It is true that a great deal of society was continually offered to him, and even thrust upon him. In the popular phrase, London was empty, but there seemed to be more people than ever who desired Mr. Stormont Thorpe' s presence at their dinner-tables, or their little theatre or card or river parties. He clung sullenly to his rule of going nowhere, but it was not so simple a matter to evade the civilities and importunities of those who were stopping at the hotel, or who came there to waylay him at the entrance, or to encounter him in the restaurant. He could not always refuse to sit down at tables when attractively-dressed and vivacious women made room for him, or to linger over cigars and wine with their husbands and escorts later on.
An incessant and spirited court was paid to him by many different groups of interested people who were rarely at the pains to dissemble their aims. He formed a manner for the reception of these advances, compounded of joviality, cynicism, and frank brutality, which nobody, to his face at least, resented. If women winced under his mocking rudenesses of speech and smile, if men longed to kill him for the cold insolence of his refusal to let them inside his guard, they sedulously kept it from him. The consciousness that everybody was afraid of him,--that everybody would kneel to him, and meekly take insult and ignominy from him, if only hope remained to them of getting something out of him,--hardened like a crust upon his mind.
It was impossible to get a sense of companionship from people who cringed to him, and swallowed his affronts and cackled at his jokes with equal docility. Sometimes he had a passing amusement in the rough pleasantries and cruelties which they drew from him. There were two or three bright Jewish women, more gayly clever and impudent, perhaps, than beautiful, with whom he found it genuine fun to talk, and concerning whom he was perpetually conceiving projects which could not have been discussed with their husbands, and as perpetually doing nothing to test their feasibility. But these diversions were in their essence unsubstantial. There was not even the semblance of a real friendship among them,--and loneliness became an increasing burden.