House of Mirth (Barnes & Noble Classics - Edith Wharton [117]
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 head-quarters.
“The worst of it is, she snubs the Brys now,” he heard irrelevantly flung after him.
Ten minutes later, in the high-perched bedroom of an hotel overlooking the Casino, he was tossing his effects into a couple of gaping portmanteaux,cf while the porter waited outside to transport them to the cab at the door. It took but a brief plunge down the steep white road to the station to land him safely in the afternoon express for Nice; and not till he was installed in the corner of an empty carriage, did he exclaim to himself, with a reaction of self-contempt: “What the deuce am I running away from?”
The pertinence of the question checked Selden’s fugitive impulse before the train had started. It was ridiculous to be flying like an emotional coward from an infatuation his reason had conquered. He had instructed his bankers to forward some important business letters to Nice, and at Nice he would quietly await them. He was already annoyed with himself for having left Monte Carlo, where he had intended to pass the week which remained to him before sailing; but it would now be difficult to return on his steps without an appearance of inconsistency from which his pride recoiled. In his inmost heart he was not sorry to put himself beyond the probability of meeting Miss Bart. Completely as he had detached himself from her, he could not yet regard her merely as a social instance; and viewed in a more personal way she was not likely to be a reassuring object of study. Chance encounters, or even the repeated mention of her name, would send his thoughts back into grooves from which he had resolutely detached them; whereas, if she could be entirely excluded from his life, the pressure of new and varied impressions, with which no thought of her was connected, would soon complete the work of separation. Mrs. Fisher’s conversation had, indeed, operated to that end; but the treatment was too painful to be voluntarily chosen while milder remedies were untried; and Selden thought he could trust himself to return gradually to a reasonable view of Miss Bart, if only he did not see her.
Having reached the station early, he had arrived at this point in his reflections before the increasing throng on the platform warned him that he could not hope to preserve his privacy; the next moment there was a hand on the door; and he turned to confront the very face he was fleeing.
Miss Bart, glowing with the haste of a precipitate descent upon the train, headed a group composed of the Dorsets, young Silverton and Lord Hubert Dacey, who had barely time to spring into the carriage, and envelop Selden in ejaculations of surprise and welcome, before the whistle of departure sounded. The party, it appeared,