“I think Miss Viner and I have met already–several years ago in London.”
“I remember,” said Sophy Viner, in the same clear voice.
“How charming! Then we’re all friends. But luncheon must be ready,” said Mrs. Leath.
She turned back to the door, and the little procession moved down the two long drawing-rooms, with Effie waltzing on ahead.
Chapter XV
Madame de Chantelle and Anna had planned, for the afternoon, a visit to a remotely situated acquaintance whom the introduction of the motor had transformed into a neighbour. Effie was to pay for her morning’s holiday by an hour or two in the school-room, and Owen suggested that he and Darrow should betake themselves to a distant covert in the desultory quest for pheasants.
Darrow was not an ardent sportsman, but any pretext for physical activity would have been acceptable at the moment; and he was glad both to get away from the house and not to be left to himself.
When he came downstairs the motor was at the door, and Anna stood before the hall mirror, swathing her hat in veils. She turned at the sound of his step and smiled at him for a long full moment.
“I’d no idea you knew Miss Viner,” she said, as he helped her into her long coat.
“It came back to me, luckily, that I’d seen her two or three times in London, several years ago. She was secretary, or something of the sort, in the background of a house where I used to dine.”
He loathed the slighting indifference of the phrase, but he had uttered it deliberately, had been secretly practising it all through the interminable hour at the luncheon-table. Now that it was spoken, he shivered at its note of condescension. In such cases one was almost sure to overdo…But Anna seemed to notice nothing unusual.
“Was she really? You must tell me all about it–tell me exactly how she struck you. I’m so glad it turns out that you know her.”
“‘Know’ is rather exaggerated: we used to pass each other on the stairs.”
Madame de Chantelle and Owen appeared together as he spoke, and Anna, gathering up her wraps, said: “You’ll tell me about 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 by exercise and the obligation to talk. Little as he cared for shooting, he had the habit of concentration which makes it natural for a man to throw himself wholly into whatever business he has in hand, and there were moments of the afternoon when a sudden whirr in the undergrowth, a vivider gleam against the hazy browns and greys of the woods, was enough to fill the foreground of his attention. But all the while, behind these voluntarily emphasized sensations, his secret consciousness continued to revolve on a loud wheel of thought. For a time it seemed to be sweeping him through deep gulfs of darkness. His sensations were too swift and swarming to be disentangled. He had an almost physical sense of struggling for air, of battling helplessly with material obstructions, as though the russet covert through which he trudged were the heart of a maleficent jungle…
Snatches of his companion’s talk drifted to him intermittently through the confusion of his thoughts. He caught eager self-revealing phrases, and understood that Owen was saying things about himself, perhaps hinting indirectly at the hopes for which Darrow had been prepared by Anna’s confidences. He had already become aware that the lad liked him, and had meant to take the first opportunity of showing that he reciprocated the feeling. But the effort of fixing his attention on Owen’s words was so great that it left no power for more than the briefest and most inexpressive replies.
Young Leath, it appeared, felt that he had reached a turning-point in his career, a height from which he could impartially survey his past progress and projected endeavour. At one time he had had musical and literary yearnings, visions of desultory artistic indulgence; but these had of late been superseded by the resolute determination to plunge into practical life.
“I don’t want, you see,” Darrow heard him explaining, “to drift into what my grandmother, poor dear, is trying to make of me: an adjunct of Givre. I don’t want–hang it all!–to slip into collecting sensations as my father collected snuff-boxes. I want Effie to have Givre–it’s my grandmother’s, you know, to do as she likes with; and I’ve understood lately that if it belonged to me it would gradually gobble me up. I want to get out of it, into a life that’s big and ugly and struggling. If I can extract beauty out of that, so much the better: that’ll prove my vocation. But I want to make beauty, not be drowned in the ready-made, like a bee in a pot of honey.”