He left her at the door of Madame de Chantelle's sitting-room1, and plunged2 out alone into the rain.
The wind flung about the stripped tree-tops of the avenueand dashed the stinging streams into his face. He walked tothe gate and then turned into the high-road and strode alongin the open, buffeted3 by slanting4 gusts5. The evenly ridgedfields were a blurred6 waste of mud, and the russet covertswhich he and Owen had shot through the day before shivereddesolately against a driving sky.
Darrow walked on and on, indifferent to the direction he wastaking. His thoughts were tossing like the tree-tops.
Anna's announcement had not come to him as a completesurprise: that morning, as he strolled back to the housewith Owen Leath and Miss Viner, he had had a momentaryintuition of the truth. But it had been no more than anintuition, the merest faint cloud-puff of surmise8; and nowit was an attested9 fact, darkening over the whole sky.
In respect of his own attitude, he saw at once that thediscovery made no appreciable10 change. If he had been boundto silence before, he was no less bound to it now; the onlydifference lay in the fact that what he had just learned hadrendered his bondage11 more intolerable. Hitherto he had feltfor Sophy Viner's defenseless state a sympathy profoundlytinged with compunction. But now he was half-conscious ofan obscure indignation against her. Superior as he hadfancied himself to ready-made judgments12, he was aware ofcherishing the common doubt as to the disinterestedness13 ofthe woman who tries to rise above her past. No wonder shehad been sick with fear on meeting him! It was in his powerto do her more harm than he had dreamed...
Assuredly he did not want to harm her; but he diddesperately want to prevent her marrying Owen Leath. Hetried to get away from the feeling, to isolate14 andexteriorize it sufficiently15 to see what motives16 it was madeof; but it remained a mere7 blind motion of his blood, theinstinctive recoil17 from the thing that no amount of arguingcan make "straight." His tramp, prolonged as it was, carriedhim no nearer to enlightenment; and after trudging18 throughtwo or three sallow mud-stained villages he turned about andwearily made his way back to Givre. As he walked up theblack avenue, making for the lights that twinkled throughits pitching branches, he had a sudden realisation of hisutter helplessness. He might think and combine as he would;but there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he coulddo...
He dropped his wet coat in the vestibule and began to mountthe stairs to his room. But on the landing he was overtakenby a sober-faced maid who, in tones discreetly19 lowered,begged him to be so kind as to step, for a moment, into theMarquise's sitting-room. Somewhat disconcerted by thesummons, he followed its bearer to the door at which, acouple of hours earlier, he had taken leave of Mrs. Leath.
It opened to admit him to a large lamp-lit room which heimmediately perceived to be empty; and the fact gave himtime to note, even through his disturbance21 of mind, theinteresting degree to which Madame de Chantelle's apartment"dated" and completed her. Its looped and corded curtains,its purple satin upholstery, the Sevres jardinieres, therosewood fire-screen, the little velvet22 tables edged withlace and crowded with silver knick-knacks and simperingminiatures, reconstituted an almost perfect setting for theblonde beauty of the 'sixties. Darrow wondered that FraserLeath's filial respect should have prevailed over hisaesthetic scruples23 to the extent of permitting such ananachronism among the eighteenth century graces of Givre;but a moment's reflection made it clear that, to its lateowner, the attitude would have seemed exactly in thetraditions of the place.
Madame de Chantelle's emergence24 from an inner room snatchedDarrow from these irrelevant25 musings. She was alreadybeaded and bugled26 for the evening, and, save for a slightpinkness of the eye-lids, her elaborate appearance revealedno mark of agitation27; but Darrow noticed that, inrecognition of the solemnity of the occasion, she pinched alace handkerchief between her thumb and forefinger28.
She plunged at once into the centre of the difficulty,appealing to him, in the name of all the Everards, todescend there with her to the rescue of her darling. Shewasn't, she was sure, addressing herself in vain to onewhose person, whose "tone," whose traditions so brilliantlydeclared his indebtedness to the principles she besought29 himto defend. Her own reception of Darrow, the confidence shehad at once accorded him, must have shown him that she hadinstinctively felt their unanimity30 of sentiment on thesefundamental questions. She had in fact recognized in himthe one person whom, without pain to her maternal31 piety32, shecould welcome as her son's successor; and it was almost asto Owen's father that she now appealed to Darrow to aid inrescuing the wretched boy.
"Don't think, please, that I'm casting the least reflectionon Anna, or showing any want of sympathy for her, when I saythat I consider her partly responsible for what's happened.
Anna is 'modern'--I believe that's what it's called when youread unsettling books and admire hideous33 pictures. Indeed,"Madame de Chantelle continued, leaning confidentiallyforward, "I myself have always more or less lived in thatatmosphere: my son, you know, was very revolutionary. Onlyhe didn't, of course, apply his ideas: they were purelyintellectual. That's what dear Anna has always failed tounderstand. And I'm afraid she's created the same kind ofconfusion in Owen's mind--led him to mix up things you readabout with things you do...You know, of course, that shesides with him in this wretched business?"Developing at length upon this theme, she finally narroweddown to the point of Darrow's intervention34. "My grandson,Mr. Darrow, calls me illogical and uncharitable because myfeelings toward Miss Viner have changed since I've heardthis news. Well! You've known her, it appears, for someyears: Anna tells me you used to see her when she was acompanion, or secretary or something, to a dreadfully vulgarMrs. Murrett. And I ask you as a friend, I ask you as oneof US, to tell me if you think a girl who has had toknock about the world in that kind of position, and at theorders of all kinds of people, is fitted to be Owen's wifeI'm not implying anything against her! I LIKED the girl,Mr. Darrow...But what's that got to do with it? I don't wanther to marry my grandson. If I'd been looking for a wifefor Owen, I shouldn't have applied36 to the Farlows to find meone. That's what Anna won't understand; and what you musthelp me to make her see."Darrow, to this appeal, could oppose only the repeatedassurance of his inability to interfere37. He tried to makeMadame de Chantelle see that the very position he hoped totake in the household made his intervention the morehazardous. He brought up the usual arguments, and soundedthe expected note of sympathy; but Madame de Chantelle'salarm had dispelled38 her habitual39 imprecision, and, thoughshe had not many reasons to advance, her argument clung toits point like a frightened sharp-clawed animal.
"Well, then," she summed up, in response to his repeatedassertions that he saw no way of helping40 her, "you can, atleast, even if you won't say a word to the others, tell mefrankly and fairly--and quite between ourselves--yourpersonal opinion of Miss Viner, since you've known her somuch longer than we have."He protested that, if he had known her longer, he had knownher much less well, and that he had already, on this point,convinced Anna of his inability to pronounce an opinion.
Madame de Chantelle drew a deep sigh of intelligence. "Youropinion of Mrs. Murrett is enough! I don't suppose youpretend to conceal41 THAT? And heaven knows what otherunspeakable people she's been mixed up with. The onlyfriends she can produce are called Hoke...Don't try toreason with me, Mr. Darrow. There are feelings that godeeper than facts...And I KNOW she thought of studyingfor the stage..." Madame de Chantelle raised the corner ofher lace handkerchief to her eyes. "I'm old-fashioned--likemy furniture," she murmured. "And I thought I could counton you, Mr. Darrow..."When Darrow, that night, regained42 his room, he reflectedwith a flash of irony43 that each time he entered it hebrought a fresh troop of perplexities to trouble its sereneseclusion. Since the day after his arrival, only forty-eight hours before, when he had set his window open to thenight, and his hopes had seemed as many as its stars, eachevening had brought its new problem and its reneweddistress. But nothing, as yet, had approached the blankmisery of mind with which he now set himself to face thefresh questions confronting him.
Sophy Viner had not shown herself at dinner, so that he hadhad no glimpse of her in her new character, and no means ofdivining the real nature of the tie between herself and OwenLeath. One thing, however, was clear: whatever her realfeelings were, and however much or little she had at stake,if she had made up her mind to marry Owen she had more thanenough skill and tenacity44 to defeat any arts that poorMadame de Chantelle could oppose to her.
Darrow himself was in fact the only person who mightpossibly turn her from her purpose: Madame de Chantelle, athaphazard, had hit on the surest means of saving Owen--if toprevent his marriage were to save him! Darrow, on thispoint, did not pretend to any fixed45 opinion; one feelingalone was clear and insistent46 in him: he did not mean, if hecould help it, to let the marriage take place.
How he was to prevent it he did not know: to his tormentedimagination every issue seemed closed. For a fantasticinstant he was moved to follow Madame de Chantelle'ssuggestion and urge Anna to withdraw her approval. If hisreticence, his efforts to avoid the subject, had not escapedher, she had doubtless set them down to the fact of hisknowing more, and thinking less, of Sophy Viner than he hadbeen willing to admit; and he might take advantage of thisto turn her mind gradually from the project. Yet how do sowithout betraying his insincerity? If he had had nothing tohide he could easily have said: "It's one thing to knownothing against the girl, it's another to pretend that Ithink her a good match for Owen." But could he say even somuch without betraying more? It was not Anna's questions, orhis answers to them, that he feared, but what might cryaloud in the intervals47 between them. He understood now thatever since Sophy Viner's arrival at Givre he had felt inAnna the lurking48 sense of something unexpressed, and perhapsinexpressible, between the girl and himself...When at lasthe fell asleep he had fatalistically committed his next stepto the chances of the morrow.
The first that offered itself was an encounter with Mrs.
Leath as he descended49 the stairs the next morning. She hadcome down already hatted and shod for a dash to the parklodge, where one of the gatekeeper's children had had anaccident. In her compact dark dress she looked more thanusually straight and slim, and her face wore the pale glowit took on at any call on her energy: a kind of warriorbrightness that made her small head, with its strong chinand close-bound hair, like that of an amazon in a frieze51.
It was their first moment alone since she had left him, theafternoon before, at her mother-in-law's door; and after afew words about the injured child their talk inevitablyreverted to Owen.
Anna spoke52 with a smile of her "scene" with Madame deChantelle, who belonged, poor dear, to a generation when"scenes" (in the ladylike and lachrymal sense of the term)were the tribute which sensibility was expected to pay tothe unusual. Their conversation had been, in every detail,so exactly what Anna had foreseen that it had clearly notmade much impression on her; but she was eager to know theresult of Darrow's encounter with her mother-in-law.
"She told me she'd sent for you: she always 'sends for'
people in emergencies. That again, I suppose, is del'epoque. And failing Adelaide Painter, who can't get heretill this afternoon, there was no one but poor you to turnto."She put it all lightly, with a lightness that seemed to histight-strung nerves slightly, undefinably over-done. But hewas so aware of his own tension that he wondered, the nextmoment, whether anything would ever again seem to him quiteusual and insignificant53 and in the common order of things.
As they hastened on through the drizzle54 in which the stormof the night was weeping itself out, Anna drew close underhis umbrella, and at the pressure of her arm against his herecalled his walk up the Dover pier55 with Sophy Viner. Thememory gave him a startled vision of the inevitableoccasions of contact, confidence, familiarity, which hisfuture relationship to the girl would entail57, and thecountless chances of betrayal that every one of theminvolved.
"Do tell me just what you said," he heard Anna pleading; andwith sudden resolution he affirmed: "I quite understand yourmother-in-law's feeling as she does."The words, when uttered, seemed a good deal less significantthan they had sounded to his inner ear; and Anna repliedwithout surprise: "Of course. It's inevitable56 that sheshould. But we shall bring her round in time." Under thedripping dome58 she raised her face to his. "Don't youremember what you said the day before yesterday? 'Togetherwe can't fail to pull it off for him!' I've told Owen that,so you're pledged and there's no going back."The day before yesterday! Was it possible that, no longerago, life had seemed a sufficiently simple business for asane man to hazard such assurances?
"Anna," he questioned her abruptly59, "why are you so anxiousfor this marriage?"She stopped short to face him. "Why? But surely I'veexplained to you--or rather I've hardly had to, you seemedso in sympathy with my reasons!""I didn't know, then, who it was that Owen wanted to marry."The words were out with a spring and he felt a clearer airin his brain. But her logic35 hemmed60 him in.
"You knew yesterday; and you assured me then that you hadn'ta word to say----""Against Miss Viner?" The name, once uttered, sounded on andon in his ears. "Of course not. But that doesn'tnecessarily imply that I think her a good match for Owen."Anna made no immediate20 answer. When she spoke it was toquestion: "Why don't you think her a good match for Owen?""Well--Madame de Chantelle's reasons seem to me not quite asnegligible as you think.""You mean the fact that she's been Mrs. Murrett's secretary,and that the people who employed her before were calledHoke? For, as far as Owen and I can make out, these are thegravest charges against her.""Still, one can understand that the match is not what Madamede Chantelle had dreamed of.""Oh, perfectly--if that's all you mean."The lodge50 was in sight, and she hastened her step. Hestrode on beside her in silence, but at the gate she checkedhim with the question: "Is it really all you mean?""Of course," he heard himself declare.
"Oh, then I think I shall convince you--even if I can't,like Madame de Chantelle, summon all the Everards to myaid!" She lifted to him the look of happy laughter thatsometimes brushed her with a gleam of spring.
Darrow watched her hasten along the path between thedripping chrysanthemums61 and enter the lodge. After she hadgone in he paced up and down outside in the drizzle, waitingto learn if she had any message to send back to the house;and after the lapse62 of a few minutes she came out again.
The child, she said, was badly, though not dangerously,hurt, and the village doctor, who was already on hand, hadasked that the surgeon, already summoned from Francheuil,should be told to bring with him certain needful appliances.
Owen had started by motor to fetch the surgeon, but therewas still time to communicate with the latter by telephone.
The doctor furthermore begged for an immediate provision ofsuch bandages and disinfectants as Givre itself couldfurnish, and Anna bade Darrow address himself to Miss Viner,who would know where to find the necessary things, and woulddirect one of the servants to bicycle with them to thelodge.
Darrow, as he hurried off on this errand, had at onceperceived the opportunity it offered of a word with SophyViner. What that word was to be he did not know; but now,if ever, was the moment to make it urgent and conclusive63.
It was unlikely that he would again have such a chance ofunobserved talk with her.
He had supposed he should find her with her pupil in theschool-room; but he learned from a servant that Effie hadgone to Francheuil with her step-brother, and that MissViner was still in her room. Darrow sent her word that hewas the bearer of a message from the lodge, and a momentlater he heard her coming down the stairs.
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sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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buffeted
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| 反复敲打( buffet的过去式和过去分词 )； 连续猛击； 打来打去； 推来搡去 | |
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slanting
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| 倾斜的，歪斜的 | |
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gusts
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| 一阵强风( gust的名词复数 )； （怒、笑等的）爆发； （感情的）迸发； 发作 | |
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blurred
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| v.（使）变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）难以区分；模模糊糊；迷离 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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surmise
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| v./n.猜想，推测 | |
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attested
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| adj.经检验证明无病的，经检验证明无菌的v.证明( attest的过去式和过去分词 )；证实；声称…属实；使宣誓 | |
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appreciable
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| adj.明显的，可见的，可估量的，可觉察的 | |
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bondage
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| n.奴役，束缚 | |
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judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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disinterestedness
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isolate
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| vt.使孤立，隔离 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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recoil
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| vi.退却，退缩，畏缩 | |
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trudging
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| vt.& vi.跋涉，吃力地走（trudge的现在分词形式） | |
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discreetly
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| ad.(言行)审慎地，慎重地 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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scruples
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| n.良心上的不安( scruple的名词复数 )；顾虑，顾忌v.感到于心不安，有顾忌( scruple的第三人称单数 ) | |
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emergence
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| n.浮现，显现，出现，（植物）突出体 | |
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irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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bugled
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| 吹号（bugle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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besought
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| v.恳求，乞求（某事物）( beseech的过去式和过去分词 )；(beseech的过去式与过去分词) | |
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unanimity
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| n.全体一致，一致同意 | |
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maternal
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| adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的 | |
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piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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intervention
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| n.介入，干涉，干预 | |
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logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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dispelled
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| v.驱散，赶跑( dispel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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regained
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| 复得( regain的过去式和过去分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地 | |
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irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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tenacity
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| n.坚韧 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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insistent
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| adj.迫切的，坚持的 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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lurking
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| 潜在 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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frieze
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| n.(墙上的)横饰带，雕带 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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drizzle
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| v.下毛毛雨；n.毛毛雨，蒙蒙细雨 | |
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pier
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| n.码头；桥墩，桥柱；[建]窗间壁，支柱 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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entail
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| vt.使承担，使成为必要，需要 | |
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dome
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| n.圆屋顶，拱顶 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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hemmed
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| 缝…的褶边( hem的过去式和过去分词 )； 包围 | |
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chrysanthemums
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| n.菊花( chrysanthemum的名词复数 ) | |
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lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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conclusive
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| adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的 | |
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