Miss Bart, glowing with the haste of a precipitate descent upon
the train, headed a group composed of the Dorsets, young
Silverton and Lord Hubert Dacey, who had barely time to spring
into the carriage, and envelop Selden in ejaculations of surprise
and welcome, before the whistle of departure sounded. The party,
it appeared, were hastening to Nice in response to a sudden
summons to dine with the Duchess of Beltshire and to see the
water-fete in the bay; a plan evidently improvised--in spite of
Lord Hubert's protesting "Oh, I say, you know,"--for the express
purpose of defeating Mrs. Bry's endeavour to capture the Duchess.
During the laughing relation of this manoeuvre, Selden had time
for a rapid impression of Miss Bart, who had seated her self
opposite to him in the golden afternoon light. Scarcely three
months had elapsed since he had parted from her on the threshold
of the Brys' conservatory; but a subtle change had passed over
the quality of her beauty. Then it had had a transparency through
which the fluctuations of the spirit were sometimes tragically
visible; now its impenetrable surface suggested a process of
crystallization which had fused her whole being into one hard
brilliant substance. The change had struck Mrs. Fisher as
a rejuvenation: to Selden it seemed like that moment of pause and
arrest when the warm fluidity of youth is chilled into its final
shape.
He felt it in the way she smiled on him, and in the readiness and
competence with which, flung unexpectedly into his presence, she
took up the thread of their intercourse as though that thread had
not been snapped with a violence from which he still reeled. Such
facility sickened him--but he told himself that it was with the
pang which precedes recovery. Now he would really get well--would
eject the last drop of poison from his blood. Already he felt
himself calmer in her presence than he had learned to be in the
thought of her. Her assumptions and elisions, her short-cuts and
long DETOURS, the skill with which she contrived to meet him at a
point from which no inconvenient glimpses of the past were
visible, suggested what opportunities she had had for practising
such arts since their last meeting. He felt that she had at last
arrived at an understanding with herself: had made a pact with
her rebellious impulses, and achieved a uniform system of
self-government, under which all vagrant tendencies were either
held captive or forced into the service of the state.
And he saw other things too in her manner: saw how it had
adjusted itself to the hidden intricacies of a situation in
which, even after Mrs. Fisher's elucidating flashes, he still
felt himself agrope. Surely Mrs. Fisher could no longer charge
Miss Bart with neglecting her opportunities! To Selden's
exasperated observation she was only too completely alive to
them. She was "perfect" to every one: subservient to Bertha's
anxious predominance, good-naturedly watchful of Dorset's moods,
brightly companionable to Silverton and Dacey, the latter of whom
met her on an evident footing of old admiration, while young
Silverton, portentously self-absorbed, seemed conscious of her
only as of something vaguely obstructive. And suddenly, as Selden
noted the fine shades of manner by which she harmonized herself
with her surroundings, it flashed on him that, to need such
adroit handling, the situation must indeed be desperate. She was
on the edge of something--that was the impression left with him.
He seemed to see her poised on the brink of a chasm, with one
graceful foot advanced to assert her unconsciousness that
the ground was failing her.
On the Promenade des Anglais, where Ned Silverton hung on him for
the half hour before dinner, he received a deeper impression of
the general insecurity. Silverton was in a mood of Titanic
pessimism. How any one could come to such a damned hole as the
Riviera--any one with a grain of imagination--with the whole
Mediterranean to choose from: but then, if one's estimate of a
place depended on the way they broiled a spring chicken! Gad!
what a study might be made of the tyranny of the stomach--the way
a sluggish liver or insufficient gastric juices might affect the
whole course of the universe, overshadow everything in
reach--chronic dyspepsia ought to be among the "statutory
causes"; a woman's life might be ruined by a man's inability to
digest fresh bread. Grotesque? Yes--and tragic--like most
absurdities. There's nothing grimmer than the tragedy that wears
a comic mask.... Where was he? Oh--the reason they chucked Sicily
and rushed back? Well--partly, no doubt, Miss Bart's desire to
get back to bridge and smartness. Dead as a stone to art and
poetry--the light never WAS on sea or land for her! And of course
she persuaded Dorset that the Italian food was bad for him. Oh,
she could make him believe anything--ANYTHING! Mrs. Dorset was
aware of it--oh, perfectly: nothing SHE didn't see! But she could
hold her tongue--she'd had to, often enough. Miss Bart was an
intimate friend--she wouldn't hear a word against her. Only it
hurts a woman's pride--there are some things one doesn't get used
to . . . All this in confidence, of course? Ah--and there were
the ladies signalling from the balcony of the hotel.... He
plunged across the Promenade, leaving Selden to a meditative
cigar.
The conclusions it led him to were fortified, later in the
evening, by some of those faint corroborative hints that generate
a light of their own in the dusk of a doubting mind. Selden,
stumbling on a chance acquaintance, had dined with him, and
adjourned, still in his company, to the brightly lit Promenade,
where a line of crowded stands commanded the glittering darkness
of the waters. The night was soft and per suasive. Overhead hung
a summer sky furrowed with the rush of rockets; and from
the east a late moon, pushing up beyond the lofty bend of the
coast, sent across the bay a shaft of brightness which paled to
ashes in the red glitter of the illuminated boats. Down the
lantern-hung Promenade, snatches of band-music floated above the
hum of the crowd and the soft tossing of boughs in dusky gardens;
and between these gardens and the backs of the stands there
flowed a stream of people in whom the vociferous carnival mood
seemed tempered by the growing languor of the season.
Selden and his companion, unable to get seats on one of the
stands facing the bay, had wandered for a while with the throng,
and then found a point of vantage on a high garden-parapet above
the Promenade. Thence they caught but a triangular glimpse of
the water, and of the flashing play of boats across its surface;
but the crowd in the street was under their immediate view, and
seemed to Selden, on the whole, of more interest than the show
itself. After a while, however, he wearied of his perch and,
dropping alone to the pavement, pushed his way to the first
corner and turned into the moonlit silence of a side street. Long
garden-walls overhung by trees made a dark boundary to the
pavement; an empty cab trailed along the deserted thoroughfare,
and presently Selden saw two persons emerge from the opposite
shadows, signal to the cab, and drive off in it toward the centre
of the town. The moonlight touched them as they paused to enter
the carriage, and he recognized Mrs. Dorset and young Silverton.
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!"
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 ex
claimed,
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.
"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.
