The House of Mirth
Beneath the nearest lamp-post he glanced at his watch and saw
that the time was close on eleven. He took another cross street,
and without breasting the throng on the Promenade, made his way
to the fashionable club which overlooks that thoroughfare. Here,
amid the blaze of crowded baccarat tables, he caught sight of Lord
Hubert Dacey, seated with his habitual worn smile behind a rapidly
dwindling heap of gold. The heap being in due course wiped out,
Lord Hubert rose with a shrug, and joining Selden, adjourned with
him to the deserted terrace of the club. It was now past midnight,
and the throng on the stands was dispersing, while the long trails
of red-lit boats scattered and faded beneath a sky repossessed by
the tranquil splendour of the moon.
Lord Hubert looked at his watch. “By Jove, I promised to join the
Duchess for supper at the LONDON HOUSE; but it’s past twelve, and
I suppose they’ve all scattered. The fact is, I lost them in the
crowd soon after dinner, and took refuge here, for my sins. They
had seats on one of the stands, but of course they couldn’t stop
quiet: the Duchess never can. She and Miss Bart went off in quest
of what they call adventures—gad, it ain’t their fault if they
don’t have some queer ones!” He added tentatively, after pausing
to grope for a cigarette: “Miss Bart’s an old friend of yours,
I believe? So she told me.—Ah, thanks—I don’t seem to have one
left.” He lit Selden’s proffered cigarette, and continued, in his
high-pitched drawling tone: “None of my business, of course, but I
didn’t introduce her to the Duchess. Charming woman, the Duchess,
you understand; and a very good friend of mine; but RATHER a
liberal education.”
Selden received this in silence, and after a few puffs Lord Hubert
broke out again: “Sort of thing one can’t communicate to the young
lady—though young ladies nowadays are so competent to judge for
themselves; but in this case—I’m an old friend too, you know . . .
and there seemed no one else to speak to. The whole situation’s a
little mixed, as I see it—but there used to be an aunt somewhere, a
diffuse and innocent person, who was great at bridging over chasms
she didn’t see.... Ah, in New York, is she? Pity New York’s such a
long way off!”
Chapter 2
Miss Bart, emerging late the next morning from her cabin, found
herself alone on the deck of the Sabrina.
The cushioned chairs, disposed expectantly under the wide awning,
showed no signs of recent occupancy, and she presently learned
from a steward that Mrs. Dorset had not yet appeared, and that
the gentlemen—separately—had gone ashore as soon as they had
breakfasted. Supplied with these facts, Lily leaned awhile over the
side, giving herself up to a leisurely enjoyment of the spectacle
before her. Unclouded sunlight enveloped sea and shore in a bath
of purest radiancy. The purpling waters drew a sharp white line of
foam at the base of the shore; against its irregular eminences,
hotels and villas flashed from the greyish verdure of olive and
eucalyptus; and the background of bare and finely-pencilled
mountains quivered in a pale intensity of light.
How beautiful it was—and how she loved beauty! She had always
felt that her sensibility in this direction made up for certain
obtusenesses of feeling of which she was less proud; and during the
last three months she had indulged it passionately. The Dorsets’
invitation to go abroad with them had come as an almost miraculous
release from crushing difficulties; and her faculty for renewing
herself in new scenes, and casting off problems of conduct as
easily as the surroundings in which they had arisen, made the mere
change from one place to another seem, not merely a postponement,
but a solution of her troubles. Moral complications existed for her
only in the environment that had produced them; she did not mean
to slight or ignore them, but they lost their reality when they
changed their background. She could not have remained in New York
without repaying the money she owed to Trenor; to acquit herself
of that odious debt she might even have faced a marriage with
Rosedale; but the accident of placing the Atlantic between herself
and her obligations made them dwindle out of sight as if they had
been milestones and she had travelled past them.
Her two months on the Sabrina had been especially calculated to
aid this illusion of distance. She had been plunged into new
scenes, and had found in them a renewal of old hopes and ambitions.
The cruise itself charmed her as a romantic adventure. She was
vaguely touched by the names and scenes amid which she moved, and
had listened to Ned Silverton reading Theocritus by moonlight,
as the yacht rounded the Sicilian promontories, with a thrill
of the nerves that confirmed her belief in her intellectual
superiority. But the weeks at Cannes and Nice had really given
her more pleasure. The gratification of being welcomed in high
company, and of making her own ascendency felt there, so that she
found herself figuring once more as the “beautiful Miss Bart” in
the interesting journal devoted to recording the least movements
of her cosmopolitan companions—all these experiences tended to
throw into the extreme background of memory the prosaic and sordid
difficulties from which she had escaped.
If she was faintly aware of fresh difficulties ahead, she was
sure of her ability to meet them: it was characteristic of her to
feel that the only problems she could not solve were those with
which she was familiar. Meanwhile she could honestly be proud of
the skill with which she had adapted herself to somewhat delicate
conditions. She had reason to think that she had made herself
equally necessary to her host and hostess; and if only she had seen
any perfectly irreproachable means of drawing a financial profit
from the situation, there would have been no cloud on her horizon.
The truth was that her funds, as usual, were inconveniently low;
and to neither Dorset nor his wife could this vulgar embarrassment
be safely hinted. Still, the need was not a pressing one; she could
worry along, as she had so often done before, with the hope of some
happy change of fortune to sustain her; and meanwhile life was
gay and beautiful and easy, and she was conscious of figuring not
unworthily in such a setting.
She was engaged to breakfast that morning with the Duchess of
Beltshire, and at twelve o’clock she asked to be set ashore in the
gig. Before this she had sent her maid to enquire if she might see
Mrs. Dorset; but the reply came back that the latter was tired,
and trying to sleep. Lily thought she understood the reason of
the rebuff. Her hostess had not been included in the Duchess’s
invitation, though she herself had made the most loyal efforts in
that direction. But her grace was impervious to hints, and invited
or omitted as she chose. It was not Lily’s fault if Mrs. Dorset’s
complicated attitudes did not fall in with the Duchess’s easy gait.
The Duchess, who seldom explained herself, had not formulated her
objection beyond saying: “She’s rather a bore, you know. The only
one of your friends I like is that little Mr. Bry—HE’S funny—” but
Lily knew enough not to press the point, and was not altogether
sorry to be thus distinguished at her friend’s expense. Bertha
certainly HAD grown tiresome since she had taken to poetry and Ned
Silverton.
On the whole, it was a relief to break away now and then from
the Sabrina; and the Duchess’s little breakfast, organized by
Lord Hubert with all his usual virtuosity, was the pleasanter
to Lily for not including her travelling-companions. Dorset, of
late, had grown more than usually morose and incalculable, and
Ned Silverton went about with an air that seemed to challenge the
universe. The freedom and lightness of the ducal intercourse made
an agreeable change from these complications, and Lily was tempted,
after luncheon, to adjourn in the wake of her companions to the
hectic atmosphere of the Casino. She did not mean to play; her
diminished pocket-money offered small scope for the adventure; but
it amused her to sit on a divan, under the doubtful protection of
the Duchess’s back, while the latter hung above her stakes at a
neighbouring table.
The rooms were packed with the gazing throng which, in the
afternoon hours, trickles heavily between the tables, like the
Sunday crowd in a lion-house. In the stagnant flow of the mass,
identities were hardly distinguishable; but Lily presently saw
Mrs. Bry cleaving her determined way through the doors, and, in
the broad wake she left, the light figure of Mrs. Fisher bobbing
after her like a row-boat at the stern of a tug. Mrs. Bry pressed
on, evidently animated by the resolve to reach a certain point in
the rooms; but Mrs. Fisher, as she passed Lily, broke from her
towing-line, and let herself float to the girl’s side.
“Lose her?” she echoed the latter’s query, with an indifferent
glance at Mrs. Bry’s retreating back. “I daresay—it doesn’t matter:
I HAVE lost her already.” And, as Lily exclaimed, she added: “We
had an awful row this morning. You know, of course, that the
Duchess chucked her at dinner last night, and she thinks it was my
fault—my want of management. The worst of it is, the message—just a
mere word by telephone—came so late that the dinner HAD to be paid
for; and Becassin HAD run it up—it had been so drummed into him
that the Duchess was coming!” Mrs. Fisher indulged in a faint laugh
at the remembrance. “Paying for what she doesn’t get rankles so
dreadfully with Louisa: I can’t make her see that it’s one of the
preliminary steps to getting what you haven’t paid for—and as I was
the nearest thing to smash, she smashed me to atoms, poor dear!”
Lily murmured her commiseration. Impulses of sympathy came
naturally to her, and it was instinctive to proffer her help to
Mrs. Fisher.
“If there’s anything I can do—if it’s only a question of meeting
the Duchess! I heard her say she thought Mr. Bry amusing——”
But Mrs. Fisher interposed with a decisive gesture. “My dear,
I have my pride: the pride of my trade. I couldn’t manage the
Duchess, and I can’t palm off your arts on Louisa Bry as mine. I’ve
taken the final step: I go to Paris tonight with the Sam Gormers.
THEY’RE still in the elementary stage; an Italian Prince is a great
deal more than a Prince to them, and they’re always on the brink
of taking a courier for one. To save them from that is my present
mission.” She laughed again at the picture. “But before I go I want
to make my last will and testament—I want to leave you the Brys.”
“Me?” Miss Bart joined in her amusement. “It’s charming of you to
remember me, dear; but really——”
“You’re already so well provided for?” Mrs. Fisher flashed a sharp
glance at her. “ARE you, though, Lily—to the point of rejecting my
offer?”
Miss Bart coloured slowly. “What I really meant was, that the Brys
wouldn’t in the least care to be so disposed of.”
Mrs. Fisher continued to probe her embarrassment with an
unflinching eye. “What you really meant was that you’ve snubbed the
Brys horribly; and you know that they know——”
“Carry!”
“Oh, on certain sides Louisa bristles with perceptions. If you’d
even managed to have them asked once on the Sabrina—especially when
royalties were coming! But it’s not too late,” she ended earnestly,
“it’s not too late for either of you.”
Lily smiled. “Stay over, and I’ll get the Duchess to dine with
them.”
“I shan’t stay over—the Gormers have paid for my SALON-LIT,” said
Mrs. Fisher with simplicity. “But get the Duchess to dine with them
all the same.”
Lily’s smile again flowed into a slight laugh: her friend’s
importunity was beginning to strike her as irrelevant. “I’m sorry I
have been negligent about the Brys——” she began.