The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton (phonics reader .txt) 📗

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 rowboat 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 exclaimed, 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 Bécassin 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 fête. 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 handclasp and a last look, she added: “Remember, I leave her to you; she’s hovering now, ready to take you in.”

Lily carried the impression of Mrs. Fisher’s leave-taking away with her from the Casino doors.