第43章

XVII

At dinner that evening Madame de Chantelle's slender monologue was thrown out over gulfs of silence.Owen was still in the same state of moody abstraction as when Darrow had left him at the piano; and even Anna's face, to her friend's vigilant eye, revealed not, perhaps, a personal preoccupation, but a vague sense of impending disturbance.

She smiled, she bore a part in the talk, her eyes dwelt on Darrow's with their usual deep reliance; but beneath the surface of her serenity his tense perceptions detected a hidden stir.

He was sufficiently self-possessed to tell himself that it was doubtless due to causes with which he was not directly concerned.He knew the question of Owen's marriage was soon to be raised, and the abrupt alteration in the young man's mood made it seem probable that he was himself the centre of the atmospheric disturbance, For a moment it occurred to Darrow that Anna might have employed her afternoon in preparing Madame de Chantelle for her grandson's impending announcement; but a glance at the elder lady's unclouded brow showed that he must seek elsewhere the clue to Owen's taciturnity and his step-mother's concern.Possibly Anna had found reason to change her own attitude in the matter, and had made the change known to Owen.But this, again, was negatived by the fact that, during the afternoon's shooting, young Leath had been in a mood of almost extravagant expansiveness, and that, from the moment of his late return to the house till just before dinner, there had been, to Darrow's certain knowledge, no possibility of a private talk between himself and his step-mother.

This obscured, if it narrowed, the field of conjecture; and Darrow's gropings threw him back on the conclusion that he was probably reading too much significance into the moods of a lad he hardly knew, and who had been described to him as subject to sudden changes of humour.As to Anna's fancied perturbation, it might simply be due to the fact that she had decided to plead Owen's cause the next day, and had perhaps already had a glimpse of the difficulties awaiting her.But Darrow knew that he was too deep in his own perplexities to judge the mental state of those about him.

It might be, after all, that the variations he felt in the currents of communication were caused by his own inward tremor.

Such, at any rate, was the conclusion he had reached when, shortly after the two ladies left the drawing-room, he bade Owen good-night and went up to his room.Ever since the rapid self-colloquy which had followed on his first sight of Sophy Viner, he had known there were other questions to be faced behind the one immediately confronting him.On the score of that one, at least, his mind, if not easy, was relieved.He had done what was possible to reassure the girl, and she had apparently recognized the sincerity of his intention.He had patched up as decent a conclusion as he could to an incident that should obviously have had no sequel; but he had known all along that with the securing of Miss Viner's peace of mind only a part of his obligation was discharged, and that with that part his remaining duty was in conflict.It had been his first business to convince the girl that their secret was safe with him; but it was far from easy to square this with the equally urgent obligation of safe-guarding Anna's responsibility toward her child.

Darrow was not much afraid of accidental disclosures.Both he and Sophy Viner had too much at stake not to be on their guard.The fear that beset him was of another kind, and had a profounder source.He wanted to do all he could for the girl, but the fact of having had to urge Anna to confide Effie to her was peculiarly repugnant to him.His own ideas about Sophy Viner were too mixed and indeterminate for him not to feel the risk of such an experiment; yet he found himself in the intolerable position of appearing to press it on the woman he desired above all others to protect...

Till late in the night his thoughts revolved in a turmoil of indecision.His pride was humbled by the discrepancy between what Sophy Viner had been to him and what he had thought of her.This discrepancy, which at the time had seemed to simplify the incident, now turned out to be its most galling complication.The bare truth, indeed, was that he had hardly thought of her at all, either at the time or since, and that he was ashamed to base his judgement of her on his meagre memory of their adventure.

The essential cheapness of the whole affair--as far as his share in it was concerned--came home to him with humiliating distinctness.He would have liked to be able to feel that, at the time at least, he had staked something more on it, and had somehow, in the sequel, had a more palpable loss to show.But the plain fact was that he hadn't spent a penny on it; which was no doubt the reason of the prodigious score it had since been rolling up.At any rate, beat about the case as he would, it was clear that he owed it to Anna--and incidentally to his own peace of mind--to find some way of securing Sophy Viner's future without leaving her installed at Givre when he and his wife should depart for their new post.

The night brought no aid to the solving of this problem; but it gave him, at any rate, the clear conviction that no time was to be lost.His first step must be to obtain from Miss Viner the chance of another and calmer talk; and he resolved to seek it at the earliest hour.

He had gathered that Effie's lessons were preceded by an early scamper in the park, and conjecturing that her governess might be with her he betook himself the next morning to the terrace, whence he wandered on to the gardens and the walks beyond.

The atmosphere was still and pale.The muffled sunlight gleamed like gold tissue through grey gauze, and the beech alleys tapered away to a blue haze blent of sky and forest.

It was one of those elusive days when the familiar forms of things seem about to dissolve in a prismatic shimmer.