A Comedy of Masks: A Novel

by Ernest Christopher Dowson; Arthur Moore

As she sat in her own room, still in her dress of the evening, before the comfortable fire, which cast vague half-lights into the dark, spacious corners—she had extinguished the illumination of candles which her maid had left her, a sort of unconscious tribute to the economical traditions of her youth—she found herself considering this question and the side issues it involved very carefully.

Was it for some flaw in her nature, some lack of subtilty, or inbred stupidity, that she found the inmates of Parton Street so uninspiring, had been so little amused?

The dozen who had dined with them to-night—how typical they might be of the rest!—original and unlike each other as they were, each having his special distinction, his particular note, were hardly separable in her mind. They were very cultivated, very subtile, very cynical. Their talk, which flashed quickest around Lady Garnett, who was the readiest of them all, could not possibly have been better; it was like the rapid passes of exquisite fencers with foils. And they all seemed to have been everywhere, to have read everything, and at the last to believe in nothing—in themselves and their own paradoxes least of all. There was nothing in the world which existed except that one might make of it an elegant joke. And yet of old, the girl reflected, she had found them stimulating enough; their limitations, at least, had not seemed to her to weigh seriously against their qualities, negative though these last might be.

Had it been, then, simply the presence of Mr. Rainham which had leavened the company, and the personal fascination of his friendship—indefinable and unobtrusive as that had been—which had enabled her to adopt for the moment their urbane, impartial point of view?

Perhaps there had been a particle of truth in the charge so solemnly levelled at her by Mr. Sylvester: it was a false position that she maintained.

The attitude of Lady Garnett and her intimates, of persons (the phrase of Steele's recurred to her as meeting it appropriately) "who had seen the world enough to undervalue it with good breeding," must seem to her at last a little sterile when she was conscious—never more than now—of how clearly and swiftly the healthy young blood coursed through her veins, dissipating any morbid imaginations that she might feel inclined to cherish. She looked out at life, in her conviction that so little of it had yet been lived, that for her it might easily be a long affair, with eyes which were still full of interest and, to a certain degree, of hope; and this did not detract from at least one "impossible loyalty," from which it seemed to her she would never waver. And Charles Sylvester's infelicitous proposal recurred to her, and she was forced to ask herself whether, after all, it was quite so infelicitous as it seemed. Might not some sort of solution to the difficulties which oppressed her be offered by that alliance? Conscientiously she considered the question, and for a long time; but with the closest consideration the prospect refused to cheer her, remained singularly uninviting. And yet, arid as the notion appeared of a procession hand-in-hand through life with a husband so soberly precise, to the tune of political music, she was still hardly decided upon her answer when she at length reluctantly left her comfortable fire and composed herself to sleep.

It was not until a day or two later that a prolonged visit from the subject of these hesitations reminded her—perhaps more forcibly than before—that, however in his absence she might oscillate, in his actual presence a firm negative was, after all, the only answer which could ever suffice.

At the close of what seemed a singularly long afternoon, during which her aunt, who was confined to her room with a bad headache, had left to her the burden of entertaining, Mary came to this conclusion.

Mr. Sylvester had come with the first of her callers, and had made no sign of moving when the last had gone. And in the silence, a little portentous, which had ensued when they were left together, the girl had read easily the reason of his protracted stay. She glanced furtively, with a suggestion of weariness in her eyes, at the little jewelled watch on her wrist, wondering if in the arrival of a belated visitor there might not still be some respite.

"You are not going out?" he asked tentatively, detecting her. "I expect my sister will be here soon."