The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (if you liked this book .TXT) 📕

left to a stroll propitious to confidences. The stroll soon resolved itself into a tranquil session on a bench overhung with laurel and Banksian roses, from which they caught a dazzle of blue sea between marble balusters, and the fiery shafts of cactus-blossoms shooting meteor-like from the rock. The soft shade of their niche, and the adjacent glitter of the air, were conducive to an easy lounging mood, and to the smoking of many cigarettes; and Selden, yielding to these influences, suffered Mrs. Fisher to unfold to him the history of her recent experiences. She had come abroad with the Welly Brys at the moment when fashion flees the inclemency of the New York spring. The Brys, intoxicated by their first success, already thirsted for new kingdoms, and Mrs. Fisher, viewing the Riviera as an easy introduction to London society, had guided their course thither. She had affiliations of her own in every capital, and a facility for picking them up again after long absences; and the carefully disseminated rumour of the Brys’ wealth had at once gathered about them a group of cosmopolitan pleasure-seekers.

“But things are not going as well as I expected,” Mrs. Fisher frankly admitted. “It’s all very well to say that everybody with money can get into society; but it would be truer to say that nearly everybody can. And the London market is so glutted with new Americans that, to succeed there now, they must be either very clever or awfully queer. The Brys are neither. He would get on well enough if she’d let him alone; they like his slang and his brag and his blunders. But Louisa spoils it all by trying to repress him and put herself forward. If she’d be natural herself⁠—fat and vulgar and bouncing⁠—it would be all right; but as soon as she meets anybody smart she tries to be slender and queenly. She tried it with the Duchess of Beltshire and Lady Skiddaw, and they fled. I’ve done my best to make her see her mistake⁠—I’ve said to her again and again: ‘Just let yourself go, Louisa’; but she keeps up the humbug even with me⁠—I believe she keeps on being queenly in her own room, with the door shut.

“The worst of it is,” Mrs. Fisher went on, “that she thinks it’s all my fault. When the Dorsets turned up here six weeks ago, and everybody began to make a fuss about Lily Bart, I could see Louisa thought that if she’d had Lily in tow instead of me she would have been hobnobbing with all the royalties by this time. She doesn’t realize that it’s Lily’s beauty that does it: Lord Hubert tells me Lily is thought even handsomer than when he knew her at Aix ten years ago. It seems she was tremendously admired there. An Italian Prince, rich and the real thing, wanted to marry her; but just at the critical moment a good-looking stepson turned up, and Lily was silly enough to flirt with him while her marriage-settlements with the stepfather were being drawn up. Some people said the young man did it on purpose. You can fancy the scandal: there was an awful row between the men, and people began to look at Lily so queerly that Mrs. Peniston had to pack up and finish her cure elsewhere. Not that she ever understood: to this day she thinks that Aix didn’t suit her, and mentions her having been sent there as proof of the incompetence of French doctors. That’s Lily all over, you know: she works like a slave preparing the ground and sowing her seed; but the day she ought to be reaping the harvest she oversleeps herself or goes off on a picnic.”

Mrs. Fisher paused and looked reflectively at the deep shimmer of sea between the cactus-flowers. “Sometimes,” she added, “I think it’s just flightiness⁠—and sometimes I think it’s because, at heart, she despises the things she’s trying for. And it’s the difficulty of deciding that makes her such an interesting study.” She glanced tentatively at Selden’s motionless profile, and resumed with a slight sigh: “Well, all I can say is, I wish she’d give me some of her discarded opportunities. I wish we could change places now, for instance. She could make a very good thing out of the Brys if she managed them properly, and I should know just how to look after George Dorset while Bertha is reading Verlaine with Neddy Silverton.”

She met Selden’s sound of protest with a sharp derisive glance. “Well, what’s the use of mincing matters? We all know that’s what Bertha brought her abroad for. When Bertha wants to have a good time she has to provide occupation for George. At first I thought Lily was going to play her cards well this time, but there are rumours that Bertha is jealous of her success here and at Cannes, and I shouldn’t be surprised if there were a break any day. Lily’s only safeguard is that Bertha needs her badly⁠—oh, very badly. The Silverton affair is in the acute stage: it’s necessary that George’s attention should be pretty continuously distracted. And I’m bound to say Lily does distract it: I believe he’d marry her tomorrow if he found out there was anything wrong with Bertha. But you know him⁠—he’s as blind as he’s jealous; and of course Lily’s present business is to keep him blind. A clever woman might know just the right moment to tear off the bandage: but Lily isn’t clever in that way, and when George does open his eyes she’ll probably contrive not to be in his line of vision.”

Selden tossed away his cigarette. “By Jove⁠—it’s time for my train,” he exclaimed, with a glance at his watch; adding, in reply to Mrs. Fisher’s surprised comment⁠—“Why, I thought of course you were at Monte!”⁠—a murmured word to the effect that he was making Nice his headquarters.

“The worst of it is, she snubs the Brys now,” he heard irrelevantly flung after him.

Ten minutes later, in the high-perched bedroom