The House of Mirth
On this assumption, in fact, the early part of the following day
was lived through. Dorset, as if in obedience to Lily’s imperative
bidding, had actually returned in time for a late dinner on the
yacht. The repast had been the most difficult moment of the day.
Dorset was sunk in one of the abysmal silences which so commonly
followed on what his wife called his “attacks” that it was easy,
before the servants, to refer it to this cause; but Bertha herself
seemed, perversely enough, little disposed to make use of this
obvious means of protection. She simply left the brunt of the
situation on her husband’s hands, as if too absorbed in a grievance
of her own to suspect that she might be the object of one herself.
To Lily this attitude was the most ominous, because the most
perplexing, element in the situation. As she tried to fan the
weak flicker of talk, to build up, again and again, the crumbling
structure of “appearances,” her own attention was perpetually
distracted by the question: “What on earth can she be driving at?”
There was something positively exasperating in Bertha’s attitude
of isolated defiance. If only she would have given her friend a
hint they might still have worked together successfully; but how
could Lily be of use, while she was thus obstinately shut out from
participation? To be of use was what she honestly wanted; and not
for her own sake but for the Dorsets’. She had not thought of her
own situation at all: she was simply engrossed in trying to put a
little order in theirs. But the close of the short dreary evening
left her with a sense of effort hopelessly wasted. She had not
tried to see Dorset alone: she had positively shrunk from a renewal
of his confidences. It was Bertha whose confidence she sought, and
who should as eagerly have invited her own; and Bertha, as if in
the infatuation of self-destruction, was actually pushing away her
rescuing hand.
Lily, going to bed early, had left the couple to themselves; and
it seemed part of the general mystery in which she moved that
more than an hour should elapse before she heard Bertha walk down
the silent passage and regain her room. The morrow, rising on an
apparent continuance of the same conditions, revealed nothing of
what had occurred between the confronted pair. One fact alone
outwardly proclaimed the change they were all conspiring to
ignore; and that was the non-appearance of Ned Silverton. No one
referred to it, and this tacit avoidance of the subject kept
it in the immediate foreground of consciousness. But there was
another change, perceptible only to Lily; and that was that Dorset
now avoided her almost as pointedly as his wife. Perhaps he was
repenting his rash outpourings of the previous day; perhaps only
trying, in his clumsy way, to conform to Selden’s counsel to behave
“as usual.” Such instructions no more make for easiness of attitude
than the photographer’s behest to “look natural”; and in a creature
as unconscious as poor Dorset of the appearance he habitually
presented, the struggle to maintain a pose was sure to result in
queer contortions.
It resulted, at any rate, in throwing Lily strangely on her own
resources. She had learned, on leaving her room, that Mrs. Dorset
was still invisible, and that Dorset had left the yacht early; and
feeling too restless to remain alone, she too had herself ferried
ashore. Straying toward the Casino, she attached herself to a
group of acquaintances from Nice, with whom she lunched, and in
whose company she was returning to the rooms when she encountered
Selden crossing the square. She could not, at the moment, separate
herself definitely from her party, who had hospitably assumed that
she would remain with them till they took their departure; but she
found time for a momentary pause of enquiry, to which he promptly
returned: “I’ve seen him again—he’s just left me.”
She waited before him anxiously. “Well? what has happened? What
WILL happen?”
“Nothing as yet—and nothing in the future, I think.”
“It’s over, then? It’s settled? You’re sure?”
He smiled. “Give me time. I’m not sure—but I’m a good deal surer.”
And with that she had to content herself, and hasten on to the
expectant group on the steps.
Selden had in fact given her the utmost measure of his sureness,
had even stretched it a shade to meet the anxiety in her eyes. And
now, as he turned away, strolling down the hill toward the station,
that anxiety remained with him as the visible justification of
his own. It was not, indeed, anything specific that he feared:
there had been a literal truth in his declaration that he did not
think anything would happen. What troubled him was that, though
Dorset’s attitude had perceptibly changed, the change was not
clearly to be accounted for. It had certainly not been produced by
Selden’s arguments, or by the action of his own soberer reason.
Five minutes’ talk sufficed to show that some alien influence had
been at work, and that it had not so much subdued his resentment
as weakened his will, so that he moved under it in a state of
apathy, like a dangerous lunatic who has been drugged. Temporarily,
no doubt, however exerted, it worked for the general safety: the
question was how long it would last, and by what kind of reaction
it was likely to be followed. On these points Selden could gain no
light; for he saw that one effect of the transformation had been to
shut him off from free communion with Dorset. The latter, indeed,
was still moved by the irresistible desire to discuss his wrong;
but, though he revolved about it with the same forlorn tenacity,
Selden was aware that something always restrained him from full
expression. His state was one to produce first weariness and then
impatience in his hearer; and when their talk was over, Selden
began to feel that he had done his utmost, and might justifiably
wash his hands of the sequel.
It was in this mind that he had been making his way back to the
station when Miss Bart crossed his path; but though, after his
brief word with her, he kept mechanically on his course, he was
conscious of a gradual change in his purpose. The change had been
produced by the look in her eyes; and in his eagerness to define
the nature of that look, he dropped into a seat in the gardens,
and sat brooding upon the question. It was natural enough, in
all conscience, that she should appear anxious: a young woman
placed, in the close intimacy of a yachting-cruise, between a
couple on the verge of disaster, could hardly, aside from her
concern for her friends, be insensible to the awkwardness of her
own position. The worst of it was that, in interpreting Miss
Bart’s state of mind, so many alternative readings were possible;
and one of these, in Selden’s troubled mind, took the ugly form
suggested by Mrs. Fisher. If the girl was afraid, was she afraid
for herself or for her friends? And to what degree was her dread of
a catastrophe intensified by the sense of being fatally involved
in it? The burden of offence lying manifestly with Mrs. Dorset,
this conjecture seemed on the face of it gratuitously unkind; but
Selden knew that in the most one-sided matrimonial quarrel there
are generally counter-charges to be brought, and that they are
brought with the greater audacity where the original grievance
is so emphatic. Mrs. Fisher had not hesitated to suggest the
likelihood of Dorset’s marrying Miss Bart if “anything happened”;
and though Mrs. Fisher’s conclusions were notoriously rash, she
was shrewd enough in reading the signs from which they were drawn.
Dorset had apparently shown marked interest in the girl, and this
interest might be used to cruel advantage in his wife’s struggle
for rehabilitation. Selden knew that Bertha would fight to the
last round of powder: the rashness of her conduct was illogically
combined with a cold determination to escape its consequences.
She could be as unscrupulous in fighting for herself as she was
reckless in courting danger, and whatever came to her hand at such
moments was likely to be used as a defensive missile. He did not,
as yet, see clearly just what course she was likely to take, but
his perplexity increased his apprehension, and with it the sense
that, before leaving, he must speak again with Miss Bart. Whatever
her share in the situation—and he had always honestly tried to
resist judging her by her surroundings—however free she might be
from any personal connection with it, she would be better out of
the way of a possible crash; and since she had appealed to him for
help, it was clearly his business to tell her so.
This decision at last brought him to his feet, and carried him
back to the gambling rooms, within whose doors he had seen her
disappearing; but a prolonged exploration of the crowd failed
to put him on her traces. He saw instead, to his surprise, Ned
Silverton loitering somewhat ostentatiously about the tables; and
the discovery that this actor in the drama was not only hovering in
the wings, but actually inviting the exposure of the footlights,
though it might have seemed to imply that all peril was over,
served rather to deepen Selden’s sense of foreboding. Charged with
this impression he returned to the square, hoping to see Miss Bart
move across it, as every one in Monte Carlo seemed inevitably to do
at least a dozen times a day; but here again he waited vainly for
a glimpse of her, and the conclusion was slowly forced on him that
she had gone back to the Sabrina. It would be difficult to follow
her there, and still more difficult, should he do so, to contrive
the opportunity for a private word; and he had almost decided on
the unsatisfactory alternative of writing, when the ceaseless
diorama of the square suddenly unrolled before him the figures of
Lord Hubert and Mrs. Bry.
Hailing them at once with his question, he learned from Lord
Hubert that Miss Bart had just returned to the Sabrina in Dorset’s
company; an announcement so evidently disconcerting to him that
Mrs. Bry, after a glance from her companion, which seemed to act
like the pressure on a spring, brought forth the prompt proposal
that he should come and meet his friends at dinner that evening—“At
Becassin’s—a little dinner to the Duchess,” she flashed out before
Lord Hubert had time to remove the pressure.
Selden’s sense of the privilege of being included in such company
brought him early in the evening to the door of the restaurant,
where he paused to scan the ranks of diners approaching down the
brightly lit terrace. There, while the Brys hovered within over
the last agitating alternatives of the MENU, he kept watch for
the guests from the Sabrina, who at length rose on the horizon in
company with the Duchess, Lord and Lady Skiddaw and the Stepneys.
From this group it was easy for him to detach Miss Bart on the
pretext of a moment’s glance into one of the brilliant shops along
the terrace, and to say to her, while they lingered together in the
white dazzle of a jeweller’s window: “I stopped over to see you—to
beg of you to leave the yacht.”
The eyes she turned on him showed a quick gleam of her former fear.
“To leave—? What do you mean? What has happened?”
“Nothing. But if anything should, why be in the way of it?”
The glare from the jeweller’s window, deepening the pallor of her
face, gave to its delicate lines the sharpness of a tragic mask.
“Nothing will, I am sure; but while there’s even a doubt left, how
can you think I would leave Bertha?”
The words rang out on a note of contempt—was it possibly of
contempt for himself? Well, he was willing to risk its renewal
to the extent of insisting, with an undeniable throb of added
interest: “You have yourself to think of, you know—” to which, with
a strange fall of sadness in her voice, she answered, meeting his