_ "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
personal 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. _