THE REEF

Edith Wharton

сту 1985 · YouHui Culture Publishing Company

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The Reef

by Edith Wharton

BOOK I

I

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

Anna."

All the way from Charing Cross to Dover the train had

hammered the words of the telegram into George Darrow's

ears, ringing every change of irony on its commonplace

syllables: rattling them out like a discharge of musketry,

letting them, one by one, drip slowly and coldly into his

brain, or shaking, tossing, transposing them like the dice

in some game of the gods of malice; and now, as he emerged

from his compartment at the pier, and stood facing the windswept

platform and the angry sea beyond, they leapt out at

him as if from the crest of the waves, stung and blinded him

with 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 the

second time: put him off with all her sweet reasonableness,

and for one of her usual "good" reasons--he was certain that

this reason, like the other, (the visit of her husband's

uncle's widow) would be "good"! But it was that very

certainty which chilled him. The fact of her dealing so

reasonably with their case shed an ironic light on the idea

that there had been any exceptional warmth in the greeting

she had given him after their twelve years apart.

They had found each other again, in London, some three

months previously, at a dinner at the American Embassy, and

when she had caught sight of him her smile had been like a

red rose pinned on her widow's mourning. He still felt the

throb of surprise with which, among the stereotyped faces of

the season's diners, he had come upon her unexpected face,

with the dark hair banded above grave eyes; eyes in which he

had recognized every little curve and shadow as he would

have recognized, after half a life-time, the details of a

room he had played in as a child. And as, in the plumed

starred crowd, she had stood out for him, slender, secluded

and different, so he had felt, the instant their glances

met, that he as sharply detached himself for her. All that

and more her smile had said; had said not merely "I

remember," but "I remember just what you remember"; almost,

indeed, as though her memory had aided his, her glance flung

back on their recaptured moment its morning brightness.

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

"Oh, you know Mrs. Leath? That's perfect, for General

Farnham has failed me"--had waved them together for the

march to the diningroom, Darrow had felt a slight pressure

of the arm on his, a pressure faintly but unmistakably

emphasizing the exclamation: "Isn't it wonderful?--In

London--in the season--in a mob?"