Madame de Chantelle and Anna had planned, for the afternoon,a visit to a remotely situated acquaintance whom theintroduction of the motor had transformed into a neighbour.
Effie was to pay for her morning's holiday by an hour or twoin the school-room, and Owen suggested that he and Darrowshould betake themselves to a distant covert in thedesultory quest for pheasants.
Darrow was not an ardent sportsman, but any pretext forphysical activity would have been acceptable at the moment;and he was glad both to get away from the house and not tobe left to himself.
When he came downstairs the motor was at the door, and Annastood before the hall mirror, swathing her hat in veils.
She turned at the sound of his step and smiled at him for along full moment.
"I'd no idea you knew Miss Viner," she said, as he helpedher into her long coat.
"It came back to me, luckily, that I'd seen her two or threetimes in London, several years ago. She was secretary, orsomething of the sort, in the background of a house where Iused to dine."He loathed the slighting indifference of the phrase, but hehad uttered it deliberately, had been secretly practising itall through the interminable hour at the luncheon-table.
Now that it was spoken, he shivered at its note ofcondescension. In such cases one was almost sure tooverdo...But Anna seemed to notice nothing unusual.
"Was she really? You must tell me all about it--tell meexactly how she struck you. I'm so glad it turns out thatyou know her.""'Know' is rather exaggerated: we used to pass each other onthe stairs."Madame de Chantelle and Owen appeared together as he spoke,and Anna, gathering up her wraps, said: "You'll tell meabout that, then. Try and remember everything you can."As he tramped through the woods at his young host's side,Darrow felt the partial relief from thought produced byexercise and the obligation to talk. Little as he cared forshooting, he had the habit of concentration which makes itnatural for a man to throw himself wholly into whateverbusiness he has in hand, and there were moments of theafternoon when a sudden whirr in the undergrowth, a vividergleam against the hazy browns and greys of the woods, wasenough to fill the foreground of his attention. But all thewhile, behind these voluntarily emphasized sensations, hissecret consciousness continued to revolve on a loud wheel ofthought. For a time it seemed to be sweeping him throughdeep gulfs of darkness. His sensations were too swift andswarming to be disentangled. He had an almost physicalsense of struggling for air, of battling helplessly withmaterial obstructions, as though the russet covert throughwhich he trudged were the heart of a maleficent jungle...
Snatches of his companion's talk drifted to himintermittently through the confusion of his thoughts. Hecaught eager self-revealing phrases, and understood thatOwen was saying things about himself, perhaps hintingindirectly at the hopes for which Darrow had been preparedby Anna's confidences. He had already become aware that thelad liked him, and had meant to take the first opportunityof showing that he reciprocated the feeling. But the effortof fixing his attention on Owen's words was so great that itleft no power for more than the briefest and mostinexpressive replies.
Young Leath, it appeared, felt that he had reached aturning-point in his career, a height from which he couldimpartially survey his past progress and projectedendeavour. At one time he had had musical and literaryyearnings, visions of desultory artistic indulgence; butthese had of late been superseded by the resolutedetermination to plunge into practical life.
"I don't want, you see," Darrow heard him explaining, "todrift into what my grandmother, poor dear, is trying to makeof me: an adjunct of Givre. I don't want--hang it all!--toslip into collecting sensations as my father collectedsnuff-boxes. I want Effie to have Givre--it's mygrandmother's, you know, to do as she likes with; and I'veunderstood lately that if it belonged to me it wouldgradually gobble me up. I want to get out of it, into alife that's big and ugly and struggling. If I can extractbeauty out of THAT, so much the better: that'll prove myvocation. But I want to MAKE beauty, not be drowned inthe ready-made, like a bee in a pot of honey."Darrow knew that he was being appealed to for corroborationof these views and for encouragement in the course to whichthey pointed. To his own ears his answers sounded now curt,now irrelevant: at one moment he seemed chillinglyindifferent, at another he heard himself launching out on aflood of hazy discursiveness. He dared not look at Owen,for fear of detecting the lad's surprise at these senselesstransitions. And through the confusion of his inwardstruggles and outward loquacity he heard the ceaseless trip-hammer beat of the question: "What in God's name shall Ido?"...
To get back to the house before Anna's return seemed hismost pressing necessity. He did not clearly know why: hesimply felt that he ought to be there. At one moment itoccurred to him that Miss Viner might want to speak to himalone--and again, in the same flash, that it would probablybe the last thing she would want...At any rate, he felt heought to try to speak to HER; or at least be prepared todo so, if the chance should occur...
Finally, toward four, he told his companion that he had someletters on his mind and must get back to the house anddespatch them before the ladies returned. He left Owen withthe beater and walked on to the edge of the covert. At thepark gates he struck obliquely through the trees, followinga grass avenue at the end of which he had caught a glimpseof the roof of the chapel. A grey haze had blotted out thesun and the still air clung about him tepidly. At lengththe house-front raised before him its expanse of damp-silvered brick, and he was struck afresh by the high decorumof its calm lines and soberly massed surfaces. It made himfeel, in the turbid coil of his fears and passions, like amuddy tramp forcing his way into some pure sequesteredshrine...
By and bye, he knew, he should have to think the complexhorror out, slowly, systematically, bit by bit; but for themoment it was whirling him about so fast that he could justclutch at its sharp spikes and be tossed off again. Onlyone definite immediate fact stuck in his quivering grasp.
He must give the girl every chance--must hold himselfpassive till she had taken them...
In the court Effie ran up to him with her leaping terrier.
"I was coming out to meet you--you and Owen. Miss Viner wascoming, too, and then she couldn't because she's got such aheadache. I'm afraid I gave it to her because I did mydivision so disgracefully. It's too bad, isn't it? Butwon't you walk back with me? Nurse won't mind the least bit;she'd so much rather go in to tea."Darrow excused himself laughingly, on the plea that he hadletters to write, which was much worse than having aheadache, and not infrequently resulted in one.
"Oh, then you can go and write them in Owen's study. That'swhere gentlemen always write their letters."She flew on with her dog and Darrow pursued his way to thehouse. Effie's suggestion struck him as useful. He hadpictured himself as vaguely drifting about the drawing-rooms, and had perceived the difficulty of Miss Viner'shaving to seek him there; but the study, a small room on theright of the hall, was in easy sight from the staircase, andso situated that there would be nothing marked in his beingfound there in talk with her.
He went in, leaving the door open, and sat down at thewriting-table. The room was a friendly heterogeneous place,the one repository, in the well-ordered and amply-servantedhouse, of all its unclassified odds and ends: Effie'scroquet-box and fishing rods, Owen's guns and golf-sticksand racquets, his step-mother's flower-baskets and gardeningimplements, even Madame de Chantelle's embroidery frame, andthe back numbers of the Catholic Weekly. The early twilighthad begun to fall, and presently a slanting ray across thedesk showed Darrow that a servant was coming across the hallwith a lamp. He pulled out a sheet of note-paper and beganto write at random, while the man, entering, put the lamp athis elbow and vaguely "straightened" the heap of newspaperstossed on the divan. Then his steps died away and Darrowsat leaning his head on his locked hands.
Presently another step sounded on the stairs, wavered amom............