“I want to talk to you about that too. You don’t know what a weight is off my mind! With Sophy here for good, I shall feel so differently about leaving Effie. I’ve seen much more accomplished governesses–to my cost!–but I’ve never seen a young thing more gay and kind and human. You must have noticed, though you’ve seen them so little together, how Effie expands when she’s with her. And that, you know, is what I want. Madame de Chantelle will provide the necessary restraint.” She clasped her hands on his arm. “Yes, I’m ready to go with you now. But first of all–this very moment!–you must come with me to Effie. She knows, of course, nothing of what’s been happening; and I want her to be told first about YOU.”
Effie, sought throughout the house, was presently traced to the school-room, and thither Darrow mounted with Anna. He had never seen her so alight with happiness, and he had caught her buoyancy of mood. He kept repeating to himself: “It’s over–it’s over,” as if some monstrous midnight hallucination had been routed by the return of day.
As they approached the school-room door the terrier’s barks came to them through laughing remonstrances.
“She’s giving him his dinner,” Anna whispered, her hand in Darrow’s.
“Don’t forget the gold-fish!” they heard another voice call out.
Darrow halted on the threshold. “Oh–not now!”
“Not now?”
“I mean–she’d rather have you tell her first. I’ll wait for you both downstairs.”
He was aware that she glanced at him intently. “As you please. I’ll bring her down at once.”
She opened the door, and as she went in he heard her say: “No, Sophy, don’t go! I want you both.”
The rest of Darrow’s day was a succession of empty and agitating scenes. On his way down to Givre, before he had seen Effie Leath, he had pictured somewhat sentimentally the joy of the moment when he should take her in his arms and receive her first filial kiss. Everything in him that egotistically craved for rest, stability, a comfortably organized middle-age, all the home-building instincts of the man who has sufficiently wooed and wandered, combined to throw a charm about the figure of the child who might–who should–have been his. Effie came to him trailing the cloud of glory of his first romance, giving him back the magic hour he had missed and mourned. And how different the realization of his dream had been! The child’s radiant welcome, her unquestioning acceptance of, this new figure in the family group, had been all that he had hoped and fancied. If Mother was so awfully happy about it, and Owen and Granny, too, how nice and cosy and comfortable it was going to be for all of them, her beaming look seemed to say; and then, suddenly, the small pink fingers he had been kissing were laid on the one flaw in the circle, on the one point which must be settled before Effie could, with complete unqualified assurance, admit the new-comer to full equality with the other gods of her Olympus.
“And is Sophy awfully happy about it too?” she had asked, loosening her hold on Darrow’s neck to tilt back her head and include her mother in her questioning look.
“Why, dearest, didn’t you see she was?” Anna had exclaimed, leaning to the group with radiant eyes.
“I think I should like to ask her,” the child rejoined, after a minute’s shy consideration; and as Darrow set her down her mother laughed: “Do, darling, do! Run off at once, and tell her we expect her to be awfully happy too.”
The scene had been succeeded by others less poignant but almost as trying. Darrow cursed his luck in having, at such a moment, to run the gauntlet of a houseful of interested observers. The state of being “engaged”, in itself an absurd enough predicament, even to a man only intermittently exposed, became intolerable under the continuous scrutiny of a small circle quivering with participation. Darrow was furthermore aware that, though the case of the other couple ought to have made his own less conspicuous, it was rather they who found a refuge in the shadow of his prominence. Madame de Chantelle, though she had consented to Owen’s engagement and formally welcomed his betrothed, was nevertheless not sorry to show, by her reception of Darrow, of what finely-shaded degrees of cordiality she was capable. Miss Painter, having won the day for Owen, was also free to turn her attention to the newer candidate for her sympathy; and Darrow and Anna found themselves immersed in a warm bath of sentimental curiosity.