Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Оскар Уайльд
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was a small party, got up rather in a hurry by Lady Narborough, who was a very clever woman, with what Lord Henry used to describe as the remains of really remarkable ugliness. She had proved an excellent wife to one of our most tedious ambassadors, and having buried her husband properly in a marble mausoleum, which she had herself designed, and married off her daughters to some rich, rather elderly men, she devoted herself now to the pleasures of French fiction, French cookery, and French esprit when she could get it.
Dorian was one of her special favourites, and she always told him that she was extremely glad she had not met him in early life. ‘I know, my dear, I should have fallen madly in love with you,’ she used to say, ‘and thrown my bonnet right over the mills for your sake. It is most fortunate that you were not thought of at the time. As it was, our bonnets were so unbecoming, and the mills were so occupied in trying to raise the wind, that I never had even a flirtation with anybody. However, that was all Narborough’s fault. He was dreadfully short-sighted, and there is no pleasure in taking in a husband who never sees anything.’
Her guests this evening were rather tedious. The fact was, as she explained to Dorian, behind a very shabby fan, one of her married daughters had come up quite suddenly to stay with her, and, to make matters worse, had actually brought her husband with her. ‘I think it is most unkind of her, my dear,’ she whispered. ‘Of course I go and stay with them every summer after I come from Homburg, but then an old woman like me must have fresh air sometimes, and besides, I really wake them up. You don’t know what an existence they lead down there. It is pure unadulterated country life. They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early because they have so little to think about. There has not been a scandal in the neighbourhood since the time of Queen Elizabeth, and consequently they all fall asleep after dinner. You shan’t sit next either of them. You shall sit by me, and amuse me.’
Dorian murmured a graceful compliment, and looked round the room. Yes; it was certainly a tedious party. Two of the people he had never seen before, and the others consisted of Ernest Harrowden, one of those middle-aged mediocrities so common in London clubs who have no enemies, but are thoroughly disliked by their friends; Lady Ruxton, an over-dressed woman of forty-seven, with a hooked nose, who was always trying to get herself compromised, but was so peculiarly plain that to her great disappointment no one would ever believe anything against her; Mrs. Erlynne, a pushing nobody, with a delightful lisp, and Venetian-red hair; Lady Alice Chapman, his hostess’s daughter, a dowdy dull girl, with one of those characteristic British faces, that, once seen, are never remembered; and her husband, a red-cheeked, white-whiskered creature who, like so many of his class, was under the impression that inordinate joviality can atone for an entire lack of ideas.
He was rather sorry he had come, till Lady Narborough, looking at the great ormolu gilt clock that sprawled in gaudy curves on the mauve-draped mantelshelf, exclaimed: ‘How horrid of Henry Wotton to be so late! I sent round to him this mo. ning on chance, and he promised faithfully not to disappoint me.’
It was some consolation that Harry was to be there, and when the door opened and he heard his slow musical voice lending charm to some insincere apology, he ceased to feel bored.
But at dinner he could not eat anything. Plate after plate went away untasted. Lady Narborough kept scolding him for what she called ‘an insult to poor Adolphe, who invented the menu specially for you,’ and now and then Lord Henry looked across at him, wondering at his silence and abstracted manner. From time to time the butler filled his glass with champagne. He drank eagerly, and his thirst seemed to increase.
‘Dorian,’ said Lord Henry at last, as the chaudfroid was being handed round, ‘what is the matter with you to-night? You are quite out of sorts.’
‘I believe he is in love,’ cried Lady Narborough, ‘and that he is afraid to tell me for fear I should be jealous. He is quite right. I certainly should.’
‘Dear Lady Narborough,’ murmured Dorian, smiling, ‘I have not been in love for a whole week – not, in fact, since Madame de Ferrol left town.’
‘How you men can fall in love with that woman!’ exclaimed the old lady. ‘I really cannot understand it.’
‘It is simply because she remembers you when you were a little girl, Lady Narborough,’ said Lord Henry. ‘She is the one link between us and your short frocks.’
‘She does not remember my short frocks at all. Lord Henry. But I remember her very well at Vienna thirty years ago, and how décolletée she was then.’
‘She is still décolletée,’ he answered, taking an olive in his long fingers; ‘and when she is in a very smart gown she looks like an edition de luxe of a bad French novel. She is really wonderful, and full of surprises. Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary. When her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief.’
‘How can you, Harry!’ cried Dorian.
‘It is a most romantic explanation,’ laughed the hostess. ‘But her third husband, Lord Henry! You don’t mean to say Ferrol is the fourth.’
‘Certainly, Lady Narborough.’
‘I don’t believe a word of it.’
‘Well, ask Mr. Gray. He is one of her most intimate friends.’
‘Is it true, Mr. Gray?’
‘She assures me so, Lady Narborough,’ said Dorian. ‘I asked her whether, like Marguerite de Navarre, she had their hearts embalmed and hung at her girdle. She told me she didn’t, because none of them had any hearts at all.’
‘Four husbands! Upon my word that is trop de zéle.’
‘Trop d’audace, I tell her,’ said Dorian.
‘Oh! she is audacious enough for anything, my dear. And what is Ferrol like? I don’t know him.’
‘The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes,’ said Lord Henry, sipping his wine.
Lady Narborough hit him with her fan. ‘Lord Henry, I am not at all surprised that the world says that you are extremely wicked.’
‘But what world says that?’ asked Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows. ‘It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms.’
‘Everybody I know says you are very wicked,’ cried the old lady, shaking her head.
Lord Henry looked serious for some moments. ‘It is perfectly monstrous,’ he said at last, ‘the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely true.’
‘Isn’t he incorrigible?’ cried Dorian, leaning forward in his chair.
‘I hope so,’ said his hostess, laughing. ‘But really if you all worship Madame de Ferrol in this ridiculous way, I shall have to marry again so as to be in the fashion.’
‘You will never marry again, Lady Narborough,’ broke in Lord Henry. ‘You were far too happy. When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.’
‘Narborough wasn’t perfect,’ cried the old lady.
‘If he had been, you would not have loved him, my dear lady,’ was the rejoinder. ‘Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them they will forgive us everything, even our intellects. You will never ask me to dinner again, after saying this, I am afraid, Lady Narborough; but it is quite true.’
‘Of course it is true, Lord Henry. If we women did not love you for your defects, where would you all be? Not one of you would ever be married. You would be a set of unfortunate bachelors. Not, however, that that would alter you much. Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married men.’
‘Fin de siècle,’