The Reef

"Unexpected obstacle. Please don't come till thirtieth.

　　Anna."All the way from Charing Cross to Dover the train hadhammered the words of the telegram into George Darrow'sears, ringing every change of irony on its commonplacesyllables: rattling them out like a discharge of musketry,letting them, one by one, drip slowly and coldly into hisbrain, or shaking, tossing, transposing them like the dicein some game of the gods of malice; and now, as he emergedfrom his compartment at the pier, and stood facing the wind-swept platform and the angry sea beyond, they leapt out athim as if from the crest of the waves, stung and blinded himwith a fresh fury of derision.

　　"Unexpected obstacle. Please don't come till thirtieth.

　　Anna."She had put him off at the very last moment, and for thesecond time: put him off with all her sweet reasonableness,and for one of her usual "good" reasons--he was certain thatthis reason, like the other, (the visit of her husband'suncle's widow) would be "good"! But it was that verycertainty which chilled him. The fact of her dealing soreasonably with their case shed an ironic light on the ideathat there had been any exceptional warmth in the greetingshe had given him after their twelve years apart.

　　They had found each other again, in London, some threemonths previously, at a dinner at the American Embassy, andwhen she had caught sight of him her smile had been like ared rose pinned on her widow's mourning. He still felt thethrob of surprise with which, among the stereotyped faces ofthe season's diners, he had come upon her unexpected face,with the dark hair banded above grave eyes; eyes in which hehad recognized every little curve and shadow as he wouldhave recognized, after half a life-time, the details of aroom he had played in as a child. And as, in the plumedstarred crowd, she had stood out for him, slender, secludedand different, so he had felt, the instant their glancesmet, that he as sharply detached himself for her. All thatand more her smile had said; had said not merely "Iremember," but "I remember just what you remember"; almost,indeed, as though her memory had aided his, her glance flungback on their recaptured moment its morning brightness.

　　Certainly, when their distracted Ambassadress--with the cry:

　　"Oh, you know Mrs. Leath? That's perfect, for GeneralFarnham has failed me"--had waved them together for themarch to the diningroom, Darrow had felt a slight pressureof the arm on his, a pressure faintly but unmistakablyemphasizing the exclamation: "Isn't it wonderful?--InLondon--in the season--in a mob?"Little enough, on the part of most women; but it was a signof Mrs. Leath's quality that every movement, every syllable,told with her. Even in the old days, as an intent grave-eyed girl, she had seldom misplaced her light strokes; andDarrow, on meeting her again, had immediately felt how muchfiner and surer an instrument of expression she had become.

　　Their evening together had been a long confirmation of thisfeeling. She had talked to him, shyly yet frankly, of whathad happened to her during the years when they had sostrangely failed to meet. She had told him of her marriageto Fraser Leath, and of her subsequent life in France, whereher husband's mother, left a widow in his youth, had beenre-married to the Marquis de Chantelle, and where, partly inconsequence of this second union, the son had permanentlysettled himself. She had spoken also, with an intenseeagerness of affection, of her little girl Effie, who wasnow nine years old, and, in a strain hardly less tender, ofOwen Leath, the charming clever young stepson whom herhusband's death had left to her care...

　　A porter, stumbling against Darrow's bags, roused him to thefact that he still obstructed the platform, inert andencumbering as his luggage.

　　"Crossing, sir?"Was he crossing? He really didn't know; but for lack of anymore compelling impulse he followed the porter to theluggage van, singled out his property, and turned to marchbehind it down the gang-way. As the fierce wind shoulderedhim, building up a crystal wall against his efforts, he feltanew the derision of his case.

　　"Nasty weather to cross, sir," the porter threw back at himas they beat their way down the narrow walk to the pier.

　　Nasty weather, indeed; but luckily, as it had turned out,there was no earthly reason why Darrow should cross.

　　While he pushed on in the wake of his luggage his thoughtsslipped back into the old groove. He had once or twice runacross the man whom Anna Summers had preferred to him, andsince he had met her again he had been exercising hisimagination on the picture of what her married life musthave been. Her husband had struck him as a characteristicspecimen of the kind of American as to whom one is not quiteclear whether he lives in Europe in order to cultivate anart, or cultivates an art as a pretext for living in Europe.

　　Mr. Leath's art was water-colour painting, but he practisedit furtively, almost clandestinely, with the disdain of aman of the world for anything bordering on the professional,while he devoted himself more openly, and with religiousseriousness, to the collection of enamelled snuff-boxes. Hewas blond and well-dressed, with the physical distinctionthat comes from having a straight figure, a thin nose, andthe habit of looking slightly disgusted--as who should not,in a world where authentic snuff-boxes were growing dailyharder to find, and the market was flooded with flagrantforgeries?

　　Darrow had often wondered what possibilities of communionthere could have been between Mr. Leath and his wife. Nowhe concluded that there had probably been none. Mrs.

　　Leath's words gave no hint of her husband's having failed tojustify her choice; but her very reticence betrayed her.

　　She spoke of him with a kind of impersonal seriousness, asif he had been a character in a novel or a figure inhistory; and what she said sounded as though it had beenlearned by heart and slightly dulled by repetition. Thisfact immensely increased Darrow's impression that hismeeting with her had annihilated the intervening years.

　　She, who was always so elusive and inaccessible, had grownsuddenly communicative and kind: had opened the doors of herpast, and tacitly left him to draw his own conclusions. Asa result, he had taken leave of her with the sense that hewas a being singled out and privileged, to whom she hadentrusted something precious to keep. It was her happinessin their meeting that she had given him, had frankly lefthim to do with as he willed; and the frankness of thegesture doubled the beauty of the gift.

　　Their next meeting had prolonged and deepened theimpression. They had found each other again, a few dayslater, in an old country house full of books and pictures,in the soft landscape of southern England. The presence of alarge party, with all its aimless and agitateddisplacements, had served only to isolate the pair and givethem (at least to the young man's fancy) a deeper feeling ofcommunion, and their days there had been like some musicalprelude, where the instruments, breathing low, seem to holdback the waves of sound that press against them.

　　Mrs. Leath, on this occasion, was no less kind than before;but she contrived to make him understand that what was soinevitably coming was not to come too soon. It was not thatshe showed any hesitation as to the issue, but rather thatshe seemed to wish not to miss any stage in the gradualreflowering of their intimacy.

　　Darrow, for his part, was content to wait if she wished it.

　　He remembered that once, in America, when she was a girl,and he had gone to stay with her family in the country, shehad been out when he arrived, and her mother had told him tolook for her in the garden. She was not in the garden, butbeyond it he had seen her approaching down a long shadypath. Without hastening her step she had smiled and signedto him to wait; and charmed by the lights and shadows thatplayed upon her as she moved, and by the pleasure ofwatching her slow advance toward him, he had obeyed her andstood still. And so she seemed now to be walking to him downthe years, the light and shade of old memories and new hopesplaying variously on her, and each step giving him thevision of a different grace. She did not waver or turnaside; he knew she would come straight to where he stood;but something in her eyes said "Wait", and again he obeyedand waited.

　　On the fourth day an unexpected event threw out hiscalculations. Summoned to town by the arrival in England ofher husband's mother, she left without giving Darrow thechance he had counted on, and he cursed himself for adilatory blunderer. Still, his disappointment was temperedby the certainty of being with her again before she left forFrance; and they did in fact see each other in London.

　　There, however, the atmosphere had changed with theconditions. He could not say that she avoided him, or eventhat she was a shade less glad to see him; but she was besetby family duties and, as he thought, a little too readilyresigned to them.

　　The Marquise de Chantelle, as Darrow soon perceived, had thesame mild formidableness as the late Mr. Leath: a sort ofinsistent self-effacement before which every one about hergave way. It was perhaps the shadow of this lady'spresence--pervasive even during her actual brief eclipses--that subdued and silenced Mrs. Leath. The latter was,moreover, preoccupied about her stepson, who, soon afterreceiving his degree at Harvard, had been rescued from astormy love-affair, and finally, after some months oftroubled drifting, had yielded to his step-mother's counseland gone up to Oxford for a year of supplementary study.

　　Thither Mrs. Leath went once or twice to visit him, and herremaining days were packed with family obligations: getting,as she phrased it, "frocks and governesses" for her littlegirl, who had been left in France, and having to devote theremaining hours to long shopping expeditions with hermother-in-law. Nevertheless, during her brief escapes fromduty, Darrow had had time to feel her safe in the custody ofhis devotion, set apart for some inevitable hour; and thelast evening, at the theatre, between the overshadowingMarquise and the unsuspicious Owen, they had had an almostdecisive exchange of words.

　　Now, in the rattle of the wind about his ears, Darrowcontinued to hear the mocking echo of her message:

　　"Unexpected obstacle." In such an existence as Mrs. Leath's,at once so ordered and so exposed, he knew how small acomplication might assume the magnitude of an "obstacle;"yet, even allowing as impartially as his state of mindpermitted for the fact that, with her mother-in-law always,and her stepson intermittently, under her roof, her lotinvolved a hundred small accommodations generally foreign tothe freedom of widowhood--even so, he could not but thinkthat the very ingenuity bred of such conditions might havehelped her to find a way out of them. No, her "reason",whatever it was, could, in this case, be nothing but apretext; unless he leaned to the less flattering alternativethat any reason seemed good enough for postponing him!

　　Certainly, if her welcome had meant what he imagined, shecould not, for the second time within a few weeks, havesubmitted so tamely to the disarrangement of their plans; adisarrangement which--his official duties considered--might,for all she knew, result in his not being able to go to herfor months.

　　"Please don't come till thirtieth." The thirtieth--and itwas now the fifteenth! She flung back the fortnight on hishands as if he had been an idler indifferent to dates,instead of an active young diplomatist who, to respond toher call, had had to hew his way through a very jungle ofengagements! "Please don't come till thirtieth." That wasall. Not the shadow of an excuse or a regret; not even theperfunctory "have written" with which it is usual to softensuch blows. She didn't want him, and had taken the shortestway to tell him so. Even in his first moment ofexasperation it struck him as characteristic that she shouldnot have padded her postponement with a fib. Certainly hermoral angles were not draped!

　　"If I asked her to marry me, she'd have refused in the samelanguage. But thank heaven I haven't!" he reflected.

　　These considerations, which had been with him every yard ofthe way from London, reached a climax of irony as he wasdrawn into the crowd on the pier. It did not soften hisfeelings to remember that, but for her lack of forethought,he might, at this harsh end of the stormy May day, have beensitting before his club fire in London instead of shiveringin the damp human herd on the pier. Admitting the sex'straditional right to change, she might at least have advisedhim of hers by telegraphing directly to his rooms. But inspite of their exchange of letters she had apparently failedto note his address, and a breathless emissary had rushedfrom the Embassy to pitch her telegram into his compartmentas 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 hejammed his way through the crowd, the main point of hisgrievance against her and of his derision of himself. Halfway down the pier the prod of an umbrella increased hisexasperation by rousing him to the fact that it was raining.

　　Instantly the narrow ledge became a battle-ground ofthrusting, slanting, parrying domes. The wind rose with therain, and the harried wretches exposed to this doubleassault wreaked on their neighbours the vengeance they couldnot take on the elements.

　　Darrow, whose healthy enjoyment of life made him in generala good traveller, tolerant of agglutinated humanity, felthimself obscurely outraged by these promiscuous contacts.

　　It was as though all the people about him had taken hismeasure and known his plight; as though they werecontemptuously bumping and shoving him like theinconsiderable thing he had become. "She doesn't want you,doesn't want you, doesn't want you," their umbrellas andtheir elbows seemed to say.

　　He had rashly vowed, when the telegram was flung into hiswindow: "At any rate I won't turn back"--as though it mightcause the sender a malicious joy to have him retrace hissteps rather than keep on to Paris! Now he perceived theabsurdity of the vow, and thanked his stars that he need notplunge, to no purpose, into the fury of waves outside theharbour.

　　With this thought in his mind he turned back to look for hisporter; but the contiguity of dripping umbrellas madesignalling impossible and, perceiving that he had lost sightof the man, he scrambled up again to the platform. As hereached it, a descending umbrella caught him in the collar-bone; and the next moment, bent sideways by the wind, itturned inside out and soared up, kite-wise, at the end of ahelpless female arm.

　　Darrow caught the umbrella, lowered its inverted ribs, andlooked 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 theumbrella abruptly down on him. Darrow steadied her withextended arms, and regaining her footing she cried out: "Oh,dear, oh, dear! It's in ribbons!"Her lifted face, fresh and flushed in the driving rain, wokein him a memory of having seen it at a distant time and in avaguely unsympathetic setting; but it was no moment tofollow up such clues, and the face was obviously one to makeits way on its own merits.

　　Its possessor had dropped her bag and bundles to clutch atthe tattered umbrella. "I bought it only yesterday at theStores; and--yes--it's utterly done for!" she lamented.

　　Darrow smiled at the intensity of her distress. It was foodfor the moralist that, side by side with such catastrophesas his, human nature was still agitating itself over itsmicroscopic woes!

　　"Here's mine if you want it!" he shouted back at her throughthe shouting of the gale.

　　The offer caused the young lady to look at him moreintently. "Why, it's Mr. Darrow!" she exclaimed; and then,all radiant recognition: "Oh, thank you! We'll share it, ifyou will."She knew him, then; and he knew her; but how and where hadthey met? He put aside the problem for subsequent solution,and drawing her into a more sheltered corner, bade her waittill he could find his porter.

　　When, a few minutes later, he came back with his recoveredproperty, and the news that the boat would not leave tillthe tide had turned, she showed no concern.

　　"Not for two hours? How lucky--then I can find my trunk!"Ordinarily Darrow would have felt little disposed to involvehimself in the adventure of a young female who had lost hertrunk; but at the moment he was glad of any pretext foractivity. Even should he decide to take the next up trainfrom Dover he still had a yawning hour to fill; and theobvious remedy was to devote it to the loveliness indistress under his umbrella.

　　"You've lost a trunk? Let me see if I can find it."It pleased him that she did not return the conventional "Oh,WOULD you?" Instead, she corrected him with a laugh--Nota trunk, but my trunk; I've no other--" and then addedbriskly: "You'd better first see to getting your own thingson the boat."This made him answer, as if to give substance to his plansby discussing them: "I don't actually know that I'm goingover.""Not going over?""Well...perhaps not by this boat." Again he felt a stealingindecision. "I may probably have to go back to London.

　　I'm--I'm waiting...expecting a letter...(She'll think me adefaulter," he reflected.) "But meanwhile there's plenty oftime to find your trunk."He picked up his companion's bundles, and offered her an armwhich enabled her to press her slight person more closelyunder his umbrella; and as, thus linked, they beat their wayback to the platform, pulled together and apart likemarionettes on the wires of the wind, he continued to wonderwhere he could have seen her. He had immediately classedher as a compatriot; her small nose, her clear tints, a kindof sketchy delicacy in her face, as though she had beenbrightly but lightly washed in with water-colour, allconfirmed the evidence of her high sweet voice and of herquick incessant gestures.She was clearly an American, butwith the loose native quality strained through a closer woofof manners: the composite product of an enquiring andadaptable race. All this, however, did not help him to fita name to her, for just such instances were perpetuallypouring through the London Embassy, and the etched andangular American was becoming rarer than the fluid type.

　　More puzzling than the fact of his being unable to identifyher was the persistent sense connecting her with somethinguncomfortable and distasteful. So pleasant a vision as thatgleaming up at him between wet brown hair and wet brown boashould have evoked only associations as pleasing; but eacheffort to fit her image into his past resulted in the samememories of boredom and a vague discomfort...