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

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 afterdeck, 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