"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 enough. The difference was that Bertha was
in earnest only about herself, while he was in earnest about her.
But now, at the actual crisis, this difference seemed to throw
the weight of destitution on Bertha's side, since at least he had
her to suffer for, and she had only herself. At any rate, viewed
less ideally, all the disadvantages of such a situation were for
the woman; and it was to Bertha that Lily's sympathies now went
out. She was not fond of Bertha Dorset, but neither was she
without a sense of obligation, the heavier for having so little
per
sonal liking to sustain it. Bertha had been kind to
her, they had lived together, during the last months, on terms of
easy friendship, and the sense of friction of which Lily had
recently become aware seemed to make it the more urgent that she
should work undividedly in her friend's interest.
It was in Bertha's interest, certainly, that she had despatched
Dorset to consult with Lawrence Selden. Once the grotesqueness of
the situation accepted, she had seen at a glance that it was the
safest in which Dorset could find himself. Who but Selden could
thus miraculously combine the skill to save Bertha with the
obligation of doing so? The consciousness that much skill would
be required made Lily rest thankfully in the greatness of the
obligation. Since he would HAVE to pull Bertha through she could
trust him to find a way; and she put the fulness of her trust in
the telegram she managed to send him on her way to the quay.
Thus far, then, Lily felt that she had done well; and the
conviction strengthened her for the task that remained. She and
Bertha had never been on confidential terms, but at such a crisis
the barriers of reserve must surely fall: Dorset's wild allusions
to the scene of the morning made Lily feel that they were down
already, and that any attempt to rebuild them would be beyond
Bertha's strength. She pictured the poor creature shivering
behind her fallen defences and awaiting with suspense the moment
when she could take refuge in the first shelter that offered. If
only that shelter had not already offered itself elsewhere! As
the gig traversed the short distance between the quay and the
yacht, Lily grew more than ever alarmed at the possible
consequences of her long absence. What if the wretched Bertha,
finding in all the long hours no soul to turn to--but by this
time Lily's eager foot was on the side-ladder, and her first step
on the Sabrina showed the worst of her apprehensions to be
unfounded; for there, in the luxurious shade of the after-deck,
the wretched Bertha, in full command of her usual attenuated
elegance, sat dispensing tea to the Duchess of Beltshire and Lord
Hubert.
The sight filled Lily with such surprise that she felt that
Bertha, at least, must read its meaning in her look, and she was
proportionately disconcerted by the blankness of the look
returned. But in an instant she saw that Mrs. Dorset had, of
necessity, to look blank before the others, and that, to mitigate
the effect of her own surprise, she must at once produce some
simple reason for it. The long habit of rapid transitions made it
easy for her to exclaim to the Duchess: "Why, I thought you'd
gone back to the Princess!" and this sufficed for the lady she
addressed, if it was hardly enough for Lord Hubert.
At least it opened the way to a lively explanation of how the
Duchess was, in fact, going back the next moment, but had first
rushed out to the yacht for a word with Mrs. Dorset on the
subject of tomorrow's dinner--the dinner with the Brys, to which
Lord Hubert had finally insisted on dragging them.
"To save my neck, you know!" he explained, with a glance that
appealed to Lily for some recognition of his promptness; and the
Duchess added, with her noble candour: "Mr. Bry has promised him
a tip, and he says if we go he'll pass it onto us."
This led to some final pleasantries, in which, as it seemed to
Lily, Mrs. Dorset bore her part with astounding bravery, and at
the close of which Lord Hubert, from half way down the
side-ladder, called back, with an air of numbering heads: "And of
course we may count on Dorset too?"
"Oh, count on him," his wife assented gaily. She was keeping up
well to the last--but as she turned back from waving her adieux
over the side, Lily said to herself that the mask must drop and
the soul of fear look out.
Mrs. Dorset turned back slowly; perhaps she wanted time to steady
her muscles; at any rate, they were still under perfect control
when, dropping once more into her seat behind the tea-table, she
remarked to Miss Bart with a faint touch of irony: "I suppose I
ought to say good morning."
If it was a cue, Lily was ready to take it, though with only the
vaguest sense of what was expected of her in return. There was
something unnerving in the contemplation of Mrs. Dorset's
composure, and she had to force the light tone in which she
answered: "I tried to see you this morning, but you were not yet
up.
"No--I got to bed late. After we missed you at the station
I thought we ought to wait for you till the last train."
She spoke very gently, but with just the least tinge of reproach.
"You missed us? You waited for us at the station?" Now indeed
Lily was too far adrift in bewilderment to measure the other's
words or keep watch on her own. "But I thought you didn't get to
the station till after the last train had left!"
Mrs. Dorset, examining her between lowered lids, met this with
the immediate query: "Who told you that?"
"George--I saw him just now in the gardens."
"Ah, is that George's version? Poor George--he was in no state to
remember what I told him. He had one of his worst attacks this
morning, and I packed him off to see the doctor. Do you know if
he found him?"
Lily, still lost in conjecture, made no reply, and Mrs. Dorset
settled herself indolently in her seat. "He'll wait to see him;
he was horribly frightened about himself. It's very bad for him
to be worried, and whenever anything upsetting happens, it always
brings on an attack."
This time Lily felt sure that a cue was being pressed on her; but
it was put forth with such startling suddenness, and with so
incredible an air of ignoring what it led up to, that she could
only falter out doubtfully: "Anything upsetting?"
"Yes--such as having you so conspicuously on his hands in the
small hours. You know, my dear, you're rather a big
responsibility in such a scandalous place after midnight."
At that--at the complete unexpectedness and the inconceivable
audacity of it--Lily could not restrain the tribute of an
astonished laugh.
"Well, really--considering it was you who burdened him with the
responsibility!"
Mrs. Dorset took this with an exquisite mildness. "By not having
the superhuman cleverness to discover you in that frightful rush
for the train? Or the imagination to believe that you'd take it
without us--you and he all alone--instead of waiting quietly in
the station till we DID manage to meet you?"
Lily's colour rose: it was growing clear to her that Bertha was
pursuing an object, following a line she had marked out for
herself. Only, with such a doom impending, why waste time in
these childish efforts to avert it? The puerility of the
attempt disarmed Lily's indignation: did it not prove how
horribly the poor creature was frightened?"
No; by our simply all keeping together at Nice," she returned.
"Keeping together? When it was you who seized the first
opportunity to rush off with the Duchess and her friends? My dear
Lily, you are not a child to be led by the hand!"
"No--nor to be lectured, Bertha, really; if that's what you are
doing to me now."
Mrs. Dorset smiled on her reproachfully. "Lecture you--I? Heaven
forbid! I was merely trying to give you a friendly hint. But it's
usually the other way round, isn't it? I'm expected to take
hints, not to give them: I've positively lived on them all these
last months."
"Hints--from me to you?" Lily repeated.
"Oh, negative ones merely--what not to be and to do and to see.
And I think I've taken them to admiration. Only, my dear, if
you'll let me say so, I didn't understand that one of my negative
duties was NOT to warn you when you carried your imprudence too
far."
A chill of fear passed over Miss Bart: a sense of remembered
treachery that was like the gleam of a knife in the dusk. But
compassion, in a moment, got the better of her instinctive
recoil. What was this outpouring of senseless bitterness but the
tracked creature's attempt to cloud the medium through which it
was fleeing? It was on Lily's lips to exclaim: "You poor soul,
don't double and turn--come straight back to me, and we'll find a
way out!" But the words died under the impenetrable insolence of
Bertha's smile. Lily sat silent, taking the brunt of it quietly,
letting it spend itself on her to the last drop of its
accumulated falseness; then, without a word, she rose and went
down to her cabin.
