House of Mirth (Barnes & Noble Classics - Edith Wharton [122]
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 courtier 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 it—”
“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,”cm 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 fete. 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,