The House of Mirth

ook II, Chapter 3

Miss Bart’s telegram caught Lawrence Selden at the door of his
hotel; and having read it, he turned back to wait for Dorset. The
message necessarily left large gaps for conjecture; but all that he
had recently heard and seen made these but too easy to fill in. On
the whole he was surprised; for though he had perceived that the
situation contained all the elements of an explosion, he had often
enough, in the range of his personal experience, seen just such
combinations subside into harmlessness. Still, Dorset’s spasmodic
temper, and his wife’s reckless disregard of appearances, gave the
situation a peculiar insecurity; and it was less from the sense of
any special relation to the case than from a purely professional
zeal, that Selden resolved to guide the pair to safety. Whether, in
the present instance, safety for either lay in repairing so damaged
a tie, it was no business of his to consider: he had only, on
general principles, to think of averting a scandal, and his desire
to avert it was increased by his fear of its involving Miss Bart.
There was nothing specific in this apprehension; he merely wished
to spare her the embarrassment of being ever so remotely connected
with the public washing of the Dorset linen.

How exhaustive and unpleasant such a process would be, he saw
even more vividly after his two hours’ talk with poor Dorset. If
anything came out at all, it would be such a vast unpacking of
accumulated moral rags as left him, after his visitor had gone,
with the feeling that he must fling open the windows and have his
room swept out. But nothing should come out; and happily for his
side of the case, the dirty rags, however pieced together, could
not, without considerable difficulty, be turned into a homogeneous
grievance. The torn edges did not always fit—there were missing
bits, there were disparities of size and colour, all of which it
was naturally Selden’s business to make the most of in putting
them under his client’s eye. But to a man in Dorset’s mood the
completest demonstration could not carry conviction, and Selden saw
that for the moment all he could do was to soothe and temporize,
to offer sympathy and to counsel prudence. He let Dorset depart
charged to the brim with the sense that, till their next meeting,
he must maintain a strictly noncommittal attitude; that, in short,
his share in the game consisted for the present in looking on.
Selden knew, however, that he could not long keep such violences
in equilibrium; and he promised to meet Dorset, the next morning,
at an hotel in Monte Carlo. Meanwhile he counted not a little on
the reaction of weakness and self-distrust that, in such natures,
follows on every unwonted expenditure of moral force; and his
telegraphic reply to Miss Bart consisted simply in the injunction:
“Assume that everything is as usual.”

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
eyes: “If you knew how little difference that makes!”

“Oh, well, nothing WILL happen,” he said, more for his own
reassurance than for hers; and “Nothing, nothing, of course!” she
valiantly assented, as they turned to overtake their companions.

In the thronged restaurant, taking their places about Mrs. Bry’s
illuminated board, their confidence seemed to gain support from
the familiarity of their surroundings. Here were Dorset and his
wife once more presenting their customary faces to the world, she
engrossed in establishing her relation with an intensely new gown,
he shrinking with dyspeptic dread from the multiplied solicitations
of the MENU. The mere fact that they thus showed themselves
together, with the utmost openness the place afforded, seemed
to declare beyond a doubt that their differences were composed.
How this end had been attained was still matter for wonder, but
it was clear that for the moment Miss Bart rested confidently in
the result; and Selden tried to achieve the same view by telling
himself that her opportunities for observation had been ampler than
his own.

Meanwhile, as the dinner advanced through a labyrinth of courses,
in which it became clear that Mrs. Bry had occasionally broken away
from Lord Hubert’s restraining hand, Selden’s general watchfulness
began to lose itself in a particular study of Miss Bart. It was
one of the days when she was so handsome that to be handsome was
enough, and all the rest—her grace, her quickness, her social
felicities—seemed the overflow of a bounteous nature. But what
especially struck him was the way in which she detached herself, by
a hundred undefinable shades, from the persons who most abounded
in her own style. It was in just such company, the fine flower
and complete expression of the state she aspired to, that the
differences came out with special poignancy, her grace cheapening
the other women’s smartness as her finely-discriminated silences
made their chatter dull. The strain of the last hours had restored
to her face the deeper eloquence which Selden had lately missed
in it, and the bravery of her words to him still fluttered in her
voice and eyes. Yes, she was matchless—it was the one word for
her; and he could give his admiration the freer play because so
little personal feeling remained in it. His real detachment from
her had taken place, not at the lurid moment of disenchantment,
but now, in the sober after-light of discrimination, where he saw
her definitely divided from him by the crudeness of a choice which
seemed to deny the very differences he felt in her. It was before
him again in its completeness—the choice in which she was content
to rest: in the stupid costliness of the food and the showy dulness
of the talk, in the freedom of speech which never arrived at wit
and the freedom of act which never made for romance. The strident
setting of the restaurant, in which their table seemed set apart
in a special glare of publicity, and the presence at it of little
Dabham of the “Riviera Notes,” emphasized the ideals of a world
where conspicuousness passed for distinction, and the society
column had become the roll of fame.

It was as the immortalizer of such occasions that little Dabham,
wedged in modest watchfulness between two brilliant neighbours,
suddenly became the centre of Selden’s scrutiny. How much did he
know of what was going on, and how much, for his purpose, was still
worth finding out? His little eyes were like tentacles thrown
out to catch the floating intimations with which, to Selden, the
air at moments seemed thick; then again it cleared to its normal
emptiness, and he could see nothing in it for the journalist
but leisure to note the elegance of the ladies’ gowns. Mrs.
Dorset’s, in particular, challenged all the wealth of Mr. Dabham’s
vocabulary: it had surprises and subtleties worthy of what he
would have called “the literary style.” At first, as Selden had
noticed, it had been almost too preoccupying to its wearer; but now
she was in full command of it, and was even producing her effects
with unwonted freedom. Was she not, indeed, too free, too fluent,
for perfect naturalness? And was not Dorset, to whom his glance
had passed by a natural transition, too jerkily wavering between
the same extremes? Dorset indeed was always jerky; but it seemed
to Selden that tonight each vibration swung him farther from his
centre.

The dinner, meanwhile, was moving to its triumphant close, to
the evident satisfaction of Mrs. Bry, who, throned in apoplectic
majesty between Lord Skiddaw and Lord Hubert, seemed in spirit to
be calling on Mrs. Fisher to witness her achievement. Short of
Mrs. Fisher her audience might have been called complete; for the
restaurant was crowded with persons mainly gathered there for the
purpose of spectatorship, and accurately posted as to the names and
faces of the celebrities they had come to see. Mrs. Bry, conscious
that all her feminine guests came under that heading, and that
each one looked her part to admiration, shone on Lily with all the
pent-up gratitude that Mrs. Fisher had failed to deserve. Selden,
catching the glance, wondered what part Miss Bart had played in
organizing the entertainment. She did, at least, a great deal to
adorn it; and as he watched the bright security with which she bore
herself, he smiled to think that he should have fancied her in
need of help. Never had she appeared more serenely mistress of the
situation than when, at the moment of dispersal, detaching herself
a little from the group about the table, she turned with a smile
and a graceful slant of the shoulders to receive her cloak from
Dorset.

The dinner had been protracted over Mr. Bry’s exceptional cigars
and a bewildering array of liqueurs, and many of the other tables
were empty; but a sufficient number of diners still lingered to
give relief to the leave-taking of Mrs. Bry’s distinguished guests.
This ceremony was drawn out and complicated by the fact that it
involved, on the part of the Duchess and Lady Skiddaw, definite
farewells, and pledges of speedy reunion in Paris, where they were
to pause and replenish their wardrobes on the way to England. The
quality of Mrs. Bry’s hospitality, and of the tips her husband
had presumably imparted, lent to the manner of the English ladies
a general effusiveness which shed the rosiest light over their
hostess’s future. In its glow Mrs. Dorset and the Stepneys were
also visibly included, and the whole scene had touches of intimacy
worth their weight in gold to the watchful pen of Mr. Dabham.

A glance at her watch caused the Duchess to exclaim to her sister
that they had just time to dash for their train, and the flurry
of this departure over, the Stepneys, who had their motor at the
door, offered to convey the Dorsets and Miss Bart to the quay. The
offer was accepted, and Mrs. Dorset moved away with her husband
in attendance. Miss Bart had lingered for a last word with Lord
Hubert, and Stepney, on whom Mr. Bry was pressing a final, and
still more expensive, cigar, called out: “Come on, Lily, if you’re
going back to the yacht.”

Lily turned to obey; but as she did so, Mrs. Dorset, who had paused
on her way out, moved a few steps back toward the table.

“Miss Bart is not going back to the yacht,” she said in a voice of
singular distinctness.

A startled look ran from eye to eye; Mrs. Bry crimsoned to the
verge of congestion, Mrs. Stepney slipped nervously behind her
husband, and Selden, in the general turmoil of his sensations, was
mainly conscious of a longing to grip Dabham by the collar and
fling him out into the street.

Dorset, meanwhile, had stepped back to his wife’s side. His
face was white, and he looked about him with cowed angry eyes.
“Bertha!—Miss Bart . . . this is some misunderstanding . . . some
mistake....”

“Miss Bart remains here,” his wife rejoined incisively. “And, I
think, George, we had better not detain Mrs. Stepney any longer.”

Miss Bart, during this brief exchange of words, remained in
admirable erectness, slightly isolated from the embarrassed group
about her. She had paled a little under the shock of the insult,
but the discomposure of the surrounding faces was not reflected in
her own. The faint disdain of her smile seemed to lift her high
above her antagonist’s reach, and it was not till she had given
Mrs. Dorset the full measure of the distance between them that she
turned and extended her hand to her hostess.

“I am joining the Duchess tomorrow,” she explained, “and it seemed
easier for me to remain on shore for the night.”

She held firmly to Mrs. Bry’s wavering eye while she gave this
explanation, but when it was over Selden saw her send a tentative
glance from one to another of the women’s faces. She read their
incredulity in their averted looks, and in the mute wretchedness
of the men behind them, and for a miserable half-second he thought
she quivered on the brink of failure. Then, turning to him with an
easy gesture, and the pale bravery of her recovered smile—“Dear Mr.
Selden,” she said, “you promised to see me to my cab.”

* * * * *

Outside, the sky was gusty and overcast, and as Lily and Selden
moved toward the deserted gardens below the restaurant, spurts of
warm rain blew fitfully against their faces. The fiction of the cab
had been tacitly abandoned; they walked on in silence, her hand on
his arm, till the deeper shade of the gardens received them, and
pausing beside a bench, he said: “Sit down a moment.”

She dropped to the seat without answering, but the electric lamp at
the bend of the path shed a gleam on the struggling misery of her
face. Selden sat down beside her, waiting for her to speak, fearful
lest any word he chose should touch too roughly on her wound, and
kept also from free utterance by the wretched doubt which had
slowly renewed itself within him. What had brought her to this
pass? What weakness had placed her so abominably at her enemy’s
mercy? And why should Bertha Dorset have turned into an enemy at
the very moment when she so obviously needed the support of her
sex? Even while his nerves raged at the subjection of husbands to
their wives, and at the cruelty of women to their kind, reason
obstinately harped on the proverbial relation between smoke and
fire. The memory of Mrs. Fisher’s hints, and the corroboration of
his own impressions, while they deepened his pity also increased
his constraint, since, whichever way he sought a free outlet for
sympathy, it was blocked by the fear of committing a blunder.

Suddenly it struck him that his silence must seem almost as
accusatory as that of the men he had despised for turning from her;
but before he could find the fitting word she had cut him short
with a question.

“Do you know of a quiet hotel? I can send for my maid in the
morning.”

“An hotel—HERE—that you can go to alone? It’s not possible.”

She met this with a pale gleam of her old playfulness. “What IS,
then? It’s too wet to sleep in the gardens.”

“But there must be some one——”

“Some one to whom I can go? Of course—any number—but at THIS hour?
You see my change of plan was rather sudden——”

“Good God—if you’d listened to me!” he cried, venting his
helplessness in a burst of anger.

She still held him off with the gentle mockery of her smile. “But
haven’t I?” she rejoined. “You advised me to leave the yacht, and
I’m leaving it.”

He saw then, with a pang of self-reproach, that she meant neither
to explain nor to defend herself; that by his miserable silence he
had forfeited all chance of helping her, and that the decisive hour
was past.

She had risen, and stood before him in a kind of clouded majesty,
like some deposed princess moving tranquilly to exile.

“Lily!” he exclaimed, with a note of despairing appeal; but—“Oh,
not now,” she gently admonished him; and then, in all the sweetness
of her recovered composure: “Since I must find shelter somewhere,
and since you’re so kindly here to help me——”

He gathered himself up at the challenge. “You will do as I tell
you? There’s but one thing, then; you must go straight to your
cousins, the Stepneys.”

“Oh—” broke from her with a movement of instinctive resistance;
but he insisted: “Come—it’s late, and you must appear to have gone
there directly.”

He had drawn her hand into his arm, but she held him back with a
last gesture of protest. “I can’t—I can’t—not that—you don’t know
Gwen: you mustn’t ask me!”

“I MUST ask you—you must obey me,” he persisted, though infected at
heart by her own fear.

Her voice sank to a whisper: “And if she refuses?”—but, “Oh, trust
me—trust me!” he could only insist in return; and yielding to his
touch, she let him lead her back in silence to the edge of the
square.

In the cab they continued to remain silent through the brief drive
which carried them to the illuminated portals of the Stepneys’
hotel. Here he left her outside, in the darkness of the raised
hood, while his name was sent up to Stepney, and he paced the showy
hall, awaiting the latter’s descent. Ten minutes later the two
men passed out together between the gold-laced custodians of the
threshold; but in the vestibule Stepney drew up with a last flare
of reluctance.

“It’s understood, then?” he stipulated nervously, with his hand on
Selden’s arm. “She leaves tomorrow by the early train—and my wife’s
asleep, and can’t be disturbed.”