A taxi humming round a distant corner reminded Dorothy of an evening on the lawns at Clare when Doctor Lane had lectured her on the habits of night-jars.
"Country sights and country sounds," she exclaimed, and she shivered in a revulsion against them all, because, though she had proved her ability to share in that country life, the blind overseer Fate had withdrawn her to another environment and the overseer must always be propitiated.
The sound of the traffic was casting a spell upon Dorothy's tired nerves; she began to take pleasure in it, welcoming it as a sound familiar and cherished over many years. She looked back at herself a year ago sitting in Clarehaven church, with almost a blush for the affectation of it all, or rather for what must have seemed like affectation to other people. She had allowed herself to exaggerate everything, to dream sublimely and wake ridiculously, to be more than she was ever meant to be. Not music of wind and sea, but this dull music of London traffic was the fit accompaniment for her. She knew that now, when her own sighs absorbed in the countless sighs of the millions round her took their place in the great harmony of human sorrow. Above the castanets of hansoms and the horns of motors the omnibuses rolled like drums ... the hansoms were going back, back, the motors were going forward; but the omnibuses were going home, home, home. And was not her own journey through life like journeys she had taken as a child when the omnibus after a glittering evening went home, rumbling and rolling home?
Dorothy had nearly fallen asleep; waking to full consciousness with a start, she laughed at her fancies; quickly shutting the window, she drew the curtains and walked about the golden bedroom as if she would assure herself that the evening was not nearly spent yet, that not for her was some dim omnibus waiting to carry her home ... home. She checked the fresh impulse to dwell upon the monotonous rumble of the traffic and drove the sound from her mind. Of what could she complain, really? What other girl like herself would not envy her good fortune? What other girl would not laugh at her for thinking that life was dull because she had failed at the first attempt to produce a son? In this comfortable bedroom, amid flowers of chintz, was she not already more at home than she had ever been along the herbaceous borders of Clare? The fact was that her life at Clare had been a part sustained with infinite verve and accomplishment through many months, but always a part. Yes, it had been a part which she had sustained so brilliantly that she had nearly ruined the well-mounted but not very brilliant play in which she had been performing. The dowager had been right when she had expressed her fears for the effect upon Tony of his wife's behavior. She had considered her warning as kindly, but quite unnecessary; she had even pitied the poor little beaver-like dowager for likening her own position with that rake of a husband to that which Dorothy occupied in respect of the son. But the dowager had been right. Herself had risked the substance for the shadow, and in her lust for personal success she might abruptly have found that the play had stopped running. Luckily, it was not too late to remedy the mistake. Here was the scene set for a new act in which Tony must be allowed his chance. Poor old boy, he was not asking for much, and he was still so dependent upon her that it would be a pleasure to spoil him a little now. Should she not really be flattered that he loved her more than an heir to his name, his rank, and his fortune? What would it signify if the house of Clare became extinct? Would those ladies in the long gallery, those ladies simpering eternally at sea and sky, be a whit less immobile if children laughed on the lawns below? Would they blink their eyes or move a muscle of their rosy lips? Not they. And if strangers held their beauty in captivity, would they care? Not they. And if the earth fell into the sun so that nothing of poor mortality, not even Shakespeare, endured, would they simper less serenely in the moment before their painted lips blistered and were consumed? Not a whit less serenely. None of the people on other planets would care if the fifth Earl of Clarehaven was the last; even if the people of Mars had a telescope big enough to see what was happening on earth, they would only watch us with less compassion than we watch ants on a burning log.