The House of Mirth Edith Wharton (romantic love story reading .txt) 📖

Lord Hubert Dacey, a slender shabby-looking man, with a charming worn smile, and the air of having spent his best years in piloting the wealthy to the right restaurant, assented with gentle emphasis: “It’s quite that.”

“Peas?” said Mr. Bry contemptuously. “Can they cook terrapin? It just shows,” he continued, “what these European markets are, when a fellow can make a reputation cooking peas!”

Jack Stepney intervened with authority. “I don’t know that I quite agree with Dacey: there’s a little hole in Paris, off the Quai Voltaire⁠—but in any case, I can’t advise the Condamine gargote; at least not with ladies.”

Stepney, since his marriage, had thickened and grown prudish, as the Van Osburgh husbands were apt to do; but his wife, to his surprise and discomfiture, had developed an earthshaking fastness of gait which left him trailing breathlessly in her wake.

“That’s where we’ll go then!” she declared, with a heavy toss of her plumage. “I’m so tired of the Terrasse: it’s as dull as one of mother’s dinners. And Lord Hubert has promised to tell us who all the awful people are at the other place⁠—hasn’t he, Carry? Now, Jack, don’t look so solemn!”

“Well,” said Mrs. Bry, “all I want to know is who their dressmakers are.”

“No doubt Dacey can tell you that too,” remarked Stepney, with an ironic intention which the other received with the light murmur, “I can at least find out, my dear fellow”; and Mrs. Bry having declared that she couldn’t walk another step, the party hailed two or three of the light phaetons which hover attentively on the confines of the gardens, and rattled off in procession toward the Condamine.

Their destination was one of the little restaurants overhanging the boulevard which dips steeply down from Monte Carlo to the low intermediate quarter along the quay. From the window in which they presently found themselves installed, they overlooked the intense blue curve of the harbour, set between the verdure of twin promontories: to the right, the cliff of Monaco, topped by the medieval silhouette of its church and castle, to the left the terraces and pinnacles of the gambling-house. Between the two, the waters of the bay were furrowed by a light coming and going of pleasure-craft, through which, just at the culminating moment of luncheon, the majestic advance of a great steam-yacht drew the company’s attention from the peas.

“By Jove, I believe that’s the Dorsets back!” Stepney exclaimed; and Lord Hubert, dropping his single eyeglass, corroborated: “It’s the Sabrina⁠—yes.”

“So soon? They were to spend a month in Sicily,” Mrs. Fisher observed.

“I guess they feel as if they had: there’s only one up-to-date hotel in the whole place,” said Mr. Bry disparagingly.

“It was Ned Silverton’s idea⁠—but poor Dorset and Lily Bart must have been horribly bored.” Mrs. Fisher added in an undertone to Selden: “I do hope there hasn’t been a row.”

“It’s most awfully jolly having Miss Bart back,” said Lord Hubert, in his mild deliberate voice; and Mrs. Bry added ingenuously: “I daresay the Duchess will dine with us, now that Lily’s here.”

“The Duchess admires her immensely: I’m sure she’d be charmed to have it arranged,” Lord Hubert agreed, with the professional promptness of the man accustomed to draw his profit from facilitating social contacts: Selden was struck by the businesslike change in his manner.

“Lily has been a tremendous success here,” Mrs. Fisher continued, still addressing herself confidentially to Selden. “She looks ten years younger⁠—I never saw her so handsome. Lady Skiddaw took her everywhere in Cannes, and the Crown Princess of Macedonia had her to stop for a week at Cimiez. People say that was one reason why Bertha whisked the yacht off to Sicily: the Crown Princess didn’t take much notice of her, and she couldn’t bear to look on at Lily’s triumph.”

Selden made no reply. He was vaguely aware that Miss Bart was cruising in the Mediterranean with the Dorsets, but it had not occurred to him that there was any chance of running across her on the Riviera, where the season was virtually at an end. As he leaned back, silently contemplating his filigree cup of Turkish coffee, he was trying to put some order in his thoughts, to tell himself how the news of her nearness was really affecting him. He had a personal detachment enabling him, even in moments of emotional high-pressure, to get a fairly clear view of his feelings, and he was sincerely surprised by the disturbance which the sight of the Sabrina had produced in him. He had reason to think that his three months of engrossing professional work, following on the sharp shock of his disillusionment, had cleared his mind of its sentimental vapours. The feeling he had nourished and given prominence to was one of thankfulness for his escape: he was like a traveller so grateful for rescue from a dangerous accident that at first he is hardly conscious of his bruises. Now he suddenly felt the latent ache, and realized that after all he had not come off unhurt.

An hour later, at Mrs. Fisher’s side in the Casino gardens, he was trying to find fresh reasons for forgetting the injury received in the contemplation of the peril avoided. The party had dispersed with the loitering indecision characteristic of social movements at Monte Carlo, where the whole place, and the long gilded hours of the day, seem to offer an infinity of ways of being idle. Lord Hubert Dacey had finally gone off in quest of the Duchess of Beltshire, charged by Mrs. Bry with the delicate negotiation of securing that lady’s presence at dinner, the Stepneys had left for Nice in their motorcar, and Mr. Bry had departed to take his place in the pigeon shooting match which was at the moment engaging his highest faculties.

Mrs. Bry, who had a tendency to grow red and stertorous after luncheon, had been judiciously prevailed upon by Carry Fisher to withdraw to her hotel for an hour’s repose; and Selden and his companion were thus