The light of the October afternoon lay on an old high-roofedhouse which enclosed in its long expanse of brick andyellowish stone the breadth of a grassy court filled withthe shadow and sound of limes.
From the escutcheoned piers at the entrance of the court alevel drive, also shaded by limes, extended to a white-barred gate beyond which an equally level avenue of grass,cut through a wood, dwindled to a blue-green blur against asky banked with still white slopes of cloud.
In the court, half-way between house and drive, a ladystood. She held a parasol above her head, and looked now atthe house-front, with its double flight of steps meetingbefore a glazed door under sculptured trophies, now down thedrive toward the grassy cutting through the wood. Her airwas less of expectancy than of contemplation: she seemed notso much to be watching for any one, or listening for anapproaching sound, as letting the whole aspect of the placesink into her while she held herself open to its influence.
Yet it was no less apparent that the scene was not new toher. There was no eagerness of investigation in her survey:
she seemed rather to be looking about her with eyes towhich, for some intimate inward reason, details long sincefamiliar had suddenly acquired an unwonted freshness.
This was in fact the exact sensation of which Mrs. Leath wasconscious as she came forth from the house and descendedinto the sunlit court. She had come to meet her step-son,who was likely to be returning at that hour from anafternoon's shooting in one of the more distant plantations,and she carried in her hand the letter which had sent her insearch of him; but with her first step out of the house allthought of him had been effaced by another series ofimpressions.
The scene about her was known to satiety. She had seenGivre at all seasons of the year, and for the greater partof every year, since the far-off day of her marriage; theday when, ostensibly driving through its gates at herhusband's side, she had actually been carried there on acloud of iris-winged visions.
The possibilities which the place had then represented werestill vividly present to her. The mere phrase "a Frenchchateau" had called up to her youthful fancy a throng ofromantic associations, poetic, pictorial and emotional; andthe serene face of the old house seated in its park amongthe poplar-bordered meadows of middle France, had seemed, onher first sight of it, to hold out to her a fate as nobleand dignified as its own mien.
Though she could still call up that phase of feeling it hadlong since passed, and the house had for a time become toher the very symbol of narrowness and monotony. Then, withthe passing of years, it had gradually acquired a lessinimical character, had become, not again a castle ofdreams, evoker of fair images and romantic legend, but theshell of a life slowly adjusted to its dwelling: the placeone came back to, the place where one had one's duties,one's habits and one's books, the place one would naturallylive in till one died: a dull house, an inconvenient house,of which one knew all the defects, the shabbinesses, thediscomforts, but to which one was so used that one couldhardly, after so long a time, think one's self away from itwithout suffering a certain loss of identity.
Now, as it lay before her in the autumn mildness, itsmistress was surprised at her own insensibility. She hadbeen trying to see the house through the eyes of an oldfriend who, the next morning, would be driving up to it forthe first time; and in so doing she seemed to be opening herown eyes upon it after a long interval of blindness.
The court was very still, yet full of a latent life: thewheeling and rustling of pigeons about the rectangular yewsand across the sunny gravel; the sweep of rooks above thelustrous greyish-purple slates of the roof, and the stir ofthe tree-tops as they met the breeze which every day, atthat hour, came punctually up from the river.
Just such a latent animation glowed in Anna Leath. In everynerve and vein she was conscious of that equipoise of blisswhich the fearful human heart scarce dares acknowledge. Shewas not used to strong or full emotions; but she had alwaysknown that she should not be afraid of them. She was notafraid now; but she felt a deep inward stillness.
The immediate effect of the feeling had been to send herforth in quest of her step-son. She wanted to stroll backwith him and have a quiet talk before they re-entered thehouse. It was always easy to talk to him, and at thismoment he was the one person to whom she could have spokenwithout fear of disturbing her inner stillness. She wasglad, for all sorts of reasons, that Madame de Chantelle andEffie were still at Ouchy with the governess, and that sheand Owen had the house to themselves. And she was glad thateven he was not yet in sight. She wanted to be alone alittle longer; not to think, but to let the long slow wavesof joy break over her one by one.
She walked out of the court and sat down on one of thebenches that bordered the drive. From her seat she had adiagonal view of the long house-front and of the domedchapel terminating one of the wings. Beyond a gate in thecourt-yard wall the flower-garden drew its dark-greensquares and raised its statues against the yellowingbackground of the park. In the borders only a few latepinks and crimsons smouldered, but a peacock strutting inthe sun seemed to have gathered into his out-spread fan allthe summer glories of the place.
In Mrs. Leath's hand was the letter which had opened hereyes to these things, and a smile rose to her lips at themere feeling of the paper between her fingers. The thrill itsent through her gave a keener edge to every sense. Shefelt, saw, breathed the shining world as though a thinimpenetrable veil had suddenly been removed from it.
Just such a veil, she now perceived, had always hung betweenherself and life. It had been like the stage gauze whichgives an illusive air of reality to the painted scene behindit, yet proves it, after all, to be no more than a paintedscene.
She had been hardly aware, in her girlhood, of differingfrom others in this respect. In the well-regulated well-fedSummers world the unusual was regarded as either immoral orill-bred, and people with emotions were not visited.
Sometimes, with a sense of groping in a topsy-turvyuniverse, Anna had wondered why everybody about her seemedto ignore all the passions and sensations which formed thestuff of great poetry and memorable action. In a communitycomposed entirely of people like her parents and herparents' friends she did not see how the magnificent thingsone read about could ever have happened. She was sure thatif anything of the kind had occurred in her immediate circleher mother would have consulted the family clergyman, andher father perhaps even have rung up the police; and hersense of humour compelled her to own that, in the givenconditions, these precautions might not have beenunjustified.
Little by little the conditions conquered her, and shelearned to regard the substance of life as a mere canvas forthe embroideries of poet and painter, and its little sweptand fenced and tended surface as its actual substance. Itwas in the visioned region of action and emotion that herfullest hours were spent; but it hardly occurred to her thatthey might be translated into experience, or connected withanything likely to happen to a young lady living in WestFifty- fifth Street.
She perceived, indeed, that other girls, leading outwardlythe same life as herself, and seemingly unaware of her worldof hidden beauty, were yet possessed of some vital secretwhich escaped her. There seemed to be a kind of freemasonrybetween them; they were wider awake than she, more alert,and surer of their wants if not of their opinions. Shesupposed they were "cleverer", and accepted her inferioritygood-humouredly, half aware, within herself, of a reserve ofunused power which the others gave no sign of possessing.
This partly consoled her for missing so much of what madetheir "good time"; but the resulting sense of exclusion, ofbeing somehow laughingly but firmly debarred from a share oftheir privileges, threw her back on herself and deepened thereserve which made envious mothers cite her as a model ofladylike repression.
Love, she told herself, would one day release her from thisspell of unreality. She was persuaded that the sublimepassion was the key to the enigma; but it was difficult torelate her conception of love to the forms it wore in herexperience. Two or three of the girls she had envied fortheir superior acquaintance with the arts of life hadcontracted, in the course of time, what were variouslydescribed as "romantic" or "foolish" marriages; one evenmade a runaway match, and languished for a while under acloud of social reprobation. Here, then, was passion inaction, romance converted to reality; yet the heroines ofthese exploits returned from them untransfigured, and theirhusbands were as dull as ever when one had to sit next tothem at dinner.
Her own case, of course, would be different. Some day shewould find the magic bridge between West Fifty-fifth Streetand life; once or twice she had even fancied that the cluewas in her hand. The first time was when she had met youngDarrow. She recalled even now the stir of the encounter.
But his passion swept over her like a wind that shakes theroof of the forest without reaching its still glades orrippling its hidden pools. He was extraordinarilyintelligent and agreeable, and her heart beat faster when hewas with her. He had a tall fair easy presence and a mindin which the lights of irony played pleasantly through theshades of feeling. She liked to hear his voice almost asmuch as to listen to what he was saying, and to listen towhat he was saying almost as much as to feel that he waslooking at her; but he wanted to kiss her, and she wanted totalk to him about books and pictures, and have him insinuatethe eternal theme of their love into every subject theydiscussed.
Whenever they were apart a reaction set in. She wonderedhow she could have been so cold, called herself a prude andan idiot, questioned if any man could really care for her,and got up in the dead of night to try new ways of doing herhair. But as soon as he reappeared her head straighteneditself on her slim neck and she sped her little shafts ofirony, or flew her little kites of erudition, while hot andcold waves swept over her, and the things she really wantedto say choked in her throat and burned the palms of herhands.
Often she told herself that any silly girl who had waltzedthrough a season would know better than she how to attract aman and hold him; but when she said "a man" she did notreally mean George Darrow.
Then one day, at a dinner, she saw him sitting next to oneof the silly girls in question: the heroine of the elopementwhich had shaken West Fifty-fifth Street to its base. Theyoung lady had come back from her adventure no less sillythan when she went; and across the table the partner of herflight, a fat young man with eye-glasses, sat stolidlyeating terrapin and talking about polo and investments.
The young woman was undoubtedly as silly as ever; yet afterwatching her for a few minutes Miss Summers perceived thatshe had somehow grown luminous, perilous, obscurely menacingto nice girls and the young men they intended eventually toaccept. Suddenly, at the sight, a rage of possessorshipawoke in her. She must save Darrow, ass............