested dapplings of sunlight through new leaves the sound of a brook in the grass the ripple of tree shadows of a breezy meadows When at length the fateful march of the co-thurns was stayed by the single paws in the play and Darrow had led Miss Viner out on the balcony overhanging the square before the theatre He turned to see if she shared his feelings But the rapturous look she gave him checked the depreciation on his lips Oh, why did you bring me out here? Why not creep away and sit in the dark till it begins again? Is that the way they made you feel? Didn't they you? As if the gods were there all the while just behind them, pulling the strings? Her hands were pressed against the railing her face shining and darkening under the wing-beats of successive impressions Darrow smiled the enjoyment of her pleasure After all, he had felt all that long ago Perhaps it was his own fault rather than that of the actors that the poetry of the play seemed to have evaporated But no, he had been right in judging the performance to be dull and stale It was simply his companions' inexperience her lack of occasions to compare and estimate that made her think it brilliant I was afraid you were bored and wanted to come away Bored? She made a little aggrieved grimace You mean you thought me too ignorant and stupid to appreciate it? No, not that The hand nearest him still lay on the railing on the balcony and he covered it for a moment with his As he did so, he saw the color rise and tremble in her cheek Tell me just what you think, he said bending his head a little and only half aware of his words She did not turn her face to his but began to talk rapidly trying to convey something of what she felt But she was evidently unused to analyzing her aesthetic emotions The mulchrous rush of the drama seemed to have left her in a state of panting wonder as though it had been a storm or some other natural cataclysm She had no literary or historic associations to which to attach her impressions Her education had evidently not comprised a course in Greek literature But she felt what would properly have been unperceived by many a young lady who had taken a first in classics The ineluctable fatality of the tale the dread sway in it of the same mysterious luck of a small destiny It was not literature to her, it was fact as actual, as nearby as what was happening to her at the moment and what the next hour held in store Seen in this light the play regained Fadero its supreme and poignant reality He pierced to the heart of its significance through all the artificial accretions with which his theories of art and the conventions of the stage had clothed it and saw it as he had never seen it as life He had no question of flight and he took her back to the theatre content to receive his own sensations through the medium of hers But with the continuation of the play and the oppression of the heavy air his attention again began to wander straying back over the incidents of the morning He had been with Sophie Weiner all day and he was surprised to find how quickly the time had gone She had hardly attempted, as the hours passed to conceal her satisfaction in finding that no telegram came from the farlows Still written, she simply said and her mind had at once flown on to the golden prospect of an afternoon at the theatre The intervening hours had been disposed of in a stroll through the lively streets and a repast, luxuriously lingered over out of the chestnut boughs of a restaurant in the Champs-Elysées Everything entertained an interceder and Dero remarked with an amused attachment that she was not insensible to the impressions her charms produced Yet there was no hard edge of vanity in the sense of her prettiness She seemed simply to be aware of it as a note in the general harmony and to enjoy sounding the note as a singer enjoys singing After luncheon, as they sat over their coffee she had again asked an immense number of questions and delivered herself a remarkable variety of opinions Her questions testified to a wholesome and comprehensive human curiosity and her comments showed like her face and her whole attitude an odd mingling of precocious wisdom and a vague ignorance When she talked to him about life the word was often on her lips She seemed to him like a child playing with a tiger's cub and he said to himself that someday the child would grow up and so would the tiger Meanwhile, such expertness qualified by such candor made it impossible to guess the extent of her personal experience or to estimate its effect on her character She might be any one of a dozen definable types that are perilously to herself via shifting an uncrystallized mixture of them all Her talk, as usual, had promptly reverted to the stage She was eager to learn about every form of dramatic expression which the metropolis of things theatrical had to offer and her curiosity ranged from the official temples of the art to its less hallowed haunts Her searching inquiries about a play whose production on one of the later scenes had provoked a considerable amount of scandal led Darrow to throw out laughingly To see that you'll have to wait till you're married and his answer had sent her off a tangent Oh, I never mean to marry She had rejoined the tone of youthful finality I seem to have heard that before Yes, from girls who only got to choose Her eyes had grown suddenly almost old I'd like you to see the only men who ever wanted to marry me One was a doctor on the steamer when I came abroad with the hooks He'd been cashiered from the navy for drunkenness The other was a death widow with three grown-up daughters who kept a clock shop in bayswater Besides, she rambled on I'm not so sure that I believe in marriage You see, I'm all for self-development and the chance to live one's life I'm awfully modern, you know It was just when she proclaimed herself most awfully modern that she struck him as most helplessly backward Yet the moment after without any bravado or apparent desire to assume an attitude she would propound some social axiom only in the bitter soil of experience All these things came back to him as he sat beside her in the theater and watched her in genuine absorption It was on the story that her mind was fixed and in life also, he suspected it would always be the story rather than its remoder imagined of issues that would hold her He did not believe there were ever any echoes in her soul There was no question, however that what she felt was felt with intensity to the actual, the immediate she spread vibrating strings When the play was over and they came out once more into the sunlight Darrow looked down at her with a smile Well, he asked She made no answer Her dark gaze seemed to rest on him without seeing him Her cheeks and lips were pale and the loose hair under her hat brim clung to her forehead in damp rings She looked like a young priestess still dazed by the fumes of the cavern Oh, you poor child There's too much for you She shook her head with a vague smile Come, he went on, putting his hand on her arm Let's jump into a taxi and get some air and sunshine Look, there are hours of daylight left and see what night's going to be He pointed over their heads to where a white moon hung in the misty blue above the roofs of the Rue de Rivoli She made no answer and he signed to a motor cab calling out to the driver to the bois to house herself I must go first to the hotel There may be a message At any rate, I must decide on something Darrow saw that the reality of the situation had suddenly forced itself upon her I must decide on something, she repeated He would have liked to postpone the return to persuade her to drive directly to the bois for dinner It would have been easy enough to remind her that she could not start for Joanny that evening and that therefore it was of no moment whether she received the far-lows answered then But for some reason he hesitated to use this argument which had come so naturally to him the day before After all, he knew she would find nothing at the hotel so what did it matter if they went there The porter, interrogated, was not sure He himself had received nothing for the lady but in his absence his subordinate might have sent the letter upstairs Darrow and Sophie mounted together in the lift and the young man while she went to her room unlocked his own door and glanced at the empty table For him, at least, no message had come and on her threshold a moment later she met him with the expected No, there's nothing He feigned an unregretful surprise So much the better And now, shall we drive out somewhere or would you rather take a boat to Bellevue Have you overdined there on the terrace by moonlight? It's not at all bad and there's no earthly use in sitting here waiting She stood before complexity But when I wrote yesterday I asked them to telegraph I suppose they're horribly hard up, the poor deers and they thought a letter would do just as well as a telegram The colour had risen to her face That's why I wrote instead of telegraphing I haven't a penny to spare myself Nothing she could have said could have filled her listener with a deeper contrition He felt the red in his own face as he recalled the motive with which he had credited her in his midnight musings But that motive, after all, had simply been trumped up to justify his own disloyalty He had never really believed in it His reflection deepened his confusion and he would have liked to take her hand in his and confess the injustice he had done her She may have interpreted his change of colour as an involuntary protest of being initiated into such shabby details for she went on with a laugh I suppose you can hardly understand what it means to have to stop and think whether one can afford a telegram But I've always had to consider such things and I mustn't stay here any longer now I must get a night train for Joanie Even if the farlows can't take me in I can go to the hotel. It will cost less than staying here She paused again and then exclaimed I ought to have thought of that sooner I ought to have telegraphed yesterday But I was so sure I should hear from that today and I wanted... Oh, I did so awfully want to stay She threw a troubled look at Darrow Do you happen to remember? She asked What time it was when you posted my letter? End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of the Reef This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Reef By Edith Wharton 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 her 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 a vowel into a serious offence 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 constrained and ashamed and ever more keenly aware that the betrayal of his distress must be a greater offence 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 serpent head 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 and 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 in 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 hands still lay in his She was pale His eyes were fixed on him in a gaze in which there was neither distrust nor 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 him spoken The girl had listened to him in silence She were made motionless for a moment after it 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 mirrored past and her face at the same moment underwent the same change shrinking into a small malevolent white mask and the eyes burned black Thank you! Thank you most awfully for telling me and for all your other kind intentions the plan is 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 out of a laying his agitation The theatrical touch in her matter made his offence seem more venial than he had thought at a moment before He drew up a chair and sat down beside her After all, he said in a tone of good-humored 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'd 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 and I saw you as murret 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 were 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 up on the dressing table her chin on her hands What rubbish we talk about intentions The truth is I hadn't any I just like 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 When I found out 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 hand 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 There are broken to a lap at this ingenuous picture of his state He was ashamed of trying to better his cause 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 Watch those two whole days of it I shan't forget how kind you've been I shall have plenty time to remember But this is goodbye, you know I must telegraph it once to say I'm coming To say you're coming that I'm not forgiven? Oh you're forgiven if that's any comfort It's not 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 is 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 illusion of 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 Her face as she lifted it 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 goodbye 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 how 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 terracotta statue some young image of grace hardly more than sketched in the clay Dero as he stood looking at her reflected that her character for all its seeming firmness of opinion was probably no less immature He had not expected her to yield so suddenly to a 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 to 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 He had a very creature to whom it was bound to happen but the words had a double sense that made him wince 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 is her own and declaring as he dropped her hands All that and more too You'll see Chapter 8 of The Reef This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Joy Easton The Reef by Edith Wharton Chapter 8 All day since the late reluctant dawn the rain had come down in torrents It streamed against Daryl's high perched windows reduced their vast prospect of roofs and chimneys to a black oily huddle and filled the room with the drab twilight of an underground aquarium The streams descended with the regularity of a third day's rain when trimming and shuffling are over and the weather has settled down to do its worst There were no variations of rhythm no lyrical ups and downs The gray lines streaking the pains were as dense and uniform as the page of unparagraphed narrative George Daryl had drawn his armchair to the fire the timetable he had been studying lay on the floor and he sat staring with dull acquiescence into the boundless blur of rain which affected him like a vast projection of his own state of mind then his eyes traveled slowly about the room It was exactly ten days since his hurried unpacking had strewn it with the contents Portmanteau His brushes and razors were spread out on the blotched marble of the chest of drawers A stack of newspapers had accumulated on the center table under the electrolyer and half a dozen paper novels lay on the mantelpiece among cigar cases and toilet bottles But these traces of his passage had made no mark on the featureless dullness of the room its look of being the makeshift setting of innumerable transient collocations There was something sardonic almost sinister in its appearance of having deliberately made up for its anonymous part all in non-committal drabs and browns with a carpet and paper that nobody would remember and chairs and tables as impersonal as railway porters Daryl picked up the timetable and tossed it onto the table Then he rose to his feet lit a cigar and went to the window Through the rain he could just discover the face of a clock in a tall building beyond the railway roofs He pulled out his watch compared the two timepieces and started the hands of his with such a rush that they flew past the hour and he had to make them repeat the circuit more deliberately He felt a quite disproportionate irritation at the trifling blunder When he had corrected it he went back to his chair and threw himself down his head against his hands Presently his cigar went out and he got up, hunted for the matches lit it again and returned to his seat The room was getting on his nerves During the first few days while the skies were clear he had not noticed it or had felt for it only the contemptuous indifference of the traveler toward a provisional shelter But now that he was leaving it was looking at it for the last time it seemed to have taken of his mind to be soaking itself into him like an ugly indelible blot Every detail pressed itself on his notice with the familiarity of an accidental confidant Whichever way he turned he felt a nudge of a transient intimacy The one fixed point in his immediate future was that his leave was over and that he must be back at his post in London the next morning Within twenty-four hours he would again be in a daylight world of recognized activities himself a busy, responsible relatively necessary factor in the big, whirring social and official machine That fixed obligation was the fact he could think of with the least discomfort Yet for some unaccountable reason it was the one on which he found it most difficult to fix his thoughts Whenever he did so the room jerked him back into the circle of its insistent associations It was extraordinary with what a microscopic minuteness of loathing he hated it all the grimy carpet and wallpaper the black marble mantelpiece the clock with a guilt allegory under a dusty bell the high bolstered brown counterpane bed the framed card of printed rules under the electric light switch and the door of communication with the next room He hated the door most of all At the outset he had felt no special sense of responsibility He was satisfied that he had struck the right note and convinced of his power of sustaining it The whole incident had somehow seemed in spite of its vulgar setting and its inevitable prosaic propinquities to be enacting itself in some unmapped region outside the pale of the usual It was not like anything that had ever happened to him before in which he had ever pictured himself as likely to be involved But that, at first, had seemed no argument against his fitness to deal with it Perhaps but for the three days rain he might have got away without a doubt as to his adequacy The rain had made all the difference It had thrown the whole picture out of perspective blotted out the mystery of the remoter planes and the enchantment of the middle distance and thrust into prominence the fact of the foreground It was the kind of situation that was not helped by being thought over and by the perversity of circumstance he had been forced into the unwilling contemplation of its every aspect His cigar had gone out again and he threw it into the fire and vaguely meditated getting up to find another But the mere act of leaving his chair seemed to call for a greater exertion of the will than he was capable of and he leaned his head back with closed eyes and listened to the drumming of the rain A different noise aroused him It was the opening and closing of the door leading from the corridor into the adjoining room He sat motionless without opening his eyes But now another sight forced itself under his lowered lids It was the precise photographic picture of that other room Everything in it rose before him and pressed itself upon his vision with the same acuity of distinctness as the objects surrounding him A step sounded on the floor and he knew which way the step was directed what pieces of furniture it had to skirt, where it would probably pause and what was likely to arrest it He heard another sound and recognized it as that of a wet umbrella placed in the black marble jam of the chimney piece against the hearth He walked the creek of a hinge and instantly differentiated it as that of the wardrobe against the opposite wall Then he heard the mouse-like squeal of a reluctant drawer and knew it was the upper one in the chest of drawers beside the bed The clatter which followed was caused by the mahogany toilet glass jumping on its loosened pivots The step crossed the floor again It was strange how much better he knew it than the person who belonged Now it was drawing near the door of communication between the two rooms He opened his eyes and looked The step had ceased and for a moment there was silence Then he heard a low knock He made no response and after an interval he saw that the door handle was being tentatively turned He closed his eyes once more The door opened and the step was in the room coming cautiously toward him He was shut, relaxing his body to feign sleep There was another pause then a wavering soft advance the rustle of a dress behind his chair the warmth of two hands pressed for a moment on his lids The palms of the hands had the lingering scent of some stuff that he had bought on the boulevard He looked up and saw a letter falling over his shoulder to his knee Did I disturb you? I'm so sorry They gave me this just now when I came in The letter before he could catch it had slipped between his knees to the floor It lay there, address upward at his feet and while he sat staring down at the strong slender characters on the blue-gray envelope an arm reached out from behind to pick it up Oh, don't, don't! broke from him and he bent over and caught the arm The face above it was close to his butt Take the trouble, he stammered He dropped the arm and stooped down His grasp closed over the letter He fingered its thickness and weight and calculated the number of sheets it must contain Suddenly he felt the pressure of the hand on his shoulder and became aware that the face was still leaning over him and that in a moment he would have to look up and kiss it He bent forward first and threw one letter into the middle of the fire End of Chapter 8