The House of Mirth
“Oh, as to the Brys—it’s you I’m thinking of,” said Mrs. Fisher
abruptly. She paused, and then, bending forward, with a lowered
voice: “You know we all went on to Nice last night when the Duchess
chucked us. It was Louisa’s idea—I told her what I thought of it.”
Miss Bart assented. “Yes—I caught sight of you on the way back, at
the station.”
“Well, the man who was in the carriage with you and George
Dorset—that horrid little Dabham who does ‘Society Notes from
the Riviera’—had been dining with us at Nice. And he’s telling
everybody that you and Dorset came back alone after midnight.”
“Alone—? When he was with us?” Lily laughed, but her laugh faded
into gravity under the prolonged implication of Mrs. Fisher’s look.
“We DID come back alone—if that’s so very dreadful! But whose fault
was it? The Duchess was spending the night at Cimiez with the Crown
Princess; Bertha got bored with the show, and went off early,
promising to meet us at the station. We turned up on time, but she
didn’t—she didn’t turn up at all!”
Miss Bart made this announcement in the tone of one who presents,
with careless assurance, a complete vindication; but Mrs. Fisher
received it in a manner almost inconsequent. She seemed to have
lost sight of her friend’s part in the incident: her inward vision
had taken another slant.
“Bertha never turned up at all? Then how on earth did she get back?”
“Oh, by the next train, I suppose; there were two extra ones for
the FETE. At any rate, I know she’s safe on the yacht, though I
haven’t yet seen her; but you see it was not my fault,” Lily summed
up.
“Not your fault that Bertha didn’t turn up? My poor child, if only
you don’t have to pay for it!” Mrs. Fisher rose—she had seen Mrs.
Bry surging back in her direction. “There’s Louisa, and I must
be off—oh, we’re on the best of terms externally; we’re lunching
together; but at heart it’s ME she’s lunching on,” she explained;
and with a last hand-clasp and a last look, she added: “Remember, I
leave her to you; she’s hovering now, ready to take you in.”
* * * * *
Lily carried the impression of Mrs. Fisher’s leave-taking away with
her from the Casino doors. She had accomplished, before leaving,
the first step toward her reinstatement in Mrs. Bry’s good graces.
An affable advance—a vague murmur that they must see more of each
other—an allusive glance to a near future that was felt to include
the Duchess as well as the Sabrina—how easily it was all done, if
one possessed the knack of doing it! She wondered at herself, as
she had so often wondered, that, possessing the knack, she did not
more consistently exercise it. But sometimes she was forgetful—and
sometimes, could it be that she was proud? Today, at any rate, she
had been vaguely conscious of a reason for sinking her pride, had
in fact even sunk it to the point of suggesting to Lord Hubert
Dacey, whom she ran across on the Casino steps, that he might
really get the Duchess to dine with the Brys, if SHE undertook to
have them asked on the Sabrina. Lord Hubert had promised his help,
with the readiness on which she could always count: it was his only
way of ever reminding her that he had once been ready to do so much
more for her. Her path, in short, seemed to smooth itself before
her as she advanced; yet the faint stir of uneasiness persisted.
Had it been produced, she wondered, by her chance meeting with
Selden? She thought not—time and change seemed so completely to
have relegated him to his proper distance. The sudden and exquisite
reaction from her anxieties had had the effect of throwing the
recent past so far back that even Selden, as part of it, retained
a certain air of unreality. And he had made it so clear that they
were not to meet again; that he had merely dropped down to Nice
for a day or two, and had almost his foot on the next steamer.
No—that part of the past had merely surged up for a moment on the
fleeing surface of events; and now that it was submerged again, the
uncertainty, the apprehension persisted.
They grew to sudden acuteness as she caught sight of George Dorset
descending the steps of the Hotel de Paris and making for her
across the square. She had meant to drive down to the quay and
regain the yacht; but she now had the immediate impression that
something more was to happen first.
“Which way are you going? Shall we walk a bit?” he began, putting
the second question before the first was answered, and not waiting
for a reply to either before he directed her silently toward the
comparative seclusion of the lower gardens.
She detected in him at once all the signs of extreme nervous
tension. The skin was puffed out under his sunken eyes, and its
sallowness had paled to a leaden white against which his irregular
eyebrows and long reddish moustache were relieved with a saturnine
effect. His appearance, in short, presented an odd mixture of the
bedraggled and the ferocious.
He walked beside her in silence, with quick precipitate steps, till
they reached the embowered slopes to the east of the Casino; then,
pulling up abruptly, he said: “Have you seen Bertha?”
“No—when I left the yacht she was not yet up.”
He received this with a laugh like the whirring sound in a disabled
clock. “Not yet up? Had she gone to bed? Do you know at what time
she came on board? This morning at seven!” he exclaimed.
“At seven?” Lily started. “What happened—an accident to the train?”
He laughed again. “They missed the train—all the trains—they had to
drive back.”
“Well——?” She hesitated, feeling at once how little even this
necessity accounted for the fatal lapse of hours.
“Well, they couldn’t get a carriage at once—at that time of night,
you know—” the explanatory note made it almost seem as though he
were putting the case for his wife—“and when they finally did, it
was only a one-horse cab, and the horse was lame!”
“How tiresome! I see,” she affirmed, with the more earnestness
because she was so nervously conscious that she did not; and after
a pause she added: “I’m so sorry—but ought we to have waited?”
“Waited for the one-horse cab? It would scarcely have carried the
four of us, do you think?”
She took this in what seemed the only possible way, with a laugh
intended to sink the question itself in his humorous treatment of
it. “Well, it would have been difficult; we should have had to walk
by turns. But it would have been jolly to see the sunrise.”
“Yes: the sunrise WAS jolly,” he agreed.
“Was it? You saw it, then?”
“I saw it, yes; from the deck. I waited up for them.”
“Naturally—I suppose you were worried. Why didn’t you call on me to
share your vigil?”
He stood still, dragging at his moustache with a lean weak hand. “I
don’t think you would have cared for its DENOUEMENT,” he said with
sudden grimness.
Again she was disconcerted by the abrupt change in his tone, and
as in one flash she saw the peril of the moment, and the need of
keeping her sense of it out of her eyes.
“DENOUEMENT—isn’t that too big a word for such a small incident?
The worst of it, after all, is the fatigue which Bertha has
probably slept off by this time.”
She clung to the note bravely, though its futility was now plain to
her in the glare of his miserable eyes.
“Don’t—don’t——!” he broke out, with the hurt cry of a child; and
while she tried to merge her sympathy, and her resolve to ignore
any cause for it, in one ambiguous murmur of deprecation, he
dropped down on the bench near which they had paused, and poured
out the wretchedness of his soul.
It was a dreadful hour—an hour from which she emerged shrinking
and seared, as though her lids had been scorched by its actual
glare. It was not that she had never had premonitory glimpses of
such an outbreak; but rather because, here and there throughout
the three months, the surface of life had shown such ominous
cracks and vapours that her fears had always been on the alert
for an upheaval. There had been moments when the situation had
presented itself under a homelier yet more vivid image—that of a
shaky vehicle, dashed by unbroken steeds over a bumping road, while
she cowered within, aware that the harness wanted mending, and
wondering what would give way first. Well—everything had given way
now; and the wonder was that the crazy outfit had held together so
long. Her sense of being involved in the crash, instead of merely
witnessing it from the road, was intensified by the way in which
Dorset, through his furies of denunciation and wild reactions of
self-contempt, made her feel the need he had of her, the place she
had taken in his life. But for her, what ear would have been open
to his cries? And what hand but hers could drag him up again to a
footing of sanity and self-respect? All through the stress of the
struggle with him, she had been conscious of something faintly
maternal in her efforts to guide and uplift him. But for the
present, if he clung to her, it was not in order to be dragged up,
but to feel some one floundering in the depths with him: he wanted
her to suffer with him, not to help him to suffer less.
Happily for both, there was little physical strength to sustain his
frenzy. It left him, collapsed and breathing heavily, to an apathy
so deep and prolonged that Lily almost feared the passers-by would
think it the result of a seizure, and stop to offer their aid. But
Monte Carlo is, of all places, the one where the human bond is
least close, and odd sights are the least arresting. If a glance
or two lingered on the couple, no intrusive sympathy disturbed
them; and it was Lily herself who broke the silence by rising from
her seat. With the clearing of her vision the sweep of peril had
extended, and she saw that the post of danger was no longer at
Dorset’s side.
“If you won’t go back, I must—don’t make me leave you!” she urged.
But he remained mutely resistant, and she added: “What are you
going to do? You really can’t sit here all night.”
“I can go to an hotel. I can telegraph my lawyers.” He sat up,
roused by a new thought. “By Jove, Selden’s at Nice—I’ll send for
Selden!”
Lily, at this, reseated herself with a cry of alarm. “No, no, NO!”
she protested.
He swung round on her distrustfully. “Why not Selden? He’s a lawyer
isn’t he? One will do as well as another in a case like this.”
“As badly as another, you mean. I thought you relied on ME to help
you.”
“You do—by being so sweet and patient with me. If it hadn’t been
for you I’d have ended the thing long ago. But now it’s got to
end.” He rose suddenly, straightening himself with an effort. “You
can’t want to see me ridiculous.”
She looked at him kindly. “That’s just it.” Then, after a moment’s
pondering, almost to her own surprise she broke out with a flash of
inspiration: “Well, go over and see Mr. Selden. You’ll have time to
do it before dinner.”
“Oh, DINNER——” he mocked her; but she left him with the smiling
rejoinder: “Dinner on board, remember; we’ll put it off till nine
if you like.”
It was past four already; and when a cab had dropped her at the
quay, and she stood waiting for the gig to put off for her,
she began to wonder what had been happening on the yacht. Of
Silverton’s whereabouts there had been no mention. Had he returned
to the Sabrina? Or could Bertha—the dread alternative sprang on
her suddenly—could Bertha, left to herself, have gone ashore to
rejoin him? Lily’s heart stood still at the thought. All her
concern had hitherto been for young Silverton, not only because,
in such affairs, the woman’s instinct is to side with the man, but
because his case made a peculiar appeal to her sympathies. He was
so desperately in earnest, poor youth, and his earnestness was of
so different a quality from Bertha’s, though hers too was desperate