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                                  The
                            Merry-go-round

                        By W. Somerset Maugham




                          THE MERRY-GO-ROUND




                          The Merry-go-round

                        By W. Somerset Maugham

                            [Illustration]

                               NEW YORK
                       DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
                                 1904

                      COPYRIGHT, SEPT., 1904, BY
                          W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM




PART ONE




THE MERRY-GO-ROUND




CHAPTER I


All her life Miss Elizabeth Dwarris had been a sore trial to her
relations. A woman of means, she ruled tyrannously over a large number
of impecunious cousins, using her bank-balance like the scorpions of
Rehoboam to chastise them, and, like many another pious creature, for
their soul’s good making all and sundry excessively miserable. Nurtured
in the evangelical ways current in her youth, she insisted that her
connections should seek salvation according to her own lights; and, with
harsh tongue and with bitter gibe, made it her constant business to
persuade them of their extreme unworthiness. She arranged lives as she
thought fit, and ventured not only to order the costume and habits, but
even the inner thought of those about her: the Last Judgment could have
no terrors for any that had faced her searching examination. She invited
to stay with her in succession various poor ladies who presumed on a
distant tie to call her Aunt Eliza, and they accepted her summons, more
imperious than a royal command, with gratitude by no means unmixed with
fear, bearing the servitude meekly as a cross which in the future would
meet due testamentary reward.

Miss Dwarris loved to feel her power. During these long visits--for, in
a way, the old lady was very hospitable--she made it her especial object
to break the spirit of her guests; and it entertained her hugely to see
the mildness with which were borne her extravagant demands, the humility
with which every inclination was crushed. She took a malicious pleasure
in publicly affronting persons, ostensibly to bend a sinful pride, or
in obliging them to do things which they particularly disliked. With a
singular quickness for discovering the points on which they were most
sensitive, she attacked every weakness with blind invective till the
sufferer writhed before her, raw and bleeding: no defect, physical or
mental, was protected from her raillery, and she could pardon as little
an excess of avoirdupois as a want of memory. Yet, with all her heart,
she despised her victims, she flung in their face insolently their
mercenary spirit, vowing that she would never leave a penny to such a
pack of weak fools; it delighted her to ask for advice in the
distribution of her property among charitable societies, and she heard,
with unconcealed hilarity, their unwilling and confused suggestions.

With one of her relations only, Miss Dwarris found it needful to observe
a certain restraint, for Miss Ley, perhaps the most distant of her
cousins, was as plain-spoken as herself, and had, besides, a far keener
wit whereby she could turn rash statements to the utter ridicule of the
speaker. Nor did Miss Dwarris precisely dislike this independent spirit;
she looked upon her in fact with a certain degree of affection and not a
little fear. Miss Ley, seldom lacking a repartee, appeared really to
enjoy the verbal contests, from which, by her greater urbanity,
readiness, and knowledge, she usually emerged victorious: it confounded,
but at the same time almost amused, the elder lady that a woman so much
poorer than herself, with no smaller claims than others to the coveted
inheritance, should venture not only to be facetious at her expense, but
even to carry war into her very camp. Miss Ley, really not grieved to
find some one to whom without prickings of conscience she could speak
her whole mind, took a grim pleasure in pointing out to her cousin the
poor logic of her observations or the foolish unreason of her acts. No
cherished opinion of Miss Dwarris was safe from satire--even her
evangelicism was laughed at, and the rich old woman, unused to argument,
was easily driven into self-contradiction; and then--for the victor
took no pains to conceal her triumph--she grew pale and speechless with
rage. The quarrels were