The House of Mirth

                                BY

                           EDITH WHARTON




BOOK ONE




Chapter 1


Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand
Central Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss
Lily Bart.

It was a Monday in early September, and he was returning to his
work from a hurried dip into the country; but what was Miss Bart
doing in town at that season? If she had appeared to be catching a
train, he might have inferred that he had come on her in the act
of transition between one and another of the country houses which
disputed her presence after the close of the Newport season; but
her desultory air perplexed him. She stood apart from the crowd,
letting it drift by her to the platform or the street, and wearing
an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised, be the mask of
a very definite purpose. It struck him at once that she was waiting
for some one, but he hardly knew why the idea arrested him. There
was nothing new about Lily Bart, yet he could never see her without
a faint movement of interest: it was characteristic of her that she
always roused speculation, that her simplest acts seemed the result
of far-reaching intentions.

An impulse of curiosity made him turn out of his direct line to the
door, and stroll past her. He knew that if she did not wish to be
seen she would contrive to elude him; and it amused him to think of
putting her skill to the test.

“Mr. Selden—what good luck!”

She came forward smiling, eager almost, in her resolve to intercept
him. One or two persons, in brushing past them, lingered to look;
for Miss Bart was a figure to arrest even the suburban traveller
rushing to his last train.

Selden had never seen her more radiant. Her vivid head, relieved
against the dull tints of the crowd, made her more conspicuous than
in a ball-room, and under her dark hat and veil she regained the
girlish smoothness, the purity of tint, that she was beginning to
lose after eleven years of late hours and indefatigable dancing.
Was it really eleven years, Selden found himself wondering, and had
she indeed reached the nine-and-twentieth birthday with which her
rivals credited her?

“What luck!” she repeated. “How nice of you to come to my rescue!”

He responded joyfully that to do so was his mission in life, and
asked what form the rescue was to take.

“Oh, almost any—even to sitting on a bench and talking to me. One
sits out a cotillion—why not sit out a train? It isn’t a bit hotter
here than in Mrs. Van Osburgh’s conservatory—and some of the women
are not a bit uglier.” She broke off, laughing, to explain that she
had come up to town from Tuxedo, on her way to the Gus Trenors’ at
Bellomont, and had missed the three-fifteen train to Rhinebeck.
“And there isn’t another till half-past five.” She consulted the
little jewelled watch among her laces. “Just two hours to wait. And
I don’t know what to do with myself. My maid came up this morning
to do some shopping for me, and was to go on to Bellomont at one
o’clock, and my aunt’s house is closed, and I don’t know a soul in
town.” She glanced plaintively about the station. “It IS hotter
than Mrs. Van Osburgh’s, after all. If you can spare the time, do
take me somewhere for a breath of air.”

He declared himself entirely at her disposal: the adventure struck
him as diverting. As a spectator, he had always enjoyed Lily Bart;
and his course lay so far out of her orbit that it amused him to
be drawn for a moment into the sudden intimacy which her proposal
implied.

“Shall we go over to Sherry’s for a cup of tea?”

She smiled assentingly, and then made a slight grimace.

“So many people come up to town on a Monday—one is sure to meet a
lot of bores. I’m as old as the hills, of course, and it ought not
to make any difference; but if I’M old enough, you’re not,” she
objected gaily. “I’m dying for tea—but isn’t there a quieter place?”

He answered her smile, which rested on him vividly. Her discretions
interested him almost as much as her imprudences: he was so sure
that both were part of the same carefully-elaborated plan. In
judging Miss Bart, he had always made use of the “argument from
design.”

“The resources of New York are rather meagre,” he said; “but I’ll
find a hansom first, and then we’ll invent something.” He led her
through the throng of returning holiday-makers, past sallow-faced
girls in preposterous hats, and flat-chested women struggling with
paper bundles and palm-leaf fans. Was it possible that she belonged
to the same race? The dinginess, the crudity of this average
section of womanhood made him feel how highly specialized she was.

A rapid shower had cooled the air, and clouds still hung
refreshingly over the moist street.

“How delicious! Let us walk a little,” she said as they emerged
from the station.

They turned into Madison Avenue and began to stroll northward.
As she moved beside him, with her long light step, Selden was
conscious of taking a luxurious pleasure in her nearness: in the
modelling of her little ear, the crisp upward wave of her hair—was
it ever so slightly brightened by art?—and the thick planting
of her straight black lashes. Everything about her was at once
vigorous and exquisite, at once strong and fine. He had a confused
sense that she must have cost a great deal to make, that a great
many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious way, have
been sacrificed to produce her. He was aware that the qualities
distinguishing her from the herd of her sex were chiefly external:
as though a fine glaze of beauty and fastidiousness had been
applied to vulgar clay. Yet the analogy left him unsatisfied, for a
coarse texture will not take a high finish; and was it not possible
that the material was fine, but that circumstance had fashioned it
into a futile shape?

As he reached this point in his speculations the sun came out, and
her lifted parasol cut off his enjoyment. A moment or two later she
paused with a sigh.

“Oh, dear, I’m so hot and thirsty—and what a hideous place New York
is!” She looked despairingly up and down the dreary thoroughfare.
“Other cities put on their best clothes in summer, but New York
seems to sit in its shirtsleeves.” Her eyes wandered down one of
the side streets. “Someone has had the humanity to plant a few
trees over there. Let us go into the shade.”

“I am glad my street meets with your approval,” said Selden as they
turned the corner.

“Your street? Do you live here?”

She glanced with interest along the new brick and limestone
house-fronts, fantastically varied in obedience to the American
craving for novelty, but fresh and inviting with their awnings and
flower-boxes.

“Ah, yes—to be sure: THE BENEDICK. What a nice-looking building!
I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before.” She looked across at the
flat-house with its marble porch and pseudo-Georgian facade. “Which
are your windows? Those with the awnings down?”

“On the top floor—yes.”

“And that nice little balcony is yours? How cool it looks up there!”

He paused a moment. “Come up and see,” he suggested. “I can give
you a cup of tea in no time—and you won’t meet any bores.”

Her colour deepened—she still had the art of blushing at the right
time—but she took the suggestion as lightly as it was made.

“Why not? It’s too tempting—I’ll take the risk,” she declared.

“Oh, I’m not dangerous,” he said in the same key. In truth, he
had never liked her as well as at that moment. He knew she had
accepted without afterthought: he could never be a factor in her
calculations, and there was a surprise, a refreshment almost, in
the spontaneity of her consent.

On the threshold he paused a moment, feeling for his latchkey.

“There’s no one here; but I have a servant who is supposed to come
in the mornings, and it’s just possible he may have put out the
tea-things and provided some cake.”

He ushered her into a slip of a hall hung with old prints. She
noticed the letters and notes heaped on the table among his gloves
and sticks; then she found herself in a small library, dark but
cheerful, with its walls of books, a pleasantly faded Turkey rug,
a littered desk and, as he had foretold, a tea-tray on a low table
near the window. A breeze had sprung up, swaying inward the muslin
curtains, and bringing a fresh scent of mignonette and petunias
from the flower-box on the balcony.

Lily sank with a sigh into one of the shabby leather chairs.

“How delicious to have a place like this all to one’s self! What a
miserable thing it is to be a woman.” She leaned back in a luxury
of discontent.

Selden was rummaging in a cupboard for the cake.

“Even women,” he said, “have been known to enjoy the privileges of
a flat.”

“Oh, governesses—or widows. But not girls—not poor, miserable,
marriageable girls!”

“I even know a girl who lives in a flat.”

She sat up in surprise. “You do?”

“I do,” he assured her, emerging from the cupboard with the
sought-for cake.

“Oh, I know—you mean Gerty Farish.” She smiled a little unkindly.
“But I said MARRIAGEABLE—and besides, she has a horrid little
place, and no maid, and such queer things to eat. Her cook does the
washing and the food tastes of soap. I should hate that, you know.”

“You shouldn’t dine with her on wash-days,” said Selden, cutting
the cake.

They both laughed, and he knelt by the table to light the lamp
under the kettle, while she measured out the tea into a little
tea-pot of green glaze. As he watched her hand, polished as a
bit of old ivory, with its slender pink nails, and the sapphire
bracelet slipping over her wrist, he was struck with the irony
of suggesting to her such a life as his cousin Gertrude Farish
had chosen. She was so evidently the victim of the civilization
which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like
manacles chaining her to her fate.

She seemed to read his thought. “It was horrid of me to say that of
Gerty,” she said with charming compunction. “I forgot she was your
cousin. But we’re so different, you know: she likes being good,
and I like being happy. And besides, she is free and I am not. If
I were, I daresay I could manage to be happy even in her flat. It
must be pure bliss to arrange the furniture just as one likes, and
give all the horrors to the ash-man. If I could only do over my
aunt’s drawing-room I know I should be a better woman.”

“Is it so very bad?” he asked sympathetically.

She smiled at him across the tea-pot which she was holding up to be
filled.

“That shows how seldom you come there. Why don’t you come oftener?”

“When I do come, it’s not to look at Mrs. Peniston’s furniture.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “You don’t come at all—and yet we get on so
well when we meet.”

“Perhaps that’s the reason,” he answered promptly. “I’m afraid
I haven’t any cream, you know—shall you mind a slice of lemon
instead?”

“I shall like it better.” She waited while he cut the lemon and
dropped a thin disk into her cup. “But that is not the reason,” she
insisted.

“The reason for what?”

“For your never coming.” She leaned forward with a shade of
perplexity in her charming eyes. “I wish I knew—I wish I could make
you out. Of course I know there are men who don’t like me—one can
tell that at a glance. And there are others who are afraid of me:
they think I want to marry them.” She smiled up at him frankly.
“But I don’t think you dislike me—and you can’t possibly think I
want to marry you.”

“No—I absolve you of that,” he agreed.

“Well, then——?”

He had carried his cup to the fireplace, and stood leaning against
the chimney-piece and looking down on her with an air of indolent
amusement. The provocation in her eyes increased his amusement—he
had not supposed she would waste her powder on such small game; but
perhaps she was only keeping her hand in; or perhaps a girl of her
type had no conversation but of the personal kind. At any rate, she
was amazingly pretty, and he had asked her to tea and must live up
to his obligations.

“Well, then,” he said with a plunge, “perhaps THAT’S the reason.”

“What?”

“The fact that you don’t want to marry me. Perhaps I don’t regard
it as such a strong inducement to go and see you.” He felt a slight
shiver down his spine as he ventured this, but her laugh reassured
him.

“Dear Mr. Selden, that wasn’t worthy of you. It’s stupid of you to
make love to me, and it isn’t like you to be stupid.” She leaned
back, sipping her tea with an air so enchantingly judicial that,
if they had been in her aunt’s drawing-room, he might almost have
tried to disprove her deduction.

“Don’t you see,” she continued, “that there are men enough to say
pleasant things to me, and that what I want is a friend who won’t
be afraid to say disagreeable ones when I need them? Sometimes I
have fancied you might be that friend—I don’t know why, except that
you are neither a prig nor a bounder, and that I shouldn’t have
to pretend with you or be on my guard against you.” Her voice had
dropped to a note of seriousness, and she sat gazing up at him with
the troubled gravity of a child.

“You don’t know how much I need such a friend,” she said. “My aunt
is full of copy-book axioms, but they were all meant to apply to
conduct in the early fifties. I always feel that to live up to them
would include wearing book-muslin with gigot sleeves. And the other
women—my best friends—well, they use me or abuse me; but they don’t
care a straw what happens to me. I’ve been about too long—people
are getting tired of me; they are beginning to say I ought to marry.”

There was a moment’s pause, during which Selden meditated one or
two replies calculated to add a momentary zest to the situation;
but he rejected them in favour of the simple question: “Well, why
don’t you?”

She coloured and laughed. “Ah, I see you ARE a friend after all,
and that is one of the disagreeable things I was asking for.”

“It wasn’t meant to be disagreeable,” he returned amicably. “Isn’t
marriage your vocation? Isn’t it what you’re all brought up for?”

She sighed. “I suppose so. What else is there?”

“Exactly. And so why not take the plunge and have it over?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “You speak as if I ought to marry the
first man who came along.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that you are as hard put to it as that. But
there must be some one with the requisite qualifications.”

She shook her head wearily. “I threw away one or two good chances
when I first came out—I suppose every girl does; and you know I
am horribly poor—and very expensive. I must have a great deal of
money.”

Selden had turned to reach for a cigarette-box on the mantelpiece.

“What’s become of Dillworth?” he asked.

“Oh, his mother was frightened—she was afraid I should have all the
family jewels reset. And she wanted me to promise that I wouldn’t
do over the drawing-room.”

“The very thing you are marrying for!”

“Exactly. So she packed him off to India.”

“Hard luck—but you can do better than Dillworth.”

He offered the box, and she took out three or four cigarettes,
putting one between her lips and slipping the others into a little
gold case attached to her long pearl chain.

“Have I time? Just a whiff, then.” She leaned forward, holding the
tip of her cigarette to his. As she did so, he noted, with a purely
impersonal enjoyment, how evenly the black lashes were set in her
smooth white lids, and how the purplish shade beneath them melted
into the pure pallor of the cheek.

She began to saunter about the room, examining the bookshelves
between the puffs of her cigarette-smoke. Some of the volumes
had the ripe tints of good tooling and old morocco, and her eyes
lingered on them caressingly, not with the appreciation of the
expert, but with the pleasure in agreeable tones and textures that
was one of her inmost susceptibilities. Suddenly her expression
changed from desultory enjoyment to active conjecture, and she
turned to Selden with a question.

“You collect, don’t you—you know about first editions and things?”

“As much as a man may who has no money to spend. Now and then I
pick up something in the rubbish heap; and I go and look on at the
big sales.”

She had again addressed herself to the shelves, but her eyes now
swept them inattentively, and he saw that she was preoccupied with
a new idea.

“And Americana—do you collect Americana?”

Selden stared and laughed.

“No, that’s rather out of my line. I’m not really a collector, you
see; I simply like to have good editions of the books I am fond of.”

She made a slight grimace. “And Americana are horribly dull, I
suppose?”

“I should fancy so—except to the historian. But your real collector
values a thing for its rarity. I don’t suppose the buyers of
Americana sit up reading them all night—old Jefferson Gryce
certainly didn’t.”

She was listening with keen attention. “And yet they fetch fabulous
prices, don’t they? It seems so odd to want to pay a lot for an
ugly badly-printed book that one is never going to read! And I
suppose most of the owners of Americana are not historians either?”

“No; very few of the historians can afford to buy them. They have
to use those in the public libraries or in private collections. It
seems to be the mere rarity that attracts the average collector.”

He had seated himself on an arm of the chair near which she was
standing, and she continued to question him, asking which were the
rarest volumes, whether the Jefferson Gryce collection was really
considered the finest in the world, and what was the largest price
ever fetched by a single volume.

It was so pleasant to sit there looking up at her, as she lifted
now one book and then another from the shelves, fluttering the
pages between her fingers, while her drooping profile was outlined
against the warm background of old bindings, that he talked on
without pausing to wonder at her sudden interest in so unsuggestive
a subject. But he could never be long with her without trying to
find a reason for what she was doing, and as she replaced his
first edition of La Bruyere and turned away from the bookcases,
he began to ask himself what she had been driving at. Her next
question was not of a nature to enlighten him. She paused before
him with a smile which seemed at once designed to admit him to her
familiarity, and to remind him of the restrictions it imposed.

“Don’t you ever mind,” she asked suddenly, “not being rich enough
to buy all the books you want?”

He followed her glance about the room, with its worn furniture and
shabby walls.

“Don’t I just? Do you take me for a saint on a pillar?”

“And having to work—do you mind that?”

“Oh, the work itself is not so bad—I’m rather fond of the law.”

“No; but the being tied down: the routine—don’t you ever want to
get away, to see new places and people?”

“Horribly—especially when I see all my friends rushing to the
steamer.”

She drew a sympathetic breath. “But do you mind enough—to marry to
get out of it?”

Selden broke into a laugh. “God forbid!” he declared.

She rose with a sigh, tossing her cigarette into the grate.

“Ah, there’s the difference—a girl must, a man may if he chooses.”
She surveyed him critically. “Your coat’s a little shabby—but who
cares? It doesn’t keep people from asking you to dine. If I were
shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out as much for
her clothes as for herself. The clothes are the background, the
frame, if you like: they don’t make success, but they are a part
of it. Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected to be pretty and
well-dressed till we drop—and if we can’t keep it up alone, we have
to go into partnership.”

Selden glanced at her with amusement: it was impossible, even with
her lovely eyes imploring him, to take a sentimental view of her
case.

“Ah, well, there must be plenty of capital on the look-out for
such an investment. Perhaps you’ll meet your fate tonight at the
Trenors’.”

She returned his look interrogatively.

“I thought you might be going there—oh, not in that capacity! But
there are to be a lot of your set—Gwen Van Osburgh, the Wetheralls,
Lady Cressida Raith—and the George Dorsets.”

She paused a moment before the last name, and shot a query through
her lashes; but he remained imperturbable.

“Mrs. Trenor asked me; but I can’t get away till the end of the
week; and those big parties bore me.”

“Ah, so they do me,” she exclaimed.

“Then why go?”

“It’s part of the business—you forget! And besides, if I didn’t, I
should be playing bezique with my aunt at Richfield Springs.”

“That’s almost as bad as marrying Dillworth,” he agreed, and they
both laughed for pure pleasure in their sudden intimacy.

She glanced at the clock.

“Dear me! I must be off. It’s after five.”

She paused before the mantelpiece, studying herself in the mirror
while she adjusted her veil. The attitude revealed the long slope
of her slender sides, which gave a kind of wild-wood grace to
her outline—as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the
conventions of the drawing-room; and Selden reflected that it was
the same streak of sylvan freedom in her nature that lent such
savour to her artificiality.

He followed her across the room to the entrance-hall; but on the
threshold she held out her hand with a gesture of leave-taking.

“It’s been delightful; and now you will have to return my visit.”

“But don’t you want me to see you to the station?”

“No; good bye here, please.”

She let her hand lie in his a moment, smiling up at him adorably.

“Good bye, then—and good luck at Bellomont!” he said, opening the
door for her.

On the landing she paused to look about her. There were a thousand
chances to one against her meeting anybody, but one could never
tell, and she always paid for her rare indiscretions by a violent
reaction of prudence. There was no one in sight, however, but a
char-woman who was scrubbing the stairs. Her own stout person and
its surrounding implements took up so much room that Lily, to pass
her, had to gather up her skirts and brush against the wall. As
she did so, the woman paused in her work and looked up curiously,
resting her clenched red fists on the wet cloth she had just drawn
from her pail. She had a broad sallow face, slightly pitted with
small-pox, and thin straw-coloured hair through which her scalp
shone unpleasantly.

“I beg your pardon,” said Lily, intending by her politeness to
convey a criticism of the other’s manner.

The woman, without answering, pushed her pail aside, and continued
to stare as Miss Bart swept by with a murmur of silken linings.
Lily felt herself flushing under the look. What did the creature
suppose? Could one never do the simplest, the most harmless thing,
without subjecting one’s self to some odious conjecture? Half way
down the next flight, she smiled to think that a char-woman’s stare
should so perturb her. The poor thing was probably dazzled by such
an unwonted apparition. But WERE such apparitions unwonted on
Selden’s stairs? Miss Bart was not familiar with the moral code of
bachelors’ flat-houses, and her colour rose again as it occurred to
her that the woman’s persistent gaze implied a groping among past
associations. But she put aside the thought with a smile at her own
fears, and hastened downward, wondering if she should find a cab
short of Fifth Avenue.

Under the Georgian porch she paused again, scanning the street for
a hansom. None was in sight, but as she reached the sidewalk she
ran against a small glossy-looking man with a gardenia in his coat,
who raised his hat with a surprised exclamation.

“Miss Bart? Well—of all people! This IS luck,” he declared; and she
caught a twinkle of amused curiosity between his screwed-up lids.

“Oh, Mr. Rosedale—how are you?” she said, perceiving that the
irrepressible annoyance on her face was reflected in the sudden
intimacy of his smile.

Mr. Rosedale stood scanning her with interest and approval. He
was a plump rosy man of the blond Jewish type, with smart London
clothes fitting him like upholstery, and small sidelong eyes which
gave him the air of appraising people as if they were bric-a-brac.
He glanced up interrogatively at the porch of the Benedick.

“Been up to town for a little shopping, I suppose?” he said, in a
tone which had the familiarity of a touch.

Miss Bart shrank from it slightly, and then flung herself into
precipitate explanations.

“Yes—I came up to see my dress-maker. I am just on my way to catch
the train to the Trenors’.”

“Ah—your dress-maker; just so,” he said blandly. “I didn’t know
there were any dress-makers in the Benedick.”

“The Benedick?” She looked gently puzzled. “Is that the name of
this building?”

“Yes, that’s the name: I believe it’s an old word for bachelor,
isn’t it? I happen to own the building—that’s the way I know.” His
smile deepened as he added with increasing assurance: “But you must
let me take you to the station. The Trenors are at Bellomont, of
course? You’ve barely time to catch the five-forty. The dress-maker
kept you waiting, I suppose.”

Lily stiffened under the pleasantry.

“Oh, thanks,” she stammered; and at that moment her eye caught
a hansom drifting down Madison Avenue, and she hailed it with a
desperate gesture.

“You’re very kind; but I couldn’t think of troubling you,” she
said, extending her hand to Mr. Rosedale; and heedless of his
protestations, she sprang into the rescuing vehicle, and called out
a breathless order to the driver.




Chapter 2


In the hansom she leaned back with a sigh. Why must a girl pay so
dearly for her least escape from routine? Why could one never do
a natural thing without having to screen it behind a structure of
artifice? She had yielded to a passing impulse in going to Lawrence
Selden’s rooms, and it was so seldom that she could allow herself
the luxury of an impulse! This one, at any rate, was going to cost
her rather more than she could afford. She was vexed to see that,
in spite of so many years of vigilance, she had blundered twice
within five minutes. That stupid story about her dress-maker was
bad enough—it would have been so simple to tell Rosedale that she
had been taking tea with Selden! The mere statement of the fact
would have rendered it innocuous. But, after having let herself
be surprised in a falsehood, it was doubly stupid to snub the
witness of her discomfiture. If she had had the presence of mind to
let Rosedale drive her to the station, the concession might have
purchased his silence. He had his race’s accuracy in the appraisal
of values, and to be seen walking down the platform at the crowded
afternoon hour in the company of Miss Lily Bart would have been
money in his pocket, as he might himself have phrased it. He knew,
of course, that there would be a large house-party at Bellomont,
and the possibility of being taken for one of Mrs. Trenor’s guests
was doubtless included in his calculations. Mr. Rosedale was still
at a stage in his social ascent when it was of importance to
produce such impressions.

The provoking part was that Lily knew all this—knew how easy it
would have been to silence him on the spot, and how difficult it
might be to do so afterward. Mr. Simon Rosedale was a man who
made it his business to know everything about every one, whose
idea of showing himself to be at home in society was to display
an inconvenient familiarity with the habits of those with whom
he wished to be thought intimate. Lily was sure that within
twenty-four hours the story of her visiting her dress-maker at
the Benedick would be in active circulation among Mr. Rosedale’s
acquaintances. The worst of it was that she had always snubbed and
ignored him. On his first appearance—when her improvident cousin,
Jack Stepney, had obtained for him (in return for favours too
easily guessed) a card to one of the vast impersonal Van Osburgh
“crushes”—Rosedale, with that mixture of artistic sensibility and
business astuteness which characterizes his race, had instantly
gravitated toward Miss Bart. She understood his motives, for
her own course was guided by as nice calculations. Training and
experience had taught her to be hospitable to newcomers, since the
most unpromising might be useful later on, and there were plenty
of available OUBLIETTES to swallow them if they were not. But
some intuitive repugnance, getting the better of years of social
discipline, had made her push Mr. Rosedale into his OUBLIETTE
without a trial. He had left behind only the ripple of amusement
which his speedy despatch had caused among her friends; and though
later (to shift the metaphor) he reappeared lower down the stream,
it was only in fleeting glimpses, with long submergences between.

Hitherto Lily had been undisturbed by scruples. In her little set
Mr. Rosedale had been pronounced “impossible,” and Jack Stepney
roundly snubbed for his attempt to pay his debts in dinner
invitations. Even Mrs. Trenor, whose taste for variety had led
her into some hazardous experiments, resisted Jack’s attempts to
disguise Mr. Rosedale as a novelty, and declared that he was the
same little Jew who had been served up and rejected at the social
board a dozen times within her memory; and while Judy Trenor was
obdurate there was small chance of Mr. Rosedale’s penetrating
beyond the outer limbo of the Van Osburgh crushes. Jack gave up the
contest with a laughing “You’ll see,” and, sticking manfully to his
guns, showed himself with Rosedale at the fashionable restaurants,
in company with the personally vivid if socially obscure ladies who
are available for such purposes. But the attempt had hitherto been
vain, and as Rosedale undoubtedly paid for the dinners, the laugh
remained with his debtor.

Mr. Rosedale, it will be seen, was thus far not a factor to be
feared—unless one put one’s self in his power. And this was
precisely what Miss Bart had done. Her clumsy fib had let him see
that she had something to conceal; and she was sure he had a score
to settle with her. Something in his smile told her he had not
forgotten. She turned from the thought with a little shiver, but
it hung on her all the way to the station, and dogged her down the
platform with the persistency of Mr. Rosedale himself.

She had just time to take her seat before the train started; but
having arranged herself in her corner with the instinctive feeling
for effect which never forsook her, she glanced about in the hope
of seeing some other member of the Trenors’ party. She wanted to
get away from herself, and conversation was the only means of
escape that she knew.

Her search was rewarded by the discovery of a very blond young man
with a soft reddish beard, who, at the other end of the carriage,
appeared to be dissembling himself behind an unfolded newspaper.
Lily’s eye brightened, and a faint smile relaxed the drawn lines
of her mouth. She had known that Mr. Percy Gryce was to be at
Bellomont, but she had not counted on the luck of having him to
herself in the train; and the fact banished all perturbing thoughts
of Mr. Rosedale. Perhaps, after all, the day was to end more
favourably than it had begun.

She began to cut the pages of a novel, tranquilly studying her
prey through downcast lashes while she organized a method of
attack. Something in his attitude of conscious absorption told
her that he was aware of her presence: no one had ever been quite
so engrossed in an evening paper! She guessed that he was too shy
to come up to her, and that she would have to devise some means
of approach which should not appear to be an advance on her part.
It amused her to think that any one as rich as Mr. Percy Gryce
should be shy; but she was gifted with treasures of indulgence for
such idiosyncrasies, and besides, his timidity might serve her
purpose better than too much assurance. She had the art of giving
self-confidence to the embarrassed, but she was not equally sure of
being able to embarrass the self-confident.

She waited till the train had emerged from the tunnel and was
racing between the ragged edges of the northern suburbs. Then,
as it lowered its speed near Yonkers, she rose from her seat and
drifted slowly down the carriage. As she passed Mr. Gryce, the
train gave a lurch, and he was aware of a slender hand gripping the
back of his chair. He rose with a start, his ingenuous face looking
as though it had been dipped in crimson: even the reddish tint in
his beard seemed to deepen. The train swayed again, almost flinging
Miss Bart into his arms.

She steadied herself with a laugh and drew back; but he was
enveloped in the scent of her dress, and his shoulder had felt her
fugitive touch.

“Oh, Mr. Gryce, is it you? I’m so sorry—I was trying to find the
porter and get some tea.”

She held out her hand as the train resumed its level rush, and they
stood exchanging a few words in the aisle. Yes—he was going to
Bellomont. He had heard she was to be of the party—he blushed again
as he admitted it. And was he to be there for a whole week? How
delightful!

But at this point one or two belated passengers from the last
station forced their way into the carriage, and Lily had to retreat
to her seat.

“The chair next to mine is empty—do take it,” she said over her
shoulder; and Mr. Gryce, with considerable embarrassment, succeeded
in effecting an exchange which enabled him to transport himself and
his bags to her side.

“Ah—and here is the porter, and perhaps we can have some tea.”

She signalled to that official, and in a moment, with the ease that
seemed to attend the fulfilment of all her wishes, a little table
had been set up between the seats, and she had helped Mr. Gryce to
bestow his encumbering properties beneath it.

When the tea came he watched her in silent fascination while
her hands flitted above the tray, looking miraculously fine and
slender in contrast to the coarse china and lumpy bread. It seemed
wonderful to him that any one should perform with such careless
ease the difficult task of making tea in public in a lurching
train. He would never have dared to order it for himself, lest he
should attract the notice of his fellow-passengers; but, secure in
the shelter of her conspicuousness, he sipped the inky draught with
a delicious sense of exhilaration.

Lily, with the flavour of Selden’s caravan tea on her lips, had
no great fancy to drown it in the railway brew which seemed such
nectar to her companion; but, rightly judging that one of the
charms of tea is the fact of drinking it together, she proceeded
to give the last touch to Mr. Gryce’s enjoyment by smiling at him
across her lifted cup.

“Is it quite right—I haven’t made it too strong?” she asked
solicitously; and he replied with conviction that he had never
tasted better tea.

“I daresay it is true,” she reflected; and her imagination was
fired by the thought that Mr. Gryce, who might have sounded the
depths of the most complex self-indulgence, was perhaps actually
taking his first journey alone with a pretty woman.

It struck her as providential that she should be the instrument
of his initiation. Some girls would not have known how to
manage him. They would have over-emphasized the novelty of the
adventure, trying to make him feel in it the zest of an escapade.
But Lily’s methods were more delicate. She remembered that her
cousin Jack Stepney had once defined Mr. Gryce as the young man
who had promised his mother never to go out in the rain without
his overshoes; and acting on this hint, she resolved to impart a
gently domestic air to the scene, in the hope that her companion,
instead of feeling that he was doing something reckless or unusual,
would merely be led to dwell on the advantage of always having a
companion to make one’s tea in the train.

But in spite of her efforts, conversation flagged after the tray
had been removed, and she was driven to take a fresh measurement
of Mr. Gryce’s limitations. It was not, after all, opportunity but
imagination that he lacked: he had a mental palate which would
never learn to distinguish between railway tea and nectar. There
was, however, one topic she could rely on: one spring that she
had only to touch to set his simple machinery in motion. She had
refrained from touching it because it was a last resource, and she
had relied on other arts to stimulate other sensations; but as a
settled look of dulness began to creep over his candid features,
she saw that extreme measures were necessary.

“And how,” she said, leaning forward, “are you getting on with your
Americana?”

His eye became a degree less opaque: it was as though an incipient
film had been removed from it, and she felt the pride of a skilful
operator.

“I’ve got a few new things,” he said, suffused with pleasure, but
lowering his voice as though he feared his fellow-passengers might
be in league to despoil him.

She returned a sympathetic enquiry, and gradually he was drawn
on to talk of his latest purchases. It was the one subject which
enabled him to forget himself, or allowed him, rather, to remember
himself without constraint, because he was at home in it, and could
assert a superiority that there were few to dispute. Hardly any of
his acquaintances cared for Americana, or knew anything about them;
and the consciousness of this ignorance threw Mr. Gryce’s knowledge
into agreeable relief. The only difficulty was to introduce the
topic and to keep it to the front; most people showed no desire to
have their ignorance dispelled, and Mr. Gryce was like a merchant
whose warehouses are crammed with an unmarketable commodity.

But Miss Bart, it appeared, really did want to know about
Americana; and moreover, she was already sufficiently informed to
make the task of farther instruction as easy as it was agreeable.
She questioned him intelligently, she heard him submissively; and,
prepared for the look of lassitude which usually crept over his
listeners’ faces, he grew eloquent under her receptive gaze. The
“points” she had had the presence of mind to glean from Selden, in
anticipation of this very contingency, were serving her to such
good purpose that she began to think her visit to him had been the
luckiest incident of the day. She had once more shown her talent
for profiting by the unexpected, and dangerous theories as to the
advisability of yielding to impulse were germinating under the
surface of smiling attention which she continued to present to her
companion.

Mr. Gryce’s sensations, if less definite, were equally agreeable.
He felt the confused titillation with which the lower organisms
welcome the gratification of their needs, and all his senses
floundered in a vague well-being, through which Miss Bart’s
personality was dimly but pleasantly perceptible.

Mr. Gryce’s interest in Americana had not originated with himself:
it was impossible to think of him as evolving any taste of his
own. An uncle had left him a collection already noted among
bibliophiles; the existence of the collection was the only fact
that had ever shed glory on the name of Gryce, and the nephew took
as much pride in his inheritance as though it had been his own
work. Indeed, he gradually came to regard it as such, and to feel a
sense of personal complacency when he chanced on any reference to
the Gryce Americana. Anxious as he was to avoid personal notice, he
took, in the printed mention of his name, a pleasure so exquisite
and excessive that it seemed a compensation for his shrinking from
publicity.

To enjoy the sensation as often as possible, he subscribed to all
the reviews dealing with book-collecting in general, and American
history in particular, and as allusions to his library abounded
in the pages of these journals, which formed his only reading, he
came to regard himself as figuring prominently in the public eye,
and to enjoy the thought of the interest which would be excited
if the persons he met in the street, or sat among in travelling,
were suddenly to be told that he was the possessor of the Gryce
Americana.

Most timidities have such secret compensations, and Miss Bart was
discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in
proportion to the outer self-depreciation. With a more confident
person she would not have dared to dwell so long on one topic,
or to show such exaggerated interest in it; but she had rightly
guessed that Mr. Gryce’s egoism was a thirsty soil, requiring
constant nurture from without. Miss Bart had the gift of following
an undercurrent of thought while she appeared to be sailing on the
surface of conversation; and in this case her mental excursion
took the form of a rapid survey of Mr. Percy Gryce’s future as
combined with her own. The Gryces were from Albany, and but lately
introduced to the metropolis, where the mother and son had come,
after old Jefferson Gryce’s death, to take possession of his house
in Madison Avenue—an appalling house, all brown stone without and
black walnut within, with the Gryce library in a fire-proof annex
that looked like a mausoleum. Lily, however, knew all about them:
young Mr. Gryce’s arrival had fluttered the maternal breasts of
New York, and when a girl has no mother to palpitate for her she
must needs be on the alert for herself. Lily, therefore, had not
only contrived to put herself in the young man’s way, but had made
the acquaintance of Mrs. Gryce, a monumental woman with the voice
of a pulpit orator and a mind preoccupied with the iniquities of
her servants, who came sometimes to sit with Mrs. Peniston and
learn from that lady how she managed to prevent the kitchen-maid’s
smuggling groceries out of the house. Mrs. Gryce had a kind of
impersonal benevolence: cases of individual need she regarded
with suspicion, but she subscribed to Institutions when their
annual reports showed an impressive surplus. Her domestic duties
were manifold, for they extended from furtive inspections of the
servants’ bedrooms to unannounced descents to the cellar; but she
had never allowed herself many pleasures. Once, however, she had
had a special edition of the Sarum Rule printed in rubric and
presented to every clergyman in the diocese; and the gilt album in
which their letters of thanks were pasted formed the chief ornament
of her drawing-room table.

Percy had been brought up in the principles which so excellent a
woman was sure to inculcate. Every form of prudence and suspicion
had been grafted on a nature originally reluctant and cautious,
with the result that it would have seemed hardly needful for Mrs.
Gryce to extract his promise about the overshoes, so little likely
was he to hazard himself abroad in the rain. After attaining his
majority, and coming into the fortune which the late Mr. Gryce had
made out of a patent device for excluding fresh air from hotels,
the young man continued to live with his mother in Albany; but
on Jefferson Gryce’s death, when another large property passed
into her son’s hands, Mrs. Gryce thought that what she called his
“interests” demanded his presence in New York. She accordingly
installed herself in the Madison Avenue house, and Percy, whose
sense of duty was not inferior to his mother’s, spent all his week
days in the handsome Broad Street office where a batch of pale men
on small salaries had grown grey in the management of the Gryce
estate, and where he was initiated with becoming reverence into
every detail of the art of accumulation.

As far as Lily could learn, this had hitherto been Mr. Gryce’s only
occupation, and she might have been pardoned for thinking it not
too hard a task to interest a young man who had been kept on such
low diet. At any rate, she felt herself so completely in command of
the situation that she yielded to a sense of security in which all
fear of Mr. Rosedale, and of the difficulties on which that fear
was contingent, vanished beyond the edge of thought.

The stopping of the train at Garrisons would not have distracted
her from these thoughts, had she not caught a sudden look of
distress in her companion’s eye. His seat faced toward the door,
and she guessed that he had been perturbed by the approach of an
acquaintance; a fact confirmed by the turning of heads and general
sense of commotion which her own entrance into a railway-carriage
was apt to produce.

She knew the symptoms at once, and was not surprised to be hailed
by the high notes of a pretty woman, who entered the train
accompanied by a maid, a bull-terrier, and a footman staggering
under a load of bags and dressing-cases.

“Oh, Lily—are you going to Bellomont? Then you can’t let me
have your seat, I suppose? But I MUST have a seat in this
carriage—porter, you must find me a place at once. Can’t some one
be put somewhere else? I want to be with my friends. Oh, how do you
do, Mr. Gryce? Do please make him understand that I must have a
seat next to you and Lily.”

Mrs. George Dorset, regardless of the mild efforts of a traveller
with a carpet-bag, who was doing his best to make room for her
by getting out of the train, stood in the middle of the aisle,
diffusing about her that general sense of exasperation which a
pretty woman on her travels not infrequently creates.

She was smaller and thinner than Lily Bart, with a restless
pliability of pose, as if she could have been crumpled up and run
through a ring, like the sinuous draperies she affected. Her small
pale face seemed the mere setting of a pair of dark exaggerated
eyes, of which the visionary gaze contrasted curiously with her
self-assertive tone and gestures; so that, as one of her friends
observed, she was like a disembodied spirit who took up a great
deal of room.

Having finally discovered that the seat adjoining Miss Bart’s
was at her disposal, she possessed herself of it with a farther
displacement of her surroundings, explaining meanwhile that she had
come across from Mount Kisco in her motor-car that morning, and had
been kicking her heels for an hour at Garrisons, without even the
alleviation of a cigarette, her brute of a husband having neglected
to replenish her case before they parted that morning.

“And at this hour of the day I don’t suppose you’ve a single one
left, have you, Lily?” she plaintively concluded.

Miss Bart caught the startled glance of Mr. Percy Gryce, whose own
lips were never defiled by tobacco.

“What an absurd question, Bertha!” she exclaimed, blushing at the
thought of the store she had laid in at Lawrence Selden’s.

“Why, don’t you smoke? Since when have you given it up? What—you
never—— And you don’t either, Mr. Gryce? Ah, of course—how stupid
of me—I understand.”

And Mrs. Dorset leaned back against her travelling cushions with a
smile which made Lily wish there had been no vacant seat beside her
own.




Chapter 3


Bridge at Bellomont usually lasted till the small hours; and when
Lily went to bed that night she had played too long for her own
good.

Feeling no desire for the self-communion which awaited her in her
room, she lingered on the broad stairway, looking down into the
hall below, where the last card-players were grouped about the tray
of tall glasses and silver-collared decanters which the butler had
just placed on a low table near the fire.

The hall was arcaded, with a gallery supported on columns of
pale yellow marble. Tall clumps of flowering plants were grouped
against a background of dark foliage in the angles of the walls.
On the crimson carpet a deer-hound and two or three spaniels dozed
luxuriously before the fire, and the light from the great central
lantern overhead shed a brightness on the women’s hair and struck
sparks from their jewels as they moved.

There were moments when such scenes delighted Lily, when they
gratified her sense of beauty and her craving for the external
finish of life; there were others when they gave a sharper edge
to the meagreness of her own opportunities. This was one of the
moments when the sense of contrast was uppermost, and she turned
away impatiently as Mrs. George Dorset, glittering in serpentine
spangles, drew Percy Gryce in her wake to a confidential nook
beneath the gallery.

It was not that Miss Bart was afraid of losing her newly-acquired
hold over Mr. Gryce. Mrs. Dorset might startle or dazzle him,
but she had neither the skill nor the patience to effect his
capture. She was too self-engrossed to penetrate the recesses of
his shyness, and besides, why should she care to give herself the
trouble? At most it might amuse her to make sport of his simplicity
for an evening—after that he would be merely a burden to her, and
knowing this, she was far too experienced to encourage him. But
the mere thought of that other woman, who could take a man up and
toss him aside as she willed, without having to regard him as a
possible factor in her plans, filled Lily Bart with envy. She had
been bored all the afternoon by Percy Gryce—the mere thought seemed
to waken an echo of his droning voice—but she could not ignore him
on the morrow, she must follow up her success, must submit to more
boredom, must be ready with fresh compliances and adaptabilities,
and all on the bare chance that he might ultimately decide to do
her the honour of boring her for life.

It was a hateful fate—but how escape from it? What choice had she?
To be herself, or a Gerty Farish. As she entered her bedroom, with
its softly-shaded lights, her lace dressing-gown lying across
the silken bedspread, her little embroidered slippers before the
fire, a vase of carnations filling the air with perfume, and
the last novels and magazines lying uncut on a table beside the
reading-lamp, she had a vision of Miss Farish’s cramped flat, with
its cheap conveniences and hideous wall-papers. No; she was not
made for mean and shabby surroundings, for the squalid compromises
of poverty. Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury; it
was the background she required, the only climate she could breathe
in. But the luxury of others was not what she wanted. A few years
ago it had sufficed her: she had taken her daily meed of pleasure
without caring who provided it. Now she was beginning to chafe at
the obligations it imposed, to feel herself a mere pensioner on the
splendour which had once seemed to belong to her. There were even
moments when she was conscious of having to pay her way.

For a long time she had refused to play bridge. She knew she could
not afford it, and she was afraid of acquiring so expensive a
taste. She had seen the danger exemplified in more than one of her
associates—in young Ned Silverton, for instance, the charming fair
boy now seated in abject rapture at the elbow of Mrs. Fisher, a
striking divorcee with eyes and gowns as emphatic as the head-lines
of her “case.” Lily could remember when young Silverton had
stumbled into their circle, with the air of a strayed Arcadian
who has published charming sonnets in his college journal. Since
then he had developed a taste for Mrs. Fisher and bridge, and the
latter at least had involved him in expenses from which he had been
more than once rescued by harassed maiden sisters, who treasured
the sonnets, and went without sugar in their tea to keep their
darling afloat. Ned’s case was familiar to Lily: she had seen his
charming eyes—which had a good deal more poetry in them than the
sonnets—change from surprise to amusement, and from amusement
to anxiety, as he passed under the spell of the terrible god of
chance; and she was afraid of discovering the same symptoms in her
own case.

For in the last year she had found that her hostesses expected her
to take a place at the card-table. It was one of the taxes she
had to pay for their prolonged hospitality, and for the dresses
and trinkets which occasionally replenished her insufficient
wardrobe. And since she had played regularly the passion had grown
on her. Once or twice of late she had won a large sum, and instead
of keeping it against future losses, had spent it in dress or
jewelry; and the desire to atone for this imprudence, combined
with the increasing exhilaration of the game, drove her to risk
higher stakes at each fresh venture. She tried to excuse herself
on the plea that, in the Trenor set, if one played at all one must
either play high or be set down as priggish or stingy; but she knew
that the gambling passion was upon her, and that in her present
surroundings there was small hope of resisting it.

Tonight the luck had been persistently bad, and the little gold
purse which hung among her trinkets was almost empty when she
returned to her room. She unlocked the wardrobe, and taking out her
jewel-case, looked under the tray for the roll of bills from which
she had replenished the purse before going down to dinner. Only
twenty dollars were left: the discovery was so startling that for a
moment she fancied she must have been robbed. Then she took paper
and pencil, and seating herself at the writing-table, tried to
reckon up what she had spent during the day. Her head was throbbing
with fatigue, and she had to go over the figures again and again;
but at last it became clear to her that she had lost three hundred
dollars at cards. She took out her cheque-book to see if her
balance was larger than she remembered, but found she had erred
in the other direction. Then she returned to her calculations;
but figure as she would, she could not conjure back the vanished
three hundred dollars. It was the sum she had set aside to pacify
her dress-maker—unless she should decide to use it as a sop to the
jeweller. At any rate, she had so many uses for it that its very
insufficiency had caused her to play high in the hope of doubling
it. But of course she had lost—she who needed every penny, while
Bertha Dorset, whose husband showered money on her, must have
pocketed at least five hundred, and Judy Trenor, who could have
afforded to lose a thousand a night, had left the table clutching
such a heap of bills that she had been unable to shake hands with
her guests when they bade her good night.

A world in which such things could be seemed a miserable place
to Lily Bart; but then she had never been able to understand the
laws of a universe which was so ready to leave her out of its
calculations.

She began to undress without ringing for her maid, whom she had
sent to bed. She had been long enough in bondage to other people’s
pleasure to be considerate of those who depended on hers, and in
her bitter moods it sometimes struck her that she and her maid were
in the same position, except that the latter received her wages
more regularly.

As she sat before the mirror brushing her hair, her face looked
hollow and pale, and she was frightened by two little lines near
her mouth, faint flaws in the smooth curve of the cheek.

“Oh, I must stop worrying!” she exclaimed. “Unless it’s the
electric light——” she reflected, springing up from her seat and
lighting the candles on the dressing-table.

She turned out the wall-lights, and peered at herself between the
candle-flames. The white oval of her face swam out waveringly from
a background of shadows, the uncertain light blurring it like a
haze; but the two lines about the mouth remained.

Lily rose and undressed in haste.

“It is only because I am tired and have such odious things to think
about,” she kept repeating; and it seemed an added injustice that
petty cares should leave a trace on the beauty which was her only
defence against them.

But the odious things were there, and remained with her. She
returned wearily to the thought of Percy Gryce, as a wayfarer picks
up a heavy load and toils on after a brief rest. She was almost
sure she had “landed” him: a few days’ work and she would win her
reward. But the reward itself seemed unpalatable just then: she
could get no zest from the thought of victory. It would be a rest
from worry, no more—and how little that would have seemed to her
a few years earlier! Her ambitions had shrunk gradually in the
desiccating air of failure. But why had she failed? Was it her own
fault or that of destiny?

She remembered how her mother, after they had lost their money, used
to say to her with a kind of fierce vindictiveness: “But you’ll get
it all back—you’ll get it all back, with your face.”... The
remembrance roused a whole train of association, and she lay in the
darkness reconstructing the past out of which her present had grown.

A house in which no one ever dined at home unless there was
“company”; a door-bell perpetually ringing; a hall-table showered
with square envelopes which were opened in haste, and oblong
envelopes which were allowed to gather dust in the depths of a
bronze jar; a series of French and English maids giving warning
amid a chaos of hurriedly-ransacked wardrobes and dress-closets;
an equally changing dynasty of nurses and footmen; quarrels in the
pantry, the kitchen and the drawing-room; precipitate trips to
Europe, and returns with gorged trunks and days of interminable
unpacking; semi-annual discussions as to where the summer should
be spent, grey interludes of economy and brilliant reactions of
expense—such was the setting of Lily Bart’s first memories.

Ruling the turbulent element called home was the vigorous and
determined figure of a mother still young enough to dance her
ball-dresses to rags, while the hazy outline of a neutral-tinted
father filled an intermediate space between the butler and the man
who came to wind the clocks. Even to the eyes of infancy, Mrs.
Hudson Bart had appeared young; but Lily could not recall the time
when her father had not been bald and slightly stooping, with
streaks of grey in his hair, and a tired walk. It was a shock to
her to learn afterward that he was but two years older than her
mother.

Lily seldom saw her father by daylight. All day he was “downtown”;
and in winter it was long after nightfall when she heard his fagged
step on the stairs and his hand on the school-room door. He would
kiss her in silence, and ask one or two questions of the nurse or
the governess; then Mrs. Bart’s maid would come to remind him that
he was dining out, and he would hurry away with a nod to Lily. In
summer, when he joined them for a Sunday at Newport or Southampton,
he was even more effaced and silent than in winter. It seemed
to tire him to rest, and he would sit for hours staring at the
sea-line from a quiet corner of the verandah, while the clatter of
his wife’s existence went on unheeded a few feet off. Generally,
however, Mrs. Bart and Lily went to Europe for the summer, and
before the steamer was half way over Mr. Bart had dipped below the
horizon. Sometimes his daughter heard him denounced for having
neglected to forward Mrs. Bart’s remittances; but for the most part
he was never mentioned or thought of till his patient stooping
figure presented itself on the New York dock as a buffer between
the magnitude of his wife’s luggage and the restrictions of the
American custom-house.

In this desultory yet agitated fashion life went on through Lily’s
teens: a zig-zag broken course down which the family craft glided
on a rapid current of amusement, tugged at by the underflow of
a perpetual need—the need of more money. Lily could not recall
the time when there had been money enough, and in some vague way
her father seemed always to blame for the deficiency. It could
certainly not be the fault of Mrs. Bart, who was spoken of by her
friends as a “wonderful manager.” Mrs. Bart was famous for the
unlimited effect she produced on limited means; and to the lady and
her acquaintances there was something heroic in living as though
one were much richer than one’s bank-book denoted.

Lily was naturally proud of her mother’s aptitude in this line: she
had been brought up in the faith that, whatever it cost, one must
have a good cook, and be what Mrs. Bart called “decently dressed.”
Mrs. Bart’s worst reproach to her husband was to ask him if he
expected her to “live like a pig”; and his replying in the negative
was always regarded as a justification for cabling to Paris for an
extra dress or two, and telephoning to the jeweller that he might,
after all, send home the turquoise bracelet which Mrs. Bart had
looked at that morning.

Lily knew people who “lived like pigs,” and their appearance and
surroundings justified her mother’s repugnance to that form of
existence. They were mostly cousins, who inhabited dingy houses
with engravings from Cole’s Voyage of Life on the drawing-room
walls, and slatternly parlour-maids who said “I’ll go and see”
to visitors calling at an hour when all right-minded persons are
conventionally if not actually out. The disgusting part of it was
that many of these cousins were rich, so that Lily imbibed the idea
that if people lived like pigs it was from choice, and through the
lack of any proper standard of conduct. This gave her a sense of
reflected superiority, and she did not need Mrs. Bart’s comments on
the family frumps and misers to foster her naturally lively taste
for splendour.

Lily was nineteen when circumstances caused her to revise her view
of the universe.

The previous year she had made a dazzling debut fringed by a heavy
thunder-cloud of bills. The light of the debut still lingered on
the horizon, but the cloud had thickened; and suddenly it broke.
The suddenness added to the horror; and there were still times
when Lily relived with painful vividness every detail of the day
on which the blow fell. She and her mother had been seated at the
luncheon-table, over the CHAUFROIX and cold salmon of the previous
night’s dinner: it was one of Mrs. Bart’s few economies to consume
in private the expensive remnants of her hospitality. Lily was
feeling the pleasant languor which is youth’s penalty for dancing
till dawn; but her mother, in spite of a few lines about the mouth,
and under the yellow waves on her temples, was as alert, determined
and high in colour as if she had risen from an untroubled sleep.

In the centre of the table, between the melting MARRONS GLACES
and candied cherries, a pyramid of American Beauties lifted their
vigorous stems; they held their heads as high as Mrs. Bart, but
their rose-colour had turned to a dissipated purple, and Lily’s
sense of fitness was disturbed by their reappearance on the
luncheon-table.

“I really think, mother,” she said reproachfully, “we might
afford a few fresh flowers for luncheon. Just some jonquils or
lilies-of-the-valley—”

Mrs. Bart stared. Her own fastidiousness had its eye fixed on the
world, and she did not care how the luncheon-table looked when
there was no one present at it but the family. But she smiled at
her daughter’s innocence.

“Lilies-of-the-valley,” she said calmly, “cost two dollars a dozen
at this season.”

Lily was not impressed. She knew very little of the value of money.

“It would not take more than six dozen to fill that bowl,” she
argued.

“Six dozen what?” asked her father’s voice in the doorway.

The two women looked up in surprise; though it was a Saturday, the
sight of Mr. Bart at luncheon was an unwonted one. But neither
his wife nor his daughter was sufficiently interested to ask an
explanation.

Mr. Bart dropped into a chair, and sat gazing absently at the
fragment of jellied salmon which the butler had placed before him.

“I was only saying,” Lily began, “that I hate to see faded flowers
at luncheon; and mother says a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley would
not cost more than twelve dollars. Mayn’t I tell the florist to
send a few every day?”

She leaned confidently toward her father: he seldom refused her
anything, and Mrs. Bart had taught her to plead with him when her
own entreaties failed.

Mr. Bart sat motionless, his gaze still fixed on the salmon, and
his lower jaw dropped; he looked even paler than usual, and his
thin hair lay in untidy streaks on his forehead. Suddenly he looked
at his daughter and laughed. The laugh was so strange that Lily
coloured under it: she disliked being ridiculed, and her father
seemed to see something ridiculous in the request. Perhaps he
thought it foolish that she should trouble him about such a trifle.

“Twelve dollars—twelve dollars a day for flowers? Oh, certainly, my
dear—give him an order for twelve hundred.” He continued to laugh.

Mrs. Bart gave him a quick glance.

“You needn’t wait, Poleworth—I will ring for you,” she said to the
butler.

The butler withdrew with an air of silent disapproval, leaving the
remains of the CHAUFROIX on the sideboard.

“What is the matter, Hudson? Are you ill?” said Mrs. Bart severely.

She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making,
and it was odious to her that her husband should make a show of
himself before the servants.

“Are you ill?” she repeated.

“Ill?—— No, I’m ruined,” he said.

Lily made a frightened sound, and Mrs. Bart rose to her feet.

“Ruined——?” she cried; but controlling herself instantly, she
turned a calm face to Lily.

“Shut the pantry door,” she said.

Lily obeyed, and when she turned back into the room her father was
sitting with both elbows on the table, the plate of salmon between
them, and his head bowed on his hands.

Mrs. Bart stood over him with a white face which made her hair
unnaturally yellow. She looked at Lily as the latter approached:
her look was terrible, but her voice was modulated to a ghastly
cheerfulness.

“Your father is not well—he doesn’t know what he is saying. It
is nothing—but you had better go upstairs; and don’t talk to the
servants,” she added.

Lily obeyed; she always obeyed when her mother spoke in that
voice. She had not been deceived by Mrs. Bart’s words: she knew
at once that they were ruined. In the dark hours which followed,
that awful fact overshadowed even her father’s slow and difficult
dying. To his wife he no longer counted: he had become extinct
when he ceased to fulfil his purpose, and she sat at his side
with the provisional air of a traveller who waits for a belated
train to start. Lily’s feelings were softer: she pitied him in a
frightened ineffectual way. But the fact that he was for the most
part unconscious, and that his attention, when she stole into the
room, drifted away from her after a moment, made him even more of a
stranger than in the nursery days when he had never come home till
after dark. She seemed always to have seen him through a blur—first
of sleepiness, then of distance and indifference—and now the fog
had thickened till he was almost indistinguishable. If she could
have performed any little services for him, or have exchanged with
him a few of those affecting words which an extensive perusal of
fiction had led her to connect with such occasions, the filial
instinct might have stirred in her; but her pity, finding no active
expression, remained in a state of spectatorship, overshadowed by
her mother’s grim unflagging resentment. Every look and act of Mrs.
Bart’s seemed to say: “You are sorry for him now—but you will feel
differently when you see what he has done to us.”

It was a relief to Lily when her father died.

Then a long winter set in. There was a little money left, but to
Mrs. Bart it seemed worse than nothing—the mere mockery of what
she was entitled to. What was the use of living if one had to live
like a pig? She sank into a kind of furious apathy, a state of
inert anger against fate. Her faculty for “managing” deserted her,
or she no longer took sufficient pride in it to exert it. It was
well enough to “manage” when by so doing one could keep one’s own
carriage; but when one’s best contrivance did not conceal the fact
that one had to go on foot, the effort was no longer worth making.

Lily and her mother wandered from place to place, now paying long
visits to relations whose house-keeping Mrs. Bart criticized, and
who deplored the fact that she let Lily breakfast in bed when the
girl had no prospects before her, and now vegetating in cheap
continental refuges, where Mrs. Bart held herself fiercely aloof
from the frugal tea-tables of her companions in misfortune. She was
especially careful to avoid her old friends and the scenes of her
former successes. To be poor seemed to her such a confession of
failure that it amounted to disgrace; and she detected a note of
condescension in the friendliest advances.

Only one thought consoled her, and that was the contemplation of
Lily’s beauty. She studied it with a kind of passion, as though
it were some weapon she had slowly fashioned for her vengeance.
It was the last asset in their fortunes, the nucleus around which
their life was to be rebuilt. She watched it jealously, as though
it were her own property and Lily its mere custodian; and she
tried to instil into the latter a sense of the responsibility that
such a charge involved. She followed in imagination the career
of other beauties, pointing out to her daughter what might be
achieved through such a gift, and dwelling on the awful warning of
those who, in spite of it, had failed to get what they wanted: to
Mrs. Bart, only stupidity could explain the lamentable denouement
of some of her examples. She was not above the inconsistency of
charging fate, rather than herself, with her own misfortunes; but
she inveighed so acrimoniously against love-matches that Lily would
have fancied her own marriage had been of that nature, had not Mrs.
Bart frequently assured her that she had been “talked into it”—by
whom, she never made clear.

Lily was duly impressed by the magnitude of her opportunities. The
dinginess of her present life threw into enchanting relief the
existence to which she felt herself entitled. To a less illuminated
intelligence Mrs. Bart’s counsels might have been dangerous; but
Lily understood that beauty is only the raw material of conquest,
and that to convert it into success other arts are required. She
knew that to betray any sense of superiority was a subtler form of
the stupidity her mother denounced, and it did not take her long
to learn that a beauty needs more tact than the possessor of an
average set of features.

Her ambitions were not as crude as Mrs. Bart’s. It had been among
that lady’s grievances that her husband—in the early days, before
he was too tired—had wasted his evenings in what she vaguely
described as “reading poetry”; and among the effects packed off to
auction after his death were a score or two of dingy volumes which
had struggled for existence among the boots and medicine bottles of
his dressing-room shelves. There was in Lily a vein of sentiment,
perhaps transmitted from this source, which gave an idealizing
touch to her most prosaic purposes. She liked to think of her
beauty as a power for good, as giving her the opportunity to attain
a position where she should make her influence felt in the vague
diffusion of refinement and good taste. She was fond of pictures
and flowers, and of sentimental fiction, and she could not help
thinking that the possession of such tastes ennobled her desire for
worldly advantages. She would not indeed have cared to marry a man
who was merely rich: she was secretly ashamed of her mother’s crude
passion for money. Lily’s preference would have been for an English
nobleman with political ambitions and vast estates; or, for second
choice, an Italian prince with a castle in the Apennines and an
hereditary office in the Vatican. Lost causes had a romantic charm
for her, and she liked to picture herself as standing aloof from
the vulgar press of the Quirinal, and sacrificing her pleasure to
the claims of an immemorial tradition....

How long ago and how far off it all seemed! Those ambitions were
hardly more futile and childish than the earlier ones which had
centred about the possession of a French jointed doll with real
hair. Was it only ten years since she had wavered in imagination
between the English earl and the Italian prince? Relentlessly her
mind travelled on over the dreary interval....

After two years of hungry roaming Mrs. Bart had died——died of a
deep disgust. She had hated dinginess, and it was her fate to be
dingy. Her visions of a brilliant marriage for Lily had faded after
the first year.

“People can’t marry you if they don’t see you—and how can they see
you in these holes where we’re stuck?” That was the burden of her
lament; and her last adjuration to her daughter was to escape from
dinginess if she could.

“Don’t let it creep up on you and drag you down. Fight your way out
of it somehow—you’re young and can do it,” she insisted.

She had died during one of their brief visits to New York, and
there Lily at once became the centre of a family council composed
of the wealthy relatives whom she had been taught to despise
for living like pigs. It may be that they had an inkling of the
sentiments in which she had been brought up, for none of them
manifested a very lively desire for her company; indeed, the
question threatened to remain unsolved till Mrs. Peniston with a
sigh announced: “I’ll try her for a year.”

Every one was surprised, but one and all concealed their surprise,
lest Mrs. Peniston should be alarmed by it into reconsidering her
decision.

Mrs. Peniston was Mr. Bart’s widowed sister, and if she was by
no means the richest of the family group, its other members
nevertheless abounded in reasons why she was clearly destined by
Providence to assume the charge of Lily. In the first place she was
alone, and it would be charming for her to have a young companion.
Then she sometimes travelled, and Lily’s familiarity with foreign
customs—deplored as a misfortune by her more conservative
relatives—would at least enable her to act as a kind of courier.
But as a matter of fact Mrs. Peniston had not been affected by
these considerations. She had taken the girl simply because no one
else would have her, and because she had the kind of moral MAUVAISE
HONTE which makes the public display of selfishness difficult,
though it does not interfere with its private indulgence. It would
have been impossible for Mrs. Peniston to be heroic on a desert
island, but with the eyes of her little world upon her she took a
certain pleasure in her act.

She reaped the reward to which disinterestedness is entitled,
and found an agreeable companion in her niece. She had expected
to find Lily headstrong, critical and “foreign”—for even Mrs.
Peniston, though she occasionally went abroad, had the family dread
of foreignness—but the girl showed a pliancy, which, to a more
penetrating mind than her aunt’s, might have been less reassuring
than the open selfishness of youth. Misfortune had made Lily supple
instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to
break than a stiff one.

Mrs. Peniston, however, did not suffer from her niece’s
adaptability. Lily had no intention of taking advantage of her
aunt’s good-nature. She was in truth grateful for the refuge
offered her: Mrs. Peniston’s opulent interior was at least not
externally dingy. But dinginess is a quality which assumes all
manner of disguises; and Lily soon found that it was as latent
in the expensive routine of her aunt’s life as in the makeshift
existence of a continental pension.

Mrs. Peniston was one of the episodical persons who form the
padding of life. It was impossible to believe that she had herself
ever been a focus of activities. The most vivid thing about her
was the fact that her grandmother had been a Van Alstyne. This
connection with the well-fed and industrious stock of early New
York revealed itself in the glacial neatness of Mrs. Peniston’s
drawing-room and in the excellence of her cuisine. She belonged
to the class of old New Yorkers who have always lived well,
dressed expensively, and done little else; and to these inherited
obligations Mrs. Peniston faithfully conformed. She had always
been a looker-on at life, and her mind resembled one of those
little mirrors which her Dutch ancestors were accustomed to affix
to their upper windows, so that from the depths of an impenetrable
domesticity they might see what was happening in the street.

Mrs. Peniston was the owner of a country-place in New Jersey,
but she had never lived there since her husband’s death—a remote
event, which appeared to dwell in her memory chiefly as a dividing
point in the personal reminiscences that formed the staple of her
conversation. She was a woman who remembered dates with intensity,
and could tell at a moment’s notice whether the drawing-room
curtains had been renewed before or after Mr. Peniston’s last
illness.

Mrs. Peniston thought the country lonely and trees damp, and
cherished a vague fear of meeting a bull. To guard against such
contingencies she frequented the more populous watering-places,
where she installed herself impersonally in a hired house and
looked on at life through the matting screen of her verandah. In
the care of such a guardian, it soon became clear to Lily that
she was to enjoy only the material advantages of good food and
expensive clothing; and, though far from underrating these, she
would gladly have exchanged them for what Mrs. Bart had taught her
to regard as opportunities. She sighed to think what her mother’s
fierce energies would have accomplished, had they been coupled
with Mrs. Peniston’s resources. Lily had abundant energy of her
own, but it was restricted by the necessity of adapting herself to
her aunt’s habits. She saw that at all costs she must keep Mrs.
Peniston’s favour till, as Mrs. Bart would have phrased it, she
could stand on her own legs. Lily had no mind for the vagabond life
of the poor relation, and to adapt herself to Mrs. Peniston she
had, to some degree, to assume that lady’s passive attitude. She
had fancied at first that it would be easy to draw her aunt into
the whirl of her own activities, but there was a static force in
Mrs. Peniston against which her niece’s efforts spent themselves
in vain. To attempt to bring her into active relation with life
was like tugging at a piece of furniture which has been screwed
to the floor. She did not, indeed, expect Lily to remain equally
immovable: she had all the American guardian’s indulgence for the
volatility of youth.

She had indulgence also for certain other habits of her niece’s.
It seemed to her natural that Lily should spend all her money on
dress, and she supplemented the girl’s scanty income by occasional
“handsome presents” meant to be applied to the same purpose.
Lily, who was intensely practical, would have preferred a fixed
allowance; but Mrs. Peniston liked the periodical recurrence of
gratitude evoked by unexpected cheques, and was perhaps shrewd
enough to perceive that such a method of giving kept alive in her
niece a salutary sense of dependence.

Beyond this, Mrs. Peniston had not felt called upon to do anything
for her charge: she had simply stood aside and let her take the
field. Lily had taken it, at first with the confidence of assured
possessorship, then with gradually narrowing demands, till now
she found herself actually struggling for a foothold on the
broad space which had once seemed her own for the asking. How it
happened she did not yet know. Sometimes she thought it was because
Mrs. Peniston had been too passive, and again she feared it was
because she herself had not been passive enough. Had she shown an
undue eagerness for victory? Had she lacked patience, pliancy and
dissimulation? Whether she charged herself with these faults or
absolved herself from them, made no difference in the sum-total
of her failure. Younger and plainer girls had been married off by
dozens, and she was nine-and-twenty, and still Miss Bart.

She was beginning to have fits of angry rebellion against fate,
when she longed to drop out of the race and make an independent
life for herself. But what manner of life would it be? She had
barely enough money to pay her dress-makers’ bills and her gambling
debts; and none of the desultory interests which she dignified with
the name of tastes was pronounced enough to enable her to live
contentedly in obscurity. Ah, no—she was too intelligent not to be
honest with herself. She knew that she hated dinginess as much as
her mother had hated it, and to her last breath she meant to fight
against it, dragging herself up again and again above its flood
till she gained the bright pinnacles of success which presented
such a slippery surface to her clutch.




Chapter 4


The next morning, on her breakfast tray, Miss Bart found a note
from her hostess.

“Dearest Lily,” it ran, “if it is not too much of a bore to be
down by ten, will you come to my sitting-room to help me with some
tiresome things?”

Lily tossed aside the note and subsided on her pillows with a sigh.
It WAS a bore to be down by ten—an hour regarded at Bellomont as
vaguely synchronous with sunrise—and she knew too well the nature
of the tiresome things in question. Miss Pragg, the secretary,
had been called away, and there would be notes and dinner-cards
to write, lost addresses to hunt up, and other social drudgery to
perform. It was understood that Miss Bart should fill the gap in
such emergencies, and she usually recognized the obligation without
a murmur.

Today, however, it renewed the sense of servitude which the
previous night’s review of her cheque-book had produced. Everything
in her surroundings ministered to feelings of ease and amenity.
The windows stood open to the sparkling freshness of the September
morning, and between the yellow boughs she caught a perspective of
hedges and parterres leading by degrees of lessening formality to
the free undulations of the park. Her maid had kindled a little
fire on the hearth, and it contended cheerfully with the sunlight
which slanted across the moss-green carpet and caressed the curved
sides of an old marquetry desk. Near the bed stood a table holding
her breakfast tray, with its harmonious porcelain and silver,
a handful of violets in a slender glass, and the morning paper
folded beneath her letters. There was nothing new to Lily in these
tokens of a studied luxury; but, though they formed a part of her
atmosphere, she never lost her sensitiveness to their charm. Mere
display left her with a sense of superior distinction; but she felt
an affinity to all the subtler manifestations of wealth.

Mrs. Trenor’s summons, however, suddenly recalled her state of
dependence, and she rose and dressed in a mood of irritability that
she was usually too prudent to indulge. She knew that such emotions
leave lines on the face as well as in the character, and she had
meant to take warning by the little creases which her midnight
survey had revealed.

The matter of course tone of Mrs. Trenor’s greeting deepened her
irritation. If one did drag one’s self out of bed at such an hour,
and come down fresh and radiant to the monotony of note-writing,
some special recognition of the sacrifice seemed fitting. But Mrs.
Trenor’s tone showed no consciousness of the fact.

“Oh, Lily, that’s nice of you,” she merely sighed across the
chaos of letters, bills and other domestic documents which gave
an incongruously commercial touch to the slender elegance of her
writing-table.

“There are such lots of horrors this morning,” she added, clearing
a space in the centre of the confusion and rising to yield her seat
to Miss Bart.

Mrs. Trenor was a tall fair woman, whose height just saved her
from redundancy. Her rosy blondness had survived some forty years
of futile activity without showing much trace of ill-usage except
in a diminished play of feature. It was difficult to define her
beyond saying that she seemed to exist only as a hostess, not so
much from any exaggerated instinct of hospitality as because she
could not sustain life except in a crowd. The collective nature
of her interests exempted her from the ordinary rivalries of her
sex, and she knew no more personal emotion than that of hatred for
the woman who presumed to give bigger dinners or have more amusing
house-parties than herself. As her social talents, backed by Mr.
Trenor’s bank-account, almost always assured her ultimate triumph
in such competitions, success had developed in her an unscrupulous
good nature toward the rest of her sex, and in Miss Bart’s
utilitarian classification of her friends, Mrs. Trenor ranked as
the woman who was least likely to “go back” on her.

“It was simply inhuman of Pragg to go off now,” Mrs. Trenor
declared, as her friend seated herself at the desk. “She says her
sister is going to have a baby—as if that were anything to having
a house-party! I’m sure I shall get most horribly mixed up and
there will be some awful rows. When I was down at Tuxedo I asked a
lot of people for next week, and I’ve mislaid the list and can’t
remember who is coming. And this week is going to be a horrid
failure too—and Gwen Van Osburgh will go back and tell her mother
how bored people were. I did mean to ask the Wetheralls—that was a
blunder of Gus’s. They disapprove of Carry Fisher, you know. As if
one could help having Carry Fisher! It WAS foolish of her to get
that second divorce—Carry always overdoes things—but she said the
only way to get a penny out of Fisher was to divorce him and make
him pay alimony. And poor Carry has to consider every dollar. It’s
really absurd of Alice Wetherall to make such a fuss about meeting
her, when one thinks of what society is coming to. Some one said
the other day that there was a divorce and a case of appendicitis
in every family one knows. Besides, Carry is the only person who
can keep Gus in a good humour when we have bores in the house. Have
you noticed that ALL the husbands like her? All, I mean, except her
own. It’s rather clever of her to have made a specialty of devoting
herself to dull people—the field is such a large one, and she has
it practically to herself. She finds compensations, no doubt—I know
she borrows money of Gus—but then I’d PAY her to keep him in a good
humour, so I can’t complain, after all.”

Mrs. Trenor paused to enjoy the spectacle of Miss Bart’s efforts to
unravel her tangled correspondence.

“But it is only the Wetheralls and Carry,” she resumed, with a
fresh note of lament. “The truth is, I’m awfully disappointed in
Lady Cressida Raith.”

“Disappointed? Had you known her before?”

“Mercy, no—never saw her till yesterday. Lady Skiddaw sent her
over with letters to the Van Osburghs, and I heard that Maria Van
Osburgh was asking a big party to meet her this week, so I thought
it would be fun to get her away, and Jack Stepney, who knew her
in India, managed it for me. Maria was furious, and actually had
the impudence to make Gwen invite herself here, so that they
shouldn’t be QUITE out of it—if I’d known what Lady Cressida was
like, they could have had her and welcome! But I thought any
friend of the Skiddaws’ was sure to be amusing. You remember what
fun Lady Skiddaw was? There were times when I simply had to send
the girls out of the room. Besides, Lady Cressida is the Duchess
of Beltshire’s sister, and I naturally supposed she was the same
sort; but you never can tell in those English families. They are
so big that there’s room for all kinds, and it turns out that Lady
Cressida is the moral one—married a clergyman and does missionary
work in the East End. Think of my taking such a lot of trouble
about a clergyman’s wife, who wears Indian jewelry and botanizes!
She made Gus take her all through the glass-houses yesterday, and
bothered him to death by asking him the names of the plants. Fancy
treating Gus as if he were the gardener!”

Mrs. Trenor brought this out in a CRESCENDO of indignation.

“Oh, well, perhaps Lady Cressida will reconcile the Wetheralls to
meeting Carry Fisher,” said Miss Bart pacifically.

“I’m sure I hope so! But she is boring all the men horribly, and
if she takes to distributing tracts, as I hear she does, it will
be too depressing. The worst of it is that she would have been so
useful at the right time. You know we have to have the Bishop once
a year, and she would have given just the right tone to things.
I always have horrid luck about the Bishop’s visits,” added Mrs.
Trenor, whose present misery was being fed by a rapidly rising tide
of reminiscence; “last year, when he came, Gus forgot all about his
being here, and brought home the Ned Wintons and the Farleys—five
divorces and six sets of children between them!”

“When is Lady Cressida going?” Lily enquired.

Mrs. Trenor cast up her eyes in despair. “My dear, if one only
knew! I was in such a hurry to get her away from Maria that I
actually forgot to name a date, and Gus says she told some one she
meant to stop here all winter.”

“To stop here? In this house?”

“Don’t be silly—in America. But if no one else asks her—you know
they NEVER go to hotels.”

“Perhaps Gus only said it to frighten you.”

“No—I heard her tell Bertha Dorset that she had six months to put
in while her husband was taking the cure in the Engadine. You
should have seen Bertha look vacant! But it’s no joke, you know—if
she stays here all the autumn she’ll spoil everything, and Maria
Van Osburgh will simply exult.”

At this affecting vision Mrs. Trenor’s voice trembled with
self-pity.

“Oh, Judy—as if any one were ever bored at Bellomont!” Miss Bart
tactfully protested. “You know perfectly well that, if Mrs. Van
Osburgh were to get all the right people and leave you with all the
wrong ones, you’d manage to make things go off, and she wouldn’t.”

Such an assurance would usually have restored Mrs. Trenor’s
complacency; but on this occasion it did not chase the cloud from
her brow.

“It isn’t only Lady Cressida,” she lamented. “Everything has gone
wrong this week. I can see that Bertha Dorset is furious with me.”

“Furious with you? Why?”

“Because I told her that Lawrence Selden was coming; but he
wouldn’t, after all, and she’s quite unreasonable enough to think
it’s my fault.”

Miss Bart put down her pen and sat absently gazing at the note she
had begun.

“I thought that was all over,” she said.

“So it is, on his side. And of course Bertha has been idle since.
But I fancy she’s out of a job just at present—and some one gave me
a hint that I had better ask Lawrence. Well, I DID ask him—but I
couldn’t make him come; and now I suppose she’ll take it out of me
by being perfectly nasty to every one else.”

“Oh, she may take it out of HIM by being perfectly charming—to some
one else.”

Mrs. Trenor shook her head dolefully. “She knows he wouldn’t mind.
And who else is there? Alice Wetherall won’t let Lucius out of her
sight. Ned Silverton can’t take his eyes off Carry Fisher—poor boy!
Gus is bored by Bertha, Jack Stepney knows her too well—and—well,
to be sure, there’s Percy Gryce!”

She sat up smiling at the thought.

Miss Bart’s countenance did not reflect the smile.

“Oh, she and Mr. Gryce would not be likely to hit it off.”

“You mean that she’d shock him and he’d bore her? Well, that’s not
such a bad beginning, you know. But I hope she won’t take it into
her head to be nice to him, for I asked him here on purpose for
you.”

Lily laughed. “MERCI DU COMPLIMENT! I should certainly have no show
against Bertha.”

“Do you think I am uncomplimentary? I’m not really, you know. Every
one knows you’re a thousand times handsomer and cleverer than
Bertha; but then you’re not nasty. And for always getting what she
wants in the long run, commend me to a nasty woman.”

Miss Bart stared in affected reproval. “I thought you were so fond
of Bertha.”

“Oh, I am—it’s much safer to be fond of dangerous people. But she
IS dangerous—and if I ever saw her up to mischief it’s now. I can
tell by poor George’s manner. That man is a perfect barometer—he
always knows when Bertha is going to——”

“To fall?” Miss Bart suggested.

“Don’t be shocking! You know he believes in her still. And of
course I don’t say there’s any real harm in Bertha. Only she
delights in making people miserable, and especially poor George.”

“Well, he seems cut out for the part—I don’t wonder she likes more
cheerful companionship.”

“Oh, George is not as dismal as you think. If Bertha did worry him
he would be quite different. Or if she’d leave him alone, and let
him arrange his life as he pleases. But she doesn’t dare lose her
hold of him on account of the money, and so when HE isn’t jealous
she pretends to be.”

Miss Bart went on writing in silence, and her hostess sat following
her train of thought with frowning intensity.

“Do you know,” she exclaimed after a long pause, “I believe I’ll
call up Lawrence on the telephone and tell him he simply MUST come?”

“Oh, don’t,” said Lily, with a quick suffusion of colour. The blush
surprised her almost as much as it did her hostess, who, though
not commonly observant of facial changes, sat staring at her with
puzzled eyes.

“Good gracious, Lily, how handsome you are! Why? Do you dislike him
so much?”

“Not at all; I like him. But if you are actuated by the benevolent
intention of protecting me from Bertha—I don’t think I need your
protection.”

Mrs. Trenor sat up with an exclamation. “Lily!——PERCY? Do you mean
to say you’ve actually done it?”

Miss Bart smiled. “I only mean to say that Mr. Gryce and I are
getting to be very good friends.”

“H’m—I see.” Mrs. Trenor fixed a rapt eye upon her. “You know they
say he has eight hundred thousand a year—and spends nothing, except
on some rubbishy old books. And his mother has heart-disease and
will leave him a lot more. OH, LILY, DO GO SLOWLY,” her friend
adjured her.

Miss Bart continued to smile without annoyance. “I shouldn’t, for
instance,” she remarked, “be in any haste to tell him that he had a
lot of rubbishy old books.”

“No, of course not; I know you’re wonderful about getting up
people’s subjects. But he’s horribly shy, and easily shocked,
and—and——”

“Why don’t you say it, Judy? I have the reputation of being on the
hunt for a rich husband?”

“Oh, I don’t mean that; he wouldn’t believe it of you—at first,”
said Mrs. Trenor, with candid shrewdness. “But you know things are
rather lively here at times—I must give Jack and Gus a hint—and
if he thought you were what his mother would call fast—oh, well,
you know what I mean. Don’t wear your scarlet CREPE-DE-CHINE for
dinner, and don’t smoke if you can help it, Lily dear!”

Lily pushed aside her finished work with a dry smile. “You’re very
kind, Judy: I’ll lock up my cigarettes and wear that last year’s
dress you sent me this morning. And if you are really interested
in my career, perhaps you’ll be kind enough not to ask me to play
bridge again this evening.”

“Bridge? Does he mind bridge, too? Oh, Lily, what an awful life
you’ll lead! But of course I won’t—why didn’t you give me a hint
last night? There’s nothing I wouldn’t do, you poor duck, to see
you happy!”

And Mrs. Trenor, glowing with her sex’s eagerness to smooth the
course of true love, enveloped Lily in a long embrace.

“You’re quite sure,” she added solicitously, as the latter
extricated herself, “that you wouldn’t like me to telephone for
Lawrence Selden?”

“Quite sure,” said Lily.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next three days demonstrated to her own complete satisfaction
Miss Bart’s ability to manage her affairs without extraneous aid.

As she sat, on the Saturday afternoon, on the terrace at Bellomont,
she smiled at Mrs. Trenor’s fear that she might go too fast. If
such a warning had ever been needful, the years had taught her a
salutary lesson, and she flattered herself that she now knew how to
adapt her pace to the object of pursuit. In the case of Mr. Gryce
she had found it well to flutter ahead, losing herself elusively
and luring him on from depth to depth of unconscious intimacy. The
surrounding atmosphere was propitious to this scheme of courtship.
Mrs. Trenor, true to her word, had shown no signs of expecting Lily
at the bridge-table, and had even hinted to the other card-players
that they were to betray no surprise at her unwonted defection. In
consequence of this hint, Lily found herself the centre of that
feminine solicitude which envelops a young woman in the mating
season. A solitude was tacitly created for her in the crowded
existence of Bellomont, and her friends could not have shown a
greater readiness for self-effacement had her wooing been adorned
with all the attributes of romance. In Lily’s set this conduct
implied a sympathetic comprehension of her motives, and Mr. Gryce
rose in her esteem as she saw the consideration he inspired.

The terrace at Bellomont on a September afternoon was a spot
propitious to sentimental musings, and as Miss Bart stood leaning
against the balustrade above the sunken garden, at a little
distance from the animated group about the tea-table, she might
have been lost in the mazes of an inarticulate happiness. In
reality, her thoughts were finding definite utterance in the
tranquil recapitulation of the blessings in store for her. From
where she stood she could see them embodied in the form of Mr.
Gryce, who, in a light overcoat and muffler, sat somewhat nervously
on the edge of his chair, while Carry Fisher, with all the energy
of eye and gesture with which nature and art had combined to
endow her, pressed on him the duty of taking part in the task of
municipal reform.

Mrs. Fisher’s latest hobby was municipal reform. It had been
preceded by an equal zeal for socialism, which had in turn replaced
an energetic advocacy of Christian Science. Mrs. Fisher was
small, fiery and dramatic; and her hands and eyes were admirable
instruments in the service of whatever causes she happened to
espouse. She had, however, the fault common to enthusiasts of
ignoring any slackness of response on the part of her hearers, and
Lily was amused by her unconsciousness of the resistance displayed
in every angle of Mr. Gryce’s attitude. Lily herself knew that
his mind was divided between the dread of catching cold if he
remained out of doors too long at that hour, and the fear that, if
he retreated to the house, Mrs. Fisher might follow him up with a
paper to be signed. Mr. Gryce had a constitutional dislike to what
he called “committing himself,” and tenderly as he cherished his
health, he evidently concluded that it was safer to stay out of
reach of pen and ink till chance released him from Mrs. Fisher’s
toils. Meanwhile he cast agonized glances in the direction of Miss
Bart, whose only response was to sink into an attitude of more
graceful abstraction. She had learned the value of contrast in
throwing her charms into relief, and was fully aware of the extent
to which Mrs. Fisher’s volubility was enhancing her own repose.

She was roused from her musings by the approach of her cousin Jack
Stepney who, at Gwen Van Osburgh’s side, was returning across the
garden from the tennis court.

The couple in question were engaged in the same kind of romance
in which Lily figured, and the latter felt a certain annoyance in
contemplating what seemed to her a caricature of her own situation.
Miss Van Osburgh was a large girl with flat surfaces and no high
lights: Jack Stepney had once said of her that she was as reliable
as roast mutton. His own taste was in the line of less solid and
more highly-seasoned diet; but hunger makes any fare palatable, and
there had been times when Mr. Stepney had been reduced to a crust.

Lily considered with interest the expression of their faces: the
girl’s turned toward her companion’s like an empty plate held up to
be filled, while the man lounging at her side already betrayed the
encroaching boredom which would presently crack the thin veneer of
his smile.

“How impatient men are!” Lily reflected. “All Jack has to do to get
everything he wants is to keep quiet and let that girl marry him;
whereas I have to calculate and contrive, and retreat and advance,
as if I were going through an intricate dance, where one misstep
would throw me hopelessly out of time.”

As they drew nearer she was whimsically struck by a kind of family
likeness between Miss Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. There was no
resemblance of feature. Gryce was handsome in a didactic way—he
looked like a clever pupil’s drawing from a plaster-cast—while
Gwen’s countenance had no more modelling than a face painted on
a toy balloon. But the deeper affinity was unmistakable: the two
had the same prejudices and ideals, and the same quality of making
other standards non-existent by ignoring them. This attribute was
common to most of Lily’s set: they had a force of negation which
eliminated everything beyond their own range of perception. Gryce
and Miss Van Osburgh were, in short, made for each other by every
law of moral and physical correspondence——“Yet they wouldn’t look
at each other,” Lily mused, “they never do. Each of them wants a
creature of a different race, of Jack’s race and mine, with all
sorts of intuitions, sensations and perceptions that they don’t
even guess the existence of. And they always get what they want.”

She stood talking with her cousin and Miss Van Osburgh, till a
slight cloud on the latter’s brow advised her that even cousinly
amenities were subject to suspicion, and Miss Bart, mindful of the
necessity of not exciting enmities at this crucial point of her
career, dropped aside while the happy couple proceeded toward the
tea-table.

Seating herself on the upper step of the terrace, Lily leaned
her head against the honeysuckles wreathing the balustrade. The
fragrance of the late blossoms seemed an emanation of the tranquil
scene, a landscape tutored to the last degree of rural elegance.
In the foreground glowed the warm tints of the gardens. Beyond the
lawn, with its pyramidal pale-gold maples and velvety firs, sloped
pastures dotted with cattle; and through a long glade the river
widened like a lake under the silver light of September. Lily did
not want to join the circle about the tea-table. They represented
the future she had chosen, and she was content with it, but in no
haste to anticipate its joys. The certainty that she could marry
Percy Gryce when she pleased had lifted a heavy load from her
mind, and her money troubles were too recent for their removal not
to leave a sense of relief which a less discerning intelligence
might have taken for happiness. Her vulgar cares were at an end.
She would be able to arrange her life as she pleased, to soar
into that empyrean of security where creditors cannot penetrate.
She would have smarter gowns than Judy Trenor, and far, far more
jewels than Bertha Dorset. She would be free forever from the
shifts, the expedients, the humiliations of the relatively poor.
Instead of having to flatter, she would be flattered; instead of
being grateful, she would receive thanks. There were old scores
she could pay off as well as old benefits she could return. And
she had no doubts as to the extent of her power. She knew that Mr.
Gryce was of the small chary type most inaccessible to impulses
and emotions. He had the kind of character in which prudence is
a vice, and good advice the most dangerous nourishment. But Lily
had known the species before: she was aware that such a guarded
nature must find one huge outlet of egoism, and she determined to
be to him what his Americana had hitherto been: the one possession
in which he took sufficient pride to spend money on it. She knew
that this generosity to self is one of the forms of meanness, and
she resolved so to identify herself with her husband’s vanity that
to gratify her wishes would be to him the most exquisite form of
self-indulgence. The system might at first necessitate a resort
to some of the very shifts and expedients from which she intended
it should free her; but she felt sure that in a short time she
would be able to play the game in her own way. How should she have
distrusted her powers? Her beauty itself was not the mere ephemeral
possession it might have been in the hands of inexperience: her
skill in enhancing it, the care she took of it, the use she made
of it, seemed to give it a kind of permanence. She felt she could
trust it to carry her through to the end.

And the end, on the whole, was worthwhile. Life was not the mockery
she had thought it three days ago. There was room for her, after
all, in this crowded selfish world of pleasure whence, so short a
time since, her poverty had seemed to exclude her. These people
whom she had ridiculed and yet envied were glad to make a place for
her in the charmed circle about which all her desires revolved.
They were not as brutal and self-engrossed as she had fancied—or
rather, since it would no longer be necessary to flatter and humour
them, that side of their nature became less conspicuous. Society is
a revolving body which is apt to be judged according to its place
in each man’s heaven; and at present it was turning its illuminated
face to Lily.

In the rosy glow it diffused her companions seemed full of amiable
qualities. She liked their elegance, their lightness, their lack
of emphasis: even the self-assurance which at times was so like
obtuseness now seemed the natural sign of social ascendency. They
were lords of the only world she cared for, and they were ready to
admit her to their ranks and let her lord it with them. Already
she felt within her a stealing allegiance to their standards, an
acceptance of their limitations, a disbelief in the things they did
not believe in, a contemptuous pity for the people who were not
able to live as they lived.

The early sunset was slanting across the park. Through the boughs
of the long avenue beyond the gardens she caught the flash of
wheels, and divined that more visitors were approaching. There
was a movement behind her, a scattering of steps and voices:
it was evident that the party about the tea-table was breaking
up. Presently she heard a tread behind her on the terrace. She
supposed that Mr. Gryce had at last found means to escape from his
predicament, and she smiled at the significance of his coming to
join her instead of beating an instant retreat to the fireside.

She turned to give him the welcome which such gallantry deserved;
but her greeting wavered into a blush of wonder, for the man who
had approached her was Lawrence Selden.

“You see I came after all,” he said; but before she had time
to answer, Mrs. Dorset, breaking away from a lifeless colloquy
with her host, had stepped between them with a little gesture of
appropriation.




Chapter 5


The observance of Sunday at Bellomont was chiefly marked by the
punctual appearance of the smart omnibus destined to convey the
household to the little church at the gates. Whether any one got
into the omnibus or not was a matter of secondary importance,
since by standing there it not only bore witness to the orthodox
intentions of the family, but made Mrs. Trenor feel, when she
finally heard it drive away, that she had somehow vicariously made
use of it.

It was Mrs. Trenor’s theory that her daughters actually did go
to church every Sunday; but their French governess’s convictions
calling her to the rival fane, and the fatigues of the week keeping
their mother in her room till luncheon, there was seldom any one
present to verify the fact. Now and then, in a spasmodic burst of
virtue—when the house had been too uproarious over night—Gus Trenor
forced his genial bulk into a tight frock-coat and routed his
daughters from their slumbers; but habitually, as Lily explained to
Mr. Gryce, this parental duty was forgotten till the church bells
were ringing across the park, and the omnibus had driven away empty.

Lily had hinted to Mr. Gryce that this neglect of religious
observances was repugnant to her early traditions, and that during
her visits to Bellomont she regularly accompanied Muriel and Hilda
to church. This tallied with the assurance, also confidentially
imparted, that, never having played bridge before, she had been
“dragged into it” on the night of her arrival, and had lost an
appalling amount of money in consequence of her ignorance of
the game and of the rules of betting. Mr. Gryce was undoubtedly
enjoying Bellomont. He liked the ease and glitter of the life, and
the lustre conferred on him by being a member of this group of rich
and conspicuous people. But he thought it a very materialistic
society; there were times when he was frightened by the talk of the
men and the looks of the ladies, and he was glad to find that Miss
Bart, for all her ease and self-possession, was not at home in so
ambiguous an atmosphere. For this reason he had been especially
pleased to learn that she would, as usual, attend the young Trenors
to church on Sunday morning; and as he paced the gravel sweep
before the door, his light overcoat on his arm and his prayer-book
in one carefully-gloved hand, he reflected agreeably on the
strength of character which kept her true to her early training in
surroundings so subversive to religious principles.

For a long time Mr. Gryce and the omnibus had the gravel sweep to
themselves; but, far from regretting this deplorable indifference
on the part of the other guests, he found himself nourishing the
hope that Miss Bart might be unaccompanied. The precious minutes
were flying, however; the big chestnuts pawed the ground and
flecked their impatient sides with foam; the coachman seemed to be
slowly petrifying on the box, and the groom on the doorstep; and
still the lady did not come. Suddenly, however, there was a sound
of voices and a rustle of skirts in the doorway, and Mr. Gryce,
restoring his watch to his pocket, turned with a nervous start;
but it was only to find himself handing Mrs. Wetherall into the
carriage.

The Wetheralls always went to church. They belonged to the vast
group of human automata who go through life without neglecting to
perform a single one of the gestures executed by the surrounding
puppets. It is true that the Bellomont puppets did not go to
church; but others equally important did—and Mr. and Mrs.
Wetherall’s circle was so large that God was included in their
visiting-list. They appeared, therefore, punctual and resigned,
with the air of people bound for a dull “At Home,” and after them
Hilda and Muriel straggled, yawning and pinning each other’s veils
and ribbons as they came. They had promised Lily to go to church
with her, they declared, and Lily was such a dear old duck that
they didn’t mind doing it to please her, though they couldn’t
fancy what had put the idea in her head, and though for their own
part they would much rather have played lawn tennis with Jack and
Gwen, if she hadn’t told them she was coming. The Misses Trenor
were followed by Lady Cressida Raith, a weather-beaten person in
Liberty silk and ethnological trinkets, who, on seeing the omnibus,
expressed her surprise that they were not to walk across the park;
but at Mrs. Wetherall’s horrified protest that the church was
a mile away, her ladyship, after a glance at the height of the
other’s heels, acquiesced in the necessity of driving, and poor
Mr. Gryce found himself rolling off between four ladies for whose
spiritual welfare he felt not the least concern.

It might have afforded him some consolation could he have known
that Miss Bart had really meant to go to church. She had even risen
earlier than usual in the execution of her purpose. She had an idea
that the sight of her in a grey gown of devotional cut, with her
famous lashes drooped above a prayer-book, would put the finishing
touch to Mr. Gryce’s subjugation, and render inevitable a certain
incident which she had resolved should form a part of the walk they
were to take together after luncheon. Her intentions in short had
never been more definite; but poor Lily, for all the hard glaze of
her exterior, was inwardly as malleable as wax. Her faculty for
adapting herself, for entering into other people’s feelings, if it
served her now and then in small contingencies, hampered her in the
decisive moments of life. She was like a water-plant in the flux
of the tides, and today the whole current of her mood was carrying
her toward Lawrence Selden. Why had he come? Was it to see herself
or Bertha Dorset? It was the last question which, at that moment,
should have engaged her. She might better have contented herself
with thinking that he had simply responded to the despairing
summons of his hostess, anxious to interpose him between herself
and the ill-humour of Mrs. Dorset. But Lily had not rested till she
learned from Mrs. Trenor that Selden had come of his own accord.
“He didn’t even wire me—he just happened to find the trap at the
station. Perhaps it’s not over with Bertha after all,” Mrs. Trenor
musingly concluded; and went away to arrange her dinner-cards
accordingly.

Perhaps it was not, Lily reflected; but it should be soon, unless
she had lost her cunning. If Selden had come at Mrs. Dorset’s call,
it was at her own that he would stay. So much the previous evening
had told her. Mrs. Trenor, true to her simple principle of making
her married friends happy, had placed Selden and Mrs. Dorset next
to each other at dinner; but, in obedience to the time-honoured
traditions of the match-maker, she had separated Lily and Mr.
Gryce, sending in the former with George Dorset, while Mr. Gryce
was coupled with Gwen Van Osburgh.

George Dorset’s talk did not interfere with the range of his
neighbour’s thoughts. He was a mournful dyspeptic, intent on
finding out the deleterious ingredients of every dish and diverted
from this care only by the sound of his wife’s voice. On this
occasion, however, Mrs. Dorset took no part in the general
conversation. She sat talking in low murmurs with Selden, and
turning a contemptuous and denuded shoulder toward her host, who,
far from resenting his exclusion, plunged into the excesses of
the MENU with the joyous irresponsibility of a free man. To Mr.
Dorset, however, his wife’s attitude was a subject of such evident
concern that, when he was not scraping the sauce from his fish, or
scooping the moist bread-crumbs from the interior of his roll, he
sat straining his thin neck for a glimpse of her between the lights.

Mrs. Trenor, as it chanced, had placed the husband and wife on
opposite sides of the table, and Lily was therefore able to observe
Mrs. Dorset also, and by carrying her glance a few feet farther, to
set up a rapid comparison between Lawrence Selden and Mr. Gryce.
It was that comparison which was her undoing. Why else had she
suddenly grown interested in Selden? She had known him for eight
years or more: ever since her return to America he had formed a
part of her background. She had always been glad to sit next to
him at dinner, had found him more agreeable than most men, and had
vaguely wished that he possessed the other qualities needful to
fix her attention; but till now she had been too busy with her own
affairs to regard him as more than one of the pleasant accessories
of life. Miss Bart was a keen reader of her own heart, and she saw
that her sudden preoccupation with Selden was due to the fact that
his presence shed a new light on her surroundings. Not that he was
notably brilliant or exceptional; in his own profession he was
surpassed by more than one man who had bored Lily through many a
weary dinner. It was rather that he had preserved a certain social
detachment, a happy air of viewing the show objectively, of having
points of contact outside the great gilt cage in which they were
all huddled for the mob to gape at. How alluring the world outside
the cage appeared to Lily, as she heard its door clang on her! In
reality, as she knew, the door never clanged: it stood always open;
but most of the captives were like flies in a bottle, and having
once flown in, could never regain their freedom. It was Selden’s
distinction that he had never forgotten the way out.

That was the secret of his way of readjusting her vision. Lily,
turning her eyes from him, found herself scanning her little world
through his retina: it was as though the pink lamps had been shut
off and the dusty daylight let in. She looked down the long table,
studying its occupants one by one, from Gus Trenor, with his
heavy carnivorous head sunk between his shoulders, as he preyed
on a jellied plover, to his wife, at the opposite end of the long
bank of orchids, suggestive, with her glaring good-looks, of a
jeweller’s window lit by electricity. And between the two, what a
long stretch of vacuity! How dreary and trivial these people were!
Lily reviewed them with a scornful impatience: Carry Fisher, with
her shoulders, her eyes, her divorces, her general air of embodying
a “spicy paragraph”; young Silverton, who had meant to live on
proof-reading and write an epic, and who now lived on his friends
and had become critical of truffles; Alice Wetherall, an animated
visiting-list, whose most fervid convictions turned on the wording
of invitations and the engraving of dinner-cards; Wetherall, with
his perpetual nervous nod of acquiescence, his air of agreeing with
people before he knew what they were saying; Jack Stepney, with his
confident smile and anxious eyes, half way between the sheriff and
an heiress; Gwen Van Osburgh, with all the guileless confidence of
a young girl who has always been told that there is no one richer
than her father.

Lily smiled at her classification of her friends. How different
they had seemed to her a few hours ago! Then they had symbolized
what she was gaining, now they stood for what she was giving
up. That very afternoon they had seemed full of brilliant
qualities; now she saw that they were merely dull in a loud way.
Under the glitter of their opportunities she saw the poverty
of their achievement. It was not that she wanted them to be
more disinterested; but she would have liked them to be more
picturesque. And she had a shamed recollection of the way in which,
a few hours since, she had felt the centripetal force of their
standards. She closed her eyes an instant, and the vacuous routine
of the life she had chosen stretched before her like a long white
road without dip or turning: it was true she was to roll over it
in a carriage instead of trudging it on foot, but sometimes the
pedestrian enjoys the diversion of a short cut which is denied to
those on wheels.

She was roused by a chuckle which Mr. Dorset seemed to eject from
the depths of his lean throat.

“I say, do look at her,” he exclaimed, turning to Miss Bart with
lugubrious merriment—“I beg your pardon, but do just look at my
wife making a fool of that poor devil over there! One would really
suppose she was gone on him—and it’s all the other way round, I
assure you.”

Thus adjured, Lily turned her eyes on the spectacle which was
affording Mr. Dorset such legitimate mirth. It certainly appeared,
as he said, that Mrs. Dorset was the more active participant in
the scene: her neighbour seemed to receive her advances with a
temperate zest which did not distract him from his dinner. The
sight restored Lily’s good humour, and knowing the peculiar
disguise which Mr. Dorset’s marital fears assumed, she asked gaily:
“Aren’t you horribly jealous of her?”

Dorset greeted the sally with delight. “Oh, abominably—you’ve
just hit it—keeps me awake at night. The doctors tell me that’s
what has knocked my digestion out—being so infernally jealous of
her.—I can’t eat a mouthful of this stuff, you know,” he added
suddenly, pushing back his plate with a clouded countenance;
and Lily, unfailingly adaptable, accorded her radiant attention
to his prolonged denunciation of other people’s cooks, with a
supplementary tirade on the toxic qualities of melted butter.

It was not often that he found so ready an ear; and, being a man
as well as a dyspeptic, it may be that as he poured his grievances
into it he was not insensible to its rosy symmetry. At any rate he
engaged Lily so long that the sweets were being handed when she
caught a phrase on her other side, where Miss Corby, the comic
woman of the company, was bantering Jack Stepney on his approaching
engagement. Miss Corby’s role was jocularity: she always entered
the conversation with a handspring.

“And of course you’ll have Sim Rosedale as best man!” Lily heard
her fling out as the climax of her prognostications; and Stepney
responded, as if struck: “Jove, that’s an idea. What a thumping
present I’d get out of him!”

SIM ROSEDALE! The name, made more odious by its diminutive,
obtruded itself on Lily’s thoughts like a leer. It stood for one
of the many hated possibilities hovering on the edge of life. If
she did not marry Percy Gryce, the day might come when she would
have to be civil to such men as Rosedale. IF SHE DID NOT MARRY
HIM? But she meant to marry him—she was sure of him and sure of
herself. She drew back with a shiver from the pleasant paths in
which her thoughts had been straying, and set her feet once more in
the middle of the long white road.... When she went upstairs that
night she found that the late post had brought her a fresh batch of
bills. Mrs. Peniston, who was a conscientious woman, had forwarded
them all to Bellomont.

       *       *       *       *       *

Miss Bart, accordingly, rose the next morning with the most earnest
conviction that it was her duty to go to church. She tore herself
betimes from the lingering enjoyment of her breakfast tray, rang to
have her grey gown laid out, and despatched her maid to borrow a
prayer-book from Mrs. Trenor.

But her course was too purely reasonable not to contain the germs
of rebellion. No sooner were her preparations made than they roused
a smothered sense of resistance. A small spark was enough to
kindle Lily’s imagination, and the sight of the grey dress and the
borrowed prayer-book flashed a long light down the years. She would
have to go to church with Percy Gryce every Sunday. They would have
a front pew in the most expensive church in New York, and his name
would figure handsomely in the list of parish charities. In a few
years, when he grew stouter, he would be made a warden. Once in the
winter the rector would come to dine, and her husband would beg
her to go over the list and see that no DIVORCEES were included,
except those who had showed signs of penitence by being re-married
to the very wealthy. There was nothing especially arduous in this
round of religious obligations; but it stood for a fraction of that
great bulk of boredom which loomed across her path. And who could
consent to be bored on such a morning? Lily had slept well, and
her bath had filled her with a pleasant glow, which was becomingly
reflected in the clear curve of her cheek. No lines were visible
this morning, or else the glass was at a happier angle.

And the day was the accomplice of her mood: it was a day for
impulse and truancy. The light air seemed full of powdered gold;
below the dewy bloom of the lawns the woodlands blushed and
smouldered, and the hills across the river swam in molten blue.
Every drop of blood in Lily’s veins invited her to happiness.

The sound of wheels roused her from these musings, and leaning
behind her shutters she saw the omnibus take up its freight. She
was too late, then—but the fact did not alarm her. A glimpse of Mr.
Gryce’s crestfallen face even suggested that she had done wisely
in absenting herself, since the disappointment he so candidly
betrayed would surely whet his appetite for the afternoon walk.
That walk she did not mean to miss; one glance at the bills on her
writing-table was enough to recall its necessity. But meanwhile
she had the morning to herself, and could muse pleasantly on the
disposal of its hours. She was familiar enough with the habits of
Bellomont to know that she was likely to have a free field till
luncheon. She had seen the Wetheralls, the Trenor girls and Lady
Cressida packed safely into the omnibus; Judy Trenor was sure to
be having her hair shampooed; Carry Fisher had doubtless carried
off her host for a drive; Ned Silverton was probably smoking
the cigarette of young despair in his bedroom; and Kate Corby
was certain to be playing tennis with Jack Stepney and Miss Van
Osburgh. Of the ladies, this left only Mrs. Dorset unaccounted for,
and Mrs. Dorset never came down till luncheon: her doctors, she
averred, had forbidden her to expose herself to the crude air of
the morning.

To the remaining members of the party Lily gave no special thought;
wherever they were, they were not likely to interfere with her
plans. These, for the moment, took the shape of assuming a dress
somewhat more rustic and summerlike in style than the garment she
had first selected, and rustling downstairs, sunshade in hand, with
the disengaged air of a lady in quest of exercise. The great hall
was empty but for the knot of dogs by the fire, who, taking in at
a glance the outdoor aspect of Miss Bart, were upon her at once
with lavish offers of companionship. She put aside the ramming paws
which conveyed these offers, and assuring the joyous volunteers
that she might presently have a use for their company, sauntered
on through the empty drawing-room to the library at the end of the
house. The library was almost the only surviving portion of the
old manor-house of Bellomont: a long spacious room, revealing the
traditions of the mother-country in its classically-cased doors,
the Dutch tiles of the chimney, and the elaborate hob-grate with
its shining brass urns. A few family portraits of lantern-jawed
gentlemen in tie-wigs, and ladies with large head-dresses and small
bodies, hung between the shelves lined with pleasantly-shabby
books: books mostly contemporaneous with the ancestors in question,
and to which the subsequent Trenors had made no perceptible
additions. The library at Bellomont was in fact never used for
reading, though it had a certain popularity as a smoking room or
a quiet retreat for flirtation. It had occurred to Lily, however,
that it might on this occasion have been resorted to by the only
member of the party in the least likely to put it to its original
use. She advanced noiselessly over the dense old rug scattered
with easy-chairs, and before she reached the middle of the room
she saw that she had not been mistaken. Lawrence Selden was in
fact seated at its farther end; but though a book lay on his knee,
his attention was not engaged with it, but directed to a lady
whose lace-clad figure, as she leaned back in an adjoining chair,
detached itself with exaggerated slimness against the dusky leather
upholstery.

Lily paused as she caught sight of the group; for a moment she
seemed about to withdraw, but thinking better of this, she
announced her approach by a slight shake of her skirts which made
the couple raise their heads, Mrs. Dorset with a look of frank
displeasure, and Selden with his usual quiet smile. The sight of
his composure had a disturbing effect on Lily; but to be disturbed
was in her case to make a more brilliant effort at self-possession.

“Dear me, am I late?” she asked, putting a hand in his as he
advanced to greet her.

“Late for what?” enquired Mrs. Dorset tartly. “Not for luncheon,
certainly—but perhaps you had an earlier engagement?”

“Yes, I had,” said Lily confidingly.

“Really? Perhaps I am in the way, then? But Mr. Selden is entirely
at your disposal.” Mrs. Dorset was pale with temper, and her
antagonist felt a certain pleasure in prolonging her distress.

“Oh, dear, no—do stay,” she said good-humouredly. “I don’t in the
least want to drive you away.”

“You’re awfully good, dear, but I never interfere with Mr. Selden’s
engagements.”

The remark was uttered with a little air of proprietorship not lost
on its object, who concealed a faint blush of annoyance by stooping
to pick up the book he had dropped at Lily’s approach. The latter’s
eyes widened charmingly and she broke into a light laugh.

“But I have no engagement with Mr. Selden! My engagement was to go
to church; and I’m afraid the omnibus has started without me. HAS
it started, do you know?”

She turned to Selden, who replied that he had heard it drive away
some time since.

“Ah, then I shall have to walk; I promised Hilda and Muriel to go
to church with them. It’s too late to walk there, you say? Well, I
shall have the credit of trying, at any rate—and the advantage of
escaping part of the service. I’m not so sorry for myself, after
all!”

And with a bright nod to the couple on whom she had intruded, Miss
Bart strolled through the glass doors and carried her rustling
grace down the long perspective of the garden walk.

She was taking her way churchward, but at no very quick pace; a
fact not lost on one of her observers, who stood in the doorway
looking after her with an air of puzzled amusement. The truth is
that she was conscious of a somewhat keen shock of disappointment.
All her plans for the day had been built on the assumption that it
was to see her that Selden had come to Bellomont. She had expected,
when she came downstairs, to find him on the watch for her; and
she had found him, instead, in a situation which might well denote
that he had been on the watch for another lady. Was it possible,
after all, that he had come for Bertha Dorset? The latter had
acted on the assumption to the extent of appearing at an hour when
she never showed herself to ordinary mortals, and Lily, for the
moment, saw no way of putting her in the wrong. It did not occur
to her that Selden might have been actuated merely by the desire
to spend a Sunday out of town: women never learn to dispense with
the sentimental motive in their judgments of men. But Lily was not
easily disconcerted; competition put her on her mettle, and she
reflected that Selden’s coming, if it did not declare him to be
still in Mrs. Dorset’s toils, showed him to be so completely free
from them that he was not afraid of her proximity.

These thoughts so engaged her that she fell into a gait hardly
likely to carry her to church before the sermon, and at length,
having passed from the gardens to the wood-path beyond, so far
forgot her intention as to sink into a rustic seat at a bend of the
walk. The spot was charming, and Lily was not insensible to the
charm, or to the fact that her presence enhanced it; but she was
not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude except in company,
and the combination of a handsome girl and a romantic scene struck
her as too good to be wasted. No one, however, appeared to profit
by the opportunity; and after a half hour of fruitless waiting she
rose and wandered on. She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she
walked; the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life
was stale on her lips. She hardly knew what she had been seeking,
or why the failure to find it had so blotted the light from her
sky: she was only aware of a vague sense of failure, of an inner
isolation deeper than the loneliness about her.

Her footsteps flagged, and she stood gazing listlessly ahead,
digging the ferny edge of the path with the tip of her sunshade.
As she did so a step sounded behind her, and she saw Selden at her
side.

“How fast you walk!” he remarked. “I thought I should never catch
up with you.”

She answered gaily: “You must be quite breathless! I’ve been
sitting under that tree for an hour.”

“Waiting for me, I hope?” he rejoined; and she said with a vague
laugh:

“Well—waiting to see if you would come.”

“I seize the distinction, but I don’t mind it, since doing the one
involved doing the other. But weren’t you sure that I should come?”

“If I waited long enough—but you see I had only a limited time to
give to the experiment.”

“Why limited? Limited by luncheon?”

“No; by my other engagement.”

“Your engagement to go to church with Muriel and Hilda?”

“No; but to come home from church with another person.”

“Ah, I see; I might have known you were fully provided with
alternatives. And is the other person coming home this way?”

Lily laughed again. “That’s just what I don’t know; and to find
out, it is my business to get to church before the service is over.”

“Exactly; and it is my business to prevent your doing so; in which
case the other person, piqued by your absence, will form the
desperate resolve of driving back in the omnibus.”

Lily received this with fresh appreciation; his nonsense was like
the bubbling of her inner mood. “Is that what you would do in such
an emergency?” she enquired.

Selden looked at her with solemnity. “I am here to prove to you,”
he cried, “what I am capable of doing in an emergency!”

“Walking a mile in an hour—you must own that the omnibus would be
quicker!”

“Ah—but will he find you in the end? That’s the only test of
success.”

They looked at each other with the same luxury of enjoyment that
they had felt in exchanging absurdities over his tea-table; but
suddenly Lily’s face changed, and she said: “Well, if it is, he has
succeeded.”

Selden, following her glance, perceived a party of people advancing
toward them from the farther bend of the path. Lady Cressida
had evidently insisted on walking home, and the rest of the
church-goers had thought it their duty to accompany her. Lily’s
companion looked rapidly from one to the other of the two men of
the party; Wetherall walking respectfully at Lady Cressida’s side
with his little sidelong look of nervous attention, and Percy Gryce
bringing-up the rear with Mrs. Wetherall and the Trenors.

“Ah—now I see why you were getting up your Americana!” Selden
exclaimed with a note of the freest admiration but the blush with
which the sally was received checked whatever amplifications he had
meant to give it.

That Lily Bart should object to being bantered about her suitors,
or even about her means of attracting them, was so new to Selden
that he had a momentary flash of surprise, which lit up a number
of possibilities; but she rose gallantly to the defence of her
confusion, by saying, as its object approached: “That was why I was
waiting for you—to thank you for having given me so many points!”

“Ah, you can hardly do justice to the subject in such a short
time,” said Selden, as the Trenor girls caught sight of Miss Bart;
and while she signalled a response to their boisterous greeting, he
added quickly: “Won’t you devote your afternoon to it? You know I
must be off tomorrow morning. We’ll take a walk, and you can thank
me at your leisure.”




Chapter 6


The afternoon was perfect. A deeper stillness possessed the air,
and the glitter of the American autumn was tempered by a haze which
diffused the brightness without dulling it.

In the woody hollows of the park there was already a faint chill;
but as the ground rose the air grew lighter, and ascending the long
slopes beyond the high-road, Lily and her companion reached a zone
of lingering summer. The path wound across a meadow with scattered
trees; then it dipped into a lane plumed with asters and purpling
sprays of bramble, whence, through the light quiver of ash-leaves,
the country unrolled itself in pastoral distances.

Higher up, the lane showed thickening tufts of fern and of the
creeping glossy verdure of shaded slopes; trees began to overhang
it, and the shade deepened to the checkered dusk of a beech-grove.
The boles of the trees stood well apart, with only a light
feathering of undergrowth; the path wound along the edge of the
wood, now and then looking out on a sunlit pasture or on an orchard
spangled with fruit.

Lily had no real intimacy with nature, but she had a passion for
the appropriate and could be keenly sensitive to a scene which
was the fitting background of her own sensations. The landscape
outspread below her seemed an enlargement of her present mood, and
she found something of herself in its calmness, its breadth, its
long free reaches. On the nearer slopes the sugar-maples wavered
like pyres of light; lower down was a massing of grey orchards, and
here and there the lingering green of an oak-grove. Two or three
red farm-houses dozed under the apple-trees, and the white wooden
spire of a village church showed beyond the shoulder of the hill;
while far below, in a haze of dust, the high-road ran between the
fields.

“Let us sit here,” Selden suggested, as they reached an open ledge
of rock above which the beeches rose steeply between mossy boulders.

Lily dropped down on the rock, glowing with her long climb. She
sat quiet, her lips parted by the stress of the ascent, her eyes
wandering peacefully over the broken ranges of the landscape.
Selden stretched himself on the grass at her feet, tilting his hat
against the level sun-rays, and clasping his hands behind his head,
which rested against the side of the rock. He had no wish to make
her talk; her quick-breathing silence seemed a part of the general
hush and harmony of things. In his own mind there was only a lazy
sense of pleasure, veiling the sharp edges of sensation as the
September haze veiled the scene at their feet. But Lily, though her
attitude was as calm as his, was throbbing inwardly with a rush of
thoughts. There were in her at the moment two beings, one drawing
deep breaths of freedom and exhilaration, the other gasping for
air in a little black prison-house of fears. But gradually the
captive’s gasps grew fainter, or the other paid less heed to them:
the horizon expanded, the air grew stronger, and the free spirit
quivered for flight.

She could not herself have explained the sense of buoyancy which
seemed to lift and swing her above the sun-suffused world at her
feet. Was it love, she wondered, or a mere fortuitous combination
of happy thoughts and sensations? How much of it was owing to the
spell of the perfect afternoon, the scent of the fading woods, the
thought of the dulness she had fled from? Lily had no definite
experience by which to test the quality of her feelings. She had
several times been in love with fortunes or careers, but only
once with a man. That was years ago, when she first came out, and
had been smitten with a romantic passion for a young gentleman
named Herbert Melson, who had blue eyes and a little wave in
his hair. Mr. Melson, who was possessed of no other negotiable
securities, had hastened to employ these in capturing the eldest
Miss Van Osburgh: since then he had grown stout and wheezy, and was
given to telling anecdotes about his children. If Lily recalled
this early emotion it was not to compare it with that which now
possessed her; the only point of comparison was the sense of
lightness, of emancipation, which she remembered feeling, in the
whirl of a waltz or the seclusion of a conservatory, during the
brief course of her youthful romance. She had not known again
till today that lightness, that glow of freedom; but now it was
something more than a blind groping of the blood. The peculiar
charm of her feeling for Selden was that she understood it; she
could put her finger on every link of the chain that was drawing
them together. Though his popularity was of the quiet kind,
felt rather than actively expressed among his friends, she had
never mistaken his inconspicuousness for obscurity. His reputed
cultivation was generally regarded as a slight obstacle to easy
intercourse, but Lily, who prided herself on her broad-minded
recognition of literature, and always carried an Omar Khayam in
her travelling-bag, was attracted by this attribute, which she
felt would have had its distinction in an older society. It was,
moreover, one of his gifts to look his part; to have a height which
lifted his head above the crowd, and the keenly-modelled dark
features which, in a land of amorphous types, gave him the air of
belonging to a more specialized race, of carrying the impress of a
concentrated past. Expansive persons found him a little dry, and
very young girls thought him sarcastic; but this air of friendly
aloofness, as far removed as possible from any assertion of
personal advantage, was the quality which piqued Lily’s interest.
Everything about him accorded with the fastidious element in her
taste, even to the light irony with which he surveyed what seemed
to her most sacred. She admired him most of all, perhaps, for being
able to convey as distinct a sense of superiority as the richest
man she had ever met.

It was the unconscious prolongation of this thought which led her
to say presently, with a laugh: “I have broken two engagements for
you today. How many have you broken for me?”

“None,” said Selden calmly. “My only engagement at Bellomont was
with you.”

She glanced down at him, faintly smiling.

“Did you really come to Bellomont to see me?”

“Of course I did.”

Her look deepened meditatively. “Why?” she murmured, with an accent
which took all tinge of coquetry from the question.

“Because you’re such a wonderful spectacle: I always like to see
what you are doing.”

“How do you know what I should be doing if you were not here?”

Selden smiled. “I don’t flatter myself that my coming has deflected
your course of action by a hair’s breadth.”

“That’s absurd—since, if you were not here, I could obviously not
be taking a walk with you.”

“No; but your taking a walk with me is only another way of making
use of your material. You are an artist and I happen to be the bit
of colour you are using today. It’s a part of your cleverness to be
able to produce premeditated effects extemporaneously.”

Lily smiled also: his words were too acute not to strike her sense
of humour. It was true that she meant to use the accident of his
presence as part of a very definite effect; or that, at least,
was the secret pretext she had found for breaking her promise to
walk with Mr. Gryce. She had sometimes been accused of being too
eager—even Judy Trenor had warned her to go slowly. Well, she would
not be too eager in this case; she would give her suitor a longer
taste of suspense. Where duty and inclination jumped together, it
was not in Lily’s nature to hold them asunder. She had excused
herself from the walk on the plea of a headache: the horrid
headache which, in the morning, had prevented her venturing to
church. Her appearance at luncheon justified the excuse. She looked
languid, full of a suffering sweetness; she carried a scent-bottle
in her hand. Mr. Gryce was new to such manifestations; he wondered
rather nervously if she were delicate, having far-reaching fears
about the future of his progeny. But sympathy won the day, and he
besought her not to expose herself: he always connected the outer
air with ideas of exposure.

Lily had received his sympathy with languid gratitude, urging him,
since she should be such poor company, to join the rest of the
party who, after luncheon, were starting in automobiles on a visit
to the Van Osburghs at Peekskill. Mr. Gryce was touched by her
disinterestedness, and, to escape from the threatened vacuity of
the afternoon, had taken her advice and departed mournfully, in a
dust-hood and goggles: as the motor-car plunged down the avenue she
smiled at his resemblance to a baffled beetle. Selden had watched
her manoeuvres with lazy amusement. She had made no reply to his
suggestion that they should spend the afternoon together, but as
her plan unfolded itself he felt fairly confident of being included
in it. The house was empty when at length he heard her step on the
stair and strolled out of the billiard-room to join her.

She had on a hat and walking-dress, and the dogs were bounding at
her feet.

“I thought, after all, the air might do me good,” she explained;
and he agreed that so simple a remedy was worth trying.

The excursionists would be gone at least four hours; Lily and
Selden had the whole afternoon before them, and the sense of
leisure and safety gave the last touch of lightness to her spirit.
With so much time to talk, and no definite object to be led up to,
she could taste the rare joys of mental vagrancy.

She felt so free from ulterior motives that she took up his charge
with a touch of resentment.

“I don’t know,” she said, “why you are always accusing me of
premeditation.”

“I thought you confessed to it: you told me the other day that you
had to follow a certain line—and if one does a thing at all it is a
merit to do it thoroughly.”

“If you mean that a girl who has no one to think for her is obliged
to think for herself, I am quite willing to accept the imputation.
But you must find me a dismal kind of person if you suppose that I
never yield to an impulse.”

“Ah, but I don’t suppose that: haven’t I told you that your genius
lies in converting impulses into intentions?”

“My genius?” she echoed with a sudden note of weariness. “Is there
any final test of genius but success? And I certainly haven’t
succeeded.”

Selden pushed his hat back and took a side-glance at her.
“Success—what is success? I shall be interested to have your
definition.”

“Success?” She hesitated. “Why, to get as much as one can out of
life, I suppose. It’s a relative quality, after all. Isn’t that
your idea of it?”

“My idea of it? God forbid!” He sat up with sudden energy, resting
his elbows on his knees and staring out upon the mellow fields. “My
idea of success,” he said, “is personal freedom.”

“Freedom? Freedom from worries?”

“From everything—from money, from poverty, from ease and anxiety,
from all the material accidents. To keep a kind of republic of the
spirit—that’s what I call success.”

She leaned forward with a responsive flash. “I know—I know—it’s
strange; but that’s just what I’ve been feeling today.”

He met her eyes with the latent sweetness of his. “Is the feeling
so rare with you?” he said.

She blushed a little under his gaze. “You think me horribly sordid,
don’t you? But perhaps it’s rather that I never had any choice.
There was no one, I mean, to tell me about the republic of the
spirit.”

“There never is—it’s a country one has to find the way to one’s
self.”

“But I should never have found my way there if you hadn’t told me.”

“Ah, there are sign-posts—but one has to know how to read them.”

“Well, I have known, I have known!” she cried with a glow of
eagerness. “Whenever I see you, I find myself spelling out a letter
of the sign—and yesterday—last evening at dinner—I suddenly saw a
little way into your republic.”

Selden was still looking at her, but with a changed eye. Hitherto
he had found, in her presence and her talk, the aesthetic amusement
which a reflective man is apt to seek in desultory intercourse with
pretty women. His attitude had been one of admiring spectatorship,
and he would have been almost sorry to detect in her any emotional
weakness which should interfere with the fulfilment of her aims.
But now the hint of this weakness had become the most interesting
thing about her. He had come on her that morning in a moment of
disarray; her face had been pale and altered, and the diminution
of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm. THAT IS HOW SHE LOOKS
WHEN SHE IS ALONE! had been his first thought; and the second was
to note in her the change which his coming produced. It was the
danger-point of their intercourse that he could not doubt the
spontaneity of her liking. From whatever angle he viewed their
dawning intimacy, he could not see it as part of her scheme of
life; and to be the unforeseen element in a career so accurately
planned was stimulating even to a man who had renounced sentimental
experiments.

“Well,” he said, “did it make you want to see more? Are you going
to become one of us?”

He had drawn out his cigarettes as he spoke, and she reached her
hand toward the case.

“Oh, do give me one—I haven’t smoked for days!”

“Why such unnatural abstinence? Everybody smokes at Bellomont.”

“Yes—but it is not considered becoming in a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER;
and at the present moment I am a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER.”

“Ah, then I’m afraid we can’t let you into the republic.”

“Why not? Is it a celibate order?”

“Not in the least, though I’m bound to say there are not many
married people in it. But you will marry some one very rich, and
it’s as hard for rich people to get into as the kingdom of heaven.”

“That’s unjust, I think, because, as I understand it, one of the
conditions of citizenship is not to think too much about money, and
the only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of
it.”

“You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is
to have enough to breathe. That is true enough in a sense; but your
lungs are thinking about the air, if you are not. And so it is with
your rich people—they may not be thinking of money, but they’re
breathing it all the while; take them into another element and see
how they squirm and gasp!”

Lily sat gazing absently through the blue rings of her
cigarette-smoke.

“It seems to me,” she said at length, “that you spend a good deal
of your time in the element you disapprove of.”

Selden received this thrust without discomposure. “Yes; but I have
tried to remain amphibious: it’s all right as long as one’s lungs
can work in another air. The real alchemy consists in being able
to turn gold back again into something else; and that’s the secret
that most of your friends have lost.”

Lily mused. “Don’t you think,” she rejoined after a moment, “that
the people who find fault with society are too apt to regard it as
an end and not a means, just as the people who despise money speak
as if its only use were to be kept in bags and gloated over? Isn’t
it fairer to look at them both as opportunities, which may be used
either stupidly or intelligently, according to the capacity of the
user?”

“That is certainly the sane view; but the queer thing about society
is that the people who regard it as an end are those who are in it,
and not the critics on the fence. It’s just the other way with most
shows—the audience may be under the illusion, but the actors know
that real life is on the other side of the footlights. The people
who take society as an escape from work are putting it to its
proper use; but when it becomes the thing worked for it distorts
all the relations of life.” Selden raised himself on his elbow.
“Good heavens!” he went on, “I don’t underrate the decorative side
of life. It seems to me the sense of splendour has justified itself
by what it has produced. The worst of it is that so much human
nature is used up in the process. If we’re all the raw stuff of the
cosmic effects, one would rather be the fire that tempers a sword
than the fish that dyes a purple cloak. And a society like ours
wastes such good material in producing its little patch of purple!
Look at a boy like Ned Silverton—he’s really too good to be used to
refurbish anybody’s social shabbiness. There’s a lad just setting
out to discover the universe: isn’t it a pity he should end by
finding it in Mrs. Fisher’s drawing-room?”

“Ned is a dear boy, and I hope he will keep his illusions long
enough to write some nice poetry about them; but do you think it is
only in society that he is likely to lose them?”

Selden answered her with a shrug. “Why do we call all our generous
ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths? Isn’t it a sufficient
condemnation of society to find one’s self accepting such
phraseology? I very nearly acquired the jargon at Silverton’s age,
and I know how names can alter the colour of beliefs.”

She had never heard him speak with such energy of affirmation. His
habitual touch was that of the eclectic, who lightly turns over
and compares; and she was moved by this sudden glimpse into the
laboratory where his faiths were formed.

“Ah, you are as bad as the other sectarians,” she exclaimed; “why
do you call your republic a republic? It is a closed corporation,
and you create arbitrary objections in order to keep people out.”

“It is not MY republic; if it were, I should have a COUP D’ETAT and
seat you on the throne.”

“Whereas, in reality, you think I can never even get my foot across
the threshold? Oh, I understand what you mean. You despise my
ambitions—you think them unworthy of me!”

Selden smiled, but not ironically. “Well, isn’t that a tribute? I
think them quite worthy of most of the people who live by them.”

She had turned to gaze on him gravely. “But isn’t it possible that,
if I had the opportunities of these people, I might make a better
use of them? Money stands for all kinds of things—its purchasing
quality isn’t limited to diamonds and motor-cars.”


“Not in the least: you might expiate your enjoyment of them by
founding a hospital.”

“But if you think they are what I should really enjoy, you must
think my ambitions are good enough for me.”

Selden met this appeal with a laugh. “Ah, my dear Miss Bart, I am
not divine Providence, to guarantee your enjoying the things you
are trying to get!”

“Then the best you can say for me is, that after struggling to get
them I probably shan’t like them?” She drew a deep breath. “What a
miserable future you foresee for me!”

“Well—have you never foreseen it for yourself?” The slow colour
rose to her cheek, not a blush of excitement but drawn from the
deep wells of feeling; it was as if the effort of her spirit had
produced it.

“Often and often,” she said. “But it looks so much darker when you
show it to me!”

He made no answer to this exclamation, and for a while they sat
silent, while something throbbed between them in the wide quiet of
the air.

But suddenly she turned on him with a kind of vehemence. “Why do
you do this to me?” she cried. “Why do you make the things I have
chosen seem hateful to me, if you have nothing to give me instead?”

The words roused Selden from the musing fit into which he had
fallen. He himself did not know why he had led their talk along
such lines; it was the last use he would have imagined himself
making of an afternoon’s solitude with Miss Bart. But it was one
of those moments when neither seemed to speak deliberately, when
an indwelling voice in each called to the other across unsounded
depths of feeling.

“No, I have nothing to give you instead,” he said, sitting up and
turning so that he faced her. “If I had, it should be yours, you
know.”

She received this abrupt declaration in a way even stranger than
the manner of its making: she dropped her face on her hands and he
saw that for a moment she wept.

It was for a moment only, however; for when he leaned nearer and
drew down her hands with a gesture less passionate than grave, she
turned on him a face softened but not disfigured by emotion, and he
said to himself, somewhat cruelly, that even her weeping was an art.

The reflection steadied his voice as he asked, between pity and
irony: “Isn’t it natural that I should try to belittle all the
things I can’t offer you?”

Her face brightened at this, but she drew her hand away, not with
a gesture of coquetry, but as though renouncing something to which
she had no claim.

“But you belittle ME, don’t you,” she returned gently, “in being so
sure they are the only things I care for?”

Selden felt an inner start; but it was only the last quiver of his
egoism. Almost at once he answered quite simply: “But you do care
for them, don’t you? And no wishing of mine can alter that.”

He had so completely ceased to consider how far this might carry
him, that he had a distinct sense of disappointment when she turned
on him a face sparkling with derision.

“Ah,” she cried, “for all your fine phrases you’re really as great
a coward as I am, for you wouldn’t have made one of them if you
hadn’t been so sure of my answer.”

The shock of this retort had the effect of crystallizing Selden’s
wavering intentions.

“I am not so sure of your answer,” he said quietly. “And I do you
the justice to believe that you are not either.”

It was her turn to look at him with surprise; and after a
moment—“Do you want to marry me?” she asked.

He broke into a laugh. “No, I don’t want to—but perhaps I should if
you did!”

“That’s what I told you—you’re so sure of me that you can amuse
yourself with experiments.” She drew back the hand he had regained,
and sat looking down on him sadly.

“I am not making experiments,” he returned. “Or if I am, it is
not on you but on myself. I don’t know what effect they are going
to have on me—but if marrying you is one of them, I will take the
risk.”

She smiled faintly. “It would be a great risk, certainly—I have
never concealed from you how great.”

“Ah, it’s you who are the coward!” he exclaimed.

She had risen, and he stood facing her with his eyes on hers. The
soft isolation of the falling day enveloped them: they seemed
lifted into a finer air. All the exquisite influences of the
hour trembled in their veins, and drew them to each other as the
loosened leaves were drawn to the earth.

“It’s you who are the coward,” he repeated, catching her hands in
his.

She leaned on him for a moment, as if with a drop of tired wings:
he felt as though her heart were beating rather with the stress
of a long flight than the thrill of new distances. Then, drawing
back with a little smile of warning—“I shall look hideous in dowdy
clothes; but I can trim my own hats,” she declared.

They stood silent for a while after this, smiling at each other
like adventurous children who have climbed to a forbidden height
from which they discover a new world. The actual world at their
feet was veiling itself in dimness, and across the valley a clear
moon rose in the denser blue.

Suddenly they heard a remote sound, like the hum of a giant insect,
and following the high-road, which wound whiter through the
surrounding twilight, a black object rushed across their vision.

Lily started from her attitude of absorption; her smile faded and
she began to move toward the lane.

“I had no idea it was so late! We shall not be back till after
dark,” she said, almost impatiently.

Selden was looking at her with surprise: it took him a moment to
regain his usual view of her; then he said, with an uncontrollable
note of dryness: “That was not one of our party; the motor was
going the other way.”

“I know—I know——” She paused, and he saw her redden through the
twilight. “But I told them I was not well—that I should not go out.
Let us go down!” she murmured.

Selden continued to look at her; then he drew his cigarette-case
from his pocket and slowly lit a cigarette. It seemed to him
necessary, at that moment, to proclaim, by some habitual gesture
of this sort, his recovered hold on the actual: he had an almost
puerile wish to let his companion see that, their flight over, he
had landed on his feet.

She waited while the spark flickered under his curved palm; then he
held out the cigarettes to her.

She took one with an unsteady hand, and putting it to her lips,
leaned forward to draw her light from his. In the indistinctness
the little red gleam lit up the lower part of her face, and he saw
her mouth tremble into a smile.

“Were you serious?” she asked, with an odd thrill of gaiety
which she might have caught up, in haste, from a heap of stock
inflections, without having time to select the just note. Selden’s
voice was under better control. “Why not?” he returned. “You see I
took no risks in being so.” And as she continued to stand before
him, a little pale under the retort, he added quickly: “Let us go
down.”




Chapter 7


It spoke much for the depth of Mrs. Trenor’s friendship that her
voice, in admonishing Miss Bart, took the same note of personal
despair as if she had been lamenting the collapse of a house-party.

“All I can say is, Lily, that I can’t make you out!” She leaned
back, sighing, in the morning abandon of lace and muslin, turning
an indifferent shoulder to the heaped-up importunities of her desk,
while she considered, with the eye of a physician who has given up
the case, the erect exterior of the patient confronting her.

“If you hadn’t told me you were going in for him seriously—but I’m
sure you made that plain enough from the beginning! Why else did
you ask me to let you off bridge, and to keep away Carry and Kate
Corby? I don’t suppose you did it because he amused you; we could
none of us imagine your putting up with him for a moment unless
you meant to marry him. And I’m sure everybody played fair! They
all wanted to help it along. Even Bertha kept her hands off—I will
say that—till Lawrence came down and you dragged him away from
her. After that she had a right to retaliate—why on earth did you
interfere with her? You’ve known Lawrence Selden for years—why did
you behave as if you had just discovered him? If you had a grudge
against Bertha it was a stupid time to show it—you could have paid
her back just as well after you were married! I told you Bertha
was dangerous. She was in an odious mood when she came here, but
Lawrence’s turning up put her in a good humour, and if you’d only
let her think he came for HER it would have never occurred to her
to play you this trick. Oh, Lily, you’ll never do anything if
you’re not serious!”

Miss Bart accepted this exhortation in a spirit of the purest
impartiality. Why should she have been angry? It was the voice
of her own conscience which spoke to her through Mrs. Trenor’s
reproachful accents. But even to her own conscience she must trump
up a semblance of defence. “I only took a day off—I thought he
meant to stay on all this week, and I knew Mr. Selden was leaving
this morning.”

Mrs. Trenor brushed aside the plea with a gesture which laid bare
its weakness.

“He did mean to stay—that’s the worst of it. It shows that he’s
run away from you; that Bertha’s done her work and poisoned him
thoroughly.”

Lily gave a slight laugh. “Oh, if he’s running I’ll overtake him!”

Her friend threw out an arresting hand. “Whatever you do, Lily, do
nothing!”

Miss Bart received the warning with a smile. “I don’t mean,
literally, to take the next train. There are ways——” But she did
not go on to specify them.

Mrs. Trenor sharply corrected the tense. “There WERE ways—plenty
of them! I didn’t suppose you needed to have them pointed out.
But don’t deceive yourself—he’s thoroughly frightened. He has run
straight home to his mother, and she’ll protect him!”

“Oh, to the death,” Lily agreed, dimpling at the vision.

“How you can LAUGH——” her friend rebuked her; and she dropped back
to a soberer perception of things with the question: “What was it
Bertha really told him?”

“Don’t ask me—horrors! She seemed to have raked up everything. Oh,
you know what I mean—of course there isn’t anything, REALLY; but
I suppose she brought in Prince Varigliano—and Lord Hubert—and
there was some story of your having borrowed money of old Ned Van
Alstyne: did you ever?”

“He is my father’s cousin,” Miss Bart interposed.

“Well, of course she left THAT out. It seems Ned told Carry Fisher;
and she told Bertha, naturally. They’re all alike, you know: they
hold their tongues for years, and you think you’re safe, but when
their opportunity comes they remember everything.”

Lily had grown pale: her voice had a harsh note in it. “It was
some money I lost at bridge at the Van Osburghs’. I repaid it, of
course.”

“Ah, well, they wouldn’t remember that; besides, it was the idea
of the gambling debt that frightened Percy. Oh, Bertha knew her
man—she knew just what to tell him!”

In this strain Mrs. Trenor continued for nearly an hour to admonish
her friend. Miss Bart listened with admirable equanimity. Her
naturally good temper had been disciplined by years of enforced
compliance, since she had almost always had to attain her ends
by the circuitous path of other people’s; and, being naturally
inclined to face unpleasant facts as soon as they presented
themselves, she was not sorry to hear an impartial statement of
what her folly was likely to cost, the more so as her own thoughts
were still insisting on the other side of the case. Presented
in the light of Mrs. Trenor’s vigorous comments, the reckoning
was certainly a formidable one, and Lily, as she listened, found
herself gradually reverting to her friend’s view of the situation.
Mrs. Trenor’s words were moreover emphasized for her hearer by
anxieties which she herself could scarcely guess. Affluence, unless
stimulated by a keen imagination, forms but the vaguest notion of
the practical strain of poverty. Judy knew it must be “horrid” for
poor Lily to have to stop to consider whether she could afford
real lace on her petticoats, and not to have a motor-car and a
steam-yacht at her orders; but the daily friction of unpaid bills,
the daily nibble of small temptations to expenditure, were trials
as far out of her experience as the domestic problems of the
char-woman. Mrs. Trenor’s unconsciousness of the real stress of the
situation had the effect of making it more galling to Lily. While
her friend reproached her for missing the opportunity to eclipse
her rivals, she was once more battling in imagination with the
mounting tide of indebtedness from which she had so nearly escaped.
What wind of folly had driven her out again on those dark seas?

If anything was needed to put the last touch to her self-abasement
it was the sense of the way her old life was opening its ruts again
to receive her. Yesterday her fancy had fluttered free pinions
above a choice of occupations; now she had to drop to the level of
the familiar routine, in which moments of seeming brilliancy and
freedom alternated with long hours of subjection.

She laid a deprecating hand on her friend’s. “Dear Judy! I’m sorry
to have been such a bore, and you are very good to me. But you must
have some letters for me to answer—let me at least be useful.”

She settled herself at the desk, and Mrs. Trenor accepted her
resumption of the morning’s task with a sigh which implied that,
after all, she had proved herself unfit for higher uses.

The luncheon-table showed a depleted circle. All the men but Jack
Stepney and Dorset had returned to town (it seemed to Lily a last
touch of irony that Selden and Percy Gryce should have gone in the
same train), and Lady Cressida and the attendant Wetheralls had
been despatched by motor to lunch at a distant country-house. At
such moments of diminished interest it was usual for Mrs. Dorset to
keep her room till the afternoon; but on this occasion she drifted
in when luncheon was half over, hollowed-eyed and drooping, but
with an edge of malice under her indifference.

She raised her eyebrows as she looked about the table. “How few of
us are left! I do so enjoy the quiet—don’t you, Lily? I wish the
men would always stop away—it’s really much nicer without them.
Oh, you don’t count, George: one doesn’t have to talk to one’s
husband. But I thought Mr. Gryce was to stay for the rest of the
week?” she added enquiringly. “Didn’t he intend to, Judy? He’s such
a nice boy—I wonder what drove him away? He is rather shy, and I’m
afraid we may have shocked him: he has been brought up in such an
old-fashioned way. Do you know, Lily, he told me he had never seen
a girl play cards for money till he saw you doing it the other
night? And he lives on the interest of his income, and always has a
lot left over to invest!”

Mrs. Fisher leaned forward eagerly. “I do believe it is some one’s
duty to educate that young man. It is shocking that he has never
been made to realize his duties as a citizen. Every wealthy man
should be compelled to study the laws of his country.”

Mrs. Dorset glanced at her quietly. “I think he HAS studied the
divorce laws. He told me he had promised the Bishop to sign some
kind of a petition against divorce.”

Mrs. Fisher reddened under her powder, and Stepney said with
a laughing glance at Miss Bart: “I suppose he is thinking of
marriage, and wants to tinker up the old ship before he goes
aboard.”

His betrothed looked shocked at the metaphor, and George Dorset
exclaimed with a sardonic growl: “Poor devil! It isn’t the ship
that will do for him, it’s the crew.”

“Or the stowaways,” said Miss Corby brightly. “If I contemplated a
voyage with him I should try to start with a friend in the hold.”

Miss Van Osburgh’s vague feeling of pique was struggling for
appropriate expression. “I’m sure I don’t see why you laugh at him;
I think he’s very nice,” she exclaimed; “and, at any rate, a girl
who married him would always have enough to be comfortable.”

She looked puzzled at the redoubled laughter which hailed her
words, but it might have consoled her to know how deeply they had
sunk into the breast of one of her hearers.

Comfortable! At that moment the word was more eloquent to Lily
Bart than any other in the language. She could not even pause to
smile over the heiress’s view of a colossal fortune as a mere
shelter against want: her mind was filled with the vision of what
that shelter might have been to her. Mrs. Dorset’s pin-pricks did
not smart, for her own irony cut deeper: no one could hurt her as
much as she was hurting herself, for no one else—not even Judy
Trenor—knew the full magnitude of her folly.

She was roused from these unprofitable considerations by a
whispered request from her hostess, who drew her apart as they left
the luncheon-table.

“Lily, dear, if you’ve nothing special to do, may I tell Carry
Fisher that you intend to drive to the station and fetch Gus? He
will be back at four, and I know she has it in her mind to meet
him. Of course I’m very glad to have him amused, but I happen to
know that she has bled him rather severely since she’s been here,
and she is so keen about going to fetch him that I fancy she must
have got a lot more bills this morning. It seems to me,” Mrs.
Trenor feelingly concluded, “that most of her alimony is paid by
other women’s husbands!”

Miss Bart, on her way to the station, had leisure to muse over
her friend’s words, and their peculiar application to herself.
Why should she have to suffer for having once, for a few hours,
borrowed money of an elderly cousin, when a woman like Carry
Fisher could make a living unrebuked from the good-nature of her
men friends and the tolerance of their wives? It all turned on the
tiresome distinction between what a married woman might, and a
girl might not, do. Of course it was shocking for a married woman
to borrow money—and Lily was expertly aware of the implication
involved—but still, it was the mere MALUM PROHIBITUM which the
world decries but condones, and which, though it may be punished by
private vengeance, does not provoke the collective disapprobation
of society. To Miss Bart, in short, no such opportunities were
possible. She could of course borrow from her women friends—a
hundred here or there, at the utmost—but they were more ready to
give a gown or a trinket, and looked a little askance when she
hinted her preference for a cheque. Women are not generous lenders,
and those among whom her lot was cast were either in the same
case as herself, or else too far removed from it to understand
its necessities. The result of her meditations was the decision
to join her aunt at Richfield. She could not remain at Bellomont
without playing bridge, and being involved in other expenses;
and to continue her usual series of autumn visits would merely
prolong the same difficulties. She had reached a point where abrupt
retrenchment was necessary, and the only cheap life was a dull
life. She would start the next morning for Richfield.

At the station she thought Gus Trenor seemed surprised, and not
wholly unrelieved, to see her. She yielded up the reins of the
light runabout in which she had driven over, and as he climbed
heavily to her side, crushing her into a scant third of the seat,
he said: “Halloo! It isn’t often you honour me. You must have been
uncommonly hard up for something to do.”

The afternoon was warm, and propinquity made her more than usually
conscious that he was red and massive, and that beads of moisture
had caused the dust of the train to adhere unpleasantly to the
broad expanse of cheek and neck which he turned to her; but she was
aware also, from the look in his small dull eyes, that the contact
with her freshness and slenderness was as agreeable to him as the
sight of a cooling beverage.

The perception of this fact helped her to answer gaily: “It’s not
often I have the chance. There are too many ladies to dispute the
privilege with me.”

“The privilege of driving me home? Well, I’m glad you won the race,
anyhow. But I know what really happened—my wife sent you. Now
didn’t she?”

He had the dull man’s unexpected flashes of astuteness, and Lily
could not help joining in the laugh with which he had pounced on
the truth.

“You see, Judy thinks I’m the safest person for you to be with; and
she’s quite right,” she rejoined.

“Oh, is she, though? If she is, it’s because you wouldn’t waste
your time on an old hulk like me. We married men have to put up
with what we can get: all the prizes are for the clever chaps
who’ve kept a free foot. Let me light a cigar, will you? I’ve had a
beastly day of it.”

He drew up in the shade of the village street, and passed the
reins to her while he held a match to his cigar. The little flame
under his hand cast a deeper crimson on his puffing face, and Lily
averted her eyes with a momentary feeling of repugnance. And yet
some women thought him handsome!

As she handed back the reins, she said sympathetically: “Did you
have such a lot of tiresome things to do?”

“I should say so—rather!” Trenor, who was seldom listened to,
either by his wife or her friends, settled down into the rare
enjoyment of a confidential talk. “You don’t know how a fellow
has to hustle to keep this kind of thing going.” He waved his
whip in the direction of the Bellomont acres, which lay outspread
before them in opulent undulations. “Judy has no idea of what she
spends—not that there isn’t plenty to keep the thing going,” he
interrupted himself, “but a man has got to keep his eyes open and
pick up all the tips he can. My father and mother used to live
like fighting-cocks on their income, and put by a good bit of it
too—luckily for me—but at the pace we go now, I don’t know where I
should be if it weren’t for taking a flyer now and then. The women
all think—I mean Judy thinks—I’ve nothing to do but to go downtown
once a month and cut off coupons, but the truth is it takes a
devilish lot of hard work to keep the machinery running. Not that I
ought to complain today, though,” he went on after a moment, “for
I did a very neat stroke of business, thanks to Stepney’s friend
Rosedale: by the way, Miss Lily, I wish you’d try to persuade Judy
to be decently civil to that chap. He’s going to be rich enough to
buy us all out one of these days, and if she’d only ask him to dine
now and then I could get almost anything out of him. The man is mad
to know the people who don’t want to know him, and when a fellow’s
in that state there is nothing he won’t do for the first woman who
takes him up.”

Lily hesitated a moment. The first part of her companion’s
discourse had started an interesting train of thought, which was
rudely interrupted by the mention of Mr. Rosedale’s name. She
uttered a faint protest.

“But you know Jack did try to take him about, and he was
impossible.”

“Oh, hang it—because he’s fat and shiny, and has a sloppy manner!
Well, all I can say is that the people who are clever enough to be
civil to him now will make a mighty good thing of it. A few years
from now he’ll be in it whether we want him or not, and then he
won’t be giving away a half-a-million tip for a dinner.”

Lily’s mind had reverted from the intrusive personality of Mr.
Rosedale to the train of thought set in motion by Trenor’s first
words. This vast mysterious Wall Street world of “tips” and
“deals”—might she not find in it the means of escape from her
dreary predicament? She had often heard of women making money in
this way through their friends: she had no more notion than most of
her sex of the exact nature of the transaction, and its vagueness
seemed to diminish its indelicacy. She could not, indeed, imagine
herself, in any extremity, stooping to extract a “tip” from Mr.
Rosedale; but at her side was a man in possession of that precious
commodity, and who, as the husband of her dearest friend, stood to
her in a relation of almost fraternal intimacy.

In her inmost heart Lily knew it was not by appealing to the
fraternal instinct that she was likely to move Gus Trenor; but this
way of explaining the situation helped to drape its crudity, and
she was always scrupulous about keeping up appearances to herself.
Her personal fastidiousness had a moral equivalent, and when she
made a tour of inspection in her own mind there were certain closed
doors she did not open.

As they reached the gates of Bellomont she turned to Trenor with a
smile. “The afternoon is so perfect—don’t you want to drive me a
little farther? I’ve been rather out of spirits all day, and it’s
so restful to be away from people, with some one who won’t mind if
I’m a little dull.”

She looked so plaintively lovely as she proffered the request, so
trustfully sure of his sympathy and understanding, that Trenor felt
himself wishing that his wife could see how other women treated
him—not battered wire-pullers like Mrs. Fisher, but a girl that
most men would have given their boots to get such a look from.

“Out of spirits? Why on earth should you ever be out of spirits? Is
your last box of Doucet dresses a failure, or did Judy rook you out
of everything at bridge last night?”

Lily shook her head with a sigh. “I have had to give up Doucet;
and bridge too—I can’t afford it. In fact I can’t afford any of
the things my friends do, and I am afraid Judy often thinks me a
bore because I don’t play cards any longer, and because I am not as
smartly dressed as the other women. But you will think me a bore
too if I talk to you about my worries, and I only mention them
because I want you to do me a favour—the very greatest of favours.”

Her eyes sought his once more, and she smiled inwardly at the tinge
of apprehension that she read in them.

“Why, of course—if it’s anything I can manage——” He broke off, and
she guessed that his enjoyment was disturbed by the remembrance of
Mrs. Fisher’s methods.

“The greatest of favours,” she rejoined gently. “The fact is, Judy
is angry with me, and I want you to make my peace.”

“Angry with you? Oh, come, nonsense——” his relief broke through in
a laugh. “Why, you know she’s devoted to you.”

“She is the best friend I have, and that is why I mind having to
vex her. But I daresay you know what she has wanted me to do. She
has set her heart—poor dear—on my marrying—marrying a great deal of
money.”

She paused with a slight falter of embarrassment, and Trenor,
turning abruptly, fixed on her a look of growing intelligence.

“A great deal of money? Oh, by Jove—you don’t mean Gryce? What—you
do? Oh, no, of course I won’t mention it—you can trust me to keep
my mouth shut—but Gryce—good Lord, GRYCE! Did Judy really think you
could bring yourself to marry that portentous little ass? But you
couldn’t, eh? And so you gave him the sack, and that’s the reason
why he lit out by the first train this morning?” He leaned back,
spreading himself farther across the seat, as if dilated by the
joyful sense of his own discernment. “How on earth could Judy think
you would do such a thing? I could have told her you’d never put up
with such a little milksop!”

Lily sighed more deeply. “I sometimes think,” she murmured, “that
men understand a woman’s motives better than other women do.”

“Some men—I’m certain of it! I could have TOLD Judy,” he repeated,
exulting in the implied superiority over his wife.

“I thought you would understand; that’s why I wanted to speak to
you,” Miss Bart rejoined. “I can’t make that kind of marriage; it’s
impossible. But neither can I go on living as all the women in my
set do. I am almost entirely dependent on my aunt, and though she
is very kind to me she makes me no regular allowance, and lately
I’ve lost money at cards, and I don’t dare tell her about it. I
have paid my card debts, of course, but there is hardly anything
left for my other expenses, and if I go on with my present life I
shall be in horrible difficulties. I have a tiny income of my own,
but I’m afraid it’s badly invested, for it seems to bring in less
every year, and I am so ignorant of money matters that I don’t
know if my aunt’s agent, who looks after it, is a good adviser.”
She paused a moment, and added in a lighter tone: “I didn’t mean
to bore you with all this, but I want your help in making Judy
understand that I can’t, at present, go on living as one must
live among you all. I am going away tomorrow to join my aunt at
Richfield, and I shall stay there for the rest of the autumn, and
dismiss my maid and learn how to mend my own clothes.”

At this picture of loveliness in distress, the pathos of which
was heightened by the light touch with which it was drawn, a
murmur of indignant sympathy broke from Trenor. Twenty-four hours
earlier, if his wife had consulted him on the subject of Miss
Bart’s future, he would have said that a girl with extravagant
tastes and no money had better marry the first rich man she could
get; but with the subject of discussion at his side, turning to
him for sympathy, making him feel that he understood her better
than her dearest friends, and confirming the assurance by the
appeal of her exquisite nearness, he was ready to swear that such
a marriage was a desecration, and that, as a man of honour, he was
bound to do all he could to protect her from the results of her
disinterestedness. This impulse was reinforced by the reflection
that if she had married Gryce she would have been surrounded
by flattery and approval, whereas, having refused to sacrifice
herself to expediency, she was left to bear the whole cost of
her resistance. Hang it, if he could find a way out of such
difficulties for a professional sponge like Carry Fisher, who was
simply a mental habit corresponding to the physical titillations
of the cigarette or the cock-tail, he could surely do as much for
a girl who appealed to his highest sympathies, and who brought her
troubles to him with the trustfulness of a child.

Trenor and Miss Bart prolonged their drive till long after sunset;
and before it was over he had tried, with some show of success, to
prove to her that, if she would only trust him, he could make a
handsome sum of money for her without endangering the small amount
she possessed. She was too genuinely ignorant of the manipulations
of the stock-market to understand his technical explanations, or
even perhaps to perceive that certain points in them were slurred;
the haziness enveloping the transaction served as a veil for her
embarrassment, and through the general blur her hopes dilated like
lamps in a fog. She understood only that her modest investments
were to be mysteriously multiplied without risk to herself; and the
assurance that this miracle would take place within a short time,
that there would be no tedious interval for suspense and reaction,
relieved her of her lingering scruples.

Again she felt the lightening of her load, and with it the release
of repressed activities. Her immediate worries conjured, it was
easy to resolve that she would never again find herself in such
straits, and as the need of economy and self-denial receded
from her foreground she felt herself ready to meet any other
demand which life might make. Even the immediate one of letting
Trenor, as they drove homeward, lean a little nearer and rest
his hand reassuringly on hers, cost her only a momentary shiver
of reluctance. It was part of the game to make him feel that her
appeal had been an uncalculated impulse, provoked by the liking he
inspired; and the renewed sense of power in handling men, while it
consoled her wounded vanity, helped also to obscure the thought of
the claim at which his manner hinted. He was a coarse dull man who,
under all his show of authority, was a mere supernumerary in the
costly show for which his money paid: surely, to a clever girl, it
would be easy to hold him by his vanity, and so keep the obligation
on his side.




Chapter 8


The first thousand dollar cheque which Lily received with a blotted
scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence in the
exact degree to which it effaced her debts.

The transaction had justified itself by its results: she saw now
how absurd it would have been to let any primitive scruple deprive
her of this easy means of appeasing her creditors. Lily felt really
virtuous as she dispensed the sum in sops to her tradesmen, and the
fact that a fresh order accompanied each payment did not lessen her
sense of disinterestedness. How many women, in her place, would
have given the orders without making the payment!

She had found it reassuringly easy to keep Trenor in a good humour.
To listen to his stories, to receive his confidences and laugh at
his jokes, seemed for the moment all that was required of her, and
the complacency with which her hostess regarded these attentions
freed them of the least hint of ambiguity. Mrs. Trenor evidently
assumed that Lily’s growing intimacy with her husband was simply an
indirect way of returning her own kindness.

“I’m so glad you and Gus have become such good friends,” she said
approvingly. “It’s too delightful of you to be so nice to him, and
put up with all his tiresome stories. I know what they are, because
I had to listen to them when we were engaged—I’m sure he is telling
the same ones still. And now I shan’t always have to be asking
Carry Fisher here to keep him in a good humour. She’s a perfect
vulture, you know; and she hasn’t the least moral sense. She is
always getting Gus to speculate for her, and I’m sure she never
pays when she loses.”

Miss Bart could shudder at this state of things without the
embarrassment of a personal application. Her own position was
surely quite different. There could be no question of her not
paying when she lost, since Trenor had assured her that she was
certain not to lose. In sending her the cheque he had explained
that he had made five thousand for her out of Rosedale’s “tip,” and
had put four thousand back in the same venture, as there was the
promise of another “big rise”; she understood therefore that he
was now speculating with her own money, and that she consequently
owed him no more than the gratitude which such a trifling service
demanded. She vaguely supposed that, to raise the first sum, he had
borrowed on her securities; but this was a point over which her
curiosity did not linger. It was concentrated, for the moment, on
the probable date of the next “big rise.”

The news of this event was received by her some weeks later, on
the occasion of Jack Stepney’s marriage to Miss Van Osburgh. As
a cousin of the bridegroom, Miss Bart had been asked to act as
bridesmaid; but she had declined on the plea that, since she was
much taller than the other attendant virgins, her presence might
mar the symmetry of the group. The truth was, she had attended too
many brides to the altar: when next seen there she meant to be the
chief figure in the ceremony. She knew the pleasantries made at the
expense of young girls who have been too long before the public,
and she was resolved to avoid such assumptions of youthfulness as
might lead people to think her older than she really was.

The Van Osburgh marriage was celebrated in the village church near
the paternal estate on the Hudson. It was the “simple country
wedding” to which guests are convoyed in special trains, and
from which the hordes of the uninvited have to be fended off by
the intervention of the police. While these sylvan rites were
taking place, in a church packed with fashion and festooned with
orchids, the representatives of the press were threading their
way, note-book in hand, through the labyrinth of wedding presents,
and the agent of a cinematograph syndicate was setting up his
apparatus at the church door. It was the kind of scene in which
Lily had often pictured herself as taking the principal part, and
on this occasion the fact that she was once more merely a casual
spectator, instead of the mystically veiled figure occupying
the centre of attention, strengthened her resolve to assume the
latter part before the year was over. The fact that her immediate
anxieties were relieved did not blind her to a possibility of
their recurrence; it merely gave her enough buoyancy to rise once
more above her doubts and feel a renewed faith in her beauty, her
power, and her general fitness to attract a brilliant destiny.
It could not be that one conscious of such aptitudes for mastery
and enjoyment was doomed to a perpetuity of failure; and her
mistakes looked easily reparable in the light of her restored
self-confidence.

A special appositeness was given to these reflections by the
discovery, in a neighbouring pew, of the serious profile and
neatly-trimmed beard of Mr. Percy Gryce. There was something
almost bridal in his own aspect: his large white gardenia had a
symbolic air that struck Lily as a good omen. After all, seen
in an assemblage of his kind he was not ridiculous-looking: a
friendly critic might have called his heaviness weighty, and he
was at his best in the attitude of vacant passivity which brings
out the oddities of the restless. She fancied he was the kind
of man whose sentimental associations would be stirred by the
conventional imagery of a wedding, and she pictured herself, in the
seclusion of the Van Osburgh conservatories, playing skillfully
upon sensibilities thus prepared for her touch. In fact, when she
looked at the other women about her, and recalled the image she
had brought away from her own glass, it did not seem as though any
special skill would be needed to repair her blunder and bring him
once more to her feet.

The sight of Selden’s dark head, in a pew almost facing her,
disturbed for a moment the balance of her complacency. The rise of
her blood as their eyes met was succeeded by a contrary motion,
a wave of resistance and withdrawal. She did not wish to see him
again, not because she feared his influence, but because his
presence always had the effect of cheapening her aspirations, of
throwing her whole world out of focus. Besides, he was a living
reminder of the worst mistake in her career, and the fact that he
had been its cause did not soften her feelings toward him. She
could still imagine an ideal state of existence in which, all else
being superadded, intercourse with Selden might be the last touch
of luxury; but in the world as it was, such a privilege was likely
to cost more than it was worth.

“Lily, dear, I never saw you look so lovely! You look as if
something delightful had just happened to you!”

The young lady who thus formulated her admiration of her
brilliant friend did not, in her own person, suggest such happy
possibilities. Miss Gertrude Farish, in fact, typified the mediocre
and the ineffectual. If there were compensating qualities in her
wide frank glance and the freshness of her smile, these were
qualities which only the sympathetic observer would perceive
before noticing that her eyes were of a workaday grey and her lips
without haunting curves. Lily’s own view of her wavered between
pity for her limitations and impatience at her cheerful acceptance
of them. To Miss Bart, as to her mother, acquiescence in dinginess
was evidence of stupidity; and there were moments when, in the
consciousness of her own power to look and to be so exactly what
the occasion required, she almost felt that other girls were plain
and inferior from choice. Certainly no one need have confessed such
acquiescence in her lot as was revealed in the “useful” colour of
Gerty Farish’s gown and the subdued lines of her hat: it is almost
as stupid to let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as
to have them proclaim that you think you are beautiful.

Of course, being fatally poor and dingy, it was wise of Gerty to
have taken up philanthropy and symphony concerts; but there was
something irritating in her assumption that existence yielded no
higher pleasures, and that one might get as much interest and
excitement out of life in a cramped flat as in the splendours
of the Van Osburgh establishment. Today, however, her chirping
enthusiasms did not irritate Lily. They seemed only to throw her
own exceptionalness into becoming relief, and give a soaring
vastness to her scheme of life.

“Do let us go and take a peep at the presents before everyone else
leaves the dining-room!” suggested Miss Farish, linking her arm in
her friend’s. It was characteristic of her to take a sentimental
and unenvious interest in all the details of a wedding: she was
the kind of person who always kept her handkerchief out during the
service, and departed clutching a box of wedding-cake.

“Isn’t everything beautifully done?” she pursued, as they entered
the distant drawing-room assigned to the display of Miss Van
Osburgh’s bridal spoils. “I always say no one does things better
than cousin Grace! Did you ever taste anything more delicious than
that MOUSSE of lobster with champagne sauce? I made up my mind
weeks ago that I wouldn’t miss this wedding, and just fancy how
delightfully it all came about. When Lawrence Selden heard I was
coming, he insisted on fetching me himself and driving me to the
station, and when we go back this evening I am to dine with him at
Sherry’s. I really feel as excited as if I were getting married
myself!”

Lily smiled: she knew that Selden had always been kind to his dull
cousin, and she had sometimes wondered why he wasted so much time
in such an unremunerative manner; but now the thought gave her a
vague pleasure.

“Do you see him often?” she asked.

“Yes; he is very good about dropping in on Sundays. And now and
then we do a play together; but lately I haven’t seen much of him.
He doesn’t look well, and he seems nervous and unsettled. The dear
fellow! I do wish he would marry some nice girl. I told him so
today, but he said he didn’t care for the really nice ones, and
the other kind didn’t care for him—but that was just his joke, of
course. He could never marry a girl who WASN’T nice. Oh, my dear,
did you ever see such pearls?”

They had paused before the table on which the bride’s jewels were
displayed, and Lily’s heart gave an envious throb as she caught
the refraction of light from their surfaces—the milky gleam of
perfectly matched pearls, the flash of rubies relieved against
contrasting velvet, the intense blue rays of sapphires kindled into
light by surrounding diamonds: all these precious tints enhanced
and deepened by the varied art of their setting. The glow of the
stones warmed Lily’s veins like wine. More completely than any
other expression of wealth they symbolized the life she longed to
lead, the life of fastidious aloofness and refinement in which
every detail should have the finish of a jewel, and the whole form
a harmonious setting to her own jewel-like rareness.

“Oh, Lily, do look at this diamond pendant—it’s as big as
a dinner-plate! Who can have given it?” Miss Farish bent
short-sightedly over the accompanying card. “MR. SIMON ROSEDALE.
What, that horrid man? Oh, yes—I remember he’s a friend of Jack’s,
and I suppose cousin Grace had to ask him here today; but she must
rather hate having to let Gwen accept such a present from him.”

Lily smiled. She doubted Mrs. Van Osburgh’s reluctance, but was
aware of Miss Farish’s habit of ascribing her own delicacies of
feeling to the persons least likely to be encumbered by them.

“Well, if Gwen doesn’t care to be seen wearing it she can always
exchange it for something else,” she remarked.

“Ah, here is something so much prettier,” Miss Farish continued.
“Do look at this exquisite white sapphire. I’m sure the person who
chose it must have taken particular pains. What is the name? Percy
Gryce? Ah, then I’m not surprised!” She smiled significantly as
she replaced the card. “Of course you’ve heard that he’s perfectly
devoted to Evie Van Osburgh? Cousin Grace is so pleased about
it—it’s quite a romance! He met her first at the George Dorsets’,
only about six weeks ago, and it’s just the nicest possible
marriage for dear Evie. Oh, I don’t mean the money—of course she
has plenty of her own—but she’s such a quiet stay-at-home kind of
girl, and it seems he has just the same tastes; so they are exactly
suited to each other.”

Lily stood staring vacantly at the white sapphire on its velvet
bed. Evie Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce? The names rang derisively
through her brain. EVIE VAN OSBURGH? The youngest, dumpiest,
dullest of the four dull and dumpy daughters whom Mrs. Van Osburgh,
with unsurpassed astuteness, had “placed” one by one in enviable
niches of existence! Ah, lucky girls who grow up in the shelter of
a mother’s love—a mother who knows how to contrive opportunities
without conceding favours, how to take advantage of propinquity
without allowing appetite to be dulled by habit! The cleverest girl
may miscalculate where her own interests are concerned, may yield
too much at one moment and withdraw too far at the next: it takes
a mother’s unerring vigilance and foresight to land her daughters
safely in the arms of wealth and suitability.

Lily’s passing light-heartedness sank beneath a renewed sense of
failure. Life was too stupid, too blundering! Why should Percy
Gryce’s millions be joined to another great fortune, why should
this clumsy girl be put in possession of powers she would never
know how to use?

She was roused from these speculations by a familiar touch on her
arm, and turning saw Gus Trenor beside her. She felt a thrill of
vexation: what right had he to touch her? Luckily Gerty Farish had
wandered off to the next table, and they were alone.

Trenor, looking stouter than ever in his tight frock-coat, and
unbecomingly flushed by the bridal libations, gazed at her with
undisguised approval.

“By Jove, Lily, you do look a stunner!” He had slipped insensibly
into the use of her Christian name, and she had never found the
right moment to correct him. Besides, in her set all the men and
women called each other by their Christian names; it was only
on Trenor’s lips that the familiar address had an unpleasant
significance.

“Well,” he continued, still jovially impervious to her annoyance,
“have you made up your mind which of these little trinkets you mean
to duplicate at Tiffany’s tomorrow? I’ve got a cheque for you in my
pocket that will go a long way in that line!”

Lily gave him a startled look: his voice was louder than usual,
and the room was beginning to fill with people. But as her glance
assured her that they were still beyond ear-shot a sense of
pleasure replaced her apprehension.

“Another dividend?” she asked, smiling and drawing near him in the
desire not to be overheard.

“Well, not exactly: I sold out on the rise and I’ve pulled off four
thou’ for you. Not so bad for a beginner, eh? I suppose you’ll
begin to think you’re a pretty knowing speculator. And perhaps you
won’t think poor old Gus such an awful ass as some people do.”

“I think you the kindest of friends; but I can’t thank you properly
now.”

She let her eyes shine into his with a look that made up for the
hand-clasp he would have claimed if they had been alone—and how
glad she was that they were not! The news filled her with the
glow produced by a sudden cessation of physical pain. The world
was not so stupid and blundering after all: now and then a stroke
of luck came to the unluckiest. At the thought her spirits began
to rise: it was characteristic of her that one trifling piece of
good fortune should give wings to all her hopes. Instantly came
the reflection that Percy Gryce was not irretrievably lost; and
she smiled to think of the excitement of recapturing him from
Evie Van Osburgh. What chance could such a simpleton have against
her if she chose to exert herself? She glanced about, hoping to
catch a glimpse of Gryce; but her eyes lit instead on the glossy
countenance of Mr. Rosedale, who was slipping through the crowd
with an air half obsequious, half obtrusive, as though, the moment
his presence was recognized, it would swell to the dimensions of
the room.

Not wishing to be the means of effecting this enlargement, Lily
quickly transferred her glance to Trenor, to whom the expression of
her gratitude seemed not to have brought the complete gratification
she had meant it to give.

“Hang thanking me—I don’t want to be thanked, but I SHOULD like
the chance to say two words to you now and then,” he grumbled. “I
thought you were going to spend the whole autumn with us, and I’ve
hardly laid eyes on you for the last month. Why can’t you come back
to Bellomont this evening? We’re all alone, and Judy is as cross
as two sticks. Do come and cheer a fellow up. If you say yes I’ll
run you over in the motor, and you can telephone your maid to bring
your traps from town by the next train.”

Lily shook her head with a charming semblance of regret. “I wish I
could—but it’s quite impossible. My aunt has come back to town, and
I must be with her for the next few days.”

“Well, I’ve seen a good deal less of you since we’ve got to be such
pals than I used to when you were Judy’s friend,” he continued with
unconscious penetration.

“When I was Judy’s friend? Am I not her friend still? Really, you
say the most absurd things! If I were always at Bellomont you would
tire of me much sooner than Judy—but come and see me at my aunt’s
the next afternoon you are in town; then we can have a nice quiet
talk, and you can tell me how I had better invest my fortune.”

It was true that, during the last three or four weeks, she had
absented herself from Bellomont on the pretext of having other
visits to pay; but she now began to feel that the reckoning she had
thus contrived to evade had rolled up interest in the interval.

The prospect of the nice quiet talk did not appear as all-sufficing
to Trenor as she had hoped, and his brows continued to lower as he
said: “Oh, I don’t know that I can promise you a fresh tip every
day. But there’s one thing you might do for me; and that is, just
to be a little civil to Rosedale. Judy has promised to ask him to
dine when we get to town, but I can’t induce her to have him at
Bellomont, and if you would let me bring him up now it would make
a lot of difference. I don’t believe two women have spoken to him
this afternoon, and I can tell you he’s a chap it pays to be decent
to.”

Miss Bart made an impatient movement, but suppressed the words
which seemed about to accompany it. After all, this was an
unexpectedly easy way of acquitting her debt; and had she not
reasons of her own for wishing to be civil to Mr. Rosedale?

“Oh, bring him by all means,” she said smiling; “perhaps I can get
a tip out of him on my own account.”

Trenor paused abruptly, and his eyes fixed themselves on hers with
a look which made her change colour.

“I say, you know—you’ll please remember he’s a blooming bounder,”
he said; and with a slight laugh she turned toward the open window
near which they had been standing.

The throng in the room had increased, and she felt a desire for
space and fresh air. Both of these she found on the terrace, where
only a few men were lingering over cigarettes and liqueur, while
scattered couples strolled across the lawn to the autumn-tinted
borders of the flower-garden.

As she emerged, a man moved toward her from the knot of smokers,
and she found herself face to face with Selden. The stir of the
pulses which his nearness always caused was increased by a slight
sense of constraint. They had not met since their Sunday afternoon
walk at Bellomont, and that episode was still so vivid to her
that she could hardly believe him to be less conscious of it. But
his greeting expressed no more than the satisfaction which every
pretty woman expects to see reflected in masculine eyes; and the
discovery, if distasteful to her vanity, was reassuring to her
nerves. Between the relief of her escape from Trenor, and the vague
apprehension of her meeting with Rosedale, it was pleasant to rest
a moment on the sense of complete understanding which Lawrence
Selden’s manner always conveyed.

“This is luck,” he said smiling. “I was wondering if I should be
able to have a word with you before the special snatches us away. I
came with Gerty Farish, and promised not to let her miss the train,
but I am sure she is still extracting sentimental solace from the
wedding presents. She appears to regard their number and value as
evidence of the disinterested affection of the contracting parties.”

There was not the least trace of embarrassment in his voice, and
as he spoke, leaning slightly against the jamb of the window, and
letting his eyes rest on her in the frank enjoyment of her grace,
she felt with a faint chill of regret that he had gone back without
an effort to the footing on which they had stood before their last
talk together. Her vanity was stung by the sight of his unscathed
smile. She longed to be to him something more than a piece of
sentient prettiness, a passing diversion to his eye and brain; and
the longing betrayed itself in her reply.

“Ah,” she said, “I envy Gerty that power she has of dressing
up with romance all our ugly and prosaic arrangements! I have
never recovered my self-respect since you showed me how poor and
unimportant my ambitions were.”

The words were hardly spoken when she realized their infelicity. It
seemed to be her fate to appear at her worst to Selden.

“I thought, on the contrary,” he returned lightly, “that I had been
the means of proving they were more important to you than anything
else.”

It was as if the eager current of her being had been checked by
a sudden obstacle which drove it back upon itself. She looked at
him helplessly, like a hurt or frightened child: this real self of
hers, which he had the faculty of drawing out of the depths, was so
little accustomed to go alone!

The appeal of her helplessness touched in him, as it always did,
a latent chord of inclination. It would have meant nothing to him
to discover that his nearness made her more brilliant, but this
glimpse of a twilight mood to which he alone had the clue seemed
once more to set him in a world apart with her.

“At least you can’t think worse things of me than you say!” she
exclaimed with a trembling laugh; but before he could answer, the
flow of comprehension between them was abruptly stayed by the
reappearance of Gus Trenor, who advanced with Mr. Rosedale in his
wake.

“Hang it, Lily, I thought you’d given me the slip: Rosedale and I
have been hunting all over for you!”

His voice had a note of conjugal familiarity: Miss Bart fancied she
detected in Rosedale’s eye a twinkling perception of the fact, and
the idea turned her dislike of him to repugnance.

She returned his profound bow with a slight nod, made more
disdainful by the sense of Selden’s surprise that she should number
Rosedale among her acquaintances. Trenor had turned away, and his
companion continued to stand before Miss Bart, alert and expectant,
his lips parted in a smile at whatever she might be about to say,
and his very back conscious of the privilege of being seen with her.

It was the moment for tact; for the quick bridging over of gaps;
but Selden still leaned against the window, a detached observer
of the scene, and under the spell of his observation Lily felt
herself powerless to exert her usual arts. The dread of Selden’s
suspecting that there was any need for her to propitiate such a man
as Rosedale checked the trivial phrases of politeness. Rosedale
still stood before her in an expectant attitude, and she continued
to face him in silence, her glance just level with his polished
baldness. The look put the finishing touch to what her silence
implied.

He reddened slowly, shifting from one foot to the other, fingered
the plump black pearl in his tie, and gave a nervous twist to his
moustache; then, running his eye over her, he drew back, and said,
with a side-glance at Selden: “Upon my soul, I never saw a more
ripping get-up. Is that the last creation of the dress-maker you go
to see at the Benedick? If so, I wonder all the other women don’t
go to her too!”

The words were projected sharply against Lily’s silence, and she
saw in a flash that her own act had given them their emphasis. In
ordinary talk they might have passed unheeded; but following on
her prolonged pause they acquired a special meaning. She felt,
without looking, that Selden had immediately seized it, and would
inevitably connect the allusion with her visit to himself. The
consciousness increased her irritation against Rosedale, but also
her feeling that now, if ever, was the moment to propitiate him,
hateful as it was to do so in Selden’s presence.

“How do you know the other women don’t go to my dress-maker?”
she returned. “You see I’m not afraid to give her address to my
friends!”

Her glance and accent so plainly included Rosedale in this
privileged circle that his small eyes puckered with gratification,
and a knowing smile drew up his moustache.

“By Jove, you needn’t be!” he declared. “You could give ’em the
whole outfit and win at a canter!”

“Ah, that’s nice of you; and it would be nicer still if you would
carry me off to a quiet corner, and get me a glass of lemonade or
some innocent drink before we all have to rush for the train.”

She turned away as she spoke, letting him strut at her side through
the gathering groups on the terrace, while every nerve in her
throbbed with the consciousness of what Selden must have thought of
the scene.

But under her angry sense of the perverseness of things, and the
light surface of her talk with Rosedale, a third idea persisted:
she did not mean to leave without an attempt to discover the truth
about Percy Gryce. Chance, or perhaps his own resolve, had kept
them apart since his hasty withdrawal from Bellomont; but Miss
Bart was an expert in making the most of the unexpected, and the
distasteful incidents of the last few minutes—the revelation to
Selden of precisely that part of her life which she most wished
him to ignore—increased her longing for shelter, for escape from
such humiliating contingencies. Any definite situation would be
more tolerable than this buffeting of chances, which kept her in an
attitude of uneasy alertness toward every possibility of life.

Indoors there was a general sense of dispersal in the air, as of
an audience gathering itself up for departure after the principal
actors had left the stage; but among the remaining groups, Lily
could discover neither Gryce nor the youngest Miss Van Osburgh.
That both should be missing struck her with foreboding; and she
charmed Mr. Rosedale by proposing that they should make their
way to the conservatories at the farther end of the house.
There were just enough people left in the long suite of rooms
to make their progress conspicuous, and Lily was aware of being
followed by looks of amusement and interrogation, which glanced
off as harmlessly from her indifference as from her companion’s
self-satisfaction. She cared very little at that moment about
being seen with Rosedale: all her thoughts were centred on the
object of her search. The latter, however, was not discoverable
in the conservatories, and Lily, oppressed by a sudden conviction
of failure, was casting about for a way to rid herself of her
now superfluous companion, when they came upon Mrs. Van Osburgh,
flushed and exhausted, but beaming with the consciousness of duty
performed.

She glanced at them a moment with the benign but vacant eye of the
tired hostess, to whom her guests have become mere whirling spots
in a kaleidoscope of fatigue; then her attention became suddenly
fixed, and she seized on Miss Bart with a confidential gesture.
“My dear Lily, I haven’t had time for a word with you, and now I
suppose you are just off. Have you seen Evie? She’s been looking
everywhere for you: she wanted to tell you her little secret;
but I daresay you have guessed it already. The engagement is not
to be announced till next week—but you are such a friend of Mr.
Gryce’s that they both wished you to be the first to know of their
happiness.”




Chapter 9


In Mrs. Peniston’s youth, fashion had returned to town in October;
therefore on the tenth day of the month the blinds of her Fifth
Avenue residence were drawn up, and the eyes of the Dying Gladiator
in bronze who occupied the drawing-room window resumed their survey
of that deserted thoroughfare.

The first two weeks after her return represented to Mrs. Peniston
the domestic equivalent of a religious retreat. She “went through”
the linen and blankets in the precise spirit of the penitent
exploring the inner folds of conscience; she sought for moths
as the stricken soul seeks for lurking infirmities. The topmost
shelf of every closet was made to yield up its secret, cellar and
coal-bin were probed to their darkest depths and, as a final stage
in the lustral rites, the entire house was swathed in penitential
white and deluged with expiatory soapsuds.

It was on this phase of the proceedings that Miss Bart entered
on the afternoon of her return from the Van Osburgh wedding. The
journey back to town had not been calculated to soothe her nerves.
Though Evie Van Osburgh’s engagement was still officially a secret,
it was one of which the innumerable intimate friends of the family
were already possessed; and the trainful of returning guests buzzed
with allusions and anticipations. Lily was acutely aware of her
own part in this drama of innuendo: she knew the exact quality
of the amusement the situation evoked. The crude forms in which
her friends took their pleasure included a loud enjoyment of such
complications: the zest of surprising destiny in the act of playing
a practical joke. Lily knew well enough how to bear herself in
difficult situations. She had, to a shade, the exact manner between
victory and defeat: every insinuation was shed without an effort
by the bright indifference of her manner. But she was beginning to
feel the strain of the attitude; the reaction was more rapid, and
she lapsed to a deeper self-disgust.


As was always the case with her, this moral repulsion found a
physical outlet in a quickened distaste for her surroundings. She
revolted from the complacent ugliness of Mrs. Peniston’s black
walnut, from the slippery gloss of the vestibule tiles, and the
mingled odour of sapolio and furniture-polish that met her at the
door.

The stairs were still carpetless, and on the way up to her room she
was arrested on the landing by an encroaching tide of soapsuds.
Gathering up her skirts, she drew aside with an impatient gesture;
and as she did so she had the odd sensation of having already found
herself in the same situation but in different surroundings. It
seemed to her that she was again descending the staircase from
Selden’s rooms; and looking down to remonstrate with the dispenser
of the soapy flood, she found herself met by a lifted stare which
had once before confronted her under similar circumstances. It was
the char-woman of the Benedick who, resting on crimson elbows,
examined her with the same unflinching curiosity, the same apparent
reluctance to let her pass. On this occasion, however, Miss Bart
was on her own ground.

“Don’t you see that I wish to go by? Please move your pail,” she
said sharply.

The woman at first seemed not to hear; then, without a word of
excuse, she pushed back her pail and dragged a wet floor-cloth
across the landing, keeping her eyes fixed on Lily while the latter
swept by. It was insufferable that Mrs. Peniston should have such
creatures about the house; and Lily entered her room resolved that
the woman should be dismissed that evening.

Mrs. Peniston, however, was at the moment inaccessible to
remonstrance: since early morning she had been shut up with her
maid, going over her furs, a process which formed the culminating
episode in the drama of household renovation. In the evening also
Lily found herself alone, for her aunt, who rarely dined out, had
responded to the summons of a Van Alstyne cousin who was passing
through town. The house, in its state of unnatural immaculateness
and order, was as dreary as a tomb, and as Lily, turning from
her brief repast between shrouded sideboards, wandered into the
newly-uncovered glare of the drawing-room she felt as though
she were buried alive in the stifling limits of Mrs. Peniston’s
existence.

She usually contrived to avoid being at home during the season
of domestic renewal. On the present occasion, however, a variety
of reasons had combined to bring her to town; and foremost among
them was the fact that she had fewer invitations than usual for
the autumn. She had so long been accustomed to pass from one
country-house to another, till the close of the holidays brought
her friends to town, that the unfilled gaps of time confronting
her produced a sharp sense of waning popularity. It was as she
had said to Selden—people were tired of her. They would welcome
her in a new character, but as Miss Bart they knew her by heart.
She knew herself by heart too, and was sick of the old story.
There were moments when she longed blindly for anything different,
anything strange, remote and untried; but the utmost reach of
her imagination did not go beyond picturing her usual life in a
new setting. She could not figure herself as anywhere but in a
drawing-room, diffusing elegance as a flower sheds perfume.

Meanwhile, as October advanced she had to face the alternative
of returning to the Trenors or joining her aunt in town. Even
the desolating dulness of New York in October, and the soapy
discomforts of Mrs. Peniston’s interior, seemed preferable to what
might await her at Bellomont; and with an air of heroic devotion
she announced her intention of remaining with her aunt till the
holidays.

Sacrifices of this nature are sometimes received with feelings as
mixed as those which actuate them; and Mrs. Peniston remarked to
her confidential maid that, if any of the family were to be with
her at such a crisis (though for forty years she had been thought
competent to see to the hanging of her own curtains), she would
certainly have preferred Miss Grace to Miss Lily. Grace Stepney was
an obscure cousin, of adaptable manners and vicarious interests,
who “ran in” to sit with Mrs. Peniston when Lily dined out too
continuously; who played bezique, picked up dropped stitches, read
out the deaths from the Times, and sincerely admired the purple
satin drawing-room curtains, the Dying Gladiator in the window, and
the seven-by-five painting of Niagara which represented the one
artistic excess of Mr. Peniston’s temperate career.

Mrs. Peniston, under ordinary circumstances, was as much bored by
her excellent cousin as the recipient of such services usually
is by the person who performs them. She greatly preferred the
brilliant and unreliable Lily, who did not know one end of a
crochet-needle from the other, and had frequently wounded her
susceptibilities by suggesting that the drawing-room should be
“done over.” But when it came to hunting for missing napkins, or
helping to decide whether the backstairs needed re-carpeting,
Grace’s judgment was certainly sounder than Lily’s: not to mention
the fact that the latter resented the smell of beeswax and brown
soap, and behaved as though she thought a house ought to keep clean
of itself, without extraneous assistance.

Seated under the cheerless blaze of the drawing-room
chandelier—Mrs. Peniston never lit the lamps unless there was
“company”—Lily seemed to watch her own figure retreating down
vistas of neutral-tinted dulness to a middle-age like Grace
Stepney’s. When she ceased to amuse Judy Trenor and her friends she
would have to fall back on amusing Mrs. Peniston; whichever way she
looked she saw only a future of servitude to the whims of others,
never the possibility of asserting her own eager individuality.

A ring at the door-bell, sounding emphatically through the empty
house, roused her suddenly to the extent of her boredom. It was
as though all the weariness of the past months had culminated in
the vacuity of that interminable evening. If only the ring meant a
summons from the outer world—a token that she was still remembered
and wanted!

After some delay a parlour-maid presented herself with the
announcement that there was a person outside who was asking to see
Miss Bart; and on Lily’s pressing for a more specific description,
she added:

“It’s Mrs. Haffen, Miss; she won’t say what she wants.”

Lily, to whom the name conveyed nothing, opened the door upon a
woman in a battered bonnet, who stood firmly planted under the
hall-light. The glare of the unshaded gas shone familiarly on her
pock-marked face and the reddish baldness visible through thin
strands of straw-coloured hair. Lily looked at the char-woman in
surprise.

“Do you wish to see me?” she asked.

“I should like to say a word to you, Miss.” The tone was neither
aggressive nor conciliatory: it revealed nothing of the speaker’s
errand. Nevertheless, some precautionary instinct warned Lily to
withdraw beyond ear-shot of the hovering parlour-maid.

She signed to Mrs. Haffen to follow her into the drawing-room, and
closed the door when they had entered.

“What is it that you wish?” she enquired.

The char-woman, after the manner of her kind, stood with her arms
folded in her shawl. Unwinding the latter, she produced a small
parcel wrapped in dirty newspaper.

“I have something here that you might like to see, Miss Bart.”
She spoke the name with an unpleasant emphasis, as though her
knowing it made a part of her reason for being there. To Lily the
intonation sounded like a threat.

“You have found something belonging to me?” she asked, extending
her hand.

Mrs. Haffen drew back. “Well, if it comes to that, I guess it’s
mine as much as anybody’s,” she returned.

Lily looked at her perplexedly. She was sure, now, that her
visitor’s manner conveyed a threat; but, expert as she was in
certain directions, there was nothing in her experience to prepare
her for the exact significance of the present scene. She felt,
however, that it must be ended as promptly as possible.

“I don’t understand; if this parcel is not mine, why have you asked
for me?”

The woman was unabashed by the question. She was evidently prepared
to answer it, but like all her class she had to go a long way
back to make a beginning, and it was only after a pause that she
replied: “My husband was janitor to the Benedick till the first of
the month; since then he can’t get nothing to do.”

Lily remained silent and she continued: “It wasn’t no fault of our
own, neither: the agent had another man he wanted the place for,
and we was put out, bag and baggage, just to suit his fancy. I had
a long sickness last winter, and an operation that ate up all we’d
put by; and it’s hard for me and the children, Haffen being so long
out of a job.”

After all, then, she had come only to ask Miss Bart to find a
place for her husband; or, more probably, to seek the young lady’s
intervention with Mrs. Peniston. Lily had such an air of always
getting what she wanted that she was used to being appealed to as
an intermediary, and, relieved of her vague apprehension, she took
refuge in the conventional formula.

“I am sorry you have been in trouble,” she said.

“Oh, that we have, Miss, and it’s on’y just beginning. If on’y we’d
’a got another situation—but the agent, he’s dead against us. It
ain’t no fault of ours, neither, but——”

At this point Lily’s impatience overcame her. “If you have anything
to say to me——” she interposed.

The woman’s resentment of the rebuff seemed to spur her lagging
ideas.

“Yes, Miss; I’m coming to that,” she said. She paused again,
with her eyes on Lily, and then continued, in a tone of diffuse
narrative: “When we was at the Benedick I had charge of some of the
gentlemen’s rooms; leastways, I swep’ ’em out on Saturdays. Some
of the gentlemen got the greatest sight of letters: I never saw
the like of it. Their waste-paper baskets ’d be fairly brimming,
and papers falling over on the floor. Maybe havin’ so many is how
they get so careless. Some of ’em is worse than others. Mr. Selden,
Mr. Lawrence Selden, he was always one of the carefullest: burnt
his letters in winter, and tore ’em in little bits in summer. But
sometimes he’d have so many he’d just bunch ’em together, the way
the others did, and tear the lot through once—like this.”

While she spoke she had loosened the string from the parcel in her
hand, and now she drew forth a letter which she laid on the table
between Miss Bart and herself. As she had said, the letter was torn
in two; but with a rapid gesture she laid the torn edges together
and smoothed out the page.

A wave of indignation swept over Lily. She felt herself in the
presence of something vile, as yet but dimly conjectured—the kind
of vileness of which people whispered, but which she had never
thought of as touching her own life. She drew back with a motion
of disgust, but her withdrawal was checked by a sudden discovery:
under the glare of Mrs. Peniston’s chandelier she had recognized
the hand-writing of the letter. It was a large disjointed hand,
with a flourish of masculinity which but slightly disguised
its rambling weakness, and the words, scrawled in heavy ink on
pale-tinted notepaper, smote on Lily’s ear as though she had heard
them spoken.

At first she did not grasp the full import of the situation. She
understood only that before her lay a letter written by Bertha
Dorset, and addressed, presumably, to Lawrence Selden. There was
no date, but the blackness of the ink proved the writing to be
comparatively recent. The packet in Mrs. Haffen’s hand doubtless
contained more letters of the same kind—a dozen, Lily conjectured
from its thickness. The letter before her was short, but its few
words, which had leapt into her brain before she was conscious
of reading them, told a long history—a history over which, for
the last four years, the friends of the writer had smiled and
shrugged, viewing it merely as one among the countless “good
situations” of the mundane comedy. Now the other side presented
itself to Lily, the volcanic nether side of the surface over which
conjecture and innuendo glide so lightly till the first fissure
turns their whisper to a shriek. Lily knew that there is nothing
society resents so much as having given its protection to those who
have not known how to profit by it: it is for having betrayed its
connivance that the body social punishes the offender who is found
out. And in this case there was no doubt of the issue. The code
of Lily’s world decreed that a woman’s husband should be the only
judge of her conduct: she was technically above suspicion while
she had the shelter of his approval, or even of his indifference.
But with a man of George Dorset’s temper there could be no thought
of condonation—the possessor of his wife’s letters could overthrow
with a touch the whole structure of her existence. And into what
hands Bertha Dorset’s secret had been delivered! For a moment the
irony of the coincidence tinged Lily’s disgust with a confused
sense of triumph. But the disgust prevailed—all her instinctive
resistances, of taste, of training, of blind inherited scruples,
rose against the other feeling. Her strongest sense was one of
personal contamination.

She moved away, as though to put as much distance as possible
between herself and her visitor. “I know nothing of these letters,”
she said; “I have no idea why you have brought them here.”

Mrs. Haffen faced her steadily. “I’ll tell you why, Miss. I brought
’em to you to sell, because I ain’t got no other way of raising
money, and if we don’t pay our rent by tomorrow night we’ll be put
out. I never done anythin’ of the kind before, and if you’d speak
to Mr. Selden or to Mr. Rosedale about getting Haffen taken on
again at the Benedick—I seen you talking to Mr. Rosedale on the
steps that day you come out of Mr. Selden’s rooms——”

The blood rushed to Lily’s forehead. She understood now—Mrs. Haffen
supposed her to be the writer of the letters. In the first leap
of her anger she was about to ring and order the woman out; but
an obscure impulse restrained her. The mention of Selden’s name
had started a new train of thought. Bertha Dorset’s letters were
nothing to her—they might go where the current of chance carried
them! But Selden was inextricably involved in their fate. Men
do not, at worst, suffer much from such exposure; and in this
instance the flash of divination which had carried the meaning
of the letters to Lily’s brain had revealed also that they were
appeals—repeated and therefore probably unanswered—for the renewal
of a tie which time had evidently relaxed. Nevertheless, the fact
that the correspondence had been allowed to fall into strange hands
would convict Selden of negligence in a matter where the world
holds it least pardonable; and there were graver risks to consider
where a man of Dorset’s ticklish balance was concerned.

If she weighed all these things it was unconsciously: she was
aware only of feeling that Selden would wish the letters rescued,
and that therefore she must obtain possession of them. Beyond
that her mind did not travel. She had, indeed, a quick vision of
returning the packet to Bertha Dorset, and of the opportunities the
restitution offered; but this thought lit up abysses from which she
shrank back ashamed.

Meanwhile Mrs. Haffen, prompt to perceive her hesitation, had
already opened the packet and ranged its contents on the table. All
the letters had been pieced together with strips of thin paper.
Some were in small fragments, the others merely torn in half.
Though there were not many, thus spread out they nearly covered the
table. Lily’s glance fell on a word here and there—then she said in
a low voice: “What do you wish me to pay you?”

Mrs. Haffen’s face reddened with satisfaction. It was clear that
the young lady was badly frightened, and Mrs. Haffen was the woman
to make the most of such fears. Anticipating an easier victory than
she had foreseen, she named an exorbitant sum.

But Miss Bart showed herself a less ready prey than might have been
expected from her imprudent opening. She refused to pay the price
named, and after a moment’s hesitation, met it by a counter-offer
of half the amount.

Mrs. Haffen immediately stiffened. Her hand travelled toward the
outspread letters, and folding them slowly, she made as though to
restore them to their wrapping.

“I guess they’re worth more to you than to me, Miss, but the poor
has got to live as well as the rich,” she observed sententiously.


Lily was throbbing with fear, but the insinuation fortified her
resistance.

“You are mistaken,” she said indifferently. “I have offered all I
am willing to give for the letters; but there may be other ways of
getting them.”

Mrs. Haffen raised a suspicious glance: she was too experienced not
to know that the traffic she was engaged in had perils as great as
its rewards, and she had a vision of the elaborate machinery of
revenge which a word of this commanding young lady’s might set in
motion.

She applied the corner of her shawl to her eyes, and murmured
through it that no good came of bearing too hard on the poor, but
that for her part she had never been mixed up in such a business
before, and that on her honour as a Christian all she and Haffen
had thought of was that the letters mustn’t go any farther.

Lily stood motionless, keeping between herself and the char-woman
the greatest distance compatible with the need of speaking in low
tones. The idea of bargaining for the letters was intolerable to
her, but she knew that, if she appeared to weaken, Mrs. Haffen
would at once increase her original demand.

She could never afterward recall how long the duel lasted, or
what was the decisive stroke which finally, after a lapse of time
recorded in minutes by the clock, in hours by the precipitate beat
of her pulses, put her in possession of the letters; she knew only
that the door had finally closed, and that she stood alone with the
packet in her hand.

She had no idea of reading the letters; even to unfold Mrs.
Haffen’s dirty newspaper would have seemed degrading. But what did
she intend to do with its contents? The recipient of the letters
had meant to destroy them, and it was her duty to carry out his
intention. She had no right to keep them—to do so was to lessen
whatever merit lay in having secured their possession. But how
destroy them so effectually that there should be no second risk of
their falling in such hands? Mrs. Peniston’s icy drawing-room grate
shone with a forbidding lustre: the fire, like the lamps, was never
lit except when there was company.

Miss Bart was turning to carry the letters upstairs when she
heard the opening of the outer door, and her aunt entered the
drawing-room. Mrs. Peniston was a small plump woman, with a
colourless skin lined with trivial wrinkles. Her grey hair was
arranged with precision, and her clothes looked excessively new
and yet slightly old-fashioned. They were always black and tightly
fitting, with an expensive glitter: she was the kind of woman who
wore jet at breakfast. Lily had never seen her when she was not
cuirassed in shining black, with small tight boots, and an air of
being packed and ready to start; yet she never started.

She looked about the drawing-room with an expression of minute
scrutiny. “I saw a streak of light under one of the blinds as I
drove up: it’s extraordinary that I can never teach that woman to
draw them down evenly.”

Having corrected the irregularity, she seated herself on one of
the glossy purple arm-chairs; Mrs. Peniston always sat on a chair,
never in it.

Then she turned her glance to Miss Bart. “My dear, you look tired;
I suppose it’s the excitement of the wedding. Cornelia Van Alstyne
was full of it: Molly was there, and Gerty Farish ran in for a
minute to tell us about it. I think it was odd, their serving
melons before the CONSOMME: a wedding breakfast should always begin
with CONSOMME. Molly didn’t care for the bridesmaids’ dresses. She
had it straight from Julia Melson that they cost three hundred
dollars apiece at Celeste’s, but she says they didn’t look it. I’m
glad you decided not to be a bridesmaid; that shade of salmon-pink
wouldn’t have suited you.” Mrs. Peniston delighted in discussing
the minutest details of festivities in which she had not taken
part. Nothing would have induced her to undergo the exertion and
fatigue of attending the Van Osburgh wedding, but so great was her
interest in the event that, having heard two versions of it, she
now prepared to extract a third from her niece. Lily, however,
had been deplorably careless in noting the particulars of the
entertainment. She had failed to observe the colour of Mrs. Van
Osburgh’s gown, and could not even say whether the old Van Osburgh
Sevres had been used at the bride’s table: Mrs. Peniston, in short,
found that she was of more service as a listener than as a narrator.

“Really, Lily, I don’t see why you took the trouble to go to the
wedding, if you don’t remember what happened or whom you saw there.
When I was a girl I used to keep the MENU of every dinner I went
to, and write the names of the people on the back; and I never
threw away my cotillion favours till after your uncle’s death,
when it seemed unsuitable to have so many coloured things about
the house. I had a whole closet-full, I remember; and I can tell
to this day what balls I got them at. Molly Van Alstyne reminds me
of what I was at that age; it’s wonderful how she notices. She was
able to tell her mother exactly how the wedding-dress was cut, and
we knew at once, from the fold in the back, that it must have come
from Paquin.”

Mrs. Peniston rose abruptly, and, advancing to the ormolu
clock surmounted by a helmeted Minerva, which throned on the
chimney-piece between two malachite vases, passed her lace
handkerchief between the helmet and its visor.

“I knew it—the parlour-maid never dusts there!” she exclaimed,
triumphantly displaying a minute spot on the handkerchief; then,
reseating herself, she went on: “Molly thought Mrs. Dorset the
best-dressed woman at the wedding. I’ve no doubt her dress DID
cost more than any one else’s, but I can’t quite like the idea—a
combination of sable and POINT DE MILAN. It seems she goes to a new
man in Paris, who won’t take an order till his client has spent a
day with him at his villa at Neuilly. He says he must study his
subject’s home life—a most peculiar arrangement, I should say!
But Mrs. Dorset told Molly about it herself: she said the villa
was full of the most exquisite things and she was really sorry to
leave. Molly said she never saw her looking better; she was in
tremendous spirits, and said she had made a match between Evie
Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. She really seems to have a very good
influence on young men. I hear she is interesting herself now in
that silly Silverton boy, who has had his head turned by Carry
Fisher, and has been gambling so dreadfully. Well, as I was saying,
Evie is really engaged: Mrs. Dorset had her to stay with Percy
Gryce, and managed it all, and Grace Van Osburgh is in the seventh
heaven—she had almost despaired of marrying Evie.”

Mrs. Peniston again paused, but this time her scrutiny addressed
itself, not to the furniture, but to her niece.

“Cornelia Van Alstyne was so surprised: she had heard that you
were to marry young Gryce. She saw the Wetheralls just after they
had stopped with you at Bellomont, and Alice Wetherall was quite
sure there was an engagement. She said that when Mr. Gryce left
unexpectedly one morning, they all thought he had rushed to town
for the ring.”

Lily rose and moved toward the door.

“I believe I AM tired: I think I will go to bed,” she said; and
Mrs. Peniston, suddenly distracted by the discovery that the easel
sustaining the late Mr. Peniston’s crayon-portrait was not exactly
in line with the sofa in front of it, presented an absent-minded
brow to her kiss.

In her own room Lily turned up the gas-jet and glanced toward the
grate. It was as brilliantly polished as the one below, but here at
least she could burn a few papers with less risk of incurring her
aunt’s disapproval. She made no immediate motion to do so, however,
but dropping into a chair looked wearily about her. Her room was
large and comfortably-furnished—it was the envy and admiration of
poor Grace Stepney, who boarded; but, contrasted with the light
tints and luxurious appointments of the guest-rooms where so many
weeks of Lily’s existence were spent, it seemed as dreary as a
prison. The monumental wardrobe and bedstead of black walnut had
migrated from Mr. Peniston’s bedroom, and the magenta “flock”
wall-paper, of a pattern dear to the early ’sixties, was hung with
large steel engravings of an anecdotic character. Lily had tried to
mitigate this charmless background by a few frivolous touches, in
the shape of a lace-decked toilet table and a little painted desk
surmounted by photographs; but the futility of the attempt struck
her as she looked about the room. What a contrast to the subtle
elegance of the setting she had pictured for herself—an apartment
which should surpass the complicated luxury of her friends’
surroundings by the whole extent of that artistic sensibility
which made her feel herself their superior; in which every tint
and line should combine to enhance her beauty and give distinction
to her leisure! Once more the haunting sense of physical ugliness
was intensified by her mental depression, so that each piece of
the offending furniture seemed to thrust forth its most aggressive
angle.

Her aunt’s words had told her nothing new; but they had revived the
vision of Bertha Dorset, smiling, flattered, victorious, holding
her up to ridicule by insinuations intelligible to every member of
their little group. The thought of the ridicule struck deeper than
any other sensation: Lily knew every turn of the allusive jargon
which could flay its victims without the shedding of blood. Her
cheek burned at the recollection, and she rose and caught up the
letters. She no longer meant to destroy them: that intention had
been effaced by the quick corrosion of Mrs. Peniston’s words.

Instead, she approached her desk, and lighting a taper, tied
and sealed the packet; then she opened the wardrobe, drew out a
despatch-box, and deposited the letters within it. As she did so,
it struck her with a flash of irony that she was indebted to Gus
Trenor for the means of buying them.




Chapter 10


The autumn dragged on monotonously. Miss Bart had received one or
two notes from Judy Trenor, reproaching her for not returning to
Bellomont; but she replied evasively, alleging the obligation to
remain with her aunt. In truth, however, she was fast wearying of
her solitary existence with Mrs. Peniston, and only the excitement
of spending her newly-acquired money lightened the dulness of the
days.

All her life Lily had seen money go out as quickly as it came in,
and whatever theories she cultivated as to the prudence of setting
aside a part of her gains, she had unhappily no saving vision of
the risks of the opposite course. It was a keen satisfaction to
feel that, for a few months at least, she would be independent of
her friends’ bounty, that she could show herself abroad without
wondering whether some penetrating eye would detect in her dress
the traces of Judy Trenor’s refurbished splendour. The fact that
the money freed her temporarily from all minor obligations obscured
her sense of the greater one it represented, and having never
before known what it was to command so large a sum, she lingered
delectably over the amusement of spending it.

It was on one of these occasions that, leaving a shop where she
had spent an hour of deliberation over a dressing-case of the most
complicated elegance, she ran across Miss Farish, who had entered
the same establishment with the modest object of having her watch
repaired. Lily was feeling unusually virtuous. She had decided to
defer the purchase of the dressing-case till she should receive
the bill for her new opera cloak, and the resolve made her feel
much richer than when she had entered the shop. In this mood of
self-approval she had a sympathetic eye for others, and she was
struck by her friend’s air of dejection.

Miss Farish, it appeared, had just left the committee-meeting
of a struggling charity in which she was interested. The object
of the association was to provide comfortable lodgings, with a
reading-room and other modest distractions, where young women of
the class employed in downtown offices might find a home when
out of work, or in need of rest, and the first year’s financial
report showed so deplorably small a balance that Miss Farish, who
was convinced of the urgency of the work, felt proportionately
discouraged by the small amount of interest it aroused. The
other-regarding sentiments had not been cultivated in Lily, and
she was often bored by the relation of her friend’s philanthropic
efforts, but today her quick dramatizing fancy seized on the
contrast between her own situation and that represented by some of
Gerty’s “cases.” These were young girls, like herself; some perhaps
pretty, some not without a trace of her finer sensibilities. She
pictured herself leading such a life as theirs—a life in which
achievement seemed as squalid as failure—and the vision made her
shudder sympathetically. The price of the dressing-case was still
in her pocket; and drawing out her little gold purse she slipped a
liberal fraction of the amount into Miss Farish’s hand.

The satisfaction derived from this act was all that the most ardent
moralist could have desired. Lily felt a new interest in herself as
a person of charitable instincts: she had never before thought of
doing good with the wealth she had so often dreamed of possessing,
but now her horizon was enlarged by the vision of a prodigal
philanthropy. Moreover, by some obscure process of logic, she felt
that her momentary burst of generosity had justified all previous
extravagances, and excused any in which she might subsequently
indulge. Miss Farish’s surprise and gratitude confirmed this
feeling, and Lily parted from her with a sense of self-esteem which
she naturally mistook for the fruits of altruism.

About this time she was farther cheered by an invitation to spend
the Thanksgiving week at a camp in the Adirondacks. The invitation
was one which, a year earlier, would have provoked a less ready
response, for the party, though organized by Mrs. Fisher, was
ostensibly given by a lady of obscure origin and indomitable social
ambitions, whose acquaintance Lily had hitherto avoided. Now,
however, she was disposed to coincide with Mrs. Fisher’s view, that
it didn’t matter who gave the party, as long as things were well
done; and doing things well (under competent direction) was Mrs.
Wellington Bry’s strong point. The lady (whose consort was known
as “Welly” Bry on the Stock Exchange and in sporting circles) had
already sacrificed one husband, and sundry minor considerations, to
her determination to get on; and, having obtained a hold on Carry
Fisher, she was astute enough to perceive the wisdom of committing
herself entirely to that lady’s guidance. Everything, accordingly,
was well done, for there was no limit to Mrs. Fisher’s prodigality
when she was not spending her own money, and as she remarked to her
pupil, a good cook was the best introduction to society. If the
company was not as select as the CUISINE, the Welly Brys at least
had the satisfaction of figuring for the first time in the society
columns in company with one or two noticeable names; and foremost
among these was of course Miss Bart’s. The young lady was treated
by her hosts with corresponding deference; and she was in the mood
when such attentions are acceptable, whatever their source. Mrs.
Bry’s admiration was a mirror in which Lily’s self-complacency
recovered its lost outline. No insect hangs its nest on threads
as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity;
and the sense of being of importance among the insignificant was
enough to restore to Miss Bart the gratifying consciousness of
power. If these people paid court to her it proved that she was
still conspicuous in the world to which they aspired; and she was
not above a certain enjoyment in dazzling them by her fineness, in
developing their puzzled perception of her superiorities.

Perhaps, however, her enjoyment proceeded more than she was aware
from the physical stimulus of the excursion, the challenge of crisp
cold and hard exercise, the responsive thrill of her body to the
influences of the winter woods. She returned to town in a glow
of rejuvenation, conscious of a clearer colour in her cheeks, a
fresh elasticity in her muscles. The future seemed full of a vague
promise, and all her apprehensions were swept out of sight on the
buoyant current of her mood.

A few days after her return to town she had the unpleasant surprise
of a visit from Mr. Rosedale. He came late, at the confidential
hour when the tea-table still lingers by the fire in friendly
expectancy; and his manner showed a readiness to adapt itself to
the intimacy of the occasion.

Lily, who had a vague sense of his being somehow connected with her
lucky speculations, tried to give him the welcome he expected; but
there was something in the quality of his geniality which chilled
her own, and she was conscious of marking each step in their
acquaintance by a fresh blunder.

Mr. Rosedale—making himself promptly at home in an adjoining
easy-chair, and sipping his tea critically, with the comment: “You
ought to go to my man for something really good”—appeared totally
unconscious of the repugnance which kept her in frozen erectness
behind the urn. It was perhaps her very manner of holding herself
aloof that appealed to his collector’s passion for the rare and
unattainable. He gave, at any rate, no sign of resenting it and
seemed prepared to supply in his own manner all the ease that was
lacking in hers.

His object in calling was to ask her to go to the opera in his box
on the opening night, and seeing her hesitate he said persuasively:
“Mrs. Fisher is coming, and I’ve secured a tremendous admirer of
yours, who’ll never forgive me if you don’t accept.”

As Lily’s silence left him with this allusion on his hands, he
added with a confidential smile: “Gus Trenor has promised to come
to town on purpose. I fancy he’d go a good deal farther for the
pleasure of seeing you.”

Miss Bart felt an inward motion of annoyance: it was distasteful
enough to hear her name coupled with Trenor’s, and on Rosedale’s
lips the allusion was peculiarly unpleasant.

“The Trenors are my best friends—I think we should all go a
long way to see each other,” she said, absorbing herself in the
preparation of fresh tea.

Her visitor’s smile grew increasingly intimate. “Well, I wasn’t
thinking of Mrs. Trenor at the moment—they say Gus doesn’t always,
you know.” Then, dimly conscious that he had not struck the right
note, he added, with a well-meant effort at diversion: “How’s your
luck been going in Wall Street, by the way? I hear Gus pulled off a
nice little pile for you last month.”

Lily put down the tea-caddy with an abrupt gesture. She felt that
her hands were trembling, and clasped them on her knee to steady
them; but her lip trembled too, and for a moment she was afraid
the tremor might communicate itself to her voice. When she spoke,
however, it was in a tone of perfect lightness.

“Ah, yes—I had a little bit of money to invest, and Mr. Trenor,
who helps me about such matters, advised my putting it in stocks
instead of a mortgage, as my aunt’s agent wanted me to do; and as
it happened, I made a lucky ‘turn’—is that what you call it? For
you make a great many yourself, I believe.”

She was smiling back at him now, relaxing the tension of her
attitude, and admitting him, by imperceptible gradations of glance
and manner, a step farther toward intimacy. The protective instinct
always nerved her to successful dissimulation, and it was not the
first time she had used her beauty to divert attention from an
inconvenient topic.

When Mr. Rosedale took leave, he carried with him, not only her
acceptance of his invitation, but a general sense of having
comported himself in a way calculated to advance his cause. He
had always believed he had a light touch and a knowing way with
women, and the prompt manner in which Miss Bart (as he would have
phrased it) had “come into line,” confirmed his confidence in his
powers of handling this skittish sex. Her way of glossing over the
transaction with Trenor he regarded at once as a tribute to his
own acuteness, and a confirmation of his suspicions. The girl was
evidently nervous, and Mr. Rosedale, if he saw no other means of
advancing his acquaintance with her, was not above taking advantage
of her nervousness.

He left Lily to a passion of disgust and fear. It seemed incredible
that Gus Trenor should have spoken of her to Rosedale. With
all his faults, Trenor had the safeguard of his traditions,
and was the less likely to overstep them because they were so
purely instinctive. But Lily recalled with a pang that there
were convivial moments when, as Judy had confided to her, Gus
“talked foolishly”: in one of these, no doubt, the fatal word had
slipped from him. As for Rosedale, she did not, after the first
shock, greatly care what conclusions he had drawn. Though usually
adroit enough where her own interests were concerned, she made
the mistake, not uncommon to persons in whom the social habits
are instinctive, of supposing that the inability to acquire them
quickly implies a general dulness. Because a blue-bottle bangs
irrationally against a window-pane, the drawing-room naturalist
may forget that under less artificial conditions it is capable
of measuring distances and drawing conclusions with all the
accuracy needful to its welfare; and the fact that Mr. Rosedale’s
drawing-room manner lacked perspective made Lily class him with
Trenor and the other dull men she knew, and assume that a little
flattery, and the occasional acceptance of his hospitality, would
suffice to render him innocuous. However, there could be no doubt
of the expediency of showing herself in his box on the opening
night of the opera; and after all, since Judy Trenor had promised
to take him up that winter, it was as well to reap the advantage of
being first in the field.

For a day or two after Rosedale’s visit, Lily’s thoughts were
dogged by the consciousness of Trenor’s shadowy claim, and she
wished she had a clearer notion of the exact nature of the
transaction which seemed to have put her in his power; but her mind
shrank from any unusual application, and she was always helplessly
puzzled by figures. Moreover she had not seen Trenor since the day
of the Van Osburgh wedding, and in his continued absence the trace
of Rosedale’s words was soon effaced by other impressions.

When the opening night of the opera came, her apprehensions had so
completely vanished that the sight of Trenor’s ruddy countenance in
the back of Mr. Rosedale’s box filled her with a sense of pleasant
reassurance. Lily had not quite reconciled herself to the necessity
of appearing as Rosedale’s guest on so conspicuous an occasion, and
it was a relief to find herself supported by any one of her own
set—for Mrs. Fisher’s social habits were too promiscuous for her
presence to justify Miss Bart’s.

To Lily, always inspirited by the prospect of showing her beauty
in public, and conscious tonight of all the added enhancements of
dress, the insistency of Trenor’s gaze merged itself in the general
stream of admiring looks of which she felt herself the centre. Ah,
it was good to be young, to be radiant, to glow with the sense of
slenderness, strength and elasticity, of well-poised lines and
happy tints, to feel one’s self lifted to a height apart by that
incommunicable grace which is the bodily counterpart of genius!

All means seemed justifiable to attain such an end, or rather, by a
happy shifting of lights with which practice had familiarized Miss
Bart, the cause shrank to a pin-point in the general brightness
of the effect. But brilliant young ladies, a little blinded by
their own effulgence, are apt to forget that the modest satellite
drowned in their light is still performing its own revolutions
and generating heat at its own rate. If Lily’s poetic enjoyment
of the moment was undisturbed by the base thought that her gown
and opera cloak had been indirectly paid for by Gus Trenor, the
latter had not sufficient poetry in his composition to lose sight
of these prosaic facts. He knew only that he had never seen Lily
look smarter in her life, that there wasn’t a woman in the house
who showed off good clothes as she did, and that hitherto he, to
whom she owed the opportunity of making this display, had reaped no
return beyond that of gazing at her in company with several hundred
other pairs of eyes.

It came to Lily therefore as a disagreeable surprise when, in
the back of the box, where they found themselves alone between
two acts, Trenor said, without preamble, and in a tone of sulky
authority: “Look here, Lily, how is a fellow ever to see anything
of you? I’m in town three or four days in the week, and you know
a line to the club will always find me, but you don’t seem to
remember my existence nowadays unless you want to get a tip out of
me.”

The fact that the remark was in distinctly bad taste did not make
it any easier to answer, for Lily was vividly aware that it was not
the moment for that drawing up of her slim figure and surprised
lifting of the brows by which she usually quelled incipient signs
of familiarity.

“I’m very much flattered by your wanting to see me,” she returned,
essaying lightness instead, “but, unless you have mislaid my
address, it would have been easy to find me any afternoon at my
aunt’s—in fact, I rather expected you to look me up there.”

If she hoped to mollify him by this last concession the attempt
was a failure, for he only replied, with the familiar lowering of
the brows that made him look his dullest when he was angry: “Hang
going to your aunt’s, and wasting the afternoon listening to a lot
of other chaps talking to you! You know I’m not the kind to sit
in a crowd and jaw—I’d always rather clear out when that sort of
circus is going on. But why can’t we go off somewhere on a little
lark together—a nice quiet little expedition like that drive at
Bellomont, the day you met me at the station?”

He leaned unpleasantly close in order to convey this suggestion,
and she fancied she caught a significant aroma which explained the
dark flush on his face and the glistening dampness of his forehead.

The idea that any rash answer might provoke an unpleasant outburst
tempered her disgust with caution, and she answered with a laugh:
“I don’t see how one can very well take country drives in town, but
I am not always surrounded by an admiring throng, and if you will
let me know what afternoon you are coming I will arrange things so
that we can have a nice quiet talk.”

“Hang talking! That’s what you always say,” returned Trenor, whose
expletives lacked variety. “You put me off with that at the Van
Osburgh wedding—but the plain English of it is that, now you’ve
got what you wanted out of me, you’d rather have any other fellow
about.”

His voice had risen sharply with the last words, and Lily flushed
with annoyance, but she kept command of the situation and laid a
persuasive hand on his arm.

“Don’t be foolish, Gus; I can’t let you talk to me in that
ridiculous way. If you really want to see me, why shouldn’t we
take a walk in the Park some afternoon? I agree with you that it’s
amusing to be rustic in town, and if you like I’ll meet you there,
and we’ll go and feed the squirrels, and you shall take me out on
the lake in the steam-gondola.”

She smiled as she spoke, letting her eyes rest on his in a way that
took the edge from her banter and made him suddenly malleable to
her will.

“All right, then: that’s a go. Will you come tomorrow? Tomorrow
at three o’clock, at the end of the Mall. I’ll be there sharp,
remember; you won’t go back on me, Lily?”

But to Miss Bart’s relief the repetition of her promise was cut
short by the opening of the box door to admit George Dorset.

Trenor sulkily yielded his place, and Lily turned a brilliant smile
on the newcomer. She had not talked with Dorset since their visit
at Bellomont, but something in his look and manner told her that
he recalled the friendly footing on which they had last met. He
was not a man to whom the expression of admiration came easily:
his long sallow face and distrustful eyes seemed always barricaded
against the expansive emotions. But, where her own influence was
concerned, Lily’s intuitions sent out thread-like feelers, and as
she made room for him on the narrow sofa she was sure he found a
dumb pleasure in being near her. Few women took the trouble to
make themselves agreeable to Dorset, and Lily had been kind to him
at Bellomont, and was now smiling on him with a divine renewal of
kindness.

“Well, here we are, in for another six months of caterwauling,”
he began complainingly. “Not a shade of difference between this
year and last, except that the women have got new clothes and the
singers haven’t got new voices. My wife’s musical, you know—puts me
through a course of this every winter. It isn’t so bad on Italian
nights—then she comes late, and there’s time to digest. But when
they give Wagner we have to rush dinner, and I pay up for it. And
the draughts are damnable—asphyxia in front and pleurisy in the
back. There’s Trenor leaving the box without drawing the curtain!
With a hide like that draughts don’t make any difference. Did you
ever watch Trenor eat? If you did, you’d wonder why he’s alive; I
suppose he’s leather inside too.—But I came to say that my wife
wants you to come down to our place next Sunday. Do for heaven’s
sake say yes. She’s got a lot of bores coming—intellectual ones,
I mean; that’s her new line, you know, and I’m not sure it ain’t
worse than the music. Some of ’em have long hair, and they start
an argument with the soup, and don’t notice when things are handed
to them. The consequence is the dinner gets cold, and I have
dyspepsia. That silly ass Silverton brings them to the house—he
writes poetry, you know, and Bertha and he are getting tremendously
thick. She could write better than any of ’em if she chose, and I
don’t blame her for wanting clever fellows about; all I say is:
‘Don’t let me see ’em eat!’”

The gist of this strange communication gave Lily a distinct thrill
of pleasure. Under ordinary circumstances, there would have been
nothing surprising in an invitation from Bertha Dorset; but since
the Bellomont episode an unavowed hostility had kept the two women
apart. Now, with a start of inner wonder, Lily felt that her thirst
for retaliation had died out. IF YOU WOULD FORGIVE YOUR ENEMY,
says the Malay proverb, FIRST INFLICT A HURT ON HIM; and Lily was
experiencing the truth of the apothegm. If she had destroyed Mrs.
Dorset’s letters, she might have continued to hate her; but the
fact that they remained in her possession had fed her resentment to
satiety.

She uttered a smiling acceptance, hailing in the renewal of the tie
an escape from Trenor’s importunities.




Chapter 11


Meanwhile the holidays had gone by and the season was beginning.
Fifth Avenue had become a nightly torrent of carriages surging
upward to the fashionable quarters about the Park, where
illuminated windows and outspread awnings betokened the usual
routine of hospitality. Other tributary currents crossed the
mainstream, bearing their freight to the theatres, restaurants or
opera; and Mrs. Peniston, from the secluded watch-tower of her
upper window, could tell to a nicety just when the chronic volume
of sound was increased by the sudden influx setting toward a Van
Osburgh ball, or when the multiplication of wheels meant merely
that the opera was over, or that there was a big supper at Sherry’s.

Mrs. Peniston followed the rise and culmination of the season
as keenly as the most active sharer in its gaieties; and,
as a looker-on, she enjoyed opportunities of comparison and
generalization such as those who take part must proverbially
forego. No one could have kept a more accurate record of
social fluctuations, or have put a more unerring finger on
the distinguishing features of each season: its dulness, its
extravagance, its lack of balls or excess of divorces. She had a
special memory for the vicissitudes of the “new people” who rose
to the surface with each recurring tide, and were either submerged
beneath its rush or landed triumphantly beyond the reach of envious
breakers; and she was apt to display a remarkable retrospective
insight into their ultimate fate, so that, when they had fulfilled
their destiny, she was almost always able to say to Grace
Stepney—the recipient of her prophecies—that she had known exactly
what would happen.

This particular season Mrs. Peniston would have characterized as
that in which everybody “felt poor” except the Welly Brys and Mr.
Simon Rosedale. It had been a bad autumn in Wall Street, where
prices fell in accordance with that peculiar law which proves
railway stocks and bales of cotton to be more sensitive to the
allotment of executive power than many estimable citizens trained
to all the advantages of self-government. Even fortunes supposed to
be independent of the market either betrayed a secret dependence on
it, or suffered from a sympathetic affection: fashion sulked in its
country houses, or came to town incognito, general entertainments
were discountenanced, and informality and short dinners became the
fashion.

But society, amused for a while at playing Cinderella, soon
wearied of the hearthside role, and welcomed the Fairy Godmother
in the shape of any magician powerful enough to turn the shrunken
pumpkin back again into the golden coach. The mere fact of growing
richer at a time when most people’s investments are shrinking, is
calculated to attract envious attention; and according to Wall
Street rumours, Welly Bry and Rosedale had found the secret of
performing this miracle.

Rosedale, in particular, was said to have doubled his fortune, and
there was talk of his buying the newly-finished house of one of the
victims of the crash, who, in the space of twelve short months, had
made the same number of millions, built a house in Fifth Avenue,
filled a picture gallery with old masters, entertained all New
York in it, and been smuggled out of the country between a trained
nurse and a doctor, while his creditors mounted guard over the old
masters, and his guests explained to each other that they had dined
with him only because they wanted to see the pictures. Mr. Rosedale
meant to have a less meteoric career. He knew he should have to
go slowly, and the instincts of his race fitted him to suffer
rebuffs and put up with delays. But he was prompt to perceive
that the general dulness of the season afforded him an unusual
opportunity to shine, and he set about with patient industry to
form a background for his growing glory. Mrs. Fisher was of immense
service to him at this period. She had set off so many newcomers
on the social stage that she was like one of those pieces of stock
scenery which tell the experienced spectator exactly what is going
to take place. But Mr. Rosedale wanted, in the long run, a more
individual environment. He was sensitive to shades of difference
which Miss Bart would never have credited him with perceiving,
because he had no corresponding variations of manner; and it
was becoming more and more clear to him that Miss Bart herself
possessed precisely the complementary qualities needed to round off
his social personality.

Such details did not fall within the range of Mrs. Peniston’s
vision. Like many minds of panoramic sweep, hers was apt to
overlook the MINUTIAE of the foreground, and she was much more
likely to know where Carry Fisher had found the Welly Brys’ CHEF
for them, than what was happening to her own niece. She was not,
however, without purveyors of information ready to supplement
her deficiencies. Grace Stepney’s mind was like a kind of moral
fly-paper, to which the buzzing items of gossip were drawn by a
fatal attraction, and where they hung fast in the toils of an
inexorable memory. Lily would have been surprised to know how many
trivial facts concerning herself were lodged in Miss Stepney’s
head. She was quite aware that she was of interest to dingy people,
but she assumed that there is only one form of dinginess, and
that admiration for brilliancy is the natural expression of its
inferior state. She knew that Gerty Farish admired her blindly, and
therefore supposed that she inspired the same sentiments in Grace
Stepney, whom she classified as a Gerty Farish without the saving
traits of youth and enthusiasm.

In reality, the two differed from each other as much as they
differed from the object of their mutual contemplation. Miss
Farish’s heart was a fountain of tender illusions, Miss Stepney’s
a precise register of facts as manifested in their relation to
herself. She had sensibilities which, to Lily, would have seemed
comic in a person with a freckled nose and red eyelids, who lived
in a boarding-house and admired Mrs. Peniston’s drawing-room; but
poor Grace’s limitations gave them a more concentrated inner life,
as poor soil starves certain plants into intenser efflorescence.
She had in truth no abstract propensity to malice: she did not
dislike Lily because the latter was brilliant and predominant,
but because she thought that Lily disliked her. It is less
mortifying to believe one’s self unpopular than insignificant, and
vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of
unfriendliness. Even such scant civilities as Lily accorded to Mr.
Rosedale would have made Miss Stepney her friend for life; but how
could she foresee that such a friend was worth cultivating? How,
moreover, can a young woman who has never been ignored measure
the pang which this injury inflicts? And, lastly, how could Lily,
accustomed to choose between a pressure of engagements, guess
that she had mortally offended Miss Stepney by causing her to be
excluded from one of Mrs. Peniston’s infrequent dinner-parties?

Mrs. Peniston disliked giving dinners, but she had a high sense
of family obligation, and on the Jack Stepneys’ return from their
honeymoon she felt it incumbent upon her to light the drawing-room
lamps and extract her best silver from the Safe Deposit vaults.
Mrs. Peniston’s rare entertainments were preceded by days of
heart-rending vacillation as to every detail of the feast, from
the seating of the guests to the pattern of the table-cloth, and
in the course of one of these preliminary discussions she had
imprudently suggested to her cousin Grace that, as the dinner was a
family affair, she might be included in it. For a week the prospect
had lighted up Miss Stepney’s colourless existence; then she had
been given to understand that it would be more convenient to have
her another day. Miss Stepney knew exactly what had happened.
Lily, to whom family reunions were occasions of unalloyed dulness,
had persuaded her aunt that a dinner of “smart” people would be
much more to the taste of the young couple, and Mrs. Peniston,
who leaned helplessly on her niece in social matters, had been
prevailed upon to pronounce Grace’s exile. After all, Grace could
come any other day; why should she mind being put off?

It was precisely because Miss Stepney could come any other day—and
because she knew her relations were in the secret of her unoccupied
evenings—that this incident loomed gigantically on her horizon. She
was aware that she had Lily to thank for it; and dull resentment
was turned to active animosity.

Mrs. Peniston, on whom she had looked in a day or two after the
dinner, laid down her crochet-work and turned abruptly from her
oblique survey of Fifth Avenue.

“Gus Trenor?—Lily and Gus Trenor?” she said, growing so suddenly
pale that her visitor was almost alarmed.

“Oh, cousin Julia . . . of course I don’t mean....”

“I don’t know what you DO mean,” said Mrs. Peniston, with a
frightened quiver in her small fretful voice. “Such things were
never heard of in my day. And my own niece! I’m not sure I
understand you. Do people say he’s in love with her?”

Mrs. Peniston’s horror was genuine. Though she boasted an
unequalled familiarity with the secret chronicles of society, she
had the innocence of the school-girl who regards wickedness as a
part of “history,” and to whom it never occurs that the scandals
she reads of in lesson-hours may be repeating themselves in the
next street. Mrs. Peniston had kept her imagination shrouded, like
the drawing-room furniture. She knew, of course, that society was
“very much changed,” and that many women her mother would have
thought “peculiar” were now in a position to be critical about
their visiting-lists; she had discussed the perils of divorce with
her rector, and had felt thankful at times that Lily was still
unmarried; but the idea that any scandal could attach to a young
girl’s name, above all that it could be lightly coupled with that
of a married man, was so new to her that she was as much aghast as
if she had been accused of leaving her carpets down all summer, or
of violating any of the other cardinal laws of house-keeping.

Miss Stepney, when her first fright had subsided, began to feel
the superiority that greater breadth of mind confers. It was
really pitiable to be as ignorant of the world as Mrs. Peniston!
She smiled at the latter’s question. “People always say unpleasant
things—and certainly they’re a great deal together. A friend of
mine met them the other afternoon in the Park—quite late, after the
lamps were lit. It’s a pity Lily makes herself so conspicuous.”

“CONSPICUOUS!” gasped Mrs. Peniston. She bent forward, lowering her
voice to mitigate the horror. “What sort of things do they say?
That he means to get a divorce and marry her?”

Grace Stepney laughed outright. “Dear me, no! He would hardly do
that. It—it’s a flirtation—nothing more.”

“A flirtation? Between my niece and a married man? Do you mean to
tell me that, with Lily’s looks and advantages, she could find no
better use for her time than to waste it on a fat stupid man almost
old enough to be her father?” This argument had such a convincing
ring that it gave Mrs. Peniston sufficient reassurance to pick up
her work, while she waited for Grace Stepney to rally her scattered
forces.

But Miss Stepney was on the spot in an instant. “That’s the worst
of it—people say she isn’t wasting her time! Every one knows, as
you say, that Lily is too handsome and—and charming—to devote
herself to a man like Gus Trenor unless—”

“Unless?” echoed Mrs. Peniston. Her visitor drew breath nervously.
It was agreeable to shock Mrs. Peniston, but not to shock her to
the verge of anger. Miss Stepney was not sufficiently familiar
with the classic drama to have recalled in advance how bearers
of bad tidings are proverbially received, but she now had a
rapid vision of forfeited dinners and a reduced wardrobe as the
possible consequence of her disinterestedness. To the honour of
her sex, however, hatred of Lily prevailed over more personal
considerations. Mrs. Peniston had chosen the wrong moment to boast
of her niece’s charms.

“Unless,” said Grace, leaning forward to speak with low-toned
emphasis, “unless there are material advantages to be gained by
making herself agreeable to him.”

She felt that the moment was tremendous, and remembered suddenly
that Mrs. Peniston’s black brocade, with the cut jet fringe, would
have been hers at the end of the season.

Mrs. Peniston put down her work again. Another aspect of the same
idea had presented itself to her, and she felt that it was beneath
her dignity to have her nerves racked by a dependent relative who
wore her old clothes.

“If you take pleasure in annoying me by mysterious insinuations,”
she said coldly, “you might at least have chosen a more suitable
time than just as I am recovering from the strain of giving a large
dinner.”

The mention of the dinner dispelled Miss Stepney’s last scruples.
“I don’t know why I should be accused of taking pleasure in telling
you about Lily. I was sure I shouldn’t get any thanks for it,” she
returned with a flare of temper. “But I have some family feeling
left, and as you are the only person who has any authority over
Lily, I thought you ought to know what is being said of her.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Peniston, “what I complain of is that you haven’t
told me yet what IS being said.”

“I didn’t suppose I should have to put it so plainly. People say
that Gus Trenor pays her bills.”

“Pays her bills—her bills?” Mrs. Peniston broke into a laugh. “I
can’t imagine where you can have picked up such rubbish. Lily has
her own income—and I provide for her very handsomely—”

“Oh, we all know that,” interposed Miss Stepney drily. “But Lily
wears a great many smart gowns—”

“I like her to be well-dressed—it’s only suitable!”

“Certainly; but then there are her gambling debts besides.”

Miss Stepney, in the beginning, had not meant to bring up this
point; but Mrs. Peniston had only her own incredulity to blame. She
was like the stiff-necked unbelievers of Scripture, who must be
annihilated to be convinced.

“Gambling debts? Lily?” Mrs. Peniston’s voice shook with anger and
bewilderment. She wondered whether Grace Stepney had gone out of
her mind. “What do you mean by her gambling debts?”

“Simply that if one plays bridge for money in Lily’s set one is
liable to lose a great deal—and I don’t suppose Lily always wins.”

“Who told you that my niece played cards for money?”

“Mercy, cousin Julia, don’t look at me as if I were trying to turn
you against Lily! Everybody knows she is crazy about bridge. Mrs.
Gryce told me herself that it was her gambling that frightened
Percy Gryce—it seems he was really taken with her at first. But,
of course, among Lily’s friends it’s quite the custom for girls to
play for money. In fact, people are inclined to excuse her on that
account——”

“To excuse her for what?”

“For being hard up—and accepting attentions from men like Gus
Trenor—and George Dorset——”

Mrs. Peniston gave another cry. “George Dorset? Is there any one
else? I should like to know the worst, if you please.”

“Don’t put it in that way, cousin Julia. Lately Lily has been a
good deal with the Dorsets, and he seems to admire her—but of
course that’s only natural. And I’m sure there is no truth in the
horrid things people say; but she HAS been spending a great deal
of money this winter. Evie Van Osburgh was at Celeste’s ordering
her trousseau the other day—yes, the marriage takes place next
month—and she told me that Celeste showed her the most exquisite
things she was just sending home to Lily. And people say that Judy
Trenor has quarrelled with her on account of Gus; but I’m sure I’m
sorry I spoke, though I only meant it as a kindness.”

Mrs. Peniston’s genuine incredulity enabled her to dismiss Miss
Stepney with a disdain which boded ill for that lady’s prospect of
succeeding to the black brocade; but minds impenetrable to reason
have generally some crack through which suspicion filters, and
her visitor’s insinuations did not glide off as easily as she had
expected. Mrs. Peniston disliked scenes, and her determination
to avoid them had always led her to hold herself aloof from the
details of Lily’s life. In her youth, girls had not been supposed
to require close supervision. They were generally assumed to be
taken up with the legitimate business of courtship and marriage,
and interference in such affairs on the part of their natural
guardians was considered as unwarrantable as a spectator’s suddenly
joining in a game. There had of course been “fast” girls even in
Mrs. Peniston’s early experience; but their fastness, at worst, was
understood to be a mere excess of animal spirits, against which
there could be no graver charge than that of being “unladylike.”
The modern fastness appeared synonymous with immorality, and the
mere idea of immorality was as offensive to Mrs. Peniston as a
smell of cooking in the drawing-room: it was one of the conceptions
her mind refused to admit.

She had no immediate intention of repeating to Lily what she
had heard, or even of trying to ascertain its truth by means of
discreet interrogation. To do so might be to provoke a scene; and
a scene, in the shaken state of Mrs. Peniston’s nerves, with the
effects of her dinner not worn off, and her mind still tremulous
with new impressions, was a risk she deemed it her duty to avoid.
But there remained in her thoughts a settled deposit of resentment
against her niece, all the denser because it was not to be cleared
by explanation or discussion. It was horrible of a young girl to
let herself be talked about; however unfounded the charges against
her, she must be to blame for their having been made. Mrs. Peniston
felt as if there had been a contagious illness in the house, and
she was doomed to sit shivering among her contaminated furniture.




Chapter 12


Miss Bart had in fact been treading a devious way, and none of her
critics could have been more alive to the fact than herself; but
she had a fatalistic sense of being drawn from one wrong turning
to another, without ever perceiving the right road till it was too
late to take it.

Lily, who considered herself above narrow prejudices, had not
imagined that the fact of letting Gus Trenor make a little money
for her would ever disturb her self-complacency. And the fact
in itself still seemed harmless enough; only it was a fertile
source of harmful complications. As she exhausted the amusement
of spending the money these complications became more pressing,
and Lily, whose mind could be severely logical in tracing the
causes of her ill-luck to others, justified herself by the thought
that she owed all her troubles to the enmity of Bertha Dorset.
This enmity, however, had apparently expired in a renewal of
friendliness between the two women. Lily’s visit to the Dorsets had
resulted, for both, in the discovery that they could be of use to
each other; and the civilized instinct finds a subtler pleasure in
making use of its antagonist than in confounding him. Mrs. Dorset
was, in fact, engaged in a new sentimental experiment, of which
Mrs. Fisher’s late property, Ned Silverton, was the rosy victim;
and at such moments, as Judy Trenor had once remarked, she felt a
peculiar need of distracting her husband’s attention. Dorset was
as difficult to amuse as a savage; but even his self-engrossment
was not proof against Lily’s arts, or rather these were especially
adapted to soothe an uneasy egoism. Her experience with Percy Gryce
stood her in good stead in ministering to Dorset’s humours, and if
the incentive to please was less urgent, the difficulties of her
situation were teaching her to make much of minor opportunities.

Intimacy with the Dorsets was not likely to lessen such
difficulties on the material side. Mrs. Dorset had none of Judy
Trenor’s lavish impulses, and Dorset’s admiration was not likely to
express itself in financial “tips,” even had Lily cared to renew
her experiences in that line. What she required, for the moment,
of the Dorsets’ friendship, was simply its social sanction. She
knew that people were beginning to talk of her; but this fact did
not alarm her as it had alarmed Mrs. Peniston. In her set such
gossip was not unusual, and a handsome girl who flirted with a
married man was merely assumed to be pressing to the limit of her
opportunities. It was Trenor himself who frightened her. Their walk
in the Park had not been a success. Trenor had married young, and
since his marriage his intercourse with women had not taken the
form of the sentimental small-talk which doubles upon itself like
the paths in a maze. He was first puzzled and then irritated to
find himself always led back to the same starting-point, and Lily
felt that she was gradually losing control of the situation. Trenor
was in truth in an unmanageable mood. In spite of his understanding
with Rosedale he had been somewhat heavily “touched” by the fall in
stocks; his household expenses weighed on him, and he seemed to be
meeting, on all sides, a sullen opposition to his wishes, instead
of the easy good luck he had hitherto encountered.

Mrs. Trenor was still at Bellomont, keeping the town-house open,
and descending on it now and then for a taste of the world, but
preferring the recurrent excitement of week-end parties to the
restrictions of a dull season. Since the holidays she had not urged
Lily to return to Bellomont, and the first time they met in town
Lily fancied there was a shade of coldness in her manner. Was it
merely the expression of her displeasure at Miss Bart’s neglect,
or had disquieting rumours reached her? The latter contingency
seemed improbable, yet Lily was not without a sense of uneasiness.
If her roaming sympathies had struck root anywhere, it was in
her friendship with Judy Trenor. She believed in the sincerity
of her friend’s affection, though it sometimes showed itself in
self-interested ways, and she shrank with peculiar reluctance from
any risk of estranging it. But, aside from this, she was keenly
conscious of the way in which such an estrangement would react on
herself. The fact that Gus Trenor was Judy’s husband was at times
Lily’s strongest reason for disliking him, and for resenting the
obligation under which he had placed her. To set her doubts at
rest, Miss Bart, soon after the New Year, “proposed” herself for a
week-end at Bellomont. She had learned in advance that the presence
of a large party would protect her from too great assiduity on
Trenor’s part, and his wife’s telegraphic “come by all means”
seemed to assure her of her usual welcome.

Judy received her amicably. The cares of a large party always
prevailed over personal feelings, and Lily saw no change in
her hostess’s manner. Nevertheless, she was soon aware that
the experiment of coming to Bellomont was destined not to be
successful. The party was made up of what Mrs. Trenor called “poky
people”—her generic name for persons who did not play bridge—and,
it being her habit to group all such obstructionists in one
class, she usually invited them together, regardless of their
other characteristics. The result was apt to be an irreducible
combination of persons having no other quality in common than their
abstinence from bridge, and the antagonisms developed in a group
lacking the one taste which might have amalgamated them, were in
this case aggravated by bad weather, and by the ill-concealed
boredom of their host and hostess. In such emergencies, Judy would
usually have turned to Lily to fuse the discordant elements;
and Miss Bart, assuming that such a service was expected of
her, threw herself into it with her accustomed zeal. But at the
outset she perceived a subtle resistance to her efforts. If Mrs.
Trenor’s manner toward her was unchanged, there was certainly a
faint coldness in that of the other ladies. An occasional caustic
allusion to “your friends the Wellington Brys,” or to “the little
Jew who has bought the Greiner house—some one told us you knew him,
Miss Bart,”—showed Lily that she was in disfavour with that portion
of society which, while contributing least to its amusement, has
assumed the right to decide what forms that amusement shall take.
The indication was a slight one, and a year ago Lily would have
smiled at it, trusting to the charm of her personality to dispel
any prejudice against her. But now she had grown more sensitive
to criticism and less confident in her power of disarming it.
She knew, moreover, that if the ladies at Bellomont permitted
themselves to criticize her friends openly, it was a proof that
they were not afraid of subjecting her to the same treatment behind
her back. The nervous dread lest anything in Trenor’s manner should
seem to justify their disapproval made her seek every pretext for
avoiding him, and she left Bellomont conscious of having failed in
every purpose which had taken her there.

In town she returned to preoccupations which, for the moment, had
the happy effect of banishing troublesome thoughts. The Welly Brys,
after much debate, and anxious counsel with their newly-acquired
friends, had decided on the bold move of giving a general
entertainment. To attack society collectively, when one’s means of
approach are limited to a few acquaintances, is like advancing into
a strange country with an insufficient number of scouts; but such
rash tactics have sometimes led to brilliant victories, and the
Brys had determined to put their fate to the touch. Mrs. Fisher, to
whom they had entrusted the conduct of the affair, had decided that
TABLEAUX VIVANTS and expensive music were the two baits most likely
to attract the desired prey, and after prolonged negotiations,
and the kind of wire-pulling in which she was known to excel, she
had induced a dozen fashionable women to exhibit themselves in a
series of pictures which, by a farther miracle of persuasion, the
distinguished portrait painter, Paul Morpeth, had been prevailed
upon to organize.

Lily was in her element on such occasions. Under Morpeth’s guidance
her vivid plastic sense, hitherto nurtured on no higher food than
dress-making and upholstery, found eager expression in the disposal
of draperies, the study of attitudes, the shifting of lights
and shadows. Her dramatic instinct was roused by the choice of
subjects, and the gorgeous reproductions of historic dress stirred
an imagination which only visual impressions could reach. But
keenest of all was the exhilaration of displaying her own beauty
under a new aspect: of showing that her loveliness was no mere
fixed quality, but an element shaping all emotions to fresh forms
of grace.

Mrs. Fisher’s measures had been well-taken, and society, surprised
in a dull moment, succumbed to the temptation of Mrs. Bry’s
hospitality. The protesting minority were forgotten in the throng
which abjured and came; and the audience was almost as brilliant as
the show.

Lawrence Selden was among those who had yielded to the proffered
inducements. If he did not often act on the accepted social axiom
that a man may go where he pleases, it was because he had long
since learned that his pleasures were mainly to be found in a small
group of the like-minded. But he enjoyed spectacular effects, and
was not insensible to the part money plays in their production: all
he asked was that the very rich should live up to their calling
as stage-managers, and not spend their money in a dull way. This
the Brys could certainly not be charged with doing. Their recently
built house, whatever it might lack as a frame for domesticity,
was almost as well-designed for the display of a festal assemblage
as one of those airy pleasure-halls which the Italian architects
improvised to set off the hospitality of princes. The air of
improvisation was in fact strikingly present: so recent, so
rapidly-evoked was the whole MISE-EN-SCENE that one had to touch
the marble columns to learn they were not of cardboard, to seat
one’s self in one of the damask-and-gold arm-chairs to be sure it
was not painted against the wall.

Selden, who had put one of these seats to the test, found himself,
from an angle of the ball-room, surveying the scene with frank
enjoyment. The company, in obedience to the decorative instinct
which calls for fine clothes in fine surroundings, had dressed
rather with an eye to Mrs. Bry’s background than to herself. The
seated throng, filling the immense room without undue crowding,
presented a surface of rich tissues and jewelled shoulders in
harmony with the festooned and gilded walls, and the flushed
splendours of the Venetian ceiling. At the farther end of the room
a stage had been constructed behind a proscenium arch curtained
with folds of old damask; but in the pause before the parting of
the folds there was little thought of what they might reveal, for
every woman who had accepted Mrs. Bry’s invitation was engaged in
trying to find out how many of her friends had done the same.

Gerty Farish, seated next to Selden, was lost in that
indiscriminate and uncritical enjoyment so irritating to Miss
Bart’s finer perceptions. It may be that Selden’s nearness had
something to do with the quality of his cousin’s pleasure; but Miss
Farish was so little accustomed to refer her enjoyment of such
scenes to her own share in them, that she was merely conscious of a
deeper sense of contentment.

“Wasn’t it dear of Lily to get me an invitation? Of course it would
never have occurred to Carry Fisher to put me on the list, and I
should have been so sorry to miss seeing it all—and especially
Lily herself. Some one told me the ceiling was by Veronese—you
would know, of course, Lawrence. I suppose it’s very beautiful,
but his women are so dreadfully fat. Goddesses? Well, I can only
say that if they’d been mortals and had to wear corsets, it would
have been better for them. I think our women are much handsomer.
And this room is wonderfully becoming—every one looks so well! Did
you ever see such jewels? Do look at Mrs. George Dorset’s pearls—I
suppose the smallest of them would pay the rent of our Girls’ Club
for a year. Not that I ought to complain about the club; every
one has been so wonderfully kind. Did I tell you that Lily had
given us three hundred dollars? Wasn’t it splendid of her? And
then she collected a lot of money from her friends—Mrs. Bry gave
us five hundred, and Mr. Rosedale a thousand. I wish Lily were not
so nice to Mr. Rosedale, but she says it’s no use being rude to
him, because he doesn’t see the difference. She really can’t bear
to hurt people’s feelings—it makes me so angry when I hear her
called cold and conceited! The girls at the club don’t call her
that. Do you know she has been there with me twice?—yes, Lily! And
you should have seen their eyes! One of them said it was as good
as a day in the country just to look at her. And she sat there,
and laughed and talked with them—not a bit as if she were being
CHARITABLE, you know, but as if she liked it as much as they did.
They’ve been asking ever since when she’s coming back; and she’s
promised me——oh!”

Miss Farish’s confidences were cut short by the parting of the
curtain on the first TABLEAU—a group of nymphs dancing across
flower-strewn sward in the rhythmic postures of Botticelli’s
Spring. TABLEAUX VIVANTS depend for their effect not only on the
happy disposal of lights and the delusive interposition of layers
of gauze, but on a corresponding adjustment of the mental vision.
To unfurnished minds they remain, in spite of every enhancement
of art, only a superior kind of wax-works; but to the responsive
fancy they may give magic glimpses of the boundary world between
fact and imagination. Selden’s mind was of this order: he could
yield to vision-making influences as completely as a child to the
spell of a fairy-tale. Mrs. Bry’s TABLEAUX wanted none of the
qualities which go to the producing of such illusions, and under
Morpeth’s organizing hand the pictures succeeded each other with
the rhythmic march of some splendid frieze, in which the fugitive
curves of living flesh and the wandering light of young eyes have
been subdued to plastic harmony without losing the charm of life.

The scenes were taken from old pictures, and the participators had
been cleverly fitted with characters suited to their types. No
one, for instance, could have made a more typical Goya than Carry
Fisher, with her short dark-skinned face, the exaggerated glow of
her eyes, the provocation of her frankly-painted smile. A brilliant
Miss Smedden from Brooklyn showed to perfection the sumptuous
curves of Titian’s Daughter, lifting her gold salver laden with
grapes above the harmonizing gold of rippled hair and rich brocade,
and a young Mrs. Van Alstyne, who showed the frailer Dutch type,
with high blue-veined forehead and pale eyes and lashes, made
a characteristic Vandyck, in black satin, against a curtained
archway. Then there were Kauffmann nymphs garlanding the altar of
Love; a Veronese supper, all sheeny textures, pearl-woven heads and
marble architecture; and a Watteau group of lute-playing comedians,
lounging by a fountain in a sunlit glade.

Each evanescent picture touched the vision-building faculty in
Selden, leading him so far down the vistas of fancy that even Gerty
Farish’s running commentary—“Oh, how lovely Lulu Melson looks!”
or: “That must be Kate Corby, to the right there, in purple”—did
not break the spell of the illusion. Indeed, so skilfully had the
personality of the actors been subdued to the scenes they figured
in that even the least imaginative of the audience must have felt
a thrill of contrast when the curtain suddenly parted on a picture
which was simply and undisguisedly the portrait of Miss Bart.

Here there could be no mistaking the predominance of
personality—the unanimous “Oh!” of the spectators was a tribute,
not to the brush-work of Reynolds’s “Mrs. Lloyd” but to the flesh
and blood loveliness of Lily Bart. She had shown her artistic
intelligence in selecting a type so like her own that she could
embody the person represented without ceasing to be herself. It
was as though she had stepped, not out of, but into, Reynolds’s
canvas, banishing the phantom of his dead beauty by the beams
of her living grace. The impulse to show herself in a splendid
setting—she had thought for a moment of representing Tiepolo’s
Cleopatra—had yielded to the truer instinct of trusting to her
unassisted beauty, and she had purposely chosen a picture without
distracting accessories of dress or surroundings. Her pale
draperies, and the background of foliage against which she stood,
served only to relieve the long dryad-like curves that swept upward
from her poised foot to her lifted arm. The noble buoyancy of her
attitude, its suggestion of soaring grace, revealed the touch of
poetry in her beauty that Selden always felt in her presence, yet
lost the sense of when he was not with her. Its expression was now
so vivid that for the first time he seemed to see before him the
real Lily Bart, divested of the trivialities of her little world,
and catching for a moment a note of that eternal harmony of which
her beauty was a part.

“Deuced bold thing to show herself in that get-up; but, gad, there
isn’t a break in the lines anywhere, and I suppose she wanted us to
know it!”

These words, uttered by that experienced connoisseur, Mr. Ned
Van Alstyne, whose scented white moustache had brushed Selden’s
shoulder whenever the parting of the curtains presented any
exceptional opportunity for the study of the female outline,
affected their hearer in an unexpected way. It was not the first
time that Selden had heard Lily’s beauty lightly remarked on, and
hitherto the tone of the comments had imperceptibly coloured his
view of her. But now it woke only a motion of indignant contempt.
This was the world she lived in, these were the standards by which
she was fated to be measured! Does one go to Caliban for a judgment
on Miranda?

In the long moment before the curtain fell, he had time to feel
the whole tragedy of her life. It was as though her beauty, thus
detached from all that cheapened and vulgarized it, had held out
suppliant hands to him from the world in which he and she had once
met for a moment, and where he felt an overmastering longing to be
with her again.

He was roused by the pressure of ecstatic fingers. “Wasn’t she too
beautiful, Lawrence? Don’t you like her best in that simple dress?
It makes her look like the real Lily—the Lily I know.”

He met Gerty Farish’s brimming gaze. “The Lily we know,” he
corrected; and his cousin, beaming at the implied understanding,
exclaimed joyfully: “I’ll tell her that! She always says you
dislike her.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The performance over, Selden’s first impulse was to seek
Miss Bart. During the interlude of music which succeeded the
TABLEAUX, the actors had seated themselves here and there in the
audience, diversifying its conventional appearance by the varied
picturesqueness of their dress. Lily, however, was not among them,
and her absence served to protract the effect she had produced
on Selden: it would have broken the spell to see her too soon in
the surroundings from which accident had so happily detached her.
They had not met since the day of the Van Osburgh wedding, and on
his side the avoidance had been intentional. Tonight, however,
he knew that, sooner or later, he should find himself at her
side; and though he let the dispersing crowd drift him whither
it would, without making an immediate effort to reach her, his
procrastination was not due to any lingering resistance, but to the
desire to luxuriate a moment in the sense of complete surrender.

Lily had not an instant’s doubt as to the meaning of the murmur
greeting her appearance. No other tableau had been received with
that precise note of approval: it had obviously been called forth
by herself, and not by the picture she impersonated. She had feared
at the last moment that she was risking too much in dispensing with
the advantages of a more sumptuous setting, and the completeness
of her triumph gave her an intoxicating sense of recovered power.
Not caring to diminish the impression she had produced, she held
herself aloof from the audience till the movement of dispersal
before supper, and thus had a second opportunity of showing
herself to advantage, as the throng poured slowly into the empty
drawing-room where she was standing.

She was soon the centre of a group which increased and renewed
itself as the circulation became general, and the individual
comments on her success were a delightful prolongation of the
collective applause. At such moments she lost something of
her natural fastidiousness, and cared less for the quality of
the admiration received than for its quantity. Differences of
personality were merged in a warm atmosphere of praise, in which
her beauty expanded like a flower in sunlight; and if Selden had
approached a moment or two sooner he would have seen her turning
on Ned Van Alstyne and George Dorset the look he had dreamed of
capturing for himself.

Fortune willed, however, that the hurried approach of Mrs. Fisher,
as whose aide-de-camp Van Alstyne was acting, should break up the
group before Selden reached the threshold of the room. One or two
of the men wandered off in search of their partners for supper,
and the others, noticing Selden’s approach, gave way to him in
accordance with the tacit freemasonry of the ball-room. Lily was
therefore standing alone when he reached her; and finding the
expected look in her eye, he had the satisfaction of supposing he
had kindled it. The look did indeed deepen as it rested on him, for
even in that moment of self-intoxication Lily felt the quicker beat
of life that his nearness always produced. She read, too, in his
answering gaze the delicious confirmation of her triumph, and for
the moment it seemed to her that it was for him only she cared to
be beautiful.

Selden had given her his arm without speaking. She took it in
silence, and they moved away, not toward the supper-room, but
against the tide which was setting thither. The faces about her
flowed by like the streaming images of sleep: she hardly noticed
where Selden was leading her, till they passed through a glass
doorway at the end of the long suite of rooms and stood suddenly in
the fragrant hush of a garden. Gravel grated beneath their feet,
and about them was the transparent dimness of a midsummer night.
Hanging lights made emerald caverns in the depths of foliage, and
whitened the spray of a fountain falling among lilies. The magic
place was deserted: there was no sound but the splash of the water
on the lily-pads, and a distant drift of music that might have been
blown across a sleeping lake.

Selden and Lily stood still, accepting the unreality of the scene
as a part of their own dream-like sensations. It would not have
surprised them to feel a summer breeze on their faces, or to see
the lights among the boughs reduplicated in the arch of a starry
sky. The strange solitude about them was no stranger than the
sweetness of being alone in it together. At length Lily withdrew
her hand, and moved away a step, so that her white-robed slimness
was outlined against the dusk of the branches. Selden followed her,
and still without speaking they seated themselves on a bench beside
the fountain.

Suddenly she raised her eyes with the beseeching earnestness of a
child. “You never speak to me—you think hard things of me,” she
murmured.

“I think of you at any rate, God knows!” he said.

“Then why do we never see each other? Why can’t we be friends?
You promised once to help me,” she continued in the same tone, as
though the words were drawn from her unwillingly.

“The only way I can help you is by loving you,” Selden said in a
low voice.

She made no reply, but her face turned to him with the soft motion
of a flower. His own met it slowly, and their lips touched. She
drew back and rose from her seat. Selden rose too, and they stood
facing each other. Suddenly she caught his hand and pressed it a
moment against her cheek.

“Ah, love me, love me—but don’t tell me so!” she sighed with her
eyes in his; and before he could speak she had turned and slipped
through the arch of boughs, disappearing in the brightness of the
room beyond.

Selden stood where she had left him. He knew too well the
transiency of exquisite moments to attempt to follow her; but
presently he reentered the house and made his way through the
deserted rooms to the door. A few sumptuously-cloaked ladies were
already gathered in the marble vestibule, and in the coat-room he
found Van Alstyne and Gus Trenor.

The former, at Selden’s approach, paused in the careful selection
of a cigar from one of the silver boxes invitingly set out near the
door.

“Hallo, Selden, going too? You’re an Epicurean like myself, I see:
you don’t want to see all those goddesses gobbling terrapin. Gad,
what a show of good-looking women; but not one of ’em could touch
that little cousin of mine. Talk of jewels—what’s a woman want with
jewels when she’s got herself to show? The trouble is that all
these fal-bals they wear cover up their figures when they’ve got
’em. I never knew till tonight what an outline Lily has.”

“It’s not her fault if everybody don’t know it now,” growled
Trenor, flushed with the struggle of getting into his fur-lined
coat. “Damned bad taste, I call it—no, no cigar for me. You can’t
tell what you’re smoking in one of these new houses—likely as not
the CHEF buys the cigars. Stay for supper? Not if I know it! When
people crowd their rooms so that you can’t get near any one you
want to speak to, I’d as soon sup in the elevated at the rush hour.
My wife was dead right to stay away: she says life’s too short to
spend it in breaking in new people.”




Chapter 13


Lily woke from happy dreams to find two notes at her bed-side.

One was from Mrs. Trenor, who announced that she was coming to town
that afternoon for a flying visit, and hoped Miss Bart would be
able to dine with her. The other was from Selden. He wrote briefly
that an important case called him to Albany, whence he would be
unable to return till the evening, and asked Lily to let him know
at what hour on the following day she would see him.

Lily, leaning back among her pillows, gazed musingly at his
letter. The scene in the Brys’ conservatory had been like a part
of her dreams; she had not expected to wake to such evidence
of its reality. Her first movement was one of annoyance: this
unforeseen act of Selden’s added another complication to life. It
was so unlike him to yield to such an irrational impulse! Did he
really mean to ask her to marry him? She had once shown him the
impossibility of such a hope, and his subsequent behaviour seemed
to prove that he had accepted the situation with a reasonableness
somewhat mortifying to her vanity. It was all the more agreeable
to find that this reasonableness was maintained only at the cost
of not seeing her; but, though nothing in life was as sweet as the
sense of her power over him, she saw the danger of allowing the
episode of the previous night to have a sequel. Since she could
not marry him, it would be kinder to him, as well as easier for
herself, to write a line amicably evading his request to see her:
he was not the man to mistake such a hint, and when next they met
it would be on their usual friendly footing.

Lily sprang out of bed, and went straight to her desk. She wanted
to write at once, while she could trust to the strength of her
resolve. She was still languid from her brief sleep and the
exhilaration of the evening, and the sight of Selden’s writing
brought back the culminating moment of her triumph: the moment
when she had read in his eyes that no philosophy was proof against
her power. It would be pleasant to have that sensation again . . .
no one else could give it to her in its fulness; and she could
not bear to mar her mood of luxurious retrospection by an act of
definite refusal. She took up her pen and wrote hastily: “TOMORROW
AT FOUR;” murmuring to herself, as she slipped the sheet into its
envelope: “I can easily put him off when tomorrow comes.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Judy Trenor’s summons was very welcome to Lily. It was the first
time she had received a direct communication from Bellomont
since the close of her last visit there, and she was still
visited by the dread of having incurred Judy’s displeasure.
But this characteristic command seemed to reestablish their
former relations; and Lily smiled at the thought that her friend
had probably summoned her in order to hear about the Brys’
entertainment. Mrs. Trenor had absented herself from the feast,
perhaps for the reason so frankly enunciated by her husband,
perhaps because, as Mrs. Fisher somewhat differently put it, she
“couldn’t bear new people when she hadn’t discovered them herself.”
At any rate, though she remained haughtily at Bellomont, Lily
suspected in her a devouring eagerness to hear of what she had
missed, and to learn exactly in what measure Mrs. Wellington Bry
had surpassed all previous competitors for social recognition. Lily
was quite ready to gratify this curiosity, but it happened that she
was dining out. She determined, however, to see Mrs. Trenor for a
few moments, and ringing for her maid she despatched a telegram to
say that she would be with her friend that evening at ten.

She was dining with Mrs. Fisher, who had gathered at an informal
feast a few of the performers of the previous evening. There was
to be plantation music in the studio after dinner—for Mrs. Fisher,
despairing of the republic, had taken up modelling, and annexed to
her small crowded house a spacious apartment, which, whatever its
uses in her hours of plastic inspiration, served at other times for
the exercise of an indefatigable hospitality. Lily was reluctant
to leave, for the dinner was amusing, and she would have liked to
lounge over a cigarette and hear a few songs; but she could not
break her engagement with Judy, and shortly after ten she asked
her hostess to ring for a hansom, and drove up Fifth Avenue to the
Trenors’.

She waited long enough on the doorstep to wonder that Judy’s
presence in town was not signalized by a greater promptness in
admitting her; and her surprise was increased when, instead of
the expected footman, pushing his shoulders into a tardy coat,
a shabby care-taking person in calico let her into the shrouded
hall. Trenor, however, appeared at once on the threshold of the
drawing-room, welcoming her with unusual volubility while he
relieved her of her cloak and drew her into the room.

“Come along to the den; it’s the only comfortable place in the
house. Doesn’t this room look as if it was waiting for the body
to be brought down? Can’t see why Judy keeps the house wrapped up
in this awful slippery white stuff—it’s enough to give a fellow
pneumonia to walk through these rooms on a cold day. You look a
little pinched yourself, by the way: it’s rather a sharp night
out. I noticed it walking up from the club. Come along, and I’ll
give you a nip of brandy, and you can toast yourself over the fire
and try some of my new Egyptians—that little Turkish chap at the
Embassy put me on to a brand that I want you to try, and if you
like ’em I’ll get out a lot for you: they don’t have ’em here yet,
but I’ll cable.”

He led her through the house to the large room at the back, where
Mrs. Trenor usually sat, and where, even in her absence, there was
an air of occupancy. Here, as usual, were flowers, newspapers,
a littered writing-table, and a general aspect of lamp-lit
familiarity, so that it was a surprise not to see Judy’s energetic
figure start up from the arm-chair near the fire.

It was apparently Trenor himself who had been occupying the seat
in question, for it was overhung by a cloud of cigar smoke, and
near it stood one of those intricate folding tables which British
ingenuity has devised to facilitate the circulation of tobacco and
spirits. The sight of such appliances in a drawing-room was not
unusual in Lily’s set, where smoking and drinking were unrestricted
by considerations of time and place, and her first movement was
to help herself to one of the cigarettes recommended by Trenor,
while she checked his loquacity by asking, with a surprised glance:
“Where’s Judy?”

Trenor, a little heated by his unusual flow of words, and perhaps
by prolonged propinquity with the decanters, was bending over the
latter to decipher their silver labels.

“Here, now, Lily, just a drop of cognac in a little fizzy water—you
do look pinched, you know: I swear the end of your nose is red.
I’ll take another glass to keep you company—Judy?—Why, you see,
Judy’s got a devil of a head ache—quite knocked out with it, poor
thing—she asked me to explain—make it all right, you know—Do come
up to the fire, though; you look dead-beat, really. Now do let me
make you comfortable, there’s a good girl.”

He had taken her hand, half-banteringly, and was drawing her toward
a low seat by the hearth; but she stopped and freed herself quietly.

“Do you mean to say that Judy’s not well enough to see me? Doesn’t
she want me to go upstairs?”

Trenor drained the glass he had filled for himself, and paused to
set it down before he answered.

“Why, no—the fact is, she’s not up to seeing anybody. It came on
suddenly, you know, and she asked me to tell you how awfully sorry
she was—if she’d known where you were dining she’d have sent you
word.”

“She did know where I was dining; I mentioned it in my telegram.
But it doesn’t matter, of course. I suppose if she’s so poorly she
won’t go back to Bellomont in the morning, and I can come and see
her then.”

“Yes: exactly—that’s capital. I’ll tell her you’ll pop in tomorrow
morning. And now do sit down a minute, there’s a dear, and let’s
have a nice quiet jaw together. You won’t take a drop, just for
sociability? Tell me what you think of that cigarette. Why, don’t
you like it? What are you chucking it away for?”

“I am chucking it away because I must go, if you’ll have the
goodness to call a cab for me,” Lily returned with a smile.

She did not like Trenor’s unusual excitability, with its too
evident explanation, and the thought of being alone with him,
with her friend out of reach upstairs, at the other end of the
great empty house, did not conduce to a desire to prolong their
TETE-A-TETE.

But Trenor, with a promptness which did not escape her, had moved
between herself and the door.

“Why must you go, I should like to know? If Judy’d been here you’d
have sat gossiping till all hours—and you can’t even give me five
minutes! It’s always the same story. Last night I couldn’t get near
you—I went to that damned vulgar party just to see you, and there
was everybody talking about you, and asking me if I’d ever seen
anything so stunning, and when I tried to come up and say a word,
you never took any notice, but just went on laughing and joking
with a lot of asses who only wanted to be able to swagger about
afterward, and look knowing when you were mentioned.”

He paused, flushed by his diatribe, and fixing on her a look in
which resentment was the ingredient she least disliked. But she
had regained her presence of mind, and stood composedly in the
middle of the room, while her slight smile seemed to put an ever
increasing distance between herself and Trenor.

Across it she said: “Don’t be absurd, Gus. It’s past eleven, and I
must really ask you to ring for a cab.”

He remained immovable, with the lowering forehead she had grown to
detest.

“And supposing I won’t ring for one—what’ll you do then?”

“I shall go upstairs to Judy if you force me to disturb her.”

Trenor drew a step nearer and laid his hand on her arm. “Look here,
Lily: won’t you give me five minutes of your own accord?”

“Not tonight, Gus: you——”

“Very good, then: I’ll take ’em. And as many more as I want.” He
had squared himself on the threshold, his hands thrust deep in his
pockets. He nodded toward the chair on the hearth.

“Go and sit down there, please: I’ve got a word to say to you.”

Lily’s quick temper was getting the better of her fears. She drew
herself up and moved toward the door.

“If you have anything to say to me, you must say it another time. I
shall go up to Judy unless you call a cab for me at once.”

He burst into a laugh. “Go upstairs and welcome, my dear; but you
won’t find Judy. She ain’t there.”

Lily cast a startled look upon him. “Do you mean that Judy is not
in the house—not in town?” she exclaimed.

“That’s just what I do mean,” returned Trenor, his bluster sinking
to sullenness under her look.

“Nonsense—I don’t believe you. I am going upstairs,” she said
impatiently.

He drew unexpectedly aside, letting her reach the threshold
unimpeded.

“Go up and welcome; but my wife is at Bellomont.”

But Lily had a flash of reassurance. “If she hadn’t come she would
have sent me word——”

“She did; she telephoned me this afternoon to let you know.”

“I received no message.”

“I didn’t send any.”

The two measured each other for a moment, but Lily still saw her
opponent through a blur of scorn that made all other considerations
indistinct.

“I can’t imagine your object in playing such a stupid trick on me;
but if you have fully gratified your peculiar sense of humour I
must again ask you to send for a cab.”

It was the wrong note, and she knew it as she spoke. To be stung by
irony it is not necessary to understand it, and the angry streaks
on Trenor’s face might have been raised by an actual lash.

“Look here, Lily, don’t take that high and mighty tone with me.” He
had again moved toward the door, and in her instinctive shrinking
from him she let him regain command of the threshold. “I DID play a
trick on you; I own up to it; but if you think I’m ashamed you’re
mistaken. Lord knows I’ve been patient enough—I’ve hung round and
looked like an ass. And all the while you were letting a lot of
other fellows make up to you . . . letting ’em make fun of me,
I daresay . . . I’m not sharp, and can’t dress my friends up to
look funny, as you do . . . but I can tell when it’s being done to
me.... I can tell fast enough when I’m made a fool of....”

“Ah, I shouldn’t have thought that!” flashed from Lily; but her
laugh dropped to silence under his look.

“No; you wouldn’t have thought it; but you’ll know better now.
That’s what you’re here for tonight. I’ve been waiting for a quiet
time to talk things over, and now I’ve got it I mean to make you
hear me out.”

His first rush of inarticulate resentment had been followed by a
steadiness and concentration of tone more disconcerting to Lily
than the excitement preceding it. For a moment her presence of mind
forsook her. She had more than once been in situations where a
quick sword-play of wit had been needful to cover her retreat; but
her frightened heart-throbs told her that here such skill would not
avail.

To gain time she repeated: “I don’t understand what you want.”

Trenor had pushed a chair between herself and the door. He threw
himself in it, and leaned back, looking up at her.

“I’ll tell you what I want: I want to know just where you and
I stand. Hang it, the man who pays for the dinner is generally
allowed to have a seat at table.”

She flamed with anger and abasement, and the sickening need of
having to conciliate where she longed to humble.

“I don’t know what you mean—but you must see, Gus, that I can’t
stay here talking to you at this hour——”

“Gad, you go to men’s houses fast enough in broad day light—strikes
me you’re not always so deuced careful of appearances.”

The brutality of the thrust gave her the sense of dizziness that
follows on a physical blow. Rosedale had spoken then—this was the
way men talked of her—She felt suddenly weak and defenceless: there
was a throb of self-pity in her throat. But all the while another
self was sharpening her to vigilance, whispering the terrified
warning that every word and gesture must be measured.

“If you have brought me here to say insulting things——” she began.

Trenor laughed. “Don’t talk stage-rot. I don’t want to insult you.
But a man’s got his feelings—and you’ve played with mine too long.
I didn’t begin this business—kept out of the way, and left the
track clear for the other chaps, till you rummaged me out and set
to work to make an ass of me—and an easy job you had of it, too.
That’s the trouble—it was too easy for you—you got reckless—thought
you could turn me inside out, and chuck me in the gutter like an
empty purse. But, by gad, that ain’t playing fair: that’s dodging
the rules of the game. Of course I know now what you wanted—it
wasn’t my beautiful eyes you were after—but I tell you what, Miss
Lily, you’ve got to pay up for making me think so——”

He rose, squaring his shoulders aggressively, and stepped toward
her with a reddening brow; but she held her footing, though every
nerve tore at her to retreat as he advanced.

“Pay up?” she faltered. “Do you mean that I owe you money?”

He laughed again. “Oh, I’m not asking for payment in kind. But
there’s such a thing as fair play—and interest on one’s money—and
hang me if I’ve had as much as a look from you——”

“Your money? What have I to do with your money? You advised me
how to invest mine . . . you must have seen I knew nothing of
business . . . you told me it was all right——”

“It WAS all right—it is, Lily: you’re welcome to all of it, and ten
times more. I’m only asking for a word of thanks from you.” He was
closer still, with a hand that grew formidable; and the frightened
self in her was dragging the other down.

“I HAVE thanked you; I’ve shown I was grateful. What more have you
done than any friend might do, or any one accept from a friend?”

Trenor caught her up with a sneer. “I don’t doubt you’ve accepted
as much before—and chucked the other chaps as you’d like to chuck
me. I don’t care how you settled your score with them—if you fooled
’em I’m that much to the good. Don’t stare at me like that—I know
I’m not talking the way a man is supposed to talk to a girl—but,
hang it, if you don’t like it you can stop me quick enough—you know
I’m mad about you—damn the money, there’s plenty more of it—if THAT
bothers you.... I was a brute, Lily—Lily!—just look at me——”

Over and over her the sea of humiliation broke—wave crashing on
wave so close that the moral shame was one with the physical
dread. It seemed to her that self-esteem would have made her
invulnerable—that it was her own dishonour which put a fearful
solitude about her.

His touch was a shock to her drowning consciousness. She drew back
from him with a desperate assumption of scorn.

“I’ve told you I don’t understand—but if I owe you money you shall
be paid——”

Trenor’s face darkened to rage: her recoil of abhorrence had called
out the primitive man.

“Ah—you’ll borrow from Selden or Rosedale—and take your chances of
fooling them as you’ve fooled me! Unless—unless you’ve settled your
other scores already—and I’m the only one left out in the cold!”

She stood silent, frozen to her place. The words—the words were
worse than the touch! Her heart was beating all over her body—in
her throat, her limbs, her helpless useless hands. Her eyes
travelled despairingly about the room—they lit on the bell, and
she remembered that help was in call. Yes, but scandal with it—a
hideous mustering of tongues. No, she must fight her way out alone.
It was enough that the servants knew her to be in the house with
Trenor—there must be nothing to excite conjecture in her way of
leaving it.

She raised her head, and achieved a last clear look at him.

“I am here alone with you,” she said. “What more have you to say?”

To her surprise, Trenor answered the look with a speechless stare.
With his last gust of words the flame had died out, leaving him
chill and humbled. It was as though a cold air had dispersed the
fumes of his libations, and the situation loomed before him black
and naked as the ruins of a fire. Old habits, old restraints, the
hand of inherited order, plucked back the bewildered mind which
passion had jolted from its ruts. Trenor’s eye had the haggard look
of the sleep-walker waked on a deathly ledge.

“Go home! Go away from here”——he stammered, and turning his back on
her walked toward the hearth.

The sharp release from her fears restored Lily to immediate
lucidity. The collapse of Trenor’s will left her in control, and
she heard herself, in a voice that was her own yet outside herself,
bidding him ring for the servant, bidding him give the order for
a hansom, directing him to put her in it when it came. Whence the
strength came to her she knew not; but an insistent voice warned
her that she must leave the house openly, and nerved her, in the
hall before the hovering care taker, to exchange light words with
Trenor, and charge him with the usual messages for Judy, while all
the while she shook with inward loathing. On the doorstep, with the
street before her, she felt a mad throb of liberation, intoxicating
as the prisoner’s first draught of free air; but the clearness of
brain continued, and she noted the mute aspect of Fifth Avenue,
guessed at the lateness of the hour, and even observed a man’s
figure—was there something half-familiar in its outline?—which,
as she entered the hansom, turned from the opposite corner and
vanished in the obscurity of the side street.

But with the turn of the wheels reaction came, and shuddering
darkness closed on her. “I can’t think—I can’t think,” she moaned,
and leaned her head against the rattling side of the cab. She
seemed a stranger to herself, or rather there were two selves
in her, the one she had always known, and a new abhorrent being
to which it found itself chained. She had once picked up, in a
house where she was staying, a translation of the EUMENIDES, and
her imagination had been seized by the high terror of the scene
where Orestes, in the cave of the oracle, finds his implacable
huntresses asleep, and snatches an hour’s repose. Yes, the Furies
might sometimes sleep, but they were there, always there in the
dark corners, and now they were awake and the iron clang of their
wings was in her brain.... She opened her eyes and saw the streets
passing—the familiar alien streets. All she looked on was the
same and yet changed. There was a great gulf fixed between today
and yesterday. Everything in the past seemed simple, natural,
full of daylight—and she was alone in a place of darkness and
pollution.—Alone! It was the loneliness that frightened her. Her
eyes fell on an illuminated clock at a street corner, and she saw
that the hands marked the half hour after eleven. Only half-past
eleven—there were hours and hours left of the night! And she
must spend them alone, shuddering sleepless on her bed. Her soft
nature recoiled from this ordeal, which had none of the stimulus
of conflict to goad her through it. Oh, the slow cold drip of the
minutes on her head! She had a vision of herself lying on the
black walnut bed—and the darkness would frighten her, and if she
left the light burning the dreary details of the room would brand
themselves forever on her brain. She had always hated her room at
Mrs. Peniston’s—its ugliness, its impersonality, the fact that
nothing in it was really hers. To a torn heart uncomforted by
human nearness a room may open almost human arms, and the being to
whom no four walls mean more than any others, is, at such hours,
expatriate everywhere.

Lily had no heart to lean on. Her relation with her aunt was as
superficial as that of chance lodgers who pass on the stairs. But
even had the two been in closer contact, it was impossible to think
of Mrs. Peniston’s mind as offering shelter or comprehension to
such misery as Lily’s. As the pain that can be told is but half a
pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch.
What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the
silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.

She started up and looked forth on the passing streets. Gerty!—they
were nearing Gerty’s corner. If only she could reach there before
this labouring anguish burst from her breast to her lips—if only
she could feel the hold of Gerty’s arms while she shook in the
ague-fit of fear that was coming upon her! She pushed up the door
in the roof and called the address to the driver. It was not
so late—Gerty might still be waking. And even if she were not,
the sound of the bell would penetrate every recess of her tiny
apartment, and rouse her to answer her friend’s call.




Chapter 14


Gerty Farish, the morning after the Wellington Brys’ entertainment,
woke from dreams as happy as Lily’s. If they were less vivid in
hue, more subdued to the half-tints of her personality and her
experience, they were for that very reason better suited to her
mental vision. Such flashes of joy as Lily moved in would have
blinded Miss Farish, who was accustomed, in the way of happiness,
to such scant light as shone through the cracks of other people’s
lives.

Now she was the centre of a little illumination of her own: a mild
but unmistakable beam, compounded of Lawrence Selden’s growing
kindness to herself and the discovery that he extended his liking
to Lily Bart. If these two factors seem incompatible to the student
of feminine psychology, it must be remembered that Gerty had always
been a parasite in the moral order, living on the crumbs of other
tables, and content to look through the window at the banquet
spread for her friends. Now that she was enjoying a little private
feast of her own, it would have seemed incredibly selfish not to
lay a plate for a friend; and there was no one with whom she would
rather have shared her enjoyment than Miss Bart.

As to the nature of Selden’s growing kindness, Gerty would no
more have dared to define it than she would have tried to learn
a butterfly’s colours by knocking the dust from its wings. To
seize on the wonder would be to brush off its bloom, and perhaps
see it fade and stiffen in her hand: better the sense of beauty
palpitating out of reach, while she held her breath and watched
where it would alight. Yet Selden’s manner at the Brys’ had brought
the flutter of wings so close that they seemed to be beating in
her own heart. She had never seen him so alert, so responsive,
so attentive to what she had to say. His habitual manner had an
absent-minded kindliness which she accepted, and was grateful for,
as the liveliest sentiment her presence was likely to inspire; but
she was quick to feel in him a change implying that for once she
could give pleasure as well as receive it.

And it was so delightful that this higher degree of sympathy should
be reached through their interest in Lily Bart!

Gerty’s affection for her friend—a sentiment that had learned
to keep itself alive on the scantiest diet—had grown to active
adoration since Lily’s restless curiosity had drawn her into the
circle of Miss Farish’s work. Lily’s taste of beneficence had
wakened in her a momentary appetite for well-doing. Her visit to
the Girls’ Club had first brought her in contact with the dramatic
contrasts of life. She had always accepted with philosophic
calm the fact that such existences as hers were pedestalled on
foundations of obscure humanity. The dreary limbo of dinginess lay
all around and beneath that little illuminated circle in which life
reached its finest efflorescence, as the mud and sleet of a winter
night enclose a hot-house filled with tropical flowers. All this
was in the natural order of things, and the orchid basking in its
artificially created atmosphere could round the delicate curves of
its petals undisturbed by the ice on the panes.

But it is one thing to live comfortably with the abstract
conception of poverty, another to be brought in contact with its
human embodiments. Lily had never conceived of these victims of
fate otherwise than in the mass. That the mass was composed of
individual lives, innumerable separate centres of sensation, with
her own eager reachings for pleasure, her own fierce revulsions
from pain—that some of these bundles of feeling were clothed in
shapes not so unlike her own, with eyes meant to look on gladness,
and young lips shaped for love—this discovery gave Lily one of
those sudden shocks of pity that sometimes decentralize a life.
Lily’s nature was incapable of such renewal: she could feel other
demands only through her own, and no pain was long vivid which
did not press on an answering nerve. But for the moment she was
drawn out of herself by the interest of her direct relation with
a world so unlike her own. She had supplemented her first gift by
personal assistance to one or two of Miss Farish’s most appealing
subjects, and the admiration and interest her presence excited
among the tired workers at the club ministered in a new form to her
insatiable desire to please.

Gerty Farish was not a close enough reader of character to
disentangle the mixed threads of which Lily’s philanthropy was
woven. She supposed her beautiful friend to be actuated by the
same motive as herself—that sharpening of the moral vision which
makes all human suffering so near and insistent that the other
aspects of life fade into remoteness. Gerty lived by such simple
formulas that she did not hesitate to class her friend’s state
with the emotional “change of heart” to which her dealings with
the poor had accustomed her; and she rejoiced in the thought that
she had been the humble instrument of this renewal. Now she had
an answer to all criticisms of Lily’s conduct: as she had said,
she knew “the real Lily,” and the discovery that Selden shared her
knowledge raised her placid acceptance of life to a dazzled sense
of its possibilities—a sense farther enlarged, in the course of the
afternoon, by the receipt of a telegram from Selden asking if he
might dine with her that evening.

While Gerty was lost in the happy bustle which this announcement
produced in her small household, Selden was at one with her in
thinking with intensity of Lily Bart. The case which had called him
to Albany was not complicated enough to absorb all his attention,
and he had the professional faculty of keeping a part of his mind
free when its services were not needed. This part—which at the
moment seemed dangerously like the whole—was filled to the brim
with the sensations of the previous evening. Selden understood the
symptoms: he recognized the fact that he was paying up, as there
had always been a chance of his having to pay up, for the voluntary
exclusions of his past. He had meant to keep free from permanent
ties, not from any poverty of feeling, but because, in a different
way, he was, as much as Lily, the victim of his environment. There
had been a germ of truth in his declaration to Gerty Farish that he
had never wanted to marry a “nice” girl: the adjective connoting,
in his cousin’s vocabulary, certain utilitarian qualities which
are apt to preclude the luxury of charm. Now it had been Selden’s
fate to have a charming mother: her graceful portrait, all smiles
and Cashmere, still emitted a faded scent of the undefinable
quality. His father was the kind of man who delights in a charming
woman: who quotes her, stimulates her, and keeps her perennially
charming. Neither one of the couple cared for money, but their
disdain of it took the form of always spending a little more than
was prudent. If their house was shabby, it was exquisitely kept; if
there were good books on the shelves there were also good dishes
on the table. Selden senior had an eye for a picture, his wife an
understanding of old lace; and both were so conscious of restraint
and discrimination in buying that they never quite knew how it was
that the bills mounted up.

Though many of Selden’s friends would have called his parents poor,
he had grown up in an atmosphere where restricted means were felt
only as a check on aimless profusion: where the few possessions
were so good that their rarity gave them a merited relief, and
abstinence was combined with elegance in a way exemplified by Mrs.
Selden’s knack of wearing her old velvet as if it were new. A man
has the advantage of being delivered early from the home point of
view, and before Selden left college he had learned that there
are as many different ways of going without money as of spending
it. Unfortunately, he found no way as agreeable as that practised
at home; and his views of womankind in especial were tinged by
the remembrance of the one woman who had given him his sense of
“values.” It was from her that he inherited his detachment from
the sumptuary side of life: the stoic’s carelessness of material
things, combined with the Epicurean’s pleasure in them. Life shorn
of either feeling appeared to him a diminished thing; and nowhere
was the blending of the two ingredients so essential as in the
character of a pretty woman.

It had always seemed to Selden that experience offered a great deal
besides the sentimental adventure, yet he could vividly conceive of
a love which should broaden and deepen till it became the central
fact of life. What he could not accept, in his own case, was the
makeshift alternative of a relation that should be less than this:
that should leave some portions of his nature unsatisfied, while it
put an undue strain on others. He would not, in other words, yield
to the growth of an affection which might appeal to pity yet leave
the understanding untouched: sympathy should no more delude him
than a trick of the eyes, the grace of helplessness than a curve of
the cheek.

But now—that little BUT passed like a sponge over all his vows.
His reasoned-out resistances seemed for the moment so much less
important than the question as to when Lily would receive his
note! He yielded himself to the charm of trivial preoccupations,
wondering at what hour her reply would be sent, with what words
it would begin. As to its import he had no doubt—he was as sure
of her surrender as of his own. And so he had leisure to muse on
all its exquisite details, as a hard worker, on a holiday morning,
might lie still and watch the beam of light travel gradually
across his room. But if the new light dazzled, it did not blind
him. He could still discern the outline of facts, though his own
relation to them had changed. He was no less conscious than before
of what was said of Lily Bart, but he could separate the woman he
knew from the vulgar estimate of her. His mind turned to Gerty
Farish’s words, and the wisdom of the world seemed a groping thing
beside the insight of innocence. BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART,
FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD—even the hidden god in their neighbour’s
breast! Selden was in the state of impassioned self-absorption
that the first surrender to love produces. His craving was for the
companionship of one whose point of view should justify his own,
who should confirm, by deliberate observation, the truth to which
his intuitions had leaped. He could not wait for the midday recess,
but seized a moment’s leisure in court to scribble his telegram to
Gerty Farish.

Reaching town, he was driven direct to his club, where he hoped a
note from Miss Bart might await him. But his box contained only
a line of rapturous assent from Gerty, and he was turning away
disappointed when he was hailed by a voice from the smoking room.

“Hallo, Lawrence! Dining here? Take a bite with me—I’ve ordered a
canvas-back.”

He discovered Trenor, in his day clothes, sitting, with a tall
glass at his elbow, behind the folds of a sporting journal.

Selden thanked him, but pleaded an engagement.

“Hang it, I believe every man in town has an engagement tonight. I
shall have the club to myself. You know how I’m living this winter,
rattling round in that empty house. My wife meant to come to town
today, but she’s put it off again, and how is a fellow to dine
alone in a room with the looking-glasses covered, and nothing but
a bottle of Harvey sauce on the sideboard? I say, Lawrence, chuck
your engagement and take pity on me—it gives me the blue devils to
dine alone, and there’s nobody but that canting ass Wetherall in
the club.”

“Sorry, Gus—I can’t do it.”

As Selden turned away, he noticed the dark flush on Trenor’s face,
the unpleasant moisture of his intensely white forehead, the way
his jewelled rings were wedged in the creases of his fat red
fingers. Certainly the beast was predominating—the beast at the
bottom of the glass. And he had heard this man’s name coupled with
Lily’s! Bah—the thought sickened him; all the way back to his rooms
he was haunted by the sight of Trenor’s fat creased hands——

On his table lay the note: Lily had sent it to his rooms. He knew
what was in it before he broke the seal—a grey seal with BEYOND!
beneath a flying ship. Ah, he would take her beyond—beyond the
ugliness, the pettiness, the attrition and corrosion of the soul——

       *       *       *       *       *

Gerty’s little sitting-room sparkled with welcome when Selden
entered it. Its modest “effects,” compact of enamel paint and
ingenuity, spoke to him in the language just then sweetest to his
ear. It is surprising how little narrow walls and a low ceiling
matter, when the roof of the soul has suddenly been raised. Gerty
sparkled too; or at least shone with a tempered radiance. He had
never before noticed that she had “points”—really, some good fellow
might do worse.... Over the little dinner (and here, again, the
effects were wonderful) he told her she ought to marry—he was in a
mood to pair off the whole world. She had made the caramel custard
with her own hands? It was sinful to keep such gifts to herself.
He reflected with a throb of pride that Lily could trim her own
hats—she had told him so the day of their walk at Bellomont.

He did not speak of Lily till after dinner. During the little
repast he kept the talk on his hostess, who, fluttered at being
the centre of observation, shone as rosy as the candle-shades she
had manufactured for the occasion. Selden evinced an extraordinary
interest in her household arrangements: complimented her on the
ingenuity with which she had utilized every inch of her small
quarters, asked how her servant managed about afternoons out,
learned that one may improvise delicious dinners in a chafing-dish,
and uttered thoughtful generalizations on the burden of a large
establishment.

When they were in the sitting-room again, where they fitted as
snugly as bits in a puzzle, and she had brewed the coffee, and
poured it into her grandmother’s egg-shell cups, his eye, as he
leaned back, basking in the warm fragrance, lighted on a recent
photograph of Miss Bart, and the desired transition was effected
without an effort. The photograph was well enough—but to catch
her as she had looked last night! Gerty agreed with him—never had
she been so radiant. But could photography capture that light?
There had been a new look in her face—something different; yes,
Selden agreed there had been something different. The coffee was
so exquisite that he asked for a second cup: such a contrast to
the watery stuff at the club! Ah, your poor bachelor with his
impersonal club fare, alternating with the equally impersonal
CUISINE of the dinner-party! A man who lived in lodgings missed
the best part of life—he pictured the flavourless solitude of
Trenor’s repast, and felt a moment’s compassion for the man.... But
to return to Lily—and again and again he returned, questioning,
conjecturing, leading Gerty on, draining her inmost thoughts of
their stored tenderness for her friend.

At first she poured herself out unstintingly, happy in this perfect
communion of their sympathies. His understanding of Lily helped
to confirm her own belief in her friend. They dwelt together on
the fact that Lily had had no chance. Gerty instanced her generous
impulses—her restlessness and discontent. The fact that her life
had never satisfied her proved that she was made for better things.
She might have married more than once—the conventional rich
marriage which she had been taught to consider the sole end of
existence—but when the opportunity came she had always shrunk from
it. Percy Gryce, for instance, had been in love with her—every one
at Bellomont had supposed them to be engaged, and her dismissal
of him was thought inexplicable. This view of the Gryce incident
chimed too well with Selden’s mood not to be instantly adopted
by him, with a flash of retrospective contempt for what had once
seemed the obvious solution. If rejection there had been—and he
wondered now that he had ever doubted it!—then he held the key to
the secret, and the hillsides of Bellomont were lit up, not with
sunset, but with dawn. It was he who had wavered and disowned the
face of opportunity—and the joy now warming his breast might have
been a familiar inmate if he had captured it in its first flight.

It was at this point, perhaps, that a joy just trying its
wings in Gerty’s heart dropped to earth and lay still. She sat
facing Selden, repeating mechanically: “No, she has never been
understood——” and all the while she herself seemed to be sitting
in the centre of a great glare of comprehension. The little
confidential room, where a moment ago their thoughts had touched
elbows like their chairs, grew to unfriendly vastness, separating
her from Selden by all the length of her new vision of the
future—and that future stretched out interminably, with her lonely
figure toiling down it, a mere speck on the solitude.

“She is herself with a few people only; and you are one of them,”
she heard Selden saying. And again: “Be good to her, Gerty, won’t
you?” and: “She has it in her to become whatever she is believed to
be—you’ll help her by believing the best of her?”

The words beat on Gerty’s brain like the sound of a language which
has seemed familiar at a distance, but on approaching is found to
be unintelligible. He had come to talk to her of Lily—that was all!
There had been a third at the feast she had spread for him, and
that third had taken her own place. She tried to follow what he
was saying, to cling to her own part in the talk—but it was all as
meaningless as the boom of waves in a drowning head, and she felt,
as the drowning may feel, that to sink would be nothing beside the
pain of struggling to keep up.

Selden rose, and she drew a deep breath, feeling that soon she
could yield to the blessed waves.

“Mrs. Fisher’s? You say she was dining there? There’s music
afterward; I believe I had a card from her.” He glanced at the
foolish pink-faced clock that was drumming out this hideous hour.
“A quarter past ten? I might look in there now; the Fisher evenings
are amusing. I haven’t kept you up too late, Gerty? You look
tired—I’ve rambled on and bored you.” And in the unwonted overflow
of his feelings, he left a cousinly kiss upon her cheek.

       *       *       *       *       *

At Mrs. Fisher’s, through the cigar smoke of the studio, a dozen
voices greeted Selden. A song was pending as he entered, and he
dropped into a seat near his hostess, his eyes roaming in search
of Miss Bart. But she was not there, and the discovery gave him a
pang out of all proportion to its seriousness; since the note in
his breast-pocket assured him that at four the next day they would
meet. To his impatience it seemed immeasurably long to wait, and
half-ashamed of the impulse, he leaned to Mrs. Fisher to ask, as
the music ceased, if Miss Bart had not dined with her.

“Lily? She’s just gone. She had to run off, I forget where. Wasn’t
she wonderful last night?”

“Who’s that? Lily?” asked Jack Stepney, from the depths of a
neighbouring arm-chair. “Really, you know, I’m no prude, but when
it comes to a girl standing there as if she was up at auction—I
thought seriously of speaking to cousin Julia.”

“You didn’t know Jack had become our social censor?” Mrs. Fisher
said to Selden with a laugh; and Stepney spluttered, amid the
general derision: “But she’s a cousin, hang it, and when a man’s
married—TOWN TALK was full of her this morning.”

“Yes: lively reading that was,” said Mr. Ned Van Alstyne, stroking
his moustache to hide the smile behind it. “Buy the dirty sheet?
No, of course not; some fellow showed it to me—but I’d heard the
stories before. When a girl’s as good-looking as that she’d better
marry; then no questions are asked. In our imperfectly organized
society there is no provision as yet for the young woman who claims
the privileges of marriage without assuming its obligations.”

“Well, I understand Lily is about to assume them in the shape of
Mr. Rosedale,” Mrs. Fisher said with a laugh.

“Rosedale—good heavens!” exclaimed Van Alstyne, dropping his
eye-glass. “Stepney, that’s your fault for foisting the brute on
us.”

“Oh, confound it, you know, we don’t MARRY Rosedale in our family,”
Stepney languidly protested; but his wife, who sat in oppressive
bridal finery at the other side of the room, quelled him with the
judicial reflection: “In Lily’s circumstances it’s a mistake to
have too high a standard.”

“I hear even Rosedale has been scared by the talk lately,” Mrs.
Fisher rejoined; “but the sight of her last night sent him off his
head. What do you think he said to me after her TABLEAU? ‘My God,
Mrs. Fisher, if I could get Paul Morpeth to paint her like that,
the picture’d appreciate a hundred per cent in ten years.’”

“By Jove,—but isn’t she about somewhere?” exclaimed Van Alstyne,
restoring his glass with an uneasy glance.

“No; she ran off while you were all mixing the punch down stairs.
Where was she going, by the way? What’s on tonight? I hadn’t heard
of anything.”

“Oh, not a party, I think,” said an inexperienced young Farish who
had arrived late. “I put her in her cab as I was coming in, and she
gave the driver the Trenors’ address.”

“The Trenors’?” exclaimed Mrs. Jack Stepney. “Why, the house is
closed—Judy telephoned me from Bellomont this evening.”

“Did she? That’s queer. I’m sure I’m not mistaken. Well, come now,
Trenor’s there, anyhow—I—oh, well—the fact is, I’ve no head for
numbers,” he broke off, admonished by the nudge of an adjoining
foot, and the smile that circled the room.

In its unpleasant light Selden had risen and was shaking hands with
his hostess. The air of the place stifled him, and he wondered why
he had stayed in it so long.

On the doorstep he stood still, remembering a phrase of Lily’s:
“It seems to me you spend a good deal of time in the element you
disapprove of.”

Well—what had brought him there but the quest of her? It was her
element, not his. But he would lift her out of it, take her beyond!
That BEYOND! on her letter was like a cry for rescue. He knew
that Perseus’s task is not done when he has loosed Andromeda’s
chains, for her limbs are numb with bondage, and she cannot rise
and walk, but clings to him with dragging arms as he beats back to
land with his burden. Well, he had strength for both—it was her
weakness which had put the strength in him. It was not, alas, a
clean rush of waves they had to win through, but a clogging morass
of old associations and habits, and for the moment its vapours
were in his throat. But he would see clearer, breathe freer in her
presence: she was at once the dead weight at his breast and the
spar which should float them to safety. He smiled at the whirl of
metaphor with which he was trying to build up a defence against the
influences of the last hour. It was pitiable that he, who knew the
mixed motives on which social judgments depend, should still feel
himself so swayed by them. How could he lift Lily to a freer vision
of life, if his own view of her was to be coloured by any mind in
which he saw her reflected?

The moral oppression had produced a physical craving for air, and
he strode on, opening his lungs to the reverberating coldness of
the night. At the corner of Fifth Avenue Van Alstyne hailed him
with an offer of company.

“Walking? A good thing to blow the smoke out of one’s head. Now
that women have taken to tobacco we live in a bath of nicotine.
It would be a curious thing to study the effect of cigarettes on
the relation of the sexes. Smoke is almost as great a solvent as
divorce: both tend to obscure the moral issue.”

Nothing could have been less consonant with Selden’s mood than
Van Alstyne’s after-dinner aphorisms, but as long as the latter
confined himself to generalities his listener’s nerves were in
control. Happily Van Alstyne prided himself on his summing-up of
social aspects, and with Selden for audience was eager to show the
sureness of his touch. Mrs. Fisher lived in an East side street
near the Park, and as the two men walked down Fifth Avenue the new
architectural developments of that versatile thoroughfare invited
Van Alstyne’s comment.

“That Greiner house, now—a typical rung in the social ladder! The
man who built it came from a MILIEU where all the dishes are put
on the table at once. His facade is a complete architectural meal;
if he had omitted a style his friends might have thought the money
had given out. Not a bad purchase for Rosedale, though: attracts
attention, and awes the Western sight-seer. By and bye he’ll get
out of that phase, and want something that the crowd will pass and
the few pause before. Especially if he marries my clever cousin——”

Selden dashed in with the query: “And the Wellington Brys’? Rather
clever of its kind, don’t you think?”

They were just beneath the wide white facade, with its rich
restraint of line, which suggested the clever corseting of a
redundant figure.

“That’s the next stage: the desire to imply that one has been to
Europe, and has a standard. I’m sure Mrs. Bry thinks her house
a copy of the TRIANON; in America every marble house with gilt
furniture is thought to be a copy of the TRIANON. What a clever
chap that architect is, though—how he takes his client’s measure!
He has put the whole of Mrs. Bry in his use of the composite
order. Now for the Trenors, you remember, he chose the Corinthian:
exuberant, but based on the best precedent. The Trenor house is
one of his best things—doesn’t look like a banqueting-hall turned
inside out. I hear Mrs. Trenor wants to build out a new ball-room,
and that divergence from Gus on that point keeps her at Bellomont.
The dimensions of the Brys’ ball-room must rankle: you may be sure
she knows ’em as well as if she’d been there last night with a
yard-measure. Who said she was in town, by the way? That Farish
boy? She isn’t, I know; Mrs. Stepney was right; the house is dark,
you see: I suppose Gus lives in the back.”

He had halted opposite the Trenors’ corner, and Selden perforce
stayed his steps also. The house loomed obscure and uninhabited;
only an oblong gleam above the door spoke of provisional occupancy.

“They’ve bought the house at the back: it gives them a hundred and
fifty feet in the side street. There’s where the ball-room’s to
be, with a gallery connecting it: billiard-room and so on above.
I suggested changing the entrance, and carrying the drawing-room
across the whole Fifth Avenue front; you see the front door
corresponds with the windows——”

The walking-stick which Van Alstyne swung in demonstration dropped
to a startled “Hallo!” as the door opened and two figures were seen
silhouetted against the hall-light. At the same moment a hansom
halted at the curb-stone, and one of the figures floated down to it
in a haze of evening draperies; while the other, black and bulky,
remained persistently projected against the light.

For an immeasurable second the two spectators of the incident were
silent; then the house-door closed, the hansom rolled off, and the
whole scene slipped by as if with the turn of a stereopticon.

Van Alstyne dropped his eye-glass with a low whistle.

“A—hem—nothing of this, eh, Selden? As one of the family, I know I
may count on you—appearances are deceptive—and Fifth Avenue is so
imperfectly lighted——”

“Goodnight,” said Selden, turning sharply down the side street
without seeing the other’s extended hand.

       *       *       *       *       *

Alone with her cousin’s kiss, Gerty stared upon her thoughts. He
had kissed her before—but not with another woman on his lips. If
he had spared her that she could have drowned quietly, welcoming
the dark flood as it submerged her. But now the flood was shot
through with glory, and it was harder to drown at sunrise than in
darkness. Gerty hid her face from the light, but it pierced to the
crannies of her soul. She had been so contented, life had seemed
so simple and sufficient—why had he come to trouble her with new
hopes? And Lily—Lily, her best friend! Woman-like, she accused
the woman. Perhaps, had it not been for Lily, her fond imagining
might have become truth. Selden had always liked her—had understood
and sympathized with the modest independence of her life. He, who
had the reputation of weighing all things in the nice balance of
fastidious perceptions, had been uncritical and simple in his view
of her: his cleverness had never overawed her because she had felt
at home in his heart. And now she was thrust out, and the door
barred against her by Lily’s hand! Lily, for whose admission there
she herself had pleaded! The situation was lighted up by a dreary
flash of irony. She knew Selden—she saw how the force of her faith
in Lily must have helped to dispel his hesitations. She remembered,
too, how Lily had talked of him—she saw herself bringing the two
together, making them known to each other. On Selden’s part, no
doubt, the wound inflicted was inconscient; he had never guessed
her foolish secret; but Lily—Lily must have known! When, in such
matters, are a woman’s perceptions at fault? And if she knew, then
she had deliberately despoiled her friend, and in mere wantonness
of power, since, even to Gerty’s suddenly flaming jealousy, it
seemed incredible that Lily should wish to be Selden’s wife. Lily
might be incapable of marrying for money, but she was equally
incapable of living without it, and Selden’s eager investigations
into the small economies of house-keeping made him appear to Gerty
as tragically duped as herself.

She remained long in her sitting-room, where the embers were
crumbling to cold grey, and the lamp paled under its gay shade.
Just beneath it stood the photograph of Lily Bart, looking out
imperially on the cheap gimcracks, the cramped furniture of the
little room. Could Selden picture her in such an interior? Gerty
felt the poverty, the insignificance of her surroundings: she
beheld her life as it must appear to Lily. And the cruelty of
Lily’s judgments smote upon her memory. She saw that she had
dressed her idol with attributes of her own making. When had Lily
ever really felt, or pitied, or understood? All she wanted was
the taste of new experiences: she seemed like some cruel creature
experimenting in a laboratory.

The pink-faced clock drummed out another hour, and Gerty rose with
a start. She had an appointment early the next morning with a
district visitor on the East side. She put out her lamp, covered
the fire, and went into her bedroom to undress. In the little glass
above her dressing-table she saw her face reflected against the
shadows of the room, and tears blotted the reflection. What right
had she to dream the dreams of loveliness? A dull face invited a
dull fate. She cried quietly as she undressed, laying aside her
clothes with her habitual precision, setting everything in order
for the next day, when the old life must be taken up as though
there had been no break in its routine. Her servant did not come
till eight o’clock, and she prepared her own tea-tray and placed it
beside the bed. Then she locked the door of the flat, extinguished
her light and lay down. But on her bed sleep would not come, and
she lay face to face with the fact that she hated Lily Bart. It
closed with her in the darkness like some formless evil to be
blindly grappled with. Reason, judgment, renunciation, all the
sane daylight forces, were beaten back in the sharp struggle for
self-preservation. She wanted happiness—wanted it as fiercely and
unscrupulously as Lily did, but without Lily’s power of obtaining
it. And in her conscious impotence she lay shivering, and hated her
friend——

A ring at the door-bell caught her to her feet. She struck a
light and stood startled, listening. For a moment her heart beat
incoherently, then she felt the sobering touch of fact, and
remembered that such calls were not unknown in her charitable work.
She flung on her dressing-gown to answer the summons, and unlocking
her door, confronted the shining vision of Lily Bart.

Gerty’s first movement was one of revulsion. She shrank back as
though Lily’s presence flashed too sudden a light upon her misery.
Then she heard her name in a cry, had a glimpse of her friend’s
face, and felt herself caught and clung to.

“Lily—what is it?” she exclaimed.

Miss Bart released her, and stood breathing brokenly, like one who
has gained shelter after a long flight.

“I was so cold—I couldn’t go home. Have you a fire?”

Gerty’s compassionate instincts, responding to the swift call of
habit, swept aside all her reluctances. Lily was simply some one
who needed help—for what reason, there was no time to pause and
conjecture: disciplined sympathy checked the wonder on Gerty’s
lips, and made her draw her friend silently into the sitting-room
and seat her by the darkened hearth.

“There is kindling wood here: the fire will burn in a minute.”

She knelt down, and the flame leapt under her rapid hands. It
flashed strangely through the tears which still blurred her eyes,
and smote on the white ruin of Lily’s face. The girls looked at
each other in silence; then Lily repeated: “I couldn’t go home.”

“No—no—you came here, dear! You’re cold and tired—sit quiet, and
I’ll make you some tea.”

Gerty had unconsciously adopted the soothing note of her trade:
all personal feeling was merged in the sense of ministry, and
experience had taught her that the bleeding must be stayed before
the wound is probed.

Lily sat quiet, leaning to the fire: the clatter of cups behind her
soothed her as familiar noises hush a child whom silence has kept
wakeful. But when Gerty stood at her side with the tea she pushed
it away, and turned an estranged eye on the familiar room.

“I came here because I couldn’t bear to be alone,” she said.

Gerty set down the cup and knelt beside her.

“Lily! Something has happened—can’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t bear to lie awake in my room till morning. I hate my
room at Aunt Julia’s—so I came here——”

She stirred suddenly, broke from her apathy, and clung to Gerty in
a fresh burst of fear.

“Oh, Gerty, the furies . . . you know the noise of their
wings—alone, at night, in the dark? But you don’t know—there is
nothing to make the dark dreadful to you——”

The words, flashing back on Gerty’s last hours, struck from her a
faint derisive murmur; but Lily, in the blaze of her own misery,
was blinded to everything outside it.

“You’ll let me stay? I shan’t mind when daylight comes—Is
it late? Is the night nearly over? It must be awful to be
sleepless—everything stands by the bed and stares——”

Miss Farish caught her straying hands. “Lily, look at me! Something
has happened—an accident? You have been frightened—what has
frightened you? Tell me if you can—a word or two—so that I can help
you.”

Lily shook her head.

“I am not frightened: that’s not the word. Can you imagine looking
into your glass some morning and seeing a disfigurement—some
hideous change that has come to you while you slept? Well, I seem
to myself like that—I can’t bear to see myself in my own thoughts—I
hate ugliness, you know—I’ve always turned from it—but I can’t
explain to you—you wouldn’t understand.”

She lifted her head and her eyes fell on the clock.

“How long the night is! And I know I shan’t sleep tomorrow. Some
one told me my father used to lie sleepless and think of horrors.
And he was not wicked, only unfortunate—and I see now how he must
have suffered, lying alone with his thoughts! But I am bad—a bad
girl—all my thoughts are bad—I have always had bad people about
me. Is that any excuse? I thought I could manage my own life—I was
proud—proud! but now I’m on their level——”

Sobs shook her, and she bowed to them like a tree in a dry storm.

Gerty knelt beside her, waiting, with the patience born of
experience, till this gust of misery should loosen fresh speech.
She had first imagined some physical shock, some peril of the
crowded streets, since Lily was presumably on her way home from
Carry Fisher’s; but she now saw that other nerve-centres were
smitten, and her mind trembled back from conjecture.

Lily’s sobs ceased, and she lifted her head.

“There are bad girls in your slums. Tell me—do they ever pick
themselves up? Ever forget, and feel as they did before?”

“Lily! you mustn’t speak so—you’re dreaming.”

“Don’t they always go from bad to worse? There’s no turning
back—your old self rejects you, and shuts you out.”

She rose, stretching her arms as if in utter physical weariness.
“Go to bed, dear! You work hard and get up early. I’ll watch here
by the fire, and you’ll leave the light, and your door open. All
I want is to feel that you are near me.” She laid both hands on
Gerty’s shoulders, with a smile that was like sunrise on a sea
strewn with wreckage.

“I can’t leave you, Lily. Come and lie on my bed. Your hands are
frozen—you must undress and be made warm.” Gerty paused with sudden
compunction. “But Mrs. Peniston—it’s past midnight! What will she
think?”

“She goes to bed. I have a latchkey. It doesn’t matter—I can’t go
back there.”

“There’s no need to: you shall stay here. But you must tell me
where you have been. Listen, Lily—it will help you to speak!” She
regained Miss Bart’s hands, and pressed them against her. “Try to
tell me—it will clear your poor head. Listen—you were dining at
Carry Fisher’s.” Gerty paused and added with a flash of heroism:
“Lawrence Selden went from here to find you.”

At the word, Lily’s face melted from locked anguish to the open
misery of a child. Her lips trembled and her gaze widened with
tears.

“He went to find me? And I missed him! Oh, Gerty, he tried to help
me. He told me—he warned me long ago—he foresaw that I should grow
hateful to myself!”

The name, as Gerty saw with a clutch at the heart, had loosened
the springs of self-pity in her friend’s dry breast, and tear by
tear Lily poured out the measure of her anguish. She had dropped
sideways in Gerty’s big arm-chair, her head buried where lately
Selden’s had leaned, in a beauty of abandonment that drove home to
Gerty’s aching senses the inevitableness of her own defeat. Ah,
it needed no deliberate purpose on Lily’s part to rob her of her
dream! To look on that prone loveliness was to see in it a natural
force, to recognize that love and power belong to such as Lily, as
renunciation and service are the lot of those they despoil. But if
Selden’s infatuation seemed a fatal necessity, the effect that his
name produced shook Gerty’s steadfastness with a last pang. Men
pass through such superhuman loves and outlive them: they are the
probation subduing the heart to human joys. How gladly Gerty would
have welcomed the ministry of healing: how willingly have soothed
the sufferer back to tolerance of life! But Lily’s self-betrayal
took this last hope from her. The mortal maid on the shore is
helpless against the siren who loves her prey: such victims are
floated back dead from their adventure.

Lily sprang up and caught her with strong hands. “Gerty, you
know him—you understand him—tell me; if I went to him, if I told
him everything—if I said: ‘I am bad through and through—I want
admiration, I want excitement, I want money—’ yes, MONEY! That’s my
shame, Gerty—and it’s known, it’s said of me—it’s what men think of
me—If I said it all to him—told him the whole story—said plainly:
‘I’ve sunk lower than the lowest, for I’ve taken what they take,
and not paid as they pay’—oh, Gerty, you know him, you can speak
for him: if I told him everything would he loathe me? Or would he
pity me, and understand me, and save me from loathing myself?”

Gerty stood cold and passive. She knew the hour of her probation
had come, and her poor heart beat wildly against its destiny. As a
dark river sweeps by under a lightning flash, she saw her chance of
happiness surge past under a flash of temptation. What prevented
her from saying: “He is like other men?” She was not so sure of
him, after all! But to do so would have been like blaspheming her
love. She could not put him before herself in any light but the
noblest: she must trust him to the height of her own passion.

“Yes: I know him; he will help you,” she said; and in a moment
Lily’s passion was weeping itself out against her breast.

There was but one bed in the little flat, and the two girls lay
down on it side by side when Gerty had unlaced Lily’s dress
and persuaded her to put her lips to the warm tea. The light
extinguished, they lay still in the darkness, Gerty shrinking
to the outer edge of the narrow couch to avoid contact with her
bed-fellow. Knowing that Lily disliked to be caressed, she had long
ago learned to check her demonstrative impulses toward her friend.
But tonight every fibre in her body shrank from Lily’s nearness:
it was torture to listen to her breathing, and feel the sheet stir
with it. As Lily turned, and settled to completer rest, a strand
of her hair swept Gerty’s cheek with its fragrance. Everything
about her was warm and soft and scented: even the stains of her
grief became her as rain-drops do the beaten rose. But as Gerty lay
with arms drawn down her side, in the motionless narrowness of an
effigy, she felt a stir of sobs from the breathing warmth beside
her, and Lily flung out her hand, groped for her friend’s, and held
it fast.

“Hold me, Gerty, hold me, or I shall think of things,” she moaned;
and Gerty silently slipped an arm under her, pillowing her head in
its hollow as a mother makes a nest for a tossing child. In the
warm hollow Lily lay still and her breathing grew low and regular.
Her hand still clung to Gerty’s as if to ward off evil dreams, but
the hold of her fingers relaxed, her head sank deeper into its
shelter, and Gerty felt that she slept.




Chapter 15


When Lily woke she had the bed to herself, and the winter light was
in the room.

She sat up, bewildered by the strangeness of her surroundings;
then memory returned, and she looked about her with a shiver.
In the cold slant of light reflected from the back wall of a
neighbouring building, she saw her evening dress and opera
cloak lying in a tawdry heap on a chair. Finery laid off is as
unappetizing as the remains of a feast, and it occurred to Lily
that, at home, her maid’s vigilance had always spared her the
sight of such incongruities. Her body ached with fatigue, and with
the constriction of her attitude in Gerty’s bed. All through her
troubled sleep she had been conscious of having no space to toss
in, and the long effort to remain motionless made her feel as if
she had spent her night in a train.

This sense of physical discomfort was the first to assert itself;
then she perceived, beneath it, a corresponding mental prostration,
a languor of horror more insufferable than the first rush of her
disgust. The thought of having to wake every morning with this
weight on her breast roused her tired mind to fresh effort. She
must find some way out of the slough into which she had stumbled:
it was not so much compunction as the dread of her morning thoughts
that pressed on her the need of action. But she was unutterably
tired; it was weariness to think connectedly. She lay back, looking
about the poor slit of a room with a renewal of physical distaste.
The outer air, penned between high buildings, brought no freshness
through the window; steam-heat was beginning to sing in a coil of
dingy pipes, and a smell of cooking penetrated the crack of the
door.

The door opened, and Gerty, dressed and hatted, entered with a cup
of tea. Her face looked sallow and swollen in the dreary light, and
her dull hair shaded imperceptibly into the tones of her skin.

She glanced shyly at Lily, asking in an embarrassed tone how she
felt; Lily answered with the same constraint, and raised herself up
to drink the tea.

“I must have been over-tired last night; I think I had a nervous
attack in the carriage,” she said, as the drink brought clearness
to her sluggish thoughts.

“You were not well; I am so glad you came here,” Gerty returned.

“But how am I to get home? And Aunt Julia—?”

“She knows; I telephoned early, and your maid has brought your
things. But won’t you eat something? I scrambled the eggs myself.”

Lily could not eat; but the tea strengthened her to rise and dress
under her maid’s searching gaze. It was a relief to her that Gerty
was obliged to hasten away: the two kissed silently, but without a
trace of the previous night’s emotion.

Lily found Mrs. Peniston in a state of agitation. She had sent for
Grace Stepney and was taking digitalis. Lily breasted the storm of
enquiries as best she could, explaining that she had had an attack
of faintness on her way back from Carry Fisher’s; that, fearing
she would not have strength to reach home, she had gone to Miss
Farish’s instead; but that a quiet night had restored her, and that
she had no need of a doctor.

This was a relief to Mrs. Peniston, who could give herself up
to her own symptoms, and Lily was advised to go and lie down,
her aunt’s panacea for all physical and moral disorders. In
the solitude of her own room she was brought back to a sharp
contemplation of facts. Her daylight view of them necessarily
differed from the cloudy vision of the night. The winged furies
were now prowling gossips who dropped in on each other for tea. But
her fears seemed the uglier, thus shorn of their vagueness; and
besides, she had to act, not rave. For the first time she forced
herself to reckon up the exact amount of her debt to Trenor; and
the result of this hateful computation was the discovery that she
had, in all, received nine thousand dollars from him. The flimsy
pretext on which it had been given and received shrivelled up
in the blaze of her shame: she knew that not a penny of it was
her own, and that to restore her self-respect she must at once
repay the whole amount. The inability thus to solace her outraged
feelings gave her a paralyzing sense of insignificance. She was
realizing for the first time that a woman’s dignity may cost more
to keep up than her carriage; and that the maintenance of a moral
attribute should be dependent on dollars and cents, made the world
appear a more sordid place than she had conceived it.

After luncheon, when Grace Stepney’s prying eyes had been
removed, Lily asked for a word with her aunt. The two ladies
went upstairs to the sitting-room, where Mrs. Peniston seated
herself in her black satin arm-chair tufted with yellow buttons,
beside a bead-work table bearing a bronze box with a miniature
of Beatrice Cenci in the lid. Lily felt for these objects the
same distaste which the prisoner may entertain for the fittings
of the court-room. It was here that her aunt received her rare
confidences, and the pink-eyed smirk of the turbaned Beatrice was
associated in her mind with the gradual fading of the smile from
Mrs. Peniston’s lips. That lady’s dread of a scene gave her an
inexorableness which the greatest strength of character could not
have produced, since it was independent of all considerations of
right or wrong; and knowing this, Lily seldom ventured to assail
it. She had never felt less like making the attempt than on the
present occasion; but she had sought in vain for any other means of
escape from an intolerable situation.

Mrs. Peniston examined her critically. “You’re a bad colour, Lily:
this incessant rushing about is beginning to tell on you,” she said.

Miss Bart saw an opening. “I don’t think it’s that, Aunt Julia;
I’ve had worries,” she replied.

“Ah,” said Mrs. Peniston, shutting her lips with the snap of a
purse closing against a beggar.

“I’m sorry to bother you with them,” Lily continued, “but I really
believe my faintness last night was brought on partly by anxious
thoughts—”

“I should have said Carry Fisher’s cook was enough to account for
it. She has a woman who was with Maria Melson in 1891—the spring of
the year we went to Aix—and I remember dining there two days before
we sailed, and feeling SURE the coppers hadn’t been scoured.”

“I don’t think I ate much; I can’t eat or sleep.” Lily paused, and
then said abruptly: “The fact is, Aunt Julia, I owe some money.”

Mrs. Peniston’s face clouded perceptibly, but did not express the
astonishment her niece had expected. She was silent, and Lily was
forced to continue: “I have been foolish——”

“No doubt you have: extremely foolish,” Mrs. Peniston interposed.
“I fail to see how any one with your income, and no expenses—not to
mention the handsome presents I’ve always given you——”

“Oh, you’ve been most generous, Aunt Julia; I shall never forget
your kindness. But perhaps you don’t quite realize the expense a
girl is put to nowadays——”

“I don’t realize that YOU are put to any expense except for your
clothes and your railway fares. I expect you to be handsomely
dressed; but I paid Celeste’s bill for you last October.”

Lily hesitated: her aunt’s implacable memory had never been more
inconvenient. “You were as kind as possible; but I have had to get
a few things since——”

“What kind of things? Clothes? How much have you spent? Let me see
the bill—I daresay the woman is swindling you.”

“Oh, no, I think not: clothes have grown so frightfully expensive;
and one needs so many different kinds, with country visits, and
golf and skating, and Aiken and Tuxedo——”

“Let me see the bill,” Mrs. Peniston repeated.

Lily hesitated again. In the first place, Mme. Celeste had not yet
sent in her account, and secondly, the amount it represented was
only a fraction of the sum that Lily needed.

“She hasn’t sent in the bill for my winter things, but I KNOW it’s
large; and there are one or two other things; I’ve been careless
and imprudent—I’m frightened to think of what I owe——”

She raised the troubled loveliness of her face to Mrs. Peniston,
vainly hoping that a sight so moving to the other sex might not be
without effect upon her own. But the effect produced was that of
making Mrs. Peniston shrink back apprehensively.

“Really, Lily, you are old enough to manage your own affairs, and
after frightening me to death by your performance of last night you
might at least choose a better time to worry me with such matters.”
Mrs. Peniston glanced at the clock, and swallowed a tablet of
digitalis. “If you owe Celeste another thousand, she may send me
her account,” she added, as though to end the discussion at any
cost.

“I am very sorry, Aunt Julia; I hate to trouble you at such a time;
but I have really no choice—I ought to have spoken sooner—I owe a
great deal more than a thousand dollars.”

“A great deal more? Do you owe two? She must have robbed you!”

“I told you it was not only Celeste. I—there are other bills—more
pressing—that must be settled.”

“What on earth have you been buying? Jewelry? You must have gone
off your head,” said Mrs. Peniston with asperity. “But if you have
run into debt, you must suffer the consequences, and put aside your
monthly income till your bills are paid. If you stay quietly here
until next spring, instead of racing about all over the country,
you will have no expenses at all, and surely in four or five months
you can settle the rest of your bills if I pay the dress-maker now.”

Lily was again silent. She knew she could not hope to extract
even a thousand dollars from Mrs. Peniston on the mere plea of
paying Celeste’s bill: Mrs. Peniston would expect to go over the
dress-maker’s account, and would make out the cheque to her and not
to Lily. And yet the money must be obtained before the day was over!

“The debts I speak of are—different—not like tradesmen’s bills,”
she began confusedly; but Mrs. Peniston’s look made her almost
afraid to continue. Could it be that her aunt suspected anything?
The idea precipitated Lily’s avowal.

“The fact is, I’ve played cards a good deal—bridge; the women all
do it; girls too—it’s expected. Sometimes I’ve won—won a good
deal—but lately I’ve been unlucky—and of course such debts can’t be
paid off gradually——”

She paused: Mrs. Peniston’s face seemed to be petrifying as she
listened.

“Cards—you’ve played cards for money? It’s true, then: when I was
told so I wouldn’t believe it. I won’t ask if the other horrors
I was told were true too; I’ve heard enough for the state of my
nerves. When I think of the example you’ve had in this house! But I
suppose it’s your foreign bringing-up—no one knew where your mother
picked up her friends. And her Sundays were a scandal—that I know.”

Mrs. Peniston wheeled round suddenly. “You play cards on Sunday?”

Lily flushed with the recollection of certain rainy Sundays at
Bellomont and with the Dorsets.

“You’re hard on me, Aunt Julia: I have never really cared for
cards, but a girl hates to be thought priggish and superior, and
one drifts into doing what the others do. I’ve had a dreadful
lesson, and if you’ll help me out this time I promise you—”

Mrs. Peniston raised her hand warningly. “You needn’t make any
promises: it’s unnecessary. When I offered you a home I didn’t
undertake to pay your gambling debts.”

“Aunt Julia! You don’t mean that you won’t help me?”

“I shall certainly not do anything to give the impression that I
countenance your behaviour. If you really owe your dress-maker,
I will settle with her—beyond that I recognize no obligation to
assume your debts.”

Lily had risen, and stood pale and quivering before her aunt. Pride
stormed in her, but humiliation forced the cry from her lips: “Aunt
Julia, I shall be disgraced—I—” But she could go no farther. If her
aunt turned such a stony ear to the fiction of the gambling debts,
in what spirit would she receive the terrible avowal of the truth?

“I consider that you ARE disgraced, Lily: disgraced by your conduct
far more than by its results. You say your friends have persuaded
you to play cards with them; well, they may as well learn a lesson
too. They can probably afford to lose a little money—and at any
rate, I am not going to waste any of mine in paying them. And now I
must ask you to leave me—this scene has been extremely painful, and
I have my own health to consider. Draw down the blinds, please; and
tell Jennings I will see no one this afternoon but Grace Stepney.”

Lily went up to her own room and bolted the door. She was trembling
with fear and anger—the rush of the furies’ wings was in her ears.
She walked up and down the room with blind irregular steps. The
last door of escape was closed—she felt herself shut in with her
dishonour.

Suddenly her wild pacing brought her before the clock on the
chimney-piece. Its hands stood at half-past three, and she
remembered that Selden was to come to her at four. She had meant
to put him off with a word—but now her heart leaped at the
thought of seeing him. Was there not a promise of rescue in his
love? As she had lain at Gerty’s side the night before, she had
thought of his coming, and of the sweetness of weeping out her
pain upon his breast. Of course she had meant to clear herself of
its consequences before she met him—she had never really doubted
that Mrs. Peniston would come to her aid. And she had felt, even
in the full storm of her misery, that Selden’s love could not be
her ultimate refuge; only it would be so sweet to take a moment’s
shelter there, while she gathered fresh strength to go on.

But now his love was her only hope, and as she sat alone with her
wretchedness the thought of confiding in him became as seductive
as the river’s flow to the suicide. The first plunge would be
terrible—but afterward, what blessedness might come! She remembered
Gerty’s words: “I know him—he will help you”; and her mind clung
to them as a sick person might cling to a healing relic. Oh, if
he really understood—if he would help her to gather up her broken
life, and put it together in some new semblance in which no trace
of the past should remain! He had always made her feel that she
was worthy of better things, and she had never been in greater
need of such solace. Once and again she shrank at the thought of
imperilling his love by her confession: for love was what she
needed—it would take the glow of passion to weld together the
shattered fragments of her self-esteem. But she recurred to Gerty’s
words and held fast to them. She was sure that Gerty knew Selden’s
feeling for her, and it had never dawned upon her blindness that
Gerty’s own judgment of him was coloured by emotions far more
ardent than her own.

Four o’clock found her in the drawing-room: she was sure that
Selden would be punctual. But the hour came and passed—it moved
on feverishly, measured by her impatient heart-beats. She had
time to take a fresh survey of her wretchedness, and to fluctuate
anew between the impulse to confide in Selden and the dread of
destroying his illusions. But as the minutes passed the need of
throwing herself on his comprehension became more urgent: she could
not bear the weight of her misery alone. There would be a perilous
moment, perhaps: but could she not trust to her beauty to bridge it
over, to land her safe in the shelter of his devotion?

But the hour sped on and Selden did not come. Doubtless he had been
detained, or had misread her hurriedly scrawled note, taking the
four for a five. The ringing of the door-bell a few minutes after
five confirmed this supposition, and made Lily hastily resolve to
write more legibly in future. The sound of steps in the hall, and
of the butler’s voice preceding them, poured fresh energy into her
veins. She felt herself once more the alert and competent moulder
of emergencies, and the remembrance of her power over Selden
flushed her with sudden confidence. But when the drawing-room door
opened it was Rosedale who came in.

The reaction caused her a sharp pang, but after a passing
movement of irritation at the clumsiness of fate, and at her
own carelessness in not denying the door to all but Selden, she
controlled herself and greeted Rosedale amicably. It was annoying
that Selden, when he came, should find that particular visitor in
possession, but Lily was mistress of the art of ridding herself
of superfluous company, and to her present mood Rosedale seemed
distinctly negligible.

His own view of the situation forced itself upon her after a few
moments’ conversation. She had caught at the Brys’ entertainment as
an easy impersonal subject, likely to tide them over the interval
till Selden appeared, but Mr. Rosedale, tenaciously planted beside
the tea-table, his hands in his pockets, his legs a little too
freely extended, at once gave the topic a personal turn.

“Pretty well done—well, yes, I suppose it was: Welly Bry’s got his
back up and don’t mean to let go till he’s got the hang of the
thing. Of course, there were things here and there—things Mrs.
Fisher couldn’t be expected to see to—the champagne wasn’t cold,
and the coats got mixed in the coat-room. I would have spent more
money on the music. But that’s my character: if I want a thing I’m
willing to pay: I don’t go up to the counter, and then wonder if
the article’s worth the price. I wouldn’t be satisfied to entertain
like the Welly Brys; I’d want something that would look more easy
and natural, more as if I took it in my stride. And it takes just
two things to do that, Miss Bart: money, and the right woman to
spend it.”

He paused, and examined her attentively while she affected to
rearrange the tea-cups.

“I’ve got the money,” he continued, clearing his throat, “and what
I want is the woman—and I mean to have her too.”

He leaned forward a little, resting his hands on the head of his
walking-stick. He had seen men of Ned Van Alstyne’s type bring
their hats and sticks into a drawing-room, and he thought it added
a touch of elegant familiarity to their appearance.

Lily was silent, smiling faintly, with her eyes absently resting on
his face. She was in reality reflecting that a declaration would
take some time to make, and that Selden must surely appear before
the moment of refusal had been reached. Her brooding look, as of
a mind withdrawn yet not averted, seemed to Mr. Rosedale full of
a subtle encouragement. He would not have liked any evidence of
eagerness.

“I mean to have her too,” he repeated, with a laugh intended to
strengthen his self-assurance. “I generally HAVE got what I wanted
in life, Miss Bart. I wanted money, and I’ve got more than I know
how to invest; and now the money doesn’t seem to be of any account
unless I can spend it on the right woman. That’s what I want to do
with it: I want my wife to make all the other women feel small. I’d
never grudge a dollar that was spent on that. But it isn’t every
woman can do it, no matter how much you spend on her. There was a
girl in some history book who wanted gold shields, or something,
and the fellows threw ’em at her, and she was crushed under ’em:
they killed her. Well, that’s true enough: some women looked buried
under their jewelry. What I want is a woman who’ll hold her head
higher the more diamonds I put on it. And when I looked at you the
other night at the Brys’, in that plain white dress, looking as if
you had a crown on, I said to myself: ‘By gad, if she had one she’d
wear it as if it grew on her.’”

Still Lily did not speak, and he continued, warming with his theme:
“Tell you what it is, though, that kind of woman costs more than
all the rest of ’em put together. If a woman’s going to ignore her
pearls, they want to be better than anybody else’s—and so it is
with everything else. You know what I mean—you know it’s only the
showy things that are cheap. Well, I should want my wife to be able
to take the earth for granted if she wanted to. I know there’s one
thing vulgar about money, and that’s the thinking about it; and my
wife would never have to demean herself in that way.” He paused,
and then added, with an unfortunate lapse to an earlier manner: “I
guess you know the lady I’ve got in view, Miss Bart.”

Lily raised her head, brightening a little under the challenge.
Even through the dark tumult of her thoughts, the clink of Mr.
Rosedale’s millions had a faintly seductive note. Oh, for enough of
them to cancel her one miserable debt! But the man behind them grew
increasingly repugnant in the light of Selden’s expected coming.
The contrast was too grotesque: she could scarcely suppress the
smile it provoked. She decided that directness would be best.

“If you mean me, Mr. Rosedale, I am very grateful—very much
flattered; but I don’t know what I have ever done to make you
think—”

“Oh, if you mean you’re not dead in love with me, I’ve got sense
enough left to see that. And I ain’t talking to you as if you
were—I presume I know the kind of talk that’s expected under those
circumstances. I’m confoundedly gone on you—that’s about the size
of it—and I’m just giving you a plain business statement of the
consequences. You’re not very fond of me—YET—but you’re fond of
luxury, and style, and amusement, and of not having to worry about
cash. You like to have a good time, and not have to settle for it;
and what I propose to do is to provide for the good time and do the
settling.”

He paused, and she returned with a chilling smile: “You are
mistaken in one point, Mr. Rosedale: whatever I enjoy I am prepared
to settle for.”

She spoke with the intention of making him see that, if his words
implied a tentative allusion to her private affairs, she was
prepared to meet and repudiate it. But if he recognized her meaning
it failed to abash him, and he went on in the same tone: “I didn’t
mean to give offence; excuse me if I’ve spoken too plainly. But
why ain’t you straight with me—why do you put up that kind of
bluff? You know there’ve been times when you were bothered—damned
bothered—and as a girl gets older, and things keep moving along,
why, before she knows it, the things she wants are liable to move
past her and not come back. I don’t say it’s anywhere near that
with you yet; but you’ve had a taste of bothers that a girl like
yourself ought never to have known about, and what I’m offering you
is the chance to turn your back on them once for all.”

The colour burned in Lily’s face as he ended; there was no
mistaking the point he meant to make, and to permit it to pass
unheeded was a fatal confession of weakness, while to resent it too
openly was to risk offending him at a perilous moment. Indignation
quivered on her lip; but it was quelled by the secret voice which
warned her that she must not quarrel with him. He knew too much
about her, and even at the moment when it was essential that he
should show himself at his best, he did not scruple to let her
see how much he knew. How then would he use his power when her
expression of contempt had dispelled his one motive for restraint?
Her whole future might hinge on her way of answering him: she had
to stop and consider that, in the stress of her other anxieties, as
a breathless fugitive may have to pause at the cross-roads and try
to decide coolly which turn to take.

“You are quite right, Mr. Rosedale. I HAVE had bothers; and I am
grateful to you for wanting to relieve me of them. It is not always
easy to be quite independent and self-respecting when one is poor
and lives among rich people; I have been careless about money, and
have worried about my bills. But I should be selfish and ungrateful
if I made that a reason for accepting all you offer, with no better
return to make than the desire to be free from my anxieties. You
must give me time—time to think of your kindness—and of what I
could give you in return for it——”

She held out her hand with a charming gesture in which dismissal
was shorn of its rigour. Its hint of future leniency made Rosedale
rise in obedience to it, a little flushed with his unhoped-for
success, and disciplined by the tradition of his blood to accept
what was conceded, without undue haste to press for more. Something
in his prompt acquiescence frightened her; she felt behind it the
stored force of a patience that might subdue the strongest will.
But at least they had parted amicably, and he was out of the house
without meeting Selden—Selden, whose continued absence now smote
her with a new alarm. Rosedale had remained over an hour, and she
understood that it was now too late to hope for Selden. He would
write explaining his absence, of course; there would be a note
from him by the late post. But her confession would have to be
postponed; and the chill of the delay settled heavily on her fagged
spirit.

It lay heavier when the postman’s last ring brought no note for
her, and she had to go upstairs to a lonely night—a night as grim
and sleepless as her tortured fancy had pictured it to Gerty.
She had never learned to live with her own thoughts, and to be
confronted with them through such hours of lucid misery made the
confused wretchedness of her previous vigil seem easily bearable.

Daylight disbanded the phantom crew, and made it clear to her
that she would hear from Selden before noon; but the day passed
without his writing or coming. Lily remained at home, lunching and
dining alone with her aunt, who complained of flutterings of the
heart, and talked icily on general topics. Mrs. Peniston went to
bed early, and when she had gone Lily sat down and wrote a note to
Selden. She was about to ring for a messenger to despatch it when
her eye fell on a paragraph in the evening paper which lay at her
elbow: “Mr. Lawrence Selden was among the passengers sailing this
afternoon for Havana and the West Indies on the Windward Liner
Antilles.”

She laid down the paper and sat motionless, staring at her note.
She understood now that he was never coming—that he had gone away
because he was afraid that he might come. She rose, and walking
across the floor stood gazing at herself for a long time in the
brightly lit mirror above the mantelpiece. The lines in her face
came out terribly—she looked old; and when a girl looks old to
herself, how does she look to other people? She moved away, and
began to wander aimlessly about the room, fitting her steps with
mechanical precision between the monstrous roses of Mrs. Peniston’s
Axminster. Suddenly she noticed that the pen with which she had
written to Selden still rested against the uncovered inkstand.
She seated herself again, and taking out an envelope, addressed
it rapidly to Rosedale. Then she laid out a sheet of paper, and
sat over it with suspended pen. It had been easy enough to write
the date, and “Dear Mr. Rosedale”—but after that her inspiration
flagged. She meant to tell him to come to her, but the words
refused to shape themselves. At length she began: “I have been
thinking——” then she laid the pen down, and sat with her elbows on
the table and her face hidden in her hands.

Suddenly she started up at the sound of the door-bell. It was
not late—barely ten o’clock—and there might still be a note from
Selden, or a message—or he might be there himself, on the other
side of the door! The announcement of his sailing might have been
a mistake—it might be another Lawrence Selden who had gone to
Havana—all these possibilities had time to flash through her mind,
and build up the conviction that she was after all to see or hear
from him, before the drawing-room door opened to admit a servant
carrying a telegram.

Lily tore it open with shaking hands, and read Bertha Dorset’s name
below the message: “Sailing unexpectedly tomorrow. Will you join us
on a cruise in Mediterranean?”




BOOK TWO




Chapter 1


It came vividly to Selden on the Casino steps that Monte Carlo
had, more than any other place he knew, the gift of accommodating
itself to each man’s humour. His own, at the moment, lent it a
festive readiness of welcome that might well, in a disenchanted
eye, have turned to paint and facility. So frank an appeal for
participation—so outspoken a recognition of the holiday vein in
human nature—struck refreshingly on a mind jaded by prolonged
hard work in surroundings made for the discipline of the senses.
As he surveyed the white square set in an exotic coquetry of
architecture, the studied tropicality of the gardens, the groups
loitering in the foreground against mauve mountains which
suggested a sublime stage-setting forgotten in a hurried shifting
of scenes—as he took in the whole outspread effect of light and
leisure, he felt a movement of revulsion from the last few months
of his life.

The New York winter had presented an interminable perspective of
snow-burdened days, reaching toward a spring of raw sunshine and
furious air, when the ugliness of things rasped the eye as the
gritty wind ground into the skin. Selden, immersed in his work,
had told himself that external conditions did not matter to a man
in his state, and that cold and ugliness were a good tonic for
relaxed sensibilities. When an urgent case summoned him abroad
to confer with a client in Paris, he broke reluctantly with the
routine of the office; and it was only now that, having despatched
his business, and slipped away for a week in the south, he began to
feel the renewed zest of spectatorship that is the solace of those
who take an objective interest in life.

The multiplicity of its appeals—the perpetual surprise of its
contrasts and resemblances! All these tricks and turns of the
show were upon him with a spring as he descended the Casino steps
and paused on the pavement at its doors. He had not been abroad
for seven years—and what changes the renewed contact produced! If
the central depths were untouched, hardly a pin-point of surface
remained the same. And this was the very place to bring out the
completeness of the renewal. The sublimities, the perpetuities,
might have left him as he was: but this tent pitched for a day’s
revelry spread a roof of oblivion between himself and his fixed sky.

It was mid-April, and one felt that the revelry had reached its
climax and that the desultory groups in the square and gardens
would soon dissolve and reform in other scenes. Meanwhile the last
moments of the performance seemed to gain an added brightness
from the hovering threat of the curtain. The quality of the air,
the exuberance of the flowers, the blue intensity of sea and sky,
produced the effect of a closing TABLEAU, when all the lights are
turned on at once. This impression was presently heightened by the
way in which a consciously conspicuous group of people advanced
to the middle front, and stood before Selden with the air of the
chief performers gathered together by the exigencies of the final
effect. Their appearance confirmed the impression that the show had
been staged regardless of expense, and emphasized its resemblance
to one of those “costume-plays” in which the protagonists walk
through the passions without displacing a drapery. The ladies stood
in unrelated attitudes calculated to isolate their effects, and the
men hung about them as irrelevantly as stage heroes whose tailors
are named in the programme. It was Selden himself who unwittingly
fused the group by arresting the attention of one of its members.

“Why, Mr. Selden!” Mrs. Fisher exclaimed in surprise; and with a
gesture toward Mrs. Jack Stepney and Mrs. Wellington Bry, she added
plaintively: “We’re starving to death because we can’t decide where
to lunch.”

Welcomed into their group, and made the confidant of their
difficulty, Selden learned with amusement that there were several
places where one might miss something by not lunching, or forfeit
something by lunching; so that eating actually became a minor
consideration on the very spot consecrated to its rites.

“Of course one gets the best things at the TERRASSE—but that looks
as if one hadn’t any other reason for being there: the Americans
who don’t know any one always rush for the best food. And the
Duchess of Beltshire has taken up Becassin’s lately,” Mrs. Bry
earnestly summed up.

Mrs. Bry, to Mrs. Fisher’s despair, had not progressed beyond the
point of weighing her social alternatives in public. She could not
acquire the air of doing things because she wanted to, and making
her choice the final seal of their fitness.

Mr. Bry, a short pale man, with a business face and leisure
clothes, met the dilemma hilariously.

“I guess the Duchess goes where it’s cheapest, unless she can get
her meal paid for. If you offered to blow her off at the TERRASSE
she’d turn up fast enough.”

But Mrs. Jack Stepney interposed. “The Grand Dukes go to that
little place at the Condamine. Lord Hubert says it’s the only
restaurant in Europe where they can cook peas.”

Lord Hubert Dacey, a slender shabby-looking man, with a charming
worn smile, and the air of having spent his best years in piloting
the wealthy to the right restaurant, assented with gentle emphasis:
“It’s quite that.”

“PEAS?” said Mr. Bry contemptuously. “Can they cook terrapin? It
just shows,” he continued, “what these European markets are, when a
fellow can make a reputation cooking peas!”

Jack Stepney intervened with authority. “I don’t know that I quite
agree with Dacey: there’s a little hole in Paris, off the Quai
Voltaire—but in any case, I can’t advise the Condamine GARGOTE; at
least not with ladies.”

Stepney, since his marriage, had thickened and grown prudish, as
the Van Osburgh husbands were apt to do; but his wife, to his
surprise and discomfiture, had developed an earth-shaking fastness
of gait which left him trailing breathlessly in her wake.

“That’s where we’ll go then!” she declared, with a heavy toss of
her plumage. “I’m so tired of the TERRASSE: it’s as dull as one
of mother’s dinners. And Lord Hubert has promised to tell us who
all the awful people are at the other place—hasn’t he, Carry? Now,
Jack, don’t look so solemn!”

“Well,” said Mrs. Bry, “all I want to know is who their
dress-makers are.”

“No doubt Dacey can tell you that too,” remarked Stepney, with an
ironic intention which the other received with the light murmur,
“I can at least FIND OUT, my dear fellow”; and Mrs. Bry having
declared that she couldn’t walk another step, the party hailed
two or three of the light phaetons which hover attentively on the
confines of the gardens, and rattled off in procession toward the
Condamine.

Their destination was one of the little restaurants overhanging
the boulevard which dips steeply down from Monte Carlo to the low
intermediate quarter along the quay. From the window in which
they presently found themselves installed, they overlooked the
intense blue curve of the harbour, set between the verdure of twin
promontories: to the right, the cliff of Monaco, topped by the
mediaeval silhouette of its church and castle, to the left the
terraces and pinnacles of the gambling-house. Between the two,
the waters of the bay were furrowed by a light coming and going
of pleasure-craft, through which, just at the culminating moment
of luncheon, the majestic advance of a great steam-yacht drew the
company’s attention from the peas.

“By Jove, I believe that’s the Dorsets back!” Stepney exclaimed;
and Lord Hubert, dropping his single eye-glass, corroborated: “It’s
the Sabrina—yes.”

“So soon? They were to spend a month in Sicily,” Mrs. Fisher
observed.

“I guess they feel as if they had: there’s only one up-to-date
hotel in the whole place,” said Mr. Bry disparagingly.

“It was Ned Silverton’s idea—but poor Dorset and Lily Bart must
have been horribly bored.” Mrs. Fisher added in an undertone to
Selden: “I do hope there hasn’t been a row.”

“It’s most awfully jolly having Miss Bart back,” said Lord Hubert,
in his mild deliberate voice; and Mrs. Bry added ingenuously: “I
daresay the Duchess will dine with us, now that Lily’s here.”

“The Duchess admires her immensely: I’m sure she’d be charmed
to have it arranged,” Lord Hubert agreed, with the professional
promptness of the man accustomed to draw his profit from
facilitating social contacts: Selden was struck by the businesslike
change in his manner.

“Lily has been a tremendous success here,” Mrs. Fisher continued,
still addressing herself confidentially to Selden. “She looks ten
years younger—I never saw her so handsome. Lady Skiddaw took her
everywhere in Cannes, and the Crown Princess of Macedonia had her
to stop for a week at Cimiez. People say that was one reason why
Bertha whisked the yacht off to Sicily: the Crown Princess didn’t
take much notice of her, and she couldn’t bear to look on at Lily’s
triumph.”

Selden made no reply. He was vaguely aware that Miss Bart was
cruising in the Mediterranean with the Dorsets, but it had not
occurred to him that there was any chance of running across her on
the Riviera, where the season was virtually at an end. As he leaned
back, silently contemplating his filigree cup of Turkish coffee,
he was trying to put some order in his thoughts, to tell himself
how the news of her nearness was really affecting him. He had a
personal detachment enabling him, even in moments of emotional
high-pressure, to get a fairly clear view of his feelings, and
he was sincerely surprised by the disturbance which the sight
of the Sabrina had produced in him. He had reason to think that
his three months of engrossing professional work, following on
the sharp shock of his disillusionment, had cleared his mind of
its sentimental vapours. The feeling he had nourished and given
prominence to was one of thankfulness for his escape: he was like a
traveller so grateful for rescue from a dangerous accident that at
first he is hardly conscious of his bruises. Now he suddenly felt
the latent ache, and realized that after all he had not come off
unhurt.

An hour later, at Mrs. Fisher’s side in the Casino gardens, he was
trying to find fresh reasons for forgetting the injury received in
the contemplation of the peril avoided. The party had dispersed
with the loitering indecision characteristic of social movements
at Monte Carlo, where the whole place, and the long gilded hours
of the day, seem to offer an infinity of ways of being idle. Lord
Hubert Dacey had finally gone off in quest of the Duchess of
Beltshire, charged by Mrs. Bry with the delicate negotiation of
securing that lady’s presence at dinner, the Stepneys had left for
Nice in their motor-car, and Mr. Bry had departed to take his place
in the pigeon shooting match which was at the moment engaging his
highest faculties.

Mrs. Bry, who had a tendency to grow red and stertorous after
luncheon, had been judiciously prevailed upon by Carry Fisher to
withdraw to her hotel for an hour’s repose; and Selden and his
companion were thus left to a stroll propitious to confidences.
The stroll soon resolved itself into a tranquil session on a bench
overhung with laurel and Banksian roses, from which they caught a
dazzle of blue sea between marble balusters, and the fiery shafts
of cactus-blossoms shooting meteor-like from the rock. The soft
shade of their niche, and the adjacent glitter of the air, were
conducive to an easy lounging mood, and to the smoking of many
cigarettes; and Selden, yielding to these influences, suffered Mrs.
Fisher to unfold to him the history of her recent experiences. She
had come abroad with the Welly Brys at the moment when fashion
flees the inclemency of the New York spring. The Brys, intoxicated
by their first success, already thirsted for new kingdoms, and
Mrs. Fisher, viewing the Riviera as an easy introduction to London
society, had guided their course thither. She had affiliations
of her own in every capital, and a facility for picking them up
again after long absences; and the carefully disseminated rumour
of the Brys’ wealth had at once gathered about them a group of
cosmopolitan pleasure-seekers.

“But things are not going as well as I expected,” Mrs. Fisher
frankly admitted. “It’s all very well to say that every body with
money can get into society; but it would be truer to say that
NEARLY everybody can. And the London market is so glutted with new
Americans that, to succeed there now, they must be either very
clever or awfully queer. The Brys are neither. HE would get on well
enough if she’d let him alone; they like his slang and his brag and
his blunders. But Louisa spoils it all by trying to repress him and
put herself forward. If she’d be natural herself—fat and vulgar and
bouncing—it would be all right; but as soon as she meets anybody
smart she tries to be slender and queenly. She tried it with the
Duchess of Beltshire and Lady Skiddaw, and they fled. I’ve done my
best to make her see her mistake—I’ve said to her again and again:
‘Just let yourself go, Louisa’; but she keeps up the humbug even
with me—I believe she keeps on being queenly in her own room, with
the door shut.

“The worst of it is,” Mrs. Fisher went on, “that she thinks it’s
all MY fault. When the Dorsets turned up here six weeks ago, and
everybody began to make a fuss about Lily Bart, I could see Louisa
thought that if she’d had Lily in tow instead of me she would have
been hob-nobbing with all the royalties by this time. She doesn’t
realize that it’s Lily’s beauty that does it: Lord Hubert tells me
Lily is thought even handsomer than when he knew her at Aix ten
years ago. It seems she was tremendously admired there. An Italian
Prince, rich and the real thing, wanted to marry her; but just at
the critical moment a good-looking step-son turned up, and Lily
was silly enough to flirt with him while her marriage-settlements
with the step-father were being drawn up. Some people said the
young man did it on purpose. You can fancy the scandal: there was
an awful row between the men, and people began to look at Lily
so queerly that Mrs. Peniston had to pack up and finish her cure
elsewhere. Not that SHE ever understood: to this day she thinks
that Aix didn’t suit her, and mentions her having been sent there
as proof of the incompetence of French doctors. That’s Lily all
over, you know: she works like a slave preparing the ground and
sowing her seed; but the day she ought to be reaping the harvest
she over-sleeps herself or goes off on a picnic.”

Mrs. Fisher paused and looked reflectively at the deep shimmer of
sea between the cactus-flowers. “Sometimes,” she added, “I think
it’s just flightiness—and sometimes I think it’s because, at heart,
she despises the things she’s trying for. And it’s the difficulty
of deciding that makes her such an interesting study.” She glanced
tentatively at Selden’s motionless profile, and resumed with a
slight sigh: “Well, all I can say is, I wish she’d give ME some of
her discarded opportunities. I wish we could change places now,
for instance. She could make a very good thing out of the Brys
if she managed them properly, and I should know just how to look
after George Dorset while Bertha is reading Verlaine with Neddy
Silverton.”

She met Selden’s sound of protest with a sharp derisive glance.
“Well, what’s the use of mincing matters? We all know that’s what
Bertha brought her abroad for. When Bertha wants to have a good
time she has to provide occupation for George. At first I thought
Lily was going to play her cards well THIS time, but there are
rumours that Bertha is jealous of her success here and at Cannes,
and I shouldn’t be surprised if there were a break any day. Lily’s
only safeguard is that Bertha needs her badly—oh, very badly.
The Silverton affair is in the acute stage: it’s necessary that
George’s attention should be pretty continuously distracted. And
I’m bound to say Lily DOES distract it: I believe he’d marry her
tomorrow if he found out there was anything wrong with Bertha. But
you know him—he’s as blind as he’s jealous; and of course Lily’s
present business is to keep him blind. A clever woman might know
just the right moment to tear off the bandage: but Lily isn’t
clever in that way, and when George does open his eyes she’ll
probably contrive not to be in his line of vision.”

Selden tossed away his cigarette. “By Jove—it’s time for my train,”
he exclaimed, with a glance at his watch; adding, in reply to Mrs.
Fisher’s surprised comment—“Why, I thought of course you were at
Monte!”—a murmured word to the effect that he was making Nice his
head-quarters.

“The worst of it is, she snubs the Brys now,” he heard irrelevantly
flung after him.

Ten minutes later, in the high-perched bedroom of an hotel
overlooking the Casino, he was tossing his effects into a couple of
gaping portmanteaux, while the porter waited outside to transport
them to the cab at the door. It took but a brief plunge down the
steep white road to the station to land him safely in the afternoon
express for Nice; and not till he was installed in the corner of
an empty carriage, did he exclaim to himself, with a reaction of
self-contempt: “What the deuce am I running away from?”

The pertinence of the question checked Selden’s fugitive impulse
before the train had started. It was ridiculous to be flying like
an emotional coward from an infatuation his reason had conquered.
He had instructed his bankers to forward some important business
letters to Nice, and at Nice he would quietly await them. He was
already annoyed with himself for having left Monte Carlo, where he
had intended to pass the week which remained to him before sailing;
but it would now be difficult to return on his steps without an
appearance of inconsistency from which his pride recoiled. In his
inmost heart he was not sorry to put himself beyond the probability
of meeting Miss Bart. Completely as he had detached himself from
her, he could not yet regard her merely as a social instance;
and viewed in a more personal ways she was not likely to be a
reassuring object of study. Chance encounters, or even the repeated
mention of her name, would send his thoughts back into grooves
from which he had resolutely detached them; whereas, if she could
be entirely excluded from his life, the pressure of new and varied
impressions, with which no thought of her was connected, would soon
complete the work of separation. Mrs. Fisher’s conversation had,
indeed, operated to that end; but the treatment was too painful
to be voluntarily chosen while milder remedies were untried; and
Selden thought he could trust himself to return gradually to a
reasonable view of Miss Bart, if only he did not see her.

Having reached the station early, he had arrived at this point in
his reflections before the increasing throng on the platform warned
him that he could not hope to preserve his privacy; the next moment
there was a hand on the door, and he turned to confront the very
face he was fleeing.

Miss Bart, glowing with the haste of a precipitate descent upon the
train, headed a group composed of the Dorsets, young Silverton and
Lord Hubert Dacey, who had barely time to spring into the carriage,
and envelop Selden in ejaculations of surprise and welcome, before
the whistle of departure sounded. The party, it appeared, were
hastening to Nice in response to a sudden summons to dine with the
Duchess of Beltshire and to see the water-fete in the bay; a plan
evidently improvised—in spite of Lord Hubert’s protesting “Oh, I
say, you know,”—for the express purpose of defeating Mrs. Bry’s
endeavour to capture the Duchess.

During the laughing relation of this manoeuvre, Selden had time for
a rapid impression of Miss Bart, who had seated herself opposite
to him in the golden afternoon light. Scarcely three months had
elapsed since he had parted from her on the threshold of the Brys’
conservatory; but a subtle change had passed over the quality
of her beauty. Then it had had a transparency through which the
fluctuations of the spirit were sometimes tragically visible; now
its impenetrable surface suggested a process of crystallization
which had fused her whole being into one hard brilliant substance.
The change had struck Mrs. Fisher as a rejuvenation: to Selden it
seemed like that moment of pause and arrest when the warm fluidity
of youth is chilled into its final shape.

He felt it in the way she smiled on him, and in the readiness and
competence with which, flung unexpectedly into his presence, she
took up the thread of their intercourse as though that thread had
not been snapped with a violence from which he still reeled. Such
facility sickened him—but he told himself that it was with the
pang which precedes recovery. Now he would really get well—would
eject the last drop of poison from his blood. Already he felt
himself calmer in her presence than he had learned to be in the
thought of her. Her assumptions and elisions, her short-cuts and
long DETOURS, the skill with which she contrived to meet him at a
point from which no inconvenient glimpses of the past were visible,
suggested what opportunities she had had for practising such arts
since their last meeting. He felt that she had at last arrived at
an understanding with herself: had made a pact with her rebellious
impulses, and achieved a uniform system of self-government, under
which all vagrant tendencies were either held captive or forced
into the service of the state.

And he saw other things too in her manner: saw how it had adjusted
itself to the hidden intricacies of a situation in which, even
after Mrs. Fisher’s elucidating flashes, he still felt himself
agrope. Surely Mrs. Fisher could no longer charge Miss Bart with
neglecting her opportunities! To Selden’s exasperated observation
she was only too completely alive to them. She was “perfect”
to every one: subservient to Bertha’s anxious predominance,
good-naturedly watchful of Dorset’s moods, brightly companionable
to Silverton and Dacey, the latter of whom met her on an evident
footing of old admiration, while young Silverton, portentously
self-absorbed, seemed conscious of her only as of something vaguely
obstructive. And suddenly, as Selden noted the fine shades of
manner by which she harmonized herself with her surroundings, it
flashed on him that, to need such adroit handling, the situation
must indeed be desperate. She was on the edge of something—that was
the impression left with him. He seemed to see her poised on the
brink of a chasm, with one graceful foot advanced to assert her
unconsciousness that the ground was failing her.

On the Promenade des Anglais, where Ned Silverton hung on him for
the half hour before dinner, he received a deeper impression of the
general insecurity. Silverton was in a mood of Titanic pessimism.
How any one could come to such a damned hole as the Riviera—any
one with a grain of imagination—with the whole Mediterranean to
choose from: but then, if one’s estimate of a place depended on
the way they broiled a spring chicken! Gad! what a study might be
made of the tyranny of the stomach—the way a sluggish liver or
insufficient gastric juices might affect the whole course of the
universe, overshadow everything in reach—chronic dyspepsia ought
to be among the “statutory causes”; a woman’s life might be ruined
by a man’s inability to digest fresh bread. Grotesque? Yes—and
tragic—like most absurdities. There’s nothing grimmer than the
tragedy that wears a comic mask.... Where was he? Oh—the reason
they chucked Sicily and rushed back? Well—partly, no doubt, Miss
Bart’s desire to get back to bridge and smartness. Dead as a stone
to art and poetry—the light never WAS on sea or land for her! And
of course she persuaded Dorset that the Italian food was bad for
him. Oh, she could make him believe anything—ANYTHING! Mrs. Dorset
was aware of it—oh, perfectly: nothing SHE didn’t see! But she
could hold her tongue—she’d had to, often enough. Miss Bart was an
intimate friend—she wouldn’t hear a word against her. Only it hurts
a woman’s pride—there are some things one doesn’t get used to....
All this in confidence, of course? Ah—and there were the ladies
signalling from the balcony of the hotel.... He plunged across the
Promenade, leaving Selden to a meditative cigar.

The conclusions it led him to were fortified, later in the evening,
by some of those faint corroborative hints that generate a light
of their own in the dusk of a doubting mind. Selden, stumbling on
a chance acquaintance, had dined with him, and adjourned, still
in his company, to the brightly lit Promenade, where a line of
crowded stands commanded the glittering darkness of the waters.
The night was soft and persuasive. Overhead hung a summer sky
furrowed with the rush of rockets; and from the east a late moon,
pushing up beyond the lofty bend of the coast, sent across the bay
a shaft of brightness which paled to ashes in the red glitter of
the illuminated boats. Down the lantern-hung Promenade, snatches
of band-music floated above the hum of the crowd and the soft
tossing of boughs in dusky gardens; and between these gardens and
the backs of the stands there flowed a stream of people in whom the
vociferous carnival mood seemed tempered by the growing languor of
the season.

Selden and his companion, unable to get seats on one of the stands
facing the bay, had wandered for a while with the throng, and
then found a point of vantage on a high garden-parapet above the
Promenade. Thence they caught but a triangular glimpse of the
water, and of the flashing play of boats across its surface; but
the crowd in the street was under their immediate view, and seemed
to Selden, on the whole, of more interest than the show itself.
After a while, however, he wearied of his perch and, dropping
alone to the pavement, pushed his way to the first corner and
turned into the moonlit silence of a side street. Long garden-walls
overhung by trees made a dark boundary to the pavement; an empty
cab trailed along the deserted thoroughfare, and presently Selden
saw two persons emerge from the opposite shadows, signal to the
cab, and drive off in it toward the centre of the town. The
moonlight touched them as they paused to enter the carriage, and he
recognized Mrs. Dorset and young Silverton.

Beneath the nearest lamp-post he glanced at his watch and saw
that the time was close on eleven. He took another cross street,
and without breasting the throng on the Promenade, made his way
to the fashionable club which overlooks that thoroughfare. Here,
amid the blaze of crowded baccarat tables, he caught sight of Lord
Hubert Dacey, seated with his habitual worn smile behind a rapidly
dwindling heap of gold. The heap being in due course wiped out,
Lord Hubert rose with a shrug, and joining Selden, adjourned with
him to the deserted terrace of the club. It was now past midnight,
and the throng on the stands was dispersing, while the long trails
of red-lit boats scattered and faded beneath a sky repossessed by
the tranquil splendour of the moon.

Lord Hubert looked at his watch. “By Jove, I promised to join the
Duchess for supper at the LONDON HOUSE; but it’s past twelve, and
I suppose they’ve all scattered. The fact is, I lost them in the
crowd soon after dinner, and took refuge here, for my sins. They
had seats on one of the stands, but of course they couldn’t stop
quiet: the Duchess never can. She and Miss Bart went off in quest
of what they call adventures—gad, it ain’t their fault if they
don’t have some queer ones!” He added tentatively, after pausing
to grope for a cigarette: “Miss Bart’s an old friend of yours,
I believe? So she told me.—Ah, thanks—I don’t seem to have one
left.” He lit Selden’s proffered cigarette, and continued, in his
high-pitched drawling tone: “None of my business, of course, but I
didn’t introduce her to the Duchess. Charming woman, the Duchess,
you understand; and a very good friend of mine; but RATHER a
liberal education.”

Selden received this in silence, and after a few puffs Lord Hubert
broke out again: “Sort of thing one can’t communicate to the young
lady—though young ladies nowadays are so competent to judge for
themselves; but in this case—I’m an old friend too, you know . . .
and there seemed no one else to speak to. The whole situation’s a
little mixed, as I see it—but there used to be an aunt somewhere, a
diffuse and innocent person, who was great at bridging over chasms
she didn’t see.... Ah, in New York, is she? Pity New York’s such a
long way off!”




Chapter 2


Miss Bart, emerging late the next morning from her cabin, found
herself alone on the deck of the Sabrina.

The cushioned chairs, disposed expectantly under the wide awning,
showed no signs of recent occupancy, and she presently learned
from a steward that Mrs. Dorset had not yet appeared, and that
the gentlemen—separately—had gone ashore as soon as they had
breakfasted. Supplied with these facts, Lily leaned awhile over the
side, giving herself up to a leisurely enjoyment of the spectacle
before her. Unclouded sunlight enveloped sea and shore in a bath
of purest radiancy. The purpling waters drew a sharp white line of
foam at the base of the shore; against its irregular eminences,
hotels and villas flashed from the greyish verdure of olive and
eucalyptus; and the background of bare and finely-pencilled
mountains quivered in a pale intensity of light.

How beautiful it was—and how she loved beauty! She had always
felt that her sensibility in this direction made up for certain
obtusenesses of feeling of which she was less proud; and during the
last three months she had indulged it passionately. The Dorsets’
invitation to go abroad with them had come as an almost miraculous
release from crushing difficulties; and her faculty for renewing
herself in new scenes, and casting off problems of conduct as
easily as the surroundings in which they had arisen, made the mere
change from one place to another seem, not merely a postponement,
but a solution of her troubles. Moral complications existed for her
only in the environment that had produced them; she did not mean
to slight or ignore them, but they lost their reality when they
changed their background. She could not have remained in New York
without repaying the money she owed to Trenor; to acquit herself
of that odious debt she might even have faced a marriage with
Rosedale; but the accident of placing the Atlantic between herself
and her obligations made them dwindle out of sight as if they had
been milestones and she had travelled past them.

Her two months on the Sabrina had been especially calculated to
aid this illusion of distance. She had been plunged into new
scenes, and had found in them a renewal of old hopes and ambitions.
The cruise itself charmed her as a romantic adventure. She was
vaguely touched by the names and scenes amid which she moved, and
had listened to Ned Silverton reading Theocritus by moonlight,
as the yacht rounded the Sicilian promontories, with a thrill
of the nerves that confirmed her belief in her intellectual
superiority. But the weeks at Cannes and Nice had really given
her more pleasure. The gratification of being welcomed in high
company, and of making her own ascendency felt there, so that she
found herself figuring once more as the “beautiful Miss Bart” in
the interesting journal devoted to recording the least movements
of her cosmopolitan companions—all these experiences tended to
throw into the extreme background of memory the prosaic and sordid
difficulties from which she had escaped.

If she was faintly aware of fresh difficulties ahead, she was
sure of her ability to meet them: it was characteristic of her to
feel that the only problems she could not solve were those with
which she was familiar. Meanwhile she could honestly be proud of
the skill with which she had adapted herself to somewhat delicate
conditions. She had reason to think that she had made herself
equally necessary to her host and hostess; and if only she had seen
any perfectly irreproachable means of drawing a financial profit
from the situation, there would have been no cloud on her horizon.
The truth was that her funds, as usual, were inconveniently low;
and to neither Dorset nor his wife could this vulgar embarrassment
be safely hinted. Still, the need was not a pressing one; she could
worry along, as she had so often done before, with the hope of some
happy change of fortune to sustain her; and meanwhile life was
gay and beautiful and easy, and she was conscious of figuring not
unworthily in such a setting.

She was engaged to breakfast that morning with the Duchess of
Beltshire, and at twelve o’clock she asked to be set ashore in the
gig. Before this she had sent her maid to enquire if she might see
Mrs. Dorset; but the reply came back that the latter was tired,
and trying to sleep. Lily thought she understood the reason of
the rebuff. Her hostess had not been included in the Duchess’s
invitation, though she herself had made the most loyal efforts in
that direction. But her grace was impervious to hints, and invited
or omitted as she chose. It was not Lily’s fault if Mrs. Dorset’s
complicated attitudes did not fall in with the Duchess’s easy gait.
The Duchess, who seldom explained herself, had not formulated her
objection beyond saying: “She’s rather a bore, you know. The only
one of your friends I like is that little Mr. Bry—HE’S funny—” but
Lily knew enough not to press the point, and was not altogether
sorry to be thus distinguished at her friend’s expense. Bertha
certainly HAD grown tiresome since she had taken to poetry and Ned
Silverton.

On the whole, it was a relief to break away now and then from
the Sabrina; and the Duchess’s little breakfast, organized by
Lord Hubert with all his usual virtuosity, was the pleasanter
to Lily for not including her travelling-companions. Dorset, of
late, had grown more than usually morose and incalculable, and
Ned Silverton went about with an air that seemed to challenge the
universe. The freedom and lightness of the ducal intercourse made
an agreeable change from these complications, and Lily was tempted,
after luncheon, to adjourn in the wake of her companions to the
hectic atmosphere of the Casino. She did not mean to play; her
diminished pocket-money offered small scope for the adventure; but
it amused her to sit on a divan, under the doubtful protection of
the Duchess’s back, while the latter hung above her stakes at a
neighbouring table.

The rooms were packed with the gazing throng which, in the
afternoon hours, trickles heavily between the tables, like the
Sunday crowd in a lion-house. In the stagnant flow of the mass,
identities were hardly distinguishable; but Lily presently saw
Mrs. Bry cleaving her determined way through the doors, and, in
the broad wake she left, the light figure of Mrs. Fisher bobbing
after her like a row-boat at the stern of a tug. Mrs. Bry pressed
on, evidently animated by the resolve to reach a certain point in
the rooms; but Mrs. Fisher, as she passed Lily, broke from her
towing-line, and let herself float to the girl’s side.

“Lose her?” she echoed the latter’s query, with an indifferent
glance at Mrs. Bry’s retreating back. “I daresay—it doesn’t matter:
I HAVE lost her already.” And, as Lily exclaimed, she added: “We
had an awful row this morning. You know, of course, that the
Duchess chucked her at dinner last night, and she thinks it was my
fault—my want of management. The worst of it is, the message—just a
mere word by telephone—came so late that the dinner HAD to be paid
for; and Becassin HAD run it up—it had been so drummed into him
that the Duchess was coming!” Mrs. Fisher indulged in a faint laugh
at the remembrance. “Paying for what she doesn’t get rankles so
dreadfully with Louisa: I can’t make her see that it’s one of the
preliminary steps to getting what you haven’t paid for—and as I was
the nearest thing to smash, she smashed me to atoms, poor dear!”

Lily murmured her commiseration. Impulses of sympathy came
naturally to her, and it was instinctive to proffer her help to
Mrs. Fisher.

“If there’s anything I can do—if it’s only a question of meeting
the Duchess! I heard her say she thought Mr. Bry amusing——”

But Mrs. Fisher interposed with a decisive gesture. “My dear,
I have my pride: the pride of my trade. I couldn’t manage the
Duchess, and I can’t palm off your arts on Louisa Bry as mine. I’ve
taken the final step: I go to Paris tonight with the Sam Gormers.
THEY’RE still in the elementary stage; an Italian Prince is a great
deal more than a Prince to them, and they’re always on the brink
of taking a courier for one. To save them from that is my present
mission.” She laughed again at the picture. “But before I go I want
to make my last will and testament—I want to leave you the Brys.”

“Me?” Miss Bart joined in her amusement. “It’s charming of you to
remember me, dear; but really——”

“You’re already so well provided for?” Mrs. Fisher flashed a sharp
glance at her. “ARE you, though, Lily—to the point of rejecting my
offer?”

Miss Bart coloured slowly. “What I really meant was, that the Brys
wouldn’t in the least care to be so disposed of.”

Mrs. Fisher continued to probe her embarrassment with an
unflinching eye. “What you really meant was that you’ve snubbed the
Brys horribly; and you know that they know——”

“Carry!”

“Oh, on certain sides Louisa bristles with perceptions. If you’d
even managed to have them asked once on the Sabrina—especially when
royalties were coming! But it’s not too late,” she ended earnestly,
“it’s not too late for either of you.”

Lily smiled. “Stay over, and I’ll get the Duchess to dine with
them.”

“I shan’t stay over—the Gormers have paid for my SALON-LIT,” said
Mrs. Fisher with simplicity. “But get the Duchess to dine with them
all the same.”

Lily’s smile again flowed into a slight laugh: her friend’s
importunity was beginning to strike her as irrelevant. “I’m sorry I
have been negligent about the Brys——” she began.

“Oh, as to the Brys—it’s you I’m thinking of,” said Mrs. Fisher
abruptly. She paused, and then, bending forward, with a lowered
voice: “You know we all went on to Nice last night when the Duchess
chucked us. It was Louisa’s idea—I told her what I thought of it.”

Miss Bart assented. “Yes—I caught sight of you on the way back, at
the station.”

“Well, the man who was in the carriage with you and George
Dorset—that horrid little Dabham who does ‘Society Notes from
the Riviera’—had been dining with us at Nice. And he’s telling
everybody that you and Dorset came back alone after midnight.”

“Alone—? When he was with us?” Lily laughed, but her laugh faded
into gravity under the prolonged implication of Mrs. Fisher’s look.
“We DID come back alone—if that’s so very dreadful! But whose fault
was it? The Duchess was spending the night at Cimiez with the Crown
Princess; Bertha got bored with the show, and went off early,
promising to meet us at the station. We turned up on time, but she
didn’t—she didn’t turn up at all!”

Miss Bart made this announcement in the tone of one who presents,
with careless assurance, a complete vindication; but Mrs. Fisher
received it in a manner almost inconsequent. She seemed to have
lost sight of her friend’s part in the incident: her inward vision
had taken another slant.

“Bertha never turned up at all? Then how on earth did she get back?”

“Oh, by the next train, I suppose; there were two extra ones for
the FETE. At any rate, I know she’s safe on the yacht, though I
haven’t yet seen her; but you see it was not my fault,” Lily summed
up.

“Not your fault that Bertha didn’t turn up? My poor child, if only
you don’t have to pay for it!” Mrs. Fisher rose—she had seen Mrs.
Bry surging back in her direction. “There’s Louisa, and I must
be off—oh, we’re on the best of terms externally; we’re lunching
together; but at heart it’s ME she’s lunching on,” she explained;
and with a last hand-clasp and a last look, she added: “Remember, I
leave her to you; she’s hovering now, ready to take you in.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Lily carried the impression of Mrs. Fisher’s leave-taking away with
her from the Casino doors. She had accomplished, before leaving,
the first step toward her reinstatement in Mrs. Bry’s good graces.
An affable advance—a vague murmur that they must see more of each
other—an allusive glance to a near future that was felt to include
the Duchess as well as the Sabrina—how easily it was all done, if
one possessed the knack of doing it! She wondered at herself, as
she had so often wondered, that, possessing the knack, she did not
more consistently exercise it. But sometimes she was forgetful—and
sometimes, could it be that she was proud? Today, at any rate, she
had been vaguely conscious of a reason for sinking her pride, had
in fact even sunk it to the point of suggesting to Lord Hubert
Dacey, whom she ran across on the Casino steps, that he might
really get the Duchess to dine with the Brys, if SHE undertook to
have them asked on the Sabrina. Lord Hubert had promised his help,
with the readiness on which she could always count: it was his only
way of ever reminding her that he had once been ready to do so much
more for her. Her path, in short, seemed to smooth itself before
her as she advanced; yet the faint stir of uneasiness persisted.
Had it been produced, she wondered, by her chance meeting with
Selden? She thought not—time and change seemed so completely to
have relegated him to his proper distance. The sudden and exquisite
reaction from her anxieties had had the effect of throwing the
recent past so far back that even Selden, as part of it, retained
a certain air of unreality. And he had made it so clear that they
were not to meet again; that he had merely dropped down to Nice
for a day or two, and had almost his foot on the next steamer.
No—that part of the past had merely surged up for a moment on the
fleeing surface of events; and now that it was submerged again, the
uncertainty, the apprehension persisted.

They grew to sudden acuteness as she caught sight of George Dorset
descending the steps of the Hotel de Paris and making for her
across the square. She had meant to drive down to the quay and
regain the yacht; but she now had the immediate impression that
something more was to happen first.

“Which way are you going? Shall we walk a bit?” he began, putting
the second question before the first was answered, and not waiting
for a reply to either before he directed her silently toward the
comparative seclusion of the lower gardens.

She detected in him at once all the signs of extreme nervous
tension. The skin was puffed out under his sunken eyes, and its
sallowness had paled to a leaden white against which his irregular
eyebrows and long reddish moustache were relieved with a saturnine
effect. His appearance, in short, presented an odd mixture of the
bedraggled and the ferocious.

He walked beside her in silence, with quick precipitate steps, till
they reached the embowered slopes to the east of the Casino; then,
pulling up abruptly, he said: “Have you seen Bertha?”

“No—when I left the yacht she was not yet up.”

He received this with a laugh like the whirring sound in a disabled
clock. “Not yet up? Had she gone to bed? Do you know at what time
she came on board? This morning at seven!” he exclaimed.

“At seven?” Lily started. “What happened—an accident to the train?”

He laughed again. “They missed the train—all the trains—they had to
drive back.”

“Well——?” She hesitated, feeling at once how little even this
necessity accounted for the fatal lapse of hours.

“Well, they couldn’t get a carriage at once—at that time of night,
you know—” the explanatory note made it almost seem as though he
were putting the case for his wife—“and when they finally did, it
was only a one-horse cab, and the horse was lame!”

“How tiresome! I see,” she affirmed, with the more earnestness
because she was so nervously conscious that she did not; and after
a pause she added: “I’m so sorry—but ought we to have waited?”

“Waited for the one-horse cab? It would scarcely have carried the
four of us, do you think?”

She took this in what seemed the only possible way, with a laugh
intended to sink the question itself in his humorous treatment of
it. “Well, it would have been difficult; we should have had to walk
by turns. But it would have been jolly to see the sunrise.”

“Yes: the sunrise WAS jolly,” he agreed.

“Was it? You saw it, then?”

“I saw it, yes; from the deck. I waited up for them.”

“Naturally—I suppose you were worried. Why didn’t you call on me to
share your vigil?”

He stood still, dragging at his moustache with a lean weak hand. “I
don’t think you would have cared for its DENOUEMENT,” he said with
sudden grimness.

Again she was disconcerted by the abrupt change in his tone, and
as in one flash she saw the peril of the moment, and the need of
keeping her sense of it out of her eyes.

“DENOUEMENT—isn’t that too big a word for such a small incident?
The worst of it, after all, is the fatigue which Bertha has
probably slept off by this time.”

She clung to the note bravely, though its futility was now plain to
her in the glare of his miserable eyes.

“Don’t—don’t——!” he broke out, with the hurt cry of a child; and
while she tried to merge her sympathy, and her resolve to ignore
any cause for it, in one ambiguous murmur of deprecation, he
dropped down on the bench near which they had paused, and poured
out the wretchedness of his soul.

It was a dreadful hour—an hour from which she emerged shrinking
and seared, as though her lids had been scorched by its actual
glare. It was not that she had never had premonitory glimpses of
such an outbreak; but rather because, here and there throughout
the three months, the surface of life had shown such ominous
cracks and vapours that her fears had always been on the alert
for an upheaval. There had been moments when the situation had
presented itself under a homelier yet more vivid image—that of a
shaky vehicle, dashed by unbroken steeds over a bumping road, while
she cowered within, aware that the harness wanted mending, and
wondering what would give way first. Well—everything had given way
now; and the wonder was that the crazy outfit had held together so
long. Her sense of being involved in the crash, instead of merely
witnessing it from the road, was intensified by the way in which
Dorset, through his furies of denunciation and wild reactions of
self-contempt, made her feel the need he had of her, the place she
had taken in his life. But for her, what ear would have been open
to his cries? And what hand but hers could drag him up again to a
footing of sanity and self-respect? All through the stress of the
struggle with him, she had been conscious of something faintly
maternal in her efforts to guide and uplift him. But for the
present, if he clung to her, it was not in order to be dragged up,
but to feel some one floundering in the depths with him: he wanted
her to suffer with him, not to help him to suffer less.

Happily for both, there was little physical strength to sustain his
frenzy. It left him, collapsed and breathing heavily, to an apathy
so deep and prolonged that Lily almost feared the passers-by would
think it the result of a seizure, and stop to offer their aid. But
Monte Carlo is, of all places, the one where the human bond is
least close, and odd sights are the least arresting. If a glance
or two lingered on the couple, no intrusive sympathy disturbed
them; and it was Lily herself who broke the silence by rising from
her seat. With the clearing of her vision the sweep of peril had
extended, and she saw that the post of danger was no longer at
Dorset’s side.

“If you won’t go back, I must—don’t make me leave you!” she urged.

But he remained mutely resistant, and she added: “What are you
going to do? You really can’t sit here all night.”

“I can go to an hotel. I can telegraph my lawyers.” He sat up,
roused by a new thought. “By Jove, Selden’s at Nice—I’ll send for
Selden!”

Lily, at this, reseated herself with a cry of alarm. “No, no, NO!”
she protested.

He swung round on her distrustfully. “Why not Selden? He’s a lawyer
isn’t he? One will do as well as another in a case like this.”

“As badly as another, you mean. I thought you relied on ME to help
you.”

“You do—by being so sweet and patient with me. If it hadn’t been
for you I’d have ended the thing long ago. But now it’s got to
end.” He rose suddenly, straightening himself with an effort. “You
can’t want to see me ridiculous.”

She looked at him kindly. “That’s just it.” Then, after a moment’s
pondering, almost to her own surprise she broke out with a flash of
inspiration: “Well, go over and see Mr. Selden. You’ll have time to
do it before dinner.”

“Oh, DINNER——” he mocked her; but she left him with the smiling
rejoinder: “Dinner on board, remember; we’ll put it off till nine
if you like.”

It was past four already; and when a cab had dropped her at the
quay, and she stood waiting for the gig to put off for her,
she began to wonder what had been happening on the yacht. Of
Silverton’s whereabouts there had been no mention. Had he returned
to the Sabrina? Or could Bertha—the dread alternative sprang on
her suddenly—could Bertha, left to herself, have gone ashore to
rejoin him? Lily’s heart stood still at the thought. All her
concern had hitherto been for young Silverton, not only because,
in such affairs, the woman’s instinct is to side with the man, but
because his case made a peculiar appeal to her sympathies. He was
so desperately in earnest, poor youth, and his earnestness was of
so different a quality from Bertha’s, though hers too was desperate
enough. The difference was that Bertha was in earnest only about
herself, while he was in earnest about her. But now, at the actual
crisis, this difference seemed to throw the weight of destitution
on Bertha’s side, since at least he had her to suffer for, and
she had only herself. At any rate, viewed less ideally, all the
disadvantages of such a situation were for the woman; and it was
to Bertha that Lily’s sympathies now went out. She was not fond of
Bertha Dorset, but neither was she without a sense of obligation,
the heavier for having so little personal liking to sustain it.
Bertha had been kind to her, they had lived together, during the
last months, on terms of easy friendship, and the sense of friction
of which Lily had recently become aware seemed to make it the more
urgent that she should work undividedly in her friend’s interest.

It was in Bertha’s interest, certainly, that she had despatched
Dorset to consult with Lawrence Selden. Once the grotesqueness
of the situation accepted, she had seen at a glance that it was
the safest in which Dorset could find himself. Who but Selden
could thus miraculously combine the skill to save Bertha with the
obligation of doing so? The consciousness that much skill would
be required made Lily rest thankfully in the greatness of the
obligation. Since he would HAVE to pull Bertha through she could
trust him to find a way; and she put the fulness of her trust in
the telegram she managed to send him on her way to the quay.

Thus far, then, Lily felt that she had done well; and the
conviction strengthened her for the task that remained. She and
Bertha had never been on confidential terms, but at such a crisis
the barriers of reserve must surely fall: Dorset’s wild allusions
to the scene of the morning made Lily feel that they were down
already, and that any attempt to rebuild them would be beyond
Bertha’s strength. She pictured the poor creature shivering behind
her fallen defences and awaiting with suspense the moment when
she could take refuge in the first shelter that offered. If only
that shelter had not already offered itself elsewhere! As the gig
traversed the short distance between the quay and the yacht, Lily
grew more than ever alarmed at the possible consequences of her
long absence. What if the wretched Bertha, finding in all the long
hours no soul to turn to—but by this time Lily’s eager foot was on
the side-ladder, and her first step on the Sabrina showed the worst
of her apprehensions to be unfounded; for there, in the luxurious
shade of the after-deck, the wretched Bertha, in full command of
her usual attenuated elegance, sat dispensing tea to the Duchess of
Beltshire and Lord Hubert.

The sight filled Lily with such surprise that she felt that
Bertha, at least, must read its meaning in her look, and she was
proportionately disconcerted by the blankness of the look returned.
But in an instant she saw that Mrs. Dorset had, of necessity, to
look blank before the others, and that, to mitigate the effect
of her own surprise, she must at once produce some simple reason
for it. The long habit of rapid transitions made it easy for her
to exclaim to the Duchess: “Why, I thought you’d gone back to the
Princess!” and this sufficed for the lady she addressed, if it was
hardly enough for Lord Hubert.

At least it opened the way to a lively explanation of how the
Duchess was, in fact, going back the next moment, but had first
rushed out to the yacht for a word with Mrs. Dorset on the subject
of tomorrow’s dinner—the dinner with the Brys, to which Lord Hubert
had finally insisted on dragging them.

“To save my neck, you know!” he explained, with a glance that
appealed to Lily for some recognition of his promptness; and the
Duchess added, with her noble candour: “Mr. Bry has promised him a
tip, and he says if we go he’ll pass it onto us.”

This led to some final pleasantries, in which, as it seemed to
Lily, Mrs. Dorset bore her part with astounding bravery, and at the
close of which Lord Hubert, from half way down the side-ladder,
called back, with an air of numbering heads: “And of course we may
count on Dorset too?”

“Oh, count on him,” his wife assented gaily. She was keeping up
well to the last—but as she turned back from waving her adieux over
the side, Lily said to herself that the mask must drop and the soul
of fear look out.

Mrs. Dorset turned back slowly; perhaps she wanted time to steady
her muscles; at any rate, they were still under perfect control
when, dropping once more into her seat behind the tea-table, she
remarked to Miss Bart with a faint touch of irony: “I suppose I
ought to say good morning.”

If it was a cue, Lily was ready to take it, though with only
the vaguest sense of what was expected of her in return. There
was something unnerving in the contemplation of Mrs. Dorset’s
composure, and she had to force the light tone in which she
answered: “I tried to see you this morning, but you were not yet
up.”

“No—I got to bed late. After we missed you at the station I thought
we ought to wait for you till the last train.” She spoke very
gently, but with just the least tinge of reproach.

“You missed us? You waited for us at the station?” Now indeed Lily
was too far adrift in bewilderment to measure the other’s words or
keep watch on her own. “But I thought you didn’t get to the station
till after the last train had left!”

Mrs. Dorset, examining her between lowered lids, met this with the
immediate query: “Who told you that?”

“George—I saw him just now in the gardens.”

“Ah, is that George’s version? Poor George—he was in no state to
remember what I told him. He had one of his worst attacks this
morning, and I packed him off to see the doctor. Do you know if he
found him?”

Lily, still lost in conjecture, made no reply, and Mrs. Dorset
settled herself indolently in her seat. “He’ll wait to see him; he
was horribly frightened about himself. It’s very bad for him to be
worried, and whenever anything upsetting happens, it always brings
on an attack.”

This time Lily felt sure that a cue was being pressed on her;
but it was put forth with such startling suddenness, and with so
incredible an air of ignoring what it led up to, that she could
only falter out doubtfully: “Anything upsetting?”

“Yes—such as having you so conspicuously on his hands in the small
hours. You know, my dear, you’re rather a big responsibility in
such a scandalous place after midnight.”

At that—at the complete unexpectedness and the inconceivable
audacity of it—Lily could not restrain the tribute of an astonished
laugh.

“Well, really—considering it was you who burdened him with the
responsibility!”

Mrs. Dorset took this with an exquisite mildness. “By not having
the superhuman cleverness to discover you in that frightful rush
for the train? Or the imagination to believe that you’d take it
without us—you and he all alone—instead of waiting quietly in the
station till we DID manage to meet you?”

Lily’s colour rose: it was growing clear to her that Bertha was
pursuing an object, following a line she had marked out for
herself. Only, with such a doom impending, why waste time in these
childish efforts to avert it? The puerility of the attempt disarmed
Lily’s indignation: did it not prove how horribly the poor creature
was frightened?

“No; by our simply all keeping together at Nice,” she returned.

“Keeping together? When it was you who seized the first opportunity
to rush off with the Duchess and her friends? My dear Lily, you are
not a child to be led by the hand!”

“No—nor to be lectured, Bertha, really; if that’s what you are
doing to me now.”

Mrs. Dorset smiled on her reproachfully. “Lecture you—I? Heaven
forbid! I was merely trying to give you a friendly hint. But it’s
usually the other way round, isn’t it? I’m expected to take hints,
not to give them: I’ve positively lived on them all these last
months.”

“Hints—from me to you?” Lily repeated.

“Oh, negative ones merely—what not to be and to do and to see. And
I think I’ve taken them to admiration. Only, my dear, if you’ll let
me say so, I didn’t understand that one of my negative duties was
NOT to warn you when you carried your imprudence too far.”

A chill of fear passed over Miss Bart: a sense of remembered
treachery that was like the gleam of a knife in the dusk. But
compassion, in a moment, got the better of her instinctive
recoil. What was this outpouring of senseless bitterness but the
tracked creature’s attempt to cloud the medium through which it
was fleeing? It was on Lily’s lips to exclaim: “You poor soul,
don’t double and turn—come straight back to me, and we’ll find a
way out!” But the words died under the impenetrable insolence of
Bertha’s smile. Lily sat silent, taking the brunt of it quietly,
letting it spend itself on her to the last drop of its accumulated
falseness; then, without a word, she rose and went down to her
cabin.




Chapter 3


Miss Bart’s telegram caught Lawrence Selden at the door of his
hotel; and having read it, he turned back to wait for Dorset. The
message necessarily left large gaps for conjecture; but all that he
had recently heard and seen made these but too easy to fill in. On
the whole he was surprised; for though he had perceived that the
situation contained all the elements of an explosion, he had often
enough, in the range of his personal experience, seen just such
combinations subside into harmlessness. Still, Dorset’s spasmodic
temper, and his wife’s reckless disregard of appearances, gave the
situation a peculiar insecurity; and it was less from the sense of
any special relation to the case than from a purely professional
zeal, that Selden resolved to guide the pair to safety. Whether, in
the present instance, safety for either lay in repairing so damaged
a tie, it was no business of his to consider: he had only, on
general principles, to think of averting a scandal, and his desire
to avert it was increased by his fear of its involving Miss Bart.
There was nothing specific in this apprehension; he merely wished
to spare her the embarrassment of being ever so remotely connected
with the public washing of the Dorset linen.

How exhaustive and unpleasant such a process would be, he saw
even more vividly after his two hours’ talk with poor Dorset. If
anything came out at all, it would be such a vast unpacking of
accumulated moral rags as left him, after his visitor had gone,
with the feeling that he must fling open the windows and have his
room swept out. But nothing should come out; and happily for his
side of the case, the dirty rags, however pieced together, could
not, without considerable difficulty, be turned into a homogeneous
grievance. The torn edges did not always fit—there were missing
bits, there were disparities of size and colour, all of which it
was naturally Selden’s business to make the most of in putting
them under his client’s eye. But to a man in Dorset’s mood the
completest demonstration could not carry conviction, and Selden saw
that for the moment all he could do was to soothe and temporize,
to offer sympathy and to counsel prudence. He let Dorset depart
charged to the brim with the sense that, till their next meeting,
he must maintain a strictly noncommittal attitude; that, in short,
his share in the game consisted for the present in looking on.
Selden knew, however, that he could not long keep such violences
in equilibrium; and he promised to meet Dorset, the next morning,
at an hotel in Monte Carlo. Meanwhile he counted not a little on
the reaction of weakness and self-distrust that, in such natures,
follows on every unwonted expenditure of moral force; and his
telegraphic reply to Miss Bart consisted simply in the injunction:
“Assume that everything is as usual.”

On this assumption, in fact, the early part of the following day
was lived through. Dorset, as if in obedience to Lily’s imperative
bidding, had actually returned in time for a late dinner on the
yacht. The repast had been the most difficult moment of the day.
Dorset was sunk in one of the abysmal silences which so commonly
followed on what his wife called his “attacks” that it was easy,
before the servants, to refer it to this cause; but Bertha herself
seemed, perversely enough, little disposed to make use of this
obvious means of protection. She simply left the brunt of the
situation on her husband’s hands, as if too absorbed in a grievance
of her own to suspect that she might be the object of one herself.
To Lily this attitude was the most ominous, because the most
perplexing, element in the situation. As she tried to fan the
weak flicker of talk, to build up, again and again, the crumbling
structure of “appearances,” her own attention was perpetually
distracted by the question: “What on earth can she be driving at?”
There was something positively exasperating in Bertha’s attitude
of isolated defiance. If only she would have given her friend a
hint they might still have worked together successfully; but how
could Lily be of use, while she was thus obstinately shut out from
participation? To be of use was what she honestly wanted; and not
for her own sake but for the Dorsets’. She had not thought of her
own situation at all: she was simply engrossed in trying to put a
little order in theirs. But the close of the short dreary evening
left her with a sense of effort hopelessly wasted. She had not
tried to see Dorset alone: she had positively shrunk from a renewal
of his confidences. It was Bertha whose confidence she sought, and
who should as eagerly have invited her own; and Bertha, as if in
the infatuation of self-destruction, was actually pushing away her
rescuing hand.

Lily, going to bed early, had left the couple to themselves; and
it seemed part of the general mystery in which she moved that
more than an hour should elapse before she heard Bertha walk down
the silent passage and regain her room. The morrow, rising on an
apparent continuance of the same conditions, revealed nothing of
what had occurred between the confronted pair. One fact alone
outwardly proclaimed the change they were all conspiring to
ignore; and that was the non-appearance of Ned Silverton. No one
referred to it, and this tacit avoidance of the subject kept
it in the immediate foreground of consciousness. But there was
another change, perceptible only to Lily; and that was that Dorset
now avoided her almost as pointedly as his wife. Perhaps he was
repenting his rash outpourings of the previous day; perhaps only
trying, in his clumsy way, to conform to Selden’s counsel to behave
“as usual.” Such instructions no more make for easiness of attitude
than the photographer’s behest to “look natural”; and in a creature
as unconscious as poor Dorset of the appearance he habitually
presented, the struggle to maintain a pose was sure to result in
queer contortions.

It resulted, at any rate, in throwing Lily strangely on her own
resources. She had learned, on leaving her room, that Mrs. Dorset
was still invisible, and that Dorset had left the yacht early; and
feeling too restless to remain alone, she too had herself ferried
ashore. Straying toward the Casino, she attached herself to a
group of acquaintances from Nice, with whom she lunched, and in
whose company she was returning to the rooms when she encountered
Selden crossing the square. She could not, at the moment, separate
herself definitely from her party, who had hospitably assumed that
she would remain with them till they took their departure; but she
found time for a momentary pause of enquiry, to which he promptly
returned: “I’ve seen him again—he’s just left me.”

She waited before him anxiously. “Well? what has happened? What
WILL happen?”

“Nothing as yet—and nothing in the future, I think.”

“It’s over, then? It’s settled? You’re sure?”

He smiled. “Give me time. I’m not sure—but I’m a good deal surer.”
And with that she had to content herself, and hasten on to the
expectant group on the steps.

Selden had in fact given her the utmost measure of his sureness,
had even stretched it a shade to meet the anxiety in her eyes. And
now, as he turned away, strolling down the hill toward the station,
that anxiety remained with him as the visible justification of
his own. It was not, indeed, anything specific that he feared:
there had been a literal truth in his declaration that he did not
think anything would happen. What troubled him was that, though
Dorset’s attitude had perceptibly changed, the change was not
clearly to be accounted for. It had certainly not been produced by
Selden’s arguments, or by the action of his own soberer reason.
Five minutes’ talk sufficed to show that some alien influence had
been at work, and that it had not so much subdued his resentment
as weakened his will, so that he moved under it in a state of
apathy, like a dangerous lunatic who has been drugged. Temporarily,
no doubt, however exerted, it worked for the general safety: the
question was how long it would last, and by what kind of reaction
it was likely to be followed. On these points Selden could gain no
light; for he saw that one effect of the transformation had been to
shut him off from free communion with Dorset. The latter, indeed,
was still moved by the irresistible desire to discuss his wrong;
but, though he revolved about it with the same forlorn tenacity,
Selden was aware that something always restrained him from full
expression. His state was one to produce first weariness and then
impatience in his hearer; and when their talk was over, Selden
began to feel that he had done his utmost, and might justifiably
wash his hands of the sequel.

It was in this mind that he had been making his way back to the
station when Miss Bart crossed his path; but though, after his
brief word with her, he kept mechanically on his course, he was
conscious of a gradual change in his purpose. The change had been
produced by the look in her eyes; and in his eagerness to define
the nature of that look, he dropped into a seat in the gardens,
and sat brooding upon the question. It was natural enough, in
all conscience, that she should appear anxious: a young woman
placed, in the close intimacy of a yachting-cruise, between a
couple on the verge of disaster, could hardly, aside from her
concern for her friends, be insensible to the awkwardness of her
own position. The worst of it was that, in interpreting Miss
Bart’s state of mind, so many alternative readings were possible;
and one of these, in Selden’s troubled mind, took the ugly form
suggested by Mrs. Fisher. If the girl was afraid, was she afraid
for herself or for her friends? And to what degree was her dread of
a catastrophe intensified by the sense of being fatally involved
in it? The burden of offence lying manifestly with Mrs. Dorset,
this conjecture seemed on the face of it gratuitously unkind; but
Selden knew that in the most one-sided matrimonial quarrel there
are generally counter-charges to be brought, and that they are
brought with the greater audacity where the original grievance
is so emphatic. Mrs. Fisher had not hesitated to suggest the
likelihood of Dorset’s marrying Miss Bart if “anything happened”;
and though Mrs. Fisher’s conclusions were notoriously rash, she
was shrewd enough in reading the signs from which they were drawn.
Dorset had apparently shown marked interest in the girl, and this
interest might be used to cruel advantage in his wife’s struggle
for rehabilitation. Selden knew that Bertha would fight to the
last round of powder: the rashness of her conduct was illogically
combined with a cold determination to escape its consequences.
She could be as unscrupulous in fighting for herself as she was
reckless in courting danger, and whatever came to her hand at such
moments was likely to be used as a defensive missile. He did not,
as yet, see clearly just what course she was likely to take, but
his perplexity increased his apprehension, and with it the sense
that, before leaving, he must speak again with Miss Bart. Whatever
her share in the situation—and he had always honestly tried to
resist judging her by her surroundings—however free she might be
from any personal connection with it, she would be better out of
the way of a possible crash; and since she had appealed to him for
help, it was clearly his business to tell her so.

This decision at last brought him to his feet, and carried him
back to the gambling rooms, within whose doors he had seen her
disappearing; but a prolonged exploration of the crowd failed
to put him on her traces. He saw instead, to his surprise, Ned
Silverton loitering somewhat ostentatiously about the tables; and
the discovery that this actor in the drama was not only hovering in
the wings, but actually inviting the exposure of the footlights,
though it might have seemed to imply that all peril was over,
served rather to deepen Selden’s sense of foreboding. Charged with
this impression he returned to the square, hoping to see Miss Bart
move across it, as every one in Monte Carlo seemed inevitably to do
at least a dozen times a day; but here again he waited vainly for
a glimpse of her, and the conclusion was slowly forced on him that
she had gone back to the Sabrina. It would be difficult to follow
her there, and still more difficult, should he do so, to contrive
the opportunity for a private word; and he had almost decided on
the unsatisfactory alternative of writing, when the ceaseless
diorama of the square suddenly unrolled before him the figures of
Lord Hubert and Mrs. Bry.

Hailing them at once with his question, he learned from Lord
Hubert that Miss Bart had just returned to the Sabrina in Dorset’s
company; an announcement so evidently disconcerting to him that
Mrs. Bry, after a glance from her companion, which seemed to act
like the pressure on a spring, brought forth the prompt proposal
that he should come and meet his friends at dinner that evening—“At
Becassin’s—a little dinner to the Duchess,” she flashed out before
Lord Hubert had time to remove the pressure.

Selden’s sense of the privilege of being included in such company
brought him early in the evening to the door of the restaurant,
where he paused to scan the ranks of diners approaching down the
brightly lit terrace. There, while the Brys hovered within over
the last agitating alternatives of the MENU, he kept watch for
the guests from the Sabrina, who at length rose on the horizon in
company with the Duchess, Lord and Lady Skiddaw and the Stepneys.
From this group it was easy for him to detach Miss Bart on the
pretext of a moment’s glance into one of the brilliant shops along
the terrace, and to say to her, while they lingered together in the
white dazzle of a jeweller’s window: “I stopped over to see you—to
beg of you to leave the yacht.”

The eyes she turned on him showed a quick gleam of her former fear.
“To leave—? What do you mean? What has happened?”

“Nothing. But if anything should, why be in the way of it?”

The glare from the jeweller’s window, deepening the pallor of her
face, gave to its delicate lines the sharpness of a tragic mask.
“Nothing will, I am sure; but while there’s even a doubt left, how
can you think I would leave Bertha?”

The words rang out on a note of contempt—was it possibly of
contempt for himself? Well, he was willing to risk its renewal
to the extent of insisting, with an undeniable throb of added
interest: “You have yourself to think of, you know—” to which, with
a strange fall of sadness in her voice, she answered, meeting his
eyes: “If you knew how little difference that makes!”

“Oh, well, nothing WILL happen,” he said, more for his own
reassurance than for hers; and “Nothing, nothing, of course!” she
valiantly assented, as they turned to overtake their companions.

In the thronged restaurant, taking their places about Mrs. Bry’s
illuminated board, their confidence seemed to gain support from
the familiarity of their surroundings. Here were Dorset and his
wife once more presenting their customary faces to the world, she
engrossed in establishing her relation with an intensely new gown,
he shrinking with dyspeptic dread from the multiplied solicitations
of the MENU. The mere fact that they thus showed themselves
together, with the utmost openness the place afforded, seemed
to declare beyond a doubt that their differences were composed.
How this end had been attained was still matter for wonder, but
it was clear that for the moment Miss Bart rested confidently in
the result; and Selden tried to achieve the same view by telling
himself that her opportunities for observation had been ampler than
his own.

Meanwhile, as the dinner advanced through a labyrinth of courses,
in which it became clear that Mrs. Bry had occasionally broken away
from Lord Hubert’s restraining hand, Selden’s general watchfulness
began to lose itself in a particular study of Miss Bart. It was
one of the days when she was so handsome that to be handsome was
enough, and all the rest—her grace, her quickness, her social
felicities—seemed the overflow of a bounteous nature. But what
especially struck him was the way in which she detached herself, by
a hundred undefinable shades, from the persons who most abounded
in her own style. It was in just such company, the fine flower
and complete expression of the state she aspired to, that the
differences came out with special poignancy, her grace cheapening
the other women’s smartness as her finely-discriminated silences
made their chatter dull. The strain of the last hours had restored
to her face the deeper eloquence which Selden had lately missed
in it, and the bravery of her words to him still fluttered in her
voice and eyes. Yes, she was matchless—it was the one word for
her; and he could give his admiration the freer play because so
little personal feeling remained in it. His real detachment from
her had taken place, not at the lurid moment of disenchantment,
but now, in the sober after-light of discrimination, where he saw
her definitely divided from him by the crudeness of a choice which
seemed to deny the very differences he felt in her. It was before
him again in its completeness—the choice in which she was content
to rest: in the stupid costliness of the food and the showy dulness
of the talk, in the freedom of speech which never arrived at wit
and the freedom of act which never made for romance. The strident
setting of the restaurant, in which their table seemed set apart
in a special glare of publicity, and the presence at it of little
Dabham of the “Riviera Notes,” emphasized the ideals of a world
where conspicuousness passed for distinction, and the society
column had become the roll of fame.

It was as the immortalizer of such occasions that little Dabham,
wedged in modest watchfulness between two brilliant neighbours,
suddenly became the centre of Selden’s scrutiny. How much did he
know of what was going on, and how much, for his purpose, was still
worth finding out? His little eyes were like tentacles thrown
out to catch the floating intimations with which, to Selden, the
air at moments seemed thick; then again it cleared to its normal
emptiness, and he could see nothing in it for the journalist
but leisure to note the elegance of the ladies’ gowns. Mrs.
Dorset’s, in particular, challenged all the wealth of Mr. Dabham’s
vocabulary: it had surprises and subtleties worthy of what he
would have called “the literary style.” At first, as Selden had
noticed, it had been almost too preoccupying to its wearer; but now
she was in full command of it, and was even producing her effects
with unwonted freedom. Was she not, indeed, too free, too fluent,
for perfect naturalness? And was not Dorset, to whom his glance
had passed by a natural transition, too jerkily wavering between
the same extremes? Dorset indeed was always jerky; but it seemed
to Selden that tonight each vibration swung him farther from his
centre.

The dinner, meanwhile, was moving to its triumphant close, to
the evident satisfaction of Mrs. Bry, who, throned in apoplectic
majesty between Lord Skiddaw and Lord Hubert, seemed in spirit to
be calling on Mrs. Fisher to witness her achievement. Short of
Mrs. Fisher her audience might have been called complete; for the
restaurant was crowded with persons mainly gathered there for the
purpose of spectatorship, and accurately posted as to the names and
faces of the celebrities they had come to see. Mrs. Bry, conscious
that all her feminine guests came under that heading, and that
each one looked her part to admiration, shone on Lily with all the
pent-up gratitude that Mrs. Fisher had failed to deserve. Selden,
catching the glance, wondered what part Miss Bart had played in
organizing the entertainment. She did, at least, a great deal to
adorn it; and as he watched the bright security with which she bore
herself, he smiled to think that he should have fancied her in
need of help. Never had she appeared more serenely mistress of the
situation than when, at the moment of dispersal, detaching herself
a little from the group about the table, she turned with a smile
and a graceful slant of the shoulders to receive her cloak from
Dorset.

The dinner had been protracted over Mr. Bry’s exceptional cigars
and a bewildering array of liqueurs, and many of the other tables
were empty; but a sufficient number of diners still lingered to
give relief to the leave-taking of Mrs. Bry’s distinguished guests.
This ceremony was drawn out and complicated by the fact that it
involved, on the part of the Duchess and Lady Skiddaw, definite
farewells, and pledges of speedy reunion in Paris, where they were
to pause and replenish their wardrobes on the way to England. The
quality of Mrs. Bry’s hospitality, and of the tips her husband
had presumably imparted, lent to the manner of the English ladies
a general effusiveness which shed the rosiest light over their
hostess’s future. In its glow Mrs. Dorset and the Stepneys were
also visibly included, and the whole scene had touches of intimacy
worth their weight in gold to the watchful pen of Mr. Dabham.

A glance at her watch caused the Duchess to exclaim to her sister
that they had just time to dash for their train, and the flurry
of this departure over, the Stepneys, who had their motor at the
door, offered to convey the Dorsets and Miss Bart to the quay. The
offer was accepted, and Mrs. Dorset moved away with her husband
in attendance. Miss Bart had lingered for a last word with Lord
Hubert, and Stepney, on whom Mr. Bry was pressing a final, and
still more expensive, cigar, called out: “Come on, Lily, if you’re
going back to the yacht.”

Lily turned to obey; but as she did so, Mrs. Dorset, who had paused
on her way out, moved a few steps back toward the table.

“Miss Bart is not going back to the yacht,” she said in a voice of
singular distinctness.

A startled look ran from eye to eye; Mrs. Bry crimsoned to the
verge of congestion, Mrs. Stepney slipped nervously behind her
husband, and Selden, in the general turmoil of his sensations, was
mainly conscious of a longing to grip Dabham by the collar and
fling him out into the street.

Dorset, meanwhile, had stepped back to his wife’s side. His
face was white, and he looked about him with cowed angry eyes.
“Bertha!—Miss Bart . . . this is some misunderstanding . . . some
mistake....”

“Miss Bart remains here,” his wife rejoined incisively. “And, I
think, George, we had better not detain Mrs. Stepney any longer.”

Miss Bart, during this brief exchange of words, remained in
admirable erectness, slightly isolated from the embarrassed group
about her. She had paled a little under the shock of the insult,
but the discomposure of the surrounding faces was not reflected in
her own. The faint disdain of her smile seemed to lift her high
above her antagonist’s reach, and it was not till she had given
Mrs. Dorset the full measure of the distance between them that she
turned and extended her hand to her hostess.

“I am joining the Duchess tomorrow,” she explained, “and it seemed
easier for me to remain on shore for the night.”

She held firmly to Mrs. Bry’s wavering eye while she gave this
explanation, but when it was over Selden saw her send a tentative
glance from one to another of the women’s faces. She read their
incredulity in their averted looks, and in the mute wretchedness
of the men behind them, and for a miserable half-second he thought
she quivered on the brink of failure. Then, turning to him with an
easy gesture, and the pale bravery of her recovered smile—“Dear Mr.
Selden,” she said, “you promised to see me to my cab.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Outside, the sky was gusty and overcast, and as Lily and Selden
moved toward the deserted gardens below the restaurant, spurts of
warm rain blew fitfully against their faces. The fiction of the cab
had been tacitly abandoned; they walked on in silence, her hand on
his arm, till the deeper shade of the gardens received them, and
pausing beside a bench, he said: “Sit down a moment.”

She dropped to the seat without answering, but the electric lamp at
the bend of the path shed a gleam on the struggling misery of her
face. Selden sat down beside her, waiting for her to speak, fearful
lest any word he chose should touch too roughly on her wound, and
kept also from free utterance by the wretched doubt which had
slowly renewed itself within him. What had brought her to this
pass? What weakness had placed her so abominably at her enemy’s
mercy? And why should Bertha Dorset have turned into an enemy at
the very moment when she so obviously needed the support of her
sex? Even while his nerves raged at the subjection of husbands to
their wives, and at the cruelty of women to their kind, reason
obstinately harped on the proverbial relation between smoke and
fire. The memory of Mrs. Fisher’s hints, and the corroboration of
his own impressions, while they deepened his pity also increased
his constraint, since, whichever way he sought a free outlet for
sympathy, it was blocked by the fear of committing a blunder.

Suddenly it struck him that his silence must seem almost as
accusatory as that of the men he had despised for turning from her;
but before he could find the fitting word she had cut him short
with a question.

“Do you know of a quiet hotel? I can send for my maid in the
morning.”

“An hotel—HERE—that you can go to alone? It’s not possible.”

She met this with a pale gleam of her old playfulness. “What IS,
then? It’s too wet to sleep in the gardens.”

“But there must be some one——”

“Some one to whom I can go? Of course—any number—but at THIS hour?
You see my change of plan was rather sudden——”

“Good God—if you’d listened to me!” he cried, venting his
helplessness in a burst of anger.

She still held him off with the gentle mockery of her smile. “But
haven’t I?” she rejoined. “You advised me to leave the yacht, and
I’m leaving it.”

He saw then, with a pang of self-reproach, that she meant neither
to explain nor to defend herself; that by his miserable silence he
had forfeited all chance of helping her, and that the decisive hour
was past.

She had risen, and stood before him in a kind of clouded majesty,
like some deposed princess moving tranquilly to exile.

“Lily!” he exclaimed, with a note of despairing appeal; but—“Oh,
not now,” she gently admonished him; and then, in all the sweetness
of her recovered composure: “Since I must find shelter somewhere,
and since you’re so kindly here to help me——”

He gathered himself up at the challenge. “You will do as I tell
you? There’s but one thing, then; you must go straight to your
cousins, the Stepneys.”

“Oh—” broke from her with a movement of instinctive resistance;
but he insisted: “Come—it’s late, and you must appear to have gone
there directly.”

He had drawn her hand into his arm, but she held him back with a
last gesture of protest. “I can’t—I can’t—not that—you don’t know
Gwen: you mustn’t ask me!”

“I MUST ask you—you must obey me,” he persisted, though infected at
heart by her own fear.

Her voice sank to a whisper: “And if she refuses?”—but, “Oh, trust
me—trust me!” he could only insist in return; and yielding to his
touch, she let him lead her back in silence to the edge of the
square.

In the cab they continued to remain silent through the brief drive
which carried them to the illuminated portals of the Stepneys’
hotel. Here he left her outside, in the darkness of the raised
hood, while his name was sent up to Stepney, and he paced the showy
hall, awaiting the latter’s descent. Ten minutes later the two
men passed out together between the gold-laced custodians of the
threshold; but in the vestibule Stepney drew up with a last flare
of reluctance.

“It’s understood, then?” he stipulated nervously, with his hand on
Selden’s arm. “She leaves tomorrow by the early train—and my wife’s
asleep, and can’t be disturbed.”




Chapter 4


The blinds of Mrs. Peniston’s drawing-room were drawn down against
the oppressive June sun, and in the sultry twilight the faces of
her assembled relatives took on a fitting shadow of bereavement.
They were all there: Van Alstynes, Stepneys and Melsons—even a
stray Peniston or two, indicating, by a greater latitude in dress
and manner, the fact of remoter relationship and more settled
hopes. The Peniston side was, in fact, secure in the knowledge that
the bulk of Mr. Peniston’s property “went back”; while the direct
connection hung suspended on the disposal of his widow’s private
fortune and on the uncertainty of its extent. Jack Stepney, in
his new character as the richest nephew, tacitly took the lead,
emphasizing his importance by the deeper gloss of his mourning
and the subdued authority of his manner; while his wife’s bored
attitude and frivolous gown proclaimed the heiress’s disregard of
the insignificant interests at stake. Old Ned Van Alstyne, seated
next to her in a coat that made affliction dapper, twirled his
white moustache to conceal the eager twitch of his lips; and Grace
Stepney, red-nosed and smelling of crape, whispered emotionally to
Mrs. Herbert Melson: “I couldn’t BEAR to see the Niagara anywhere
else!”

A rustle of weeds and quick turning of heads hailed the opening
of the door, and Lily Bart appeared, tall and noble in her black
dress, with Gerty Farish at her side. The women’s faces, as
she paused interrogatively on the threshold, were a study in
hesitation. One or two made faint motions of recognition, which
might have been subdued either by the solemnity of the scene, or by
the doubt as to how far the others meant to go; Mrs. Jack Stepney
gave a careless nod, and Grace Stepney, with a sepulchral gesture,
indicated a seat at her side. But Lily, ignoring the invitation, as
well as Jack Stepney’s official attempt to direct her, moved across
the room with her smooth free gait, and seated herself in a chair
which seemed to have been purposely placed apart from the others.

It was the first time that she had faced her family since her
return from Europe, two weeks earlier; but if she perceived any
uncertainty in their welcome, it served only to add a tinge of
irony to the usual composure of her bearing. The shock of dismay
with which, on the dock, she had heard from Gerty Farish of Mrs.
Peniston’s sudden death, had been mitigated, almost at once, by
the irrepressible thought that now, at last, she would be able to
pay her debts. She had looked forward with considerable uneasiness
to her first encounter with her aunt. Mrs. Peniston had vehemently
opposed her niece’s departure with the Dorsets, and had marked
her continued disapproval by not writing during Lily’s absence.
The certainty that she had heard of the rupture with the Dorsets
made the prospect of the meeting more formidable; and how should
Lily have repressed a quick sense of relief at the thought that,
instead of undergoing the anticipated ordeal, she had only to
enter gracefully on a long-assured inheritance? It had been, in
the consecrated phrase, “always understood” that Mrs. Peniston was
to provide handsomely for her niece; and in the latter’s mind the
understanding had long since crystallized into fact.

“She gets everything, of course—I don’t see what we’re here for,”
Mrs. Jack Stepney remarked with careless loudness to Ned Van
Alstyne; and the latter’s deprecating murmur—“Julia was always
a just woman”—might have been interpreted as signifying either
acquiescence or doubt.

“Well, it’s only about four hundred thousand,” Mrs. Stepney
rejoined with a yawn; and Grace Stepney, in the silence produced by
the lawyer’s preliminary cough, was heard to sob out: “They won’t
find a towel missing—I went over them with her the very day——”

Lily, oppressed by the close atmosphere, and the stifling odour
of fresh mourning, felt her attention straying as Mrs. Peniston’s
lawyer, solemnly erect behind the Buhl table at the end of the
room, began to rattle through the preamble of the will.

“It’s like being in church,” she reflected, wondering vaguely where
Gwen Stepney had got such an awful hat. Then she noticed how stout
Jack had grown—he would soon be almost as plethoric as Herbert
Melson, who sat a few feet off, breathing puffily as he leaned his
black-gloved hands on his stick.

“I wonder why rich people always grow fat—I suppose it’s because
there’s nothing to worry them. If I inherit, I shall have to be
careful of my figure,” she mused, while the lawyer droned on
through a labyrinth of legacies. The servants came first, then
a few charitable institutions, then several remoter Melsons and
Stepneys, who stirred consciously as their names rang out, and then
subsided into a state of impassiveness befitting the solemnity of
the occasion. Ned Van Alstyne, Jack Stepney, and a cousin or two
followed, each coupled with the mention of a few thousands: Lily
wondered that Grace Stepney was not among them. Then she heard her
own name—“to my niece Lily Bart ten thousand dollars—” and after
that the lawyer again lost himself in a coil of unintelligible
periods, from which the concluding phrase flashed out with
startling distinctness: “and the residue of my estate to my dear
cousin and name-sake, Grace Julia Stepney.”

There was a subdued gasp of surprise, a rapid turning of heads, and
a surging of sable figures toward the corner in which Miss Stepney
wailed out her sense of unworthiness through the crumpled ball of a
black-edged handkerchief.

Lily stood apart from the general movement, feeling herself for the
first time utterly alone. No one looked at her, no one seemed aware
of her presence; she was probing the very depths of insignificance.
And under her sense of the collective indifference came the acuter
pang of hopes deceived. Disinherited—she had been disinherited—and
for Grace Stepney! She met Gerty’s lamentable eyes, fixed on her
in a despairing effort at consolation, and the look brought her to
herself. There was something to be done before she left the house:
to be done with all the nobility she knew how to put into such
gestures. She advanced to the group about Miss Stepney, and holding
out her hand said simply: “Dear Grace, I am so glad.”

The other ladies had fallen back at her approach, and a space
created itself about her. It widened as she turned to go, and no
one advanced to fill it up. She paused a moment, glancing about
her, calmly taking the measure of her situation. She heard some one
ask a question about the date of the will; she caught a fragment
of the lawyer’s answer—something about a sudden summons, and an
“earlier instrument.” Then the tide of dispersal began to drift
past her; Mrs. Jack Stepney and Mrs. Herbert Melson stood on the
doorstep awaiting their motor; a sympathizing group escorted Grace
Stepney to the cab it was felt to be fitting she should take,
though she lived but a street or two away; and Miss Bart and Gerty
found themselves almost alone in the purple drawing-room, which
more than ever, in its stuffy dimness, resembled a well-kept family
vault, in which the last corpse had just been decently deposited.

       *       *       *       *       *

In Gerty Farish’s sitting-room, whither a hansom had carried the
two friends, Lily dropped into a chair with a faint sound of
laughter: it struck her as a humorous coincidence that her aunt’s
legacy should so nearly represent the amount of her debt to Trenor.
The need of discharging that debt had reasserted itself with
increased urgency since her return to America, and she spoke her
first thought in saying to the anxiously hovering Gerty: “I wonder
when the legacies will be paid.”

But Miss Farish could not pause over the legacies; she broke into
a larger indignation. “Oh, Lily, it’s unjust; it’s cruel—Grace
Stepney must FEEL she has no right to all that money!”

“Any one who knew how to please Aunt Julia has a right to her
money,” Miss Bart rejoined philosophically.

“But she was devoted to you—she led every one to think—” Gerty
checked herself in evident embarrassment, and Miss Bart turned to
her with a direct look. “Gerty, be honest: this will was made only
six weeks ago. She had heard of my break with the Dorsets?”

“Every one heard, of course, that there had been some
disagreement—some misunderstanding——”

“Did she hear that Bertha turned me off the yacht?”

“Lily!”

“That was what happened, you know. She said I was trying to marry
George Dorset. She did it to make him think she was jealous. Isn’t
that what she told Gwen Stepney?”

“I don’t know—I don’t listen to such horrors.”

“I MUST listen to them—I must know where I stand.” She paused, and
again sounded a faint note of derision. “Did you notice the women?
They were afraid to snub me while they thought I was going to get
the money—afterward they scuttled off as if I had the plague.”
Gerty remained silent, and she continued: “I stayed on to see
what would happen. They took their cue from Gwen Stepney and Lulu
Melson—I saw them watching to see what Gwen would do.—Gerty, I must
know just what is being said of me.”

“I tell you I don’t listen——”

“One hears such things without listening.” She rose and laid her
resolute hands on Miss Farish’s shoulders. “Gerty, are people going
to cut me?”

“Your FRIENDS, Lily—how can you think it?”

“Who are one’s friends at such a time? Who, but you, you poor
trustful darling? And heaven knows what YOU suspect me of!” She
kissed Gerty with a whimsical murmur. “You’d never let it make any
difference—but then you’re fond of criminals, Gerty! How about the
irreclaimable ones, though? For I’m absolutely impenitent, you
know.”

She drew herself up to the full height of her slender majesty,
towering like some dark angel of defiance above the troubled Gerty,
who could only falter out: “Lily, Lily—how can you laugh about such
things?”

“So as not to weep, perhaps. But no—I’m not of the tearful order. I
discovered early that crying makes my nose red, and the knowledge
has helped me through several painful episodes.” She took a
restless turn about the room, and then, reseating herself, lifted
the bright mockery of her eyes to Gerty’s anxious countenance.

“I shouldn’t have minded, you know, if I’d got the money—” and at
Miss Farish’s protesting “Oh!” she repeated calmly: “Not a straw,
my dear; for, in the first place, they wouldn’t have quite dared
to ignore me; and if they had, it wouldn’t have mattered, because
I should have been independent of them. But now—!” The irony faded
from her eyes, and she bent a clouded face upon her friend.

“How can you talk so, Lily? Of course the money ought to have
been yours, but after all that makes no difference. The important
thing——” Gerty paused, and then continued firmly: “The important
thing is that you should clear yourself—should tell your friends
the whole truth.”

“The whole truth?” Miss Bart laughed. “What is truth? Where a woman
is concerned, it’s the story that’s easiest to believe. In this
case it’s a great deal easier to believe Bertha Dorset’s story
than mine, because she has a big house and an opera box, and it’s
convenient to be on good terms with her.”

Miss Farish still fixed her with an anxious gaze. “But what IS your
story, Lily? I don’t believe any one knows it yet.”

“My story?—I don’t believe I know it myself. You see I never
thought of preparing a version in advance as Bertha did—and if I
had, I don’t think I should take the trouble to use it now.”

But Gerty continued with her quiet reasonableness: “I don’t want a
version prepared in advance—but I want you to tell me exactly what
happened from the beginning.”

“From the beginning?” Miss Bart gently mimicked her. “Dear Gerty,
how little imagination you good people have! Why, the beginning
was in my cradle, I suppose—in the way I was brought up, and the
things I was taught to care for. Or no—I won’t blame anybody for
my faults: I’ll say it was in my blood, that I got it from some
wicked pleasure-loving ancestress, who reacted against the homely
virtues of New Amsterdam, and wanted to be back at the court of
the Charleses!” And as Miss Farish continued to press her with
troubled eyes, she went on impatiently: “You asked me just now for
the truth—well, the truth about any girl is that once she’s talked
about she’s done for; and the more she explains her case the worse
it looks.—My good Gerty, you don’t happen to have a cigarette about
you?”

       *       *       *       *       *

In her stuffy room at the hotel to which she had gone on landing,
Lily Bart that evening reviewed her situation. It was the last week
in June, and none of her friends were in town. The few relatives
who had stayed on, or returned, for the reading of Mrs. Peniston’s
will, had taken flight again that afternoon to Newport or Long
Island; and not one of them had made any proffer of hospitality
to Lily. For the first time in her life she found herself utterly
alone except for Gerty Farish. Even at the actual moment of
her break with the Dorsets she had not had so keen a sense of
its consequences, for the Duchess of Beltshire, hearing of the
catastrophe from Lord Hubert, had instantly offered her protection,
and under her sheltering wing Lily had made an almost triumphant
progress to London. There she had been sorely tempted to linger on
in a society which asked of her only to amuse and charm it, without
enquiring too curiously how she had acquired her gift for doing
so; but Selden, before they parted, had pressed on her the urgent
need of returning at once to her aunt, and Lord Hubert, when he
presently reappeared in London, abounded in the same counsel. Lily
did not need to be told that the Duchess’s championship was not the
best road to social rehabilitation, and as she was besides aware
that her noble defender might at any moment drop her in favour of a
new PROTEGEE, she reluctantly decided to return to America. But she
had not been ten minutes on her native shore before she realized
that she had delayed too long to regain it. The Dorsets, the
Stepneys, the Brys—all the actors and witnesses in the miserable
drama—had preceded her with their version of the case; and, even
had she seen the least chance of gaining a hearing for her own,
some obscure disdain and reluctance would have restrained her.
She knew it was not by explanations and counter-charges that she
could ever hope to recover her lost standing; but even had she felt
the least trust in their efficacy, she would still have been held
back by the feeling which had kept her from defending herself to
Gerty Farish—a feeling that was half pride and half humiliation.
For though she knew she had been ruthlessly sacrificed to Bertha
Dorset’s determination to win back her husband, and though her own
relation to Dorset had been that of the merest good-fellowship, yet
she had been perfectly aware from the outset that her part in the
affair was, as Carry Fisher brutally put it, to distract Dorset’s
attention from his wife. That was what she was “there for”: it was
the price she had chosen to pay for three months of luxury and
freedom from care. Her habit of resolutely facing the facts, in
her rare moments of introspection, did not now allow her to put
any false gloss on the situation. She had suffered for the very
faithfulness with which she had carried out her part of the tacit
compact, but the part was not a handsome one at best, and she saw
it now in all the ugliness of failure.

She saw, too, in the same uncompromising light, the train of
consequences resulting from that failure; and these became clearer
to her with every day of her weary lingering in town. She stayed
on partly for the comfort of Gerty Farish’s nearness, and partly
for lack of knowing where to go. She understood well enough the
nature of the task before her. She must set out to regain, little
by little, the position she had lost; and the first step in the
tedious task was to find out, as soon as possible, on how many
of her friends she could count. Her hopes were mainly centred on
Mrs. Trenor, who had treasures of easy-going tolerance for those
who were amusing or useful to her, and in the noisy rush of whose
existence the still small voice of detraction was slow to make
itself heard. But Judy, though she must have been apprised of Miss
Bart’s return, had not even recognized it by the formal note of
condolence which her friend’s bereavement demanded. Any advance on
Lily’s side might have been perilous: there was nothing to do but
to trust to the happy chance of an accidental meeting, and Lily
knew that, even so late in the season, there was always a hope of
running across her friends in their frequent passages through town.

To this end she assiduously showed herself at the restaurants they
frequented, where, attended by the troubled Gerty, she lunched
luxuriously, as she said, on her expectations.

“My dear Gerty, you wouldn’t have me let the head-waiter see that
I’ve nothing to live on but Aunt Julia’s legacy? Think of Grace
Stepney’s satisfaction if she came in and found us lunching on cold
mutton and tea! What sweet shall we have today, dear—COUPE JACQUES
or PECHES A LA MELBA?”

She dropped the MENU abruptly, with a quick heightening of colour,
and Gerty, following her glance, was aware of the advance, from an
inner room, of a party headed by Mrs. Trenor and Carry Fisher. It
was impossible for these ladies and their companions—among whom
Lily had at once distinguished both Trenor and Rosedale—not to
pass, in going out, the table at which the two girls were seated;
and Gerty’s sense of the fact betrayed itself in the helpless
trepidation of her manner. Miss Bart, on the contrary, borne
forward on the wave of her buoyant grace, and neither shrinking
from her friends nor appearing to lie in wait for them, gave to
the encounter the touch of naturalness which she could impart to
the most strained situations. Such embarrassment as was shown was
on Mrs. Trenor’s side, and manifested itself in the mingling of
exaggerated warmth with imperceptible reservations. Her loudly
affirmed pleasure at seeing Miss Bart took the form of a nebulous
generalization, which included neither enquiries as to her future
nor the expression of a definite wish to see her again. Lily,
well-versed in the language of these omissions, knew that they
were equally intelligible to the other members of the party: even
Rosedale, flushed as he was with the importance of keeping such
company, at once took the temperature of Mrs. Trenor’s cordiality,
and reflected it in his off-hand greeting of Miss Bart. Trenor, red
and uncomfortable, had cut short his salutations on the pretext of
a word to say to the head-waiter; and the rest of the group soon
melted away in Mrs. Trenor’s wake.

It was over in a moment—the waiter, MENU in hand, still hung on
the result of the choice between COUPE JACQUES and PECHES A LA
MELBA—but Miss Bart, in the interval, had taken the measure of her
fate. Where Judy Trenor led, all the world would follow; and Lily
had the doomed sense of the castaway who has signalled in vain to
fleeing sails.

In a flash she remembered Mrs. Trenor’s complaints of Carry
Fisher’s rapacity, and saw that they denoted an unexpected
acquaintance with her husband’s private affairs. In the large
tumultuous disorder of the life at Bellomont, where no one seemed
to have time to observe any one else, and private aims and personal
interests were swept along unheeded in the rush of collective
activities, Lily had fancied herself sheltered from inconvenient
scrutiny; but if Judy knew when Mrs. Fisher borrowed money of
her husband, was she likely to ignore the same transaction on
Lily’s part? If she was careless of his affections she was plainly
jealous of his pocket; and in that fact Lily read the explanation
of her rebuff. The immediate result of these conclusions was the
passionate resolve to pay back her debt to Trenor. That obligation
discharged, she would have but a thousand dollars of Mrs.
Peniston’s legacy left, and nothing to live on but her own small
income, which was considerably less than Gerty Farish’s wretched
pittance; but this consideration gave way to the imperative claim
of her wounded pride. She must be quits with the Trenors first;
after that she would take thought for the future.

In her ignorance of legal procrastinations she had supposed that
her legacy would be paid over within a few days of the reading
of her aunt’s will; and after an interval of anxious suspense,
she wrote to enquire the cause of the delay. There was another
interval before Mrs. Peniston’s lawyer, who was also one of the
executors, replied to the effect that, some questions having arisen
relative to the interpretation of the will, he and his associates
might not be in a position to pay the legacies till the close of
the twelvemonth legally allotted for their settlement. Bewildered
and indignant, Lily resolved to try the effect of a personal
appeal; but she returned from her expedition with a sense of the
powerlessness of beauty and charm against the unfeeling processes
of the law. It seemed intolerable to live on for another year
under the weight of her debt; and in her extremity she decided to
turn to Miss Stepney, who still lingered in town, immersed in the
delectable duty of “going over” her benefactress’s effects. It
was bitter enough for Lily to ask a favour of Grace Stepney, but
the alternative was bitterer still; and one morning she presented
herself at Mrs. Peniston’s, where Grace, for the facilitation of
her pious task, had taken up a provisional abode.

The strangeness of entering as a suppliant the house where she had
so long commanded, increased Lily’s desire to shorten the ordeal;
and when Miss Stepney entered the darkened drawing-room, rustling
with the best quality of crape, her visitor went straight to the
point: would she be willing to advance the amount of the expected
legacy?

Grace, in reply, wept and wondered at the request, bemoaned the
inexorableness of the law, and was astonished that Lily had not
realized the exact similarity of their positions. Did she think
that only the payment of the legacies had been delayed? Why, Miss
Stepney herself had not received a penny of her inheritance, and
was paying rent—yes, actually!—for the privilege of living in a
house that belonged to her. She was sure it was not what poor dear
cousin Julia would have wished—she had told the executors so to
their faces; but they were inaccessible to reason, and there was
nothing to do but to wait. Let Lily take example by her, and be
patient—let them both remember how beautifully patient cousin Julia
had always been.

Lily made a movement which showed her imperfect assimilation of
this example. “But you will have everything, Grace—it would be easy
for you to borrow ten times the amount I am asking for.”

“Borrow—easy for me to borrow?” Grace Stepney rose up before her
in sable wrath. “Do you imagine for a moment that I would raise
money on my expectations from cousin Julia, when I know so well her
unspeakable horror of every transaction of the sort? Why, Lily, if
you must know the truth, it was the idea of your being in debt that
brought on her illness—you remember she had a slight attack before
you sailed. Oh, I don’t know the particulars, of course—I don’t
WANT to know them—but there were rumours about your affairs that
made her most unhappy—no one could be with her without seeing that.
I can’t help it if you are offended by my telling you this now—if I
can do anything to make you realize the folly of your course, and
how deeply SHE disapproved of it, I shall feel it is the truest way
of making up to you for her loss.”




Chapter 5


It seemed to Lily, as Mrs. Peniston’s door closed on her, that she
was taking a final leave of her old life. The future stretched
before her dull and bare as the deserted length of Fifth Avenue,
and opportunities showed as meagrely as the few cabs trailing in
quest of fares that did not come. The completeness of the analogy
was, however, disturbed as she reached the sidewalk by the rapid
approach of a hansom which pulled up at sight of her.

From beneath its luggage-laden top, she caught the wave of a
signalling hand; and the next moment Mrs. Fisher, springing to the
street, had folded her in a demonstrative embrace.

“My dear, you don’t mean to say you’re still in town? When I saw
you the other day at Sherry’s I didn’t have time to ask——” She
broke off, and added with a burst of frankness: “The truth is I was
HORRID, Lily, and I’ve wanted to tell you so ever since.”

“Oh——” Miss Bart protested, drawing back from her penitent clasp;
but Mrs. Fisher went on with her usual directness: “Look here,
Lily, don’t let’s beat about the bush: half the trouble in life is
caused by pretending there isn’t any. That’s not my way, and I can
only say I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself for following the other
women’s lead. But we’ll talk of that by and bye—tell me now where
you’re staying and what your plans are. I don’t suppose you’re
keeping house in there with Grace Stepney, eh?—and it struck me you
might be rather at loose ends.”

In Lily’s present mood there was no resisting the honest
friendliness of this appeal, and she said with a smile: “I am at
loose ends for the moment, but Gerty Farish is still in town, and
she’s good enough to let me be with her whenever she can spare the
time.”

Mrs. Fisher made a slight grimace. “H’m—that’s a temperate joy. Oh,
I know—Gerty’s a trump, and worth all the rest of us put together;
but A LA LONGUE you’re used to a little higher seasoning, aren’t
you, dear? And besides, I suppose she’ll be off herself before
long—the first of August, you say? Well, look here, you can’t spend
your summer in town; we’ll talk of that later too. But meanwhile,
what do you say to putting a few things in a trunk and coming down
with me to the Sam Gormers’ tonight?”

And as Lily stared at the breathless suddenness of the suggestion,
she continued with her easy laugh: “You don’t know them and they
don’t know you; but that don’t make a rap of difference. They’ve
taken the Van Alstyne place at Roslyn, and I’ve got CARTE BLANCHE
to bring my friends down there—the more the merrier. They do
things awfully well, and there’s to be rather a jolly party there
this week——” she broke off, checked by an undefinable change in
Miss Bart’s expression. “Oh, I don’t mean YOUR particular set,
you know: rather a different crowd, but very good fun. The fact
is, the Gormers have struck out on a line of their own: what they
want is to have a good time, and to have it in their own way. They
gave the other thing a few months’ trial, under my distinguished
auspices, and they were really doing extremely well—getting on a
good deal faster than the Brys, just because they didn’t care as
much—but suddenly they decided that the whole business bored them,
and that what they wanted was a crowd they could really feel at
home with. Rather original of them, don’t you think so? Mattie
Gormer HAS got aspirations still; women always have; but she’s
awfully easy-going, and Sam won’t be bothered, and they both like
to be the most important people in sight, so they’ve started a sort
of continuous performance of their own, a kind of social Coney
Island, where everybody is welcome who can make noise enough and
doesn’t put on airs. I think it’s awfully good fun myself—some
of the artistic set, you know, any pretty actress that’s going,
and so on. This week, for instance, they have Audrey Anstell,
who made such a hit last spring in ‘The Winning of Winny’; and
Paul Morpeth—he’s painting Mattie Gormer—and the Dick Bellingers,
and Kate Corby—well, every one you can think of who’s jolly and
makes a row. Now don’t stand there with your nose in the air, my
dear—it will be a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town,
and you’ll find clever people as well as noisy ones—Morpeth, who
admires Mattie enormously, always brings one or two of his set.”

Mrs. Fisher drew Lily toward the hansom with friendly authority.
“Jump in now, there’s a dear, and we’ll drive round to your hotel
and have your things packed, and then we’ll have tea, and the two
maids can meet us at the train.”

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town—of that
no doubt remained to Lily as, reclining in the shade of a leafy
verandah, she looked seaward across a stretch of greensward
picturesquely dotted with groups of ladies in lace raiment and men
in tennis flannels. The huge Van Alstyne house and its rambling
dependencies were packed to their fullest capacity with the
Gormers’ week-end guests, who now, in the radiance of the Sunday
forenoon, were dispersing themselves over the grounds in quest of
the various distractions the place afforded: distractions ranging
from tennis-courts to shooting-galleries, from bridge and whiskey
within doors to motors and steam-launches without. Lily had the
odd sense of having been caught up into the crowd as carelessly
as a passenger is gathered in by an express train. The blonde and
genial Mrs. Gormer might, indeed, have figured the conductor,
calmly assigning seats to the rush of travellers, while Carry
Fisher represented the porter pushing their bags into place, giving
them their numbers for the dining-car, and warning them when their
station was at hand. The train, meanwhile, had scarcely slackened
speed—life whizzed on with a deafening’ rattle and roar, in which
one traveller at least found a welcome refuge from the sound of
her own thoughts. The Gormer MILIEU represented a social out-skirt
which Lily had always fastidiously avoided; but it struck her, now
that she was in it, as only a flamboyant copy of her own world,
a caricature approximating the real thing as the “society play”
approaches the manners of the drawing-room. The people about her
were doing the same things as the Trenors, the Van Osburghs and
the Dorsets: the difference lay in a hundred shades of aspect and
manner, from the pattern of the men’s waistcoats to the inflexion
of the women’s voices. Everything was pitched in a higher key,
and there was more of each thing: more noise, more colour, more
champagne, more familiarity—but also greater good-nature, less
rivalry, and a fresher capacity for enjoyment.

Miss Bart’s arrival had been welcomed with an uncritical
friendliness that first irritated her pride and then brought her
to a sharp sense of her own situation—of the place in life which,
for the moment, she must accept and make the best of. These people
knew her story—of that her first long talk with Carry Fisher had
left no doubt: she was publicly branded as the heroine of a “queer”
episode—but instead of shrinking from her as her own friends had
done, they received her without question into the easy promiscuity
of their lives. They swallowed her past as easily as they did Miss
Anstell’s, and with no apparent sense of any difference in the size
of the mouthful: all they asked was that she should—in her own way,
for they recognized a diversity of gifts—contribute as much to the
general amusement as that graceful actress, whose talents, when
off the stage, were of the most varied order. Lily felt at once
that any tendency to be “stuck-up,” to mark a sense of differences
and distinctions, would be fatal to her continuance in the Gormer
set. To be taken in on such terms—and into such a world!—was hard
enough to the lingering pride in her; but she realized, with a
pang of self-contempt, that to be excluded from it would, after
all, be harder still. For, almost at once, she had felt the
insidious charm of slipping back into a life where every material
difficulty was smoothed away. The sudden escape from a stifling
hotel in a dusty deserted city to the space and luxury of a great
country-house fanned by sea breezes, had produced a state of moral
lassitude agreeable enough after the nervous tension and physical
discomfort of the past weeks. For the moment she must yield to the
refreshment her senses craved—after that she would reconsider her
situation, and take counsel with her dignity. Her enjoyment of her
surroundings was, indeed, tinged by the unpleasant consideration
that she was accepting the hospitality and courting the approval
of people she had disdained under other conditions. But she was
growing less sensitive on such points: a hard glaze of indifference
was fast forming over her delicacies and susceptibilities, and each
concession to expediency hardened the surface a little more.

On the Monday, when the party disbanded with uproarious adieux,
the return to town threw into stronger relief the charms of the
life she was leaving. The other guests were dispersing to take
up the same existence in a different setting: some at Newport,
some at Bar Harbour, some in the elaborate rusticity of an
Adirondack camp. Even Gerty Farish, who welcomed Lily’s return
with tender solicitude, would soon be preparing to join the aunt
with whom she spent her summers on Lake George: only Lily herself
remained without plan or purpose, stranded in a backwater of the
great current of pleasure. But Carry Fisher, who had insisted on
transporting her to her own house, where she herself was to perch
for a day or two on the way to the Brys’ camp, came to the rescue
with a new suggestion.

“Look here, Lily—I’ll tell you what it is: I want you to take my
place with Mattie Gormer this summer. They’re taking a party out
to Alaska next month in their private car, and Mattie, who is the
laziest woman alive, wants me to go with them, and relieve her
of the bother of arranging things; but the Brys want me too—oh,
yes, we’ve made it up: didn’t I tell you?—and, to put it frankly,
though I like the Gormers best, there’s more profit for me in
the Brys. The fact is, they want to try Newport this summer, and
if I can make it a success for them they—well, they’ll make it a
success for me.” Mrs. Fisher clasped her hands enthusiastically.
“Do you know, Lily, the more I think of my idea the better I like
it—quite as much for you as for myself. The Gormers have both taken
a tremendous fancy to you, and the trip to Alaska is—well—the very
thing I should want for you just at present.”

Miss Bart lifted her eyes with a keen glance. “To take me out of
my friends’ way, you mean?” she said quietly; and Mrs. Fisher
responded with a deprecating kiss: “To keep you out of their sight
till they realize how much they miss you.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Miss Bart went with the Gormers to Alaska; and the expedition, if
it did not produce the effect anticipated by her friend, had at
least the negative advantage of removing her from the fiery centre
of criticism and discussion. Gerty Farish had opposed the plan with
all the energy of her somewhat inarticulate nature. She had even
offered to give up her visit to Lake George, and remain in town
with Miss Bart, if the latter would renounce her journey; but Lily
could disguise her real distaste for this plan under a sufficiently
valid reason.

“You dear innocent, don’t you see,” she protested, “that Carry is
quite right, and that I must take up my usual life, and go about
among people as much as possible? If my old friends choose to
believe lies about me I shall have to make new ones, that’s all;
and you know beggars mustn’t be choosers. Not that I don’t like
Mattie Gormer—I DO like her: she’s kind and honest and unaffected;
and don’t you suppose I feel grateful to her for making me welcome
at a time when, as you’ve yourself seen, my own family have
unanimously washed their hands of me?”

Gerty shook her head, mutely unconvinced. She felt not only that
Lily was cheapening herself by making use of an intimacy she would
never have cultivated from choice, but that, in drifting back now
to her former manner of life, she was forfeiting her last chance
of ever escaping from it. Gerty had but an obscure conception
of what Lily’s actual experience had been: but its consequences
had established a lasting hold on her pity since the memorable
night when she had offered up her own secret hope to her friend’s
extremity. To characters like Gerty’s such a sacrifice constitutes
a moral claim on the part of the person in whose behalf it has been
made. Having once helped Lily, she must continue to help her; and
helping her, must believe in her, because faith is the main-spring
of such natures. But even if Miss Bart, after her renewed taste
of the amenities of life, could have returned to the barrenness
of a New York August, mitigated only by poor Gerty’s presence,
her worldly wisdom would have counselled her against such an act
of abnegation. She knew that Carry Fisher was right: that an
opportune absence might be the first step toward rehabilitation,
and that, at any rate, to linger on in town out of season was a
fatal admission of defeat. From the Gormers’ tumultuous progress
across their native continent, she returned with an altered
view of her situation. The renewed habit of luxury—the daily
waking to an assured absence of care and presence of material
ease—gradually blunted her appreciation of these values, and left
her more conscious of the void they could not fill. Mattie Gormer’s
undiscriminating good-nature, and the slap-dash sociability of her
friends, who treated Lily precisely as they treated each other—all
these characteristic notes of difference began to wear upon her
endurance; and the more she saw to criticize in her companions, the
less justification she found for making use of them. The longing
to get back to her former surroundings hardened to a fixed idea;
but with the strengthening of her purpose came the inevitable
perception that, to attain it, she must exact fresh concessions
from her pride. These, for the moment, took the unpleasant form of
continuing to cling to her hosts after their return from Alaska.
Little as she was in the key of their MILIEU, her immense social
facility, her long habit of adapting herself to others without
suffering her own outline to be blurred, the skilled manipulation
of all the polished implements of her craft, had won for her an
important place in the Gormer group. If their resonant hilarity
could never be hers, she contributed a note of easy elegance more
valuable to Mattie Gormer than the louder passages of the band.
Sam Gormer and his special cronies stood indeed a little in awe of
her; but Mattie’s following, headed by Paul Morpeth, made her feel
that they prized her for the very qualities they most conspicuously
lacked. If Morpeth, whose social indolence was as great as his
artistic activity, had abandoned himself to the easy current of
the Gormer existence, where the minor exactions of politeness were
unknown or ignored, and a man could either break his engagements,
or keep them in a painting-jacket and slippers, he still preserved
his sense of differences, and his appreciation of graces he had no
time to cultivate. During the preparations for the Brys’ TABLEAUX
he had been immensely struck by Lily’s plastic possibilities—“not
the face: too self-controlled for expression; but the rest of
her—gad, what a model she’d make!”—and though his abhorrence of the
world in which he had seen her was too great for him to think of
seeking her there, he was fully alive to the privilege of having
her to look at and listen to while he lounged in Mattie Gormer’s
dishevelled drawing-room.

Lily had thus formed, in the tumult of her surroundings, a little
nucleus of friendly relations which mitigated the crudeness of
her course in lingering with the Gormers after their return. Nor
was she without pale glimpses of her own world, especially since
the breaking up of the Newport season had set the social current
once more toward Long Island. Kate Corby, whose tastes made her
as promiscuous as Carry Fisher was rendered by her necessities,
occasionally descended on the Gormers, where, after a first
stare of surprise, she took Lily’s presence almost too much as a
matter of course. Mrs. Fisher, too, appearing frequently in the
neighbourhood, drove over to impart her experiences and give Lily
what she called the latest report from the weather-bureau; and the
latter, who had never directly invited her confidence, could yet
talk with her more freely than with Gerty Farish, in whose presence
it was impossible even to admit the existence of much that Mrs.
Fisher conveniently took for granted.

Mrs. Fisher, moreover, had no embarrassing curiosity. She did not
wish to probe the inwardness of Lily’s situation, but simply to
view it from the outside, and draw her conclusions accordingly; and
these conclusions, at the end of a confidential talk, she summed up
to her friend in the succinct remark: “You must marry as soon as
you can.”

Lily uttered a faint laugh—for once Mrs. Fisher lacked originality.
“Do you mean, like Gerty Farish, to recommend the unfailing panacea
of ‘a good man’s love’?”

“No—I don’t think either of my candidates would answer to that
description,” said Mrs. Fisher after a pause of reflection.

“Either? Are there actually two?”

“Well, perhaps I ought to say one and a half—for the moment.”

Miss Bart received this with increasing amusement. “Other things
being equal, I think I should prefer a half-husband: who is he?”

“Don’t fly out at me till you hear my reasons—George Dorset.”

“Oh——” Lily murmured reproachfully; but Mrs. Fisher pressed on
unrebuffed. “Well, why not? They had a few weeks’ honeymoon when
they first got back from Europe, but now things are going badly
with them again. Bertha has been behaving more than ever like
a madwoman, and George’s powers of credulity are very nearly
exhausted. They’re at their place here, you know, and I spent last
Sunday with them. It was a ghastly party—no one else but poor Neddy
Silverton, who looks like a galley-slave (they used to talk of my
making that poor boy unhappy!)—and after luncheon George carried me
off on a long walk, and told me the end would have to come soon.”

Miss Bart made an incredulous gesture. “As far as that goes, the
end will never come—Bertha will always know how to get him back
when she wants him.”

Mrs. Fisher continued to observe her tentatively. “Not if he has
any one else to turn to! Yes—that’s just what it comes to: the poor
creature can’t stand alone. And I remember him such a good fellow,
full of life and enthusiasm.” She paused, and went on, dropping her
glance from Lily’s: “He wouldn’t stay with her ten minutes if he
KNEW——”

“Knew——?” Miss Bart repeated.

“What YOU must, for instance—with the opportunities you’ve had! If
he had positive proof, I mean——”

Lily interrupted her with a deep blush of displeasure. “Please let
us drop the subject, Carry: it’s too odious to me.” And to divert
her companion’s attention she added, with an attempt at lightness:
“And your second candidate? We must not forget him.”

Mrs. Fisher echoed her laugh. “I wonder if you’ll cry out just as
loud if I say—Sim Rosedale?”

Miss Bart did not cry out: she sat silent, gazing thoughtfully
at her friend. The suggestion, in truth, gave expression to a
possibility which, in the last weeks, had more than once recurred
to her; but after a moment she said carelessly: “Mr. Rosedale wants
a wife who can establish him in the bosom of the Van Osburghs and
Trenors.”

Mrs. Fisher caught her up eagerly. “And so YOU could—with his
money! Don’t you see how beautifully it would work out for you
both?”

“I don’t see any way of making him see it,” Lily returned, with a
laugh intended to dismiss the subject.

But in reality it lingered with her long after Mrs. Fisher had
taken leave. She had seen very little of Rosedale since her
annexation by the Gormers, for he was still steadily bent on
penetrating to the inner Paradise from which she was now excluded;
but once or twice, when nothing better offered, he had turned up
for a Sunday, and on these occasions he had left her in no doubt
as to his view of her situation. That he still admired her was,
more than ever, offensively evident; for in the Gormer circle,
where he expanded as in his native element, there were no puzzling
conventions to check the full expression of his approval. But it
was in the quality of his admiration that she read his shrewd
estimate of her case. He enjoyed letting the Gormers see that he
had known “Miss Lily”—she was “Miss Lily” to him now—before they
had had the faintest social existence: enjoyed more especially
impressing Paul Morpeth with the distance to which their intimacy
dated back. But he let it be felt that that intimacy was a
mere ripple on the surface of a rushing social current, the
kind of relaxation which a man of large interests and manifold
preoccupations permits himself in his hours of ease.

The necessity of accepting this view of their past relation, and
of meeting it in the key of pleasantry prevalent among her new
friends, was deeply humiliating to Lily. But she dared less than
ever to quarrel with Rosedale. She suspected that her rejection
rankled among the most unforgettable of his rebuffs, and the fact
that he knew something of her wretched transaction with Trenor,
and was sure to put the basest construction on it, seemed to place
her hopelessly in his power. Yet at Carry Fisher’s suggestion a
new hope had stirred in her. Much as she disliked Rosedale, she
no longer absolutely despised him. For he was gradually attaining
his object in life, and that, to Lily, was always less despicable
than to miss it. With the slow unalterable persistency which she
had always felt in him, he was making his way through the dense
mass of social antagonisms. Already his wealth, and the masterly
use he had made of it, were giving him an enviable prominence in
the world of affairs, and placing Wall Street under obligations
which only Fifth Avenue could repay. In response to these claims,
his name began to figure on municipal committees and charitable
boards; he appeared at banquets to distinguished strangers, and
his candidacy at one of the fashionable clubs was discussed with
diminishing opposition. He had figured once or twice at the Trenor
dinners, and had learned to speak with just the right note of
disdain of the big Van Osburgh crushes; and all he now needed was a
wife whose affiliations would shorten the last tedious steps of his
ascent. It was with that object that, a year earlier, he had fixed
his affections on Miss Bart; but in the interval he had mounted
nearer to the goal, while she had lost the power to abbreviate the
remaining steps of the way. All this she saw with the clearness of
vision that came to her in moments of despondency. It was success
that dazzled her—she could distinguish facts plainly enough in the
twilight of failure. And the twilight, as she now sought to pierce
it, was gradually lighted by a faint spark of reassurance. Under
the utilitarian motive of Rosedale’s wooing she had felt, clearly
enough, the heat of personal inclination. She would not have
detested him so heartily had she not known that he dared to admire
her. What, then, if the passion persisted, though the other motive
had ceased to sustain it? She had never even tried to please him—he
had been drawn to her in spite of her manifest disdain. What if she
now chose to exert the power which, even in its passive state, he
had felt so strongly? What if she made him marry her for love, now
that he had no other reason for marrying her?




Chapter 6


As became persons of their rising consequence, the Gormers were
engaged in building a country-house on Long Island; and it was a
part of Miss Bart’s duty to attend her hostess on frequent visits
of inspection to the new estate. There, while Mrs. Gormer plunged
into problems of lighting and sanitation, Lily had leisure to
wander, in the bright autumn air, along the tree-fringed bay to
which the land declined. Little as she was addicted to solitude,
there had come to be moments when it seemed a welcome escape
from the empty noises of her life. She was weary of being swept
passively along a current of pleasure and business in which she
had no share; weary of seeing other people pursue amusement and
squander money, while she felt herself of no more account among
them than an expensive toy in the hands of a spoiled child.

It was in this frame of mind that, striking back from the shore
one morning into the windings of an unfamiliar lane, she came
suddenly upon the figure of George Dorset. The Dorset place was in
the immediate neighbourhood of the Gormers’ newly-acquired estate,
and in her motor-flights thither with Mrs. Gormer, Lily had caught
one or two passing glimpses of the couple; but they moved in so
different an orbit that she had not considered the possibility of a
direct encounter.

Dorset, swinging along with bent head, in moody abstraction, did
not see Miss Bart till he was close upon her; but the sight,
instead of bringing him to a halt, as she had half-expected, sent
him toward her with an eagerness which found expression in his
opening words.

“Miss Bart!—You’ll shake hands, won’t you? I’ve been hoping to meet
you—I should have written to you if I’d dared.” His face, with its
tossed red hair and straggling moustache, had a driven uneasy look,
as though life had become an unceasing race between himself and the
thoughts at his heels.

The look drew a word of compassionate greeting from Lily, and he
pressed on, as if encouraged by her tone: “I wanted to apologize—to
ask you to forgive me for the miserable part I played——”

She checked him with a quick gesture. “Don’t let us speak of it: I
was very sorry for you,” she said, with a tinge of disdain which,
as she instantly perceived, was not lost on him.

He flushed to his haggard eyes, flushed so cruelly that she
repented the thrust. “You might well be; you don’t know—you must
let me explain. I was deceived: abominably deceived——”

“I am still more sorry for you, then,” she interposed, without
irony; “but you must see that I am not exactly the person with whom
the subject can be discussed.”

He met this with a look of genuine wonder. “Why not? Isn’t it to
you, of all people, that I owe an explanation——”

“No explanation is necessary: the situation was perfectly clear to
me.”

“Ah——” he murmured, his head drooping again, and his irresolute
hand switching at the underbrush along the lane. But as Lily made a
movement to pass on, he broke out with fresh vehemence: “Miss Bart,
for God’s sake don’t turn from me! We used to be good friends—you
were always kind to me—and you don’t know how I need a friend now.”

The lamentable weakness of the words roused a motion of pity in
Lily’s breast. She too needed friends—she had tasted the pang of
loneliness; and her resentment of Bertha Dorset’s cruelty softened
her heart to the poor wretch who was after all the chief of
Bertha’s victims.

“I still wish to be kind; I feel no ill-will toward you,” she said.
“But you must understand that after what has happened we can’t be
friends again—we can’t see each other.”

“Ah, you ARE kind—you’re merciful—you always were!” He fixed his
miserable gaze on her. “But why can’t we be friends—why not, when
I’ve repented in dust and ashes? Isn’t it hard that you should
condemn me to suffer for the falseness, the treachery of others? I
was punished enough at the time—is there to be no respite for me?”

“I should have thought you had found complete respite in the
reconciliation which was effected at my expense,” Lily began, with
renewed impatience; but he broke in imploringly: “Don’t put it in
that way—when that’s been the worst of my punishment. My God! what
could I do—wasn’t I powerless? You were singled out as a sacrifice:
any word I might have said would have been turned against you——”

“I have told you I don’t blame you; all I ask you to understand is
that, after the use Bertha chose to make of me—after all that her
behaviour has since implied—it’s impossible that you and I should
meet.”

He continued to stand before her, in his dogged weakness. “Is
it—need it be? Mightn’t there be circumstances——?” he checked
himself, slashing at the wayside weeds in a wider radius. Then he
began again: “Miss Bart, listen—give me a minute. If we’re not to
meet again, at least let me have a hearing now. You say we can’t be
friends after—after what has happened. But can’t I at least appeal
to your pity? Can’t I move you if I ask you to think of me as a
prisoner—a prisoner you alone can set free?”

Lily’s inward start betrayed itself in a quick blush: was it
possible that this was really the sense of Carry Fisher’s
adumbrations?

“I can’t see how I can possibly be of any help to you,” she
murmured, drawing back a little from the mounting excitement of his
look.

Her tone seemed to sober him, as it had so often done in his
stormiest moments. The stubborn lines of his face relaxed, and he
said, with an abrupt drop to docility: “You WOULD see, if you’d be
as merciful as you used to be: and heaven knows I’ve never needed
it more!”

She paused a moment, moved in spite of herself by this reminder of
her influence over him. Her fibres had been softened by suffering,
and the sudden glimpse into his mocked and broken life disarmed her
contempt for his weakness.

“I am very sorry for you—I would help you willingly; but you must
have other friends, other advisers.”

“I never had a friend like you,” he answered simply. “And
besides—can’t you see?—you’re the only person”—his voice dropped to
a whisper—“the only person who knows.”

Again she felt her colour change; again her heart rose in
precipitate throbs to meet what she felt was coming. He lifted his
eyes to her entreatingly. “You do see, don’t you? You understand?
I’m desperate—I’m at the end of my tether. I want to be free, and
you can free me. I know you can. You don’t want to keep me bound
fast in hell, do you? You can’t want to take such a vengeance as
that. You were always kind—your eyes are kind now. You say you’re
sorry for me. Well, it rests with you to show it; and heaven knows
there’s nothing to keep you back. You understand, of course—there
wouldn’t be a hint of publicity—not a sound or a syllable to
connect you with the thing. It would never come to that, you know:
all I need is to be able to say definitely: ‘I know this—and
this—and this’—and the fight would drop, and the way be cleared,
and the whole abominable business swept out of sight in a second.”

He spoke pantingly, like a tired runner, with breaks of exhaustion
between his words; and through the breaks she caught, as through
the shifting rents of a fog, great golden vistas of peace and
safety. For there was no mistaking the definite intention behind
his vague appeal; she could have filled up the blanks without the
help of Mrs. Fisher’s insinuations. Here was a man who turned to
her in the extremity of his loneliness and his humiliation: if she
came to him at such a moment he would be hers with all the force of
his deluded faith. And the power to make him so lay in her hand—lay
there in a completeness he could not even remotely conjecture.
Revenge and rehabilitation might be hers at a stroke—there was
something dazzling in the completeness of the opportunity.

She stood silent, gazing away from him down the autumnal stretch
of the deserted lane. And suddenly fear possessed her—fear of
herself, and of the terrible force of the temptation. All her past
weaknesses were like so many eager accomplices drawing her toward
the path their feet had already smoothed. She turned quickly, and
held out her hand to Dorset.

“Goodbye—I’m sorry; there’s nothing in the world that I can do.”

“Nothing? Ah, don’t say that,” he cried; “say what’s true: that you
abandon me like the others. You, the only creature who could have
saved me!”

“Goodbye—goodbye,” she repeated hurriedly; and as she moved away
she heard him cry out on a last note of entreaty: “At least you’ll
let me see you once more?”

       *       *       *       *       *

Lily, on regaining the Gormer grounds, struck rapidly across the
lawn toward the unfinished house, where she fancied that her
hostess might be speculating, not too resignedly, on the cause of
her delay; for, like many unpunctual persons, Mrs. Gormer disliked
to be kept waiting.

As Miss Bart reached the avenue, however, she saw a smart phaeton
with a high-stepping pair disappear behind the shrubbery in the
direction of the gate; and on the doorstep stood Mrs. Gormer, with
a glow of retrospective pleasure on her open countenance. At sight
of Lily the glow deepened to an embarrassed red, and she said
with a slight laugh: “Did you see my visitor? Oh, I thought you
came back by the avenue. It was Mrs. George Dorset—she said she’d
dropped in to make a neighbourly call.”

Lily met the announcement with her usual composure, though her
experience of Bertha’s idiosyncrasies would not have led her to
include the neighbourly instinct among them; and Mrs. Gormer,
relieved to see that she gave no sign of surprise, went on with
a deprecating laugh: “Of course what really brought her was
curiosity—she made me take her all over the house. But no one could
have been nicer—no airs, you know, and so good-natured: I can quite
see why people think her so fascinating.”

This surprising event, coinciding too completely with her
meeting with Dorset to be regarded as contingent upon it, had
yet immediately struck Lily with a vague sense of foreboding.
It was not in Bertha’s habits to be neighbourly, much less to
make advances to any one outside the immediate circle of her
affinities. She had always consistently ignored the world of outer
aspirants, or had recognized its individual members only when
prompted by motives of self-interest; and the very capriciousness
of her condescensions had, as Lily was aware, given them special
value in the eyes of the persons she distinguished. Lily saw
this now in Mrs. Gormer’s unconcealable complacency, and in the
happy irrelevance with which, for the next day or two, she quoted
Bertha’s opinions and speculated on the origin of her gown. All
the secret ambitions which Mrs. Gormer’s native indolence, and the
attitude of her companions, kept in habitual abeyance, were now
germinating afresh in the glow of Bertha’s advances; and whatever
the cause of the latter, Lily saw that, if they were followed up,
they were likely to have a disturbing effect upon her own future.

She had arranged to break the length of her stay with her new
friends by one or two visits to other acquaintances as recent;
and on her return from this somewhat depressing excursion she was
immediately conscious that Mrs. Dorset’s influence was still in
the air. There had been another exchange of visits, a tea at a
country-club, an encounter at a hunt ball; there was even a rumour
of an approaching dinner, which Mattie Gormer, with an unnatural
effort at discretion, tried to smuggle out of the conversation
whenever Miss Bart took part in it.

The latter had already planned to return to town after a farewell
Sunday with her friends; and, with Gerty Farish’s aid, had
discovered a small private hotel where she might establish herself
for the winter. The hotel being on the edge of a fashionable
neighbourhood, the price of the few square feet she was to
occupy was considerably in excess of her means; but she found a
justification for her dislike of poorer quarters in the argument
that, at this particular juncture, it was of the utmost importance
to keep up a show of prosperity. In reality, it was impossible for
her, while she had the means to pay her way for a week ahead, to
lapse into a form of existence like Gerty Farish’s. She had never
been so near the brink of insolvency; but she could at least manage
to meet her weekly hotel bill, and having settled the heaviest of
her previous debts out of the money she had received from Trenor,
she had a still fair margin of credit to go upon. The situation,
however, was not agreeable enough to lull her to complete
unconsciousness of its insecurity. Her rooms, with their cramped
outlook down a sallow vista of brick walls and fire-escapes, her
lonely meals in the dark restaurant with its surcharged ceiling and
haunting smell of coffee—all these material discomforts, which were
yet to be accounted as so many privileges soon to be withdrawn,
kept constantly before her the disadvantages of her state; and her
mind reverted the more insistently to Mrs. Fisher’s counsels. Beat
about the question as she would, she knew the outcome of it was
that she must try to marry Rosedale; and in this conviction she was
fortified by an unexpected visit from George Dorset.

She found him, on the first Sunday after her return to town,
pacing her narrow sitting-room to the imminent peril of the few
knick-knacks with which she had tried to disguise its plush
exuberances; but the sight of her seemed to quiet him, and he said
meekly that he hadn’t come to bother her—that he asked only to be
allowed to sit for half an hour and talk of anything she liked.
In reality, as she knew, he had but one subject: himself and his
wretchedness; and it was the need of her sympathy that had drawn
him back. But he began with a pretence of questioning her about
herself, and as she replied, she saw that, for the first time,
a faint realization of her plight penetrated the dense surface
of his self-absorption. Was it possible that her old beast of an
aunt had actually cut her off? That she was living alone like this
because there was no one else for her to go to, and that she really
hadn’t more than enough to keep alive on till the wretched little
legacy was paid? The fibres of sympathy were nearly atrophied in
him, but he was suffering so intensely that he had a faint glimpse
of what other sufferings might mean—and, as she perceived, an
almost simultaneous perception of the way in which her particular
misfortunes might serve him.

When at length she dismissed him, on the pretext that she must
dress for dinner, he lingered entreatingly on the threshold to
blurt out: “It’s been such a comfort—do say you’ll let me see you
again—” But to this direct appeal it was impossible to give an
assent; and she said with friendly decisiveness: “I’m sorry—but you
know why I can’t.”

He coloured to the eyes, pushed the door shut, and stood before her
embarrassed but insistent. “I know how you might, if you would—if
things were different—and it lies with you to make them so. It’s
just a word to say, and you put me out of my misery!”

Their eyes met, and for a second she trembled again with the
nearness of the temptation. “You’re mistaken; I know nothing; I saw
nothing,” she exclaimed, striving, by sheer force of reiteration,
to build a barrier between herself and her peril; and as he turned
away, groaning out “You sacrifice us both,” she continued to
repeat, as if it were a charm: “I know nothing—absolutely nothing.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Lily had seen little of Rosedale since her illuminating talk with
Mrs. Fisher, but on the two or three occasions when they had met
she was conscious of having distinctly advanced in his favour.
There could be no doubt that he admired her as much as ever, and
she believed it rested with herself to raise his admiration to
the point where it should bear down the lingering counsels of
expediency. The task was not an easy one; but neither was it easy,
in her long sleepless nights, to face the thought of what George
Dorset was so clearly ready to offer. Baseness for baseness, she
hated the other least: there were even moments when a marriage with
Rosedale seemed the only honourable solution of her difficulties.
She did not indeed let her imagination range beyond the day of
plighting: after that everything faded into a haze of material
well-being, in which the personality of her benefactor remained
mercifully vague. She had learned, in her long vigils, that there
were certain things not good to think of, certain midnight images
that must at any cost be exorcised—and one of these was the image
of herself as Rosedale’s wife.

Carry Fisher, on the strength, as she frankly owned, of the
Brys’ Newport success, had taken for the autumn months a small
house at Tuxedo; and thither Lily was bound on the Sunday after
Dorset’s visit. Though it was nearly dinner-time when she arrived,
her hostess was still out, and the firelit quiet of the small
silent house descended on her spirit with a sense of peace and
familiarity. It may be doubted if such an emotion had ever before
been evoked by Carry Fisher’s surroundings; but, contrasted to
the world in which Lily had lately lived, there was an air of
repose and stability in the very placing of the furniture, and in
the quiet competence of the parlour-maid who led her up to her
room. Mrs. Fisher’s unconventionality was, after all, a merely
superficial divergence from an inherited social creed, while the
manners of the Gormer circle represented their first attempt to
formulate such a creed for themselves.

It was the first time since her return from Europe that Lily had
found herself in a congenial atmosphere, and the stirring of
familiar associations had almost prepared her, as she descended
the stairs before dinner, to enter upon a group of her old
acquaintances. But this expectation was instantly checked by the
reflection that the friends who remained loyal were precisely those
who would be least willing to expose her to such encounters; and
it was hardly with surprise that she found, instead, Mr. Rosedale
kneeling domestically on the drawing-room hearth before his
hostess’s little girl.

Rosedale in the paternal role was hardly a figure to soften Lily;
yet she could not but notice a quality of homely goodness in his
advances to the child. They were not, at any rate, the premeditated
and perfunctory endearments of the guest under his hostess’s
eye, for he and the little girl had the room to themselves; and
something in his attitude made him seem a simple and kindly being
compared to the small critical creature who endured his homage.
Yes, he would be kind—Lily, from the threshold, had time to
feel—kind in his gross, unscrupulous, rapacious way, the way of the
predatory creature with his mate. She had but a moment in which
to consider whether this glimpse of the fireside man mitigated
her repugnance, or gave it, rather, a more concrete and intimate
form; for at sight of her he was immediately on his feet again, the
florid and dominant Rosedale of Mattie Gormer’s drawing-room.

It was no surprise to Lily to find that he had been selected as her
only fellow-guest. Though she and her hostess had not met since
the latter’s tentative discussion of her future, Lily knew that
the acuteness which enabled Mrs. Fisher to lay a safe and pleasant
course through a world of antagonistic forces was not infrequently
exercised for the benefit of her friends. It was, in fact,
characteristic of Carry that, while she actively gleaned her own
stores from the fields of affluence, her real sympathies were on
the other side—with the unlucky, the unpopular, the unsuccessful,
with all her hungry fellow-toilers in the shorn stubble of success.

Mrs. Fisher’s experience guarded her against the mistake of
exposing Lily, for the first evening, to the unmitigated impression
of Rosedale’s personality. Kate Corby and two or three men dropped
in to dinner, and Lily, alive to every detail of her friend’s
method, saw that such opportunities as had been contrived for her
were to be deferred till she had, as it were, gained courage to
make effectual use of them. She had a sense of acquiescing in this
plan with the passiveness of a sufferer resigned to the surgeon’s
touch; and this feeling of almost lethargic helplessness continued
when, after the departure of the guests, Mrs. Fisher followed her
upstairs.

“May I come in and smoke a cigarette over your fire? If we talk in
my room we shall disturb the child.” Mrs. Fisher looked about her
with the eye of the solicitous hostess. “I hope you’ve managed to
make yourself comfortable, dear? Isn’t it a jolly little house?
It’s such a blessing to have a few quiet weeks with the baby.”

Carry, in her rare moments of prosperity, became so expansively
maternal that Miss Bart sometimes wondered whether, if she could
ever get time and money enough, she would not end by devoting them
both to her daughter.

“It’s a well-earned rest: I’ll say that for myself,” she continued,
sinking down with a sigh of content on the pillowed lounge near
the fire. “Louisa Bry is a stern task-master: I often used to
wish myself back with the Gormers. Talk of love making people
jealous and suspicious—it’s nothing to social ambition! Louisa
used to lie awake at night wondering whether the women who called
on us called on ME because I was with her, or on HER because she
was with me; and she was always laying traps to find out what
I thought. Of course I had to disown my oldest friends, rather
than let her suspect she owed me the chance of making a single
acquaintance—when, all the while, that was what she had me there
for, and what she wrote me a handsome cheque for when the season
was over!”

Mrs. Fisher was not a woman who talked of herself without cause,
and the practice of direct speech, far from precluding in her an
occasional resort to circuitous methods, served rather, at crucial
moments, the purpose of the juggler’s chatter while he shifts the
contents of his sleeves. Through the haze of her cigarette-smoke
she continued to gaze meditatively at Miss Bart, who, having
dismissed her maid, sat before the toilet table shaking out over
her shoulders the loosened undulations of her hair.

“Your hair’s wonderful, Lily. Thinner—? What does that matter,
when it’s so light and alive? So many women’s worries seem to go
straight to their hair—but yours looks as if there had never been
an anxious thought under it. I never saw you look better than you
did this evening. Mattie Gormer told me that Morpeth wanted to
paint you—why don’t you let him?”

Miss Bart’s immediate answer was to address a critical glance
to the reflection of the countenance under discussion. Then she
said, with a slight touch of irritation: “I don’t care to accept a
portrait from Paul Morpeth.”

Mrs. Fisher mused. “N—no. And just now, especially—well, he can do
you after you’re married.” She waited a moment, and then went on:
“By the way, I had a visit from Mattie the other day. She turned
up here last Sunday—and with Bertha Dorset, of all people in the
world!”

She paused again to measure the effect of this announcement on her
hearer, but the brush in Miss Bart’s lifted hand maintained its
unwavering stroke from brow to nape.

“I never was more astonished,” Mrs. Fisher pursued. “I don’t know
two women less predestined to intimacy—from Bertha’s standpoint,
that is; for of course poor Mattie thinks it natural enough that
she should be singled out—I’ve no doubt the rabbit always thinks
it is fascinating the anaconda. Well, you know I’ve always told
you that Mattie secretly longed to bore herself with the really
fashionable; and now that the chance has come, I see that she’s
capable of sacrificing all her old friends to it.”

Lily laid aside her brush and turned a penetrating glance upon her
friend. “Including ME?” she suggested.

“Ah, my dear,” murmured Mrs. Fisher, rising to push back a log from
the hearth.

“That’s what Bertha means, isn’t it?” Miss Bart went on steadily.
“For of course she always means something; and before I left Long
Island I saw that she was beginning to lay her toils for Mattie.”

Mrs. Fisher sighed evasively. “She has her fast now, at any rate.
To think of that loud independence of Mattie’s being only a
subtler form of snobbishness! Bertha can already make her believe
anything she pleases—and I’m afraid she’s begun, my poor child, by
insinuating horrors about you.”

Lily flushed under the shadow of her drooping hair. “The world
is too vile,” she murmured, averting herself from Mrs. Fisher’s
anxious scrutiny.

“It’s not a pretty place; and the only way to keep a footing in it
is to fight it on its own terms—and above all, my dear, not alone!”
Mrs. Fisher gathered up her floating implications in a resolute
grasp. “You’ve told me so little that I can only guess what has
been happening; but in the rush we all live in there’s no time to
keep on hating any one without a cause, and if Bertha is still
nasty enough to want to injure you with other people it must be
because she’s still afraid of you. From her standpoint there’s only
one reason for being afraid of you; and my own idea is that, if you
want to punish her, you hold the means in your hand. I believe you
can marry George Dorset tomorrow; but if you don’t care for that
particular form of retaliation, the only thing to save you from
Bertha is to marry somebody else.”




Chapter 7


The light projected on the situation by Mrs. Fisher had the
cheerless distinctness of a winter dawn. It outlined the facts with
a cold precision unmodified by shade or colour, and refracted, as
it were, from the blank walls of the surrounding limitations: she
had opened windows from which no sky was ever visible. But the
idealist subdued to vulgar necessities must employ vulgar minds to
draw the inferences to which he cannot stoop; and it was easier for
Lily to let Mrs. Fisher formulate her case than to put it plainly
to herself. Once confronted with it, however, she went the full
length of its consequences; and these had never been more clearly
present to her than when, the next afternoon, she set out for a
walk with Rosedale.

It was one of those still November days when the air is haunted
with the light of summer, and something in the lines of the
landscape, and in the golden haze which bathed them, recalled to
Miss Bart the September afternoon when she had climbed the slopes
of Bellomont with Selden. The importunate memory was kept before
her by its ironic contrast to her present situation, since her walk
with Selden had represented an irresistible flight from just such
a climax as the present excursion was designed to bring about. But
other memories importuned her also; the recollection of similar
situations, as skillfully led up to, but through some malice of
fortune, or her own unsteadiness of purpose, always failing of
the intended result. Well, her purpose was steady enough now. She
saw that the whole weary work of rehabilitation must begin again,
and against far greater odds, if Bertha Dorset should succeed in
breaking up her friendship with the Gormers; and her longing for
shelter and security was intensified by the passionate desire to
triumph over Bertha, as only wealth and predominance could triumph
over her. As the wife of Rosedale—the Rosedale she felt it in her
power to create—she would at least present an invulnerable front to
her enemy.

She had to draw upon this thought, as upon some fiery stimulant, to
keep up her part in the scene toward which Rosedale was too frankly
tending. As she walked beside him, shrinking in every nerve from
the way in which his look and tone made free of her, yet telling
herself that this momentary endurance of his mood was the price she
must pay for her ultimate power over him, she tried to calculate
the exact point at which concession must turn to resistance, and
the price HE would have to pay be made equally clear to him. But
his dapper self-confidence seemed impenetrable to such hints, and
she had a sense of something hard and self-contained behind the
superficial warmth of his manner.

They had been seated for some time in the seclusion of a rocky glen
above the lake, when she suddenly cut short the culmination of an
impassioned period by turning upon him the grave loveliness of her
gaze.

“I DO believe what you say, Mr. Rosedale,” she said quietly; “and I
am ready to marry you whenever you wish.”

Rosedale, reddening to the roots of his glossy hair, received this
announcement with a recoil which carried him to his feet, where he
halted before her in an attitude of almost comic discomfiture.

“For I suppose that is what you do wish,” she continued, in the
same quiet tone. “And, though I was unable to consent when you
spoke to me in this way before, I am ready, now that I know you so
much better, to trust my happiness to your hands.”

She spoke with the noble directness which she could command on
such occasions, and which was like a large steady light thrown
across the tortuous darkness of the situation. In its inconvenient
brightness Rosedale seemed to waver a moment, as though conscious
that every avenue of escape was unpleasantly illuminated.

Then he gave a short laugh, and drew out a gold cigarette-case, in
which, with plump jewelled fingers, he groped for a gold-tipped
cigarette. Selecting one, he paused to contemplate it a moment
before saying: “My dear Miss Lily, I’m sorry if there’s been any
little misapprehension between us—but you made me feel my suit was
so hopeless that I had really no intention of renewing it.”

Lily’s blood tingled with the grossness of the rebuff; but she
checked the first leap of her anger, and said in a tone of gentle
dignity: “I have no one but myself to blame if I gave you the
impression that my decision was final.”

Her word-play was always too quick for him, and this reply held him
in puzzled silence while she extended her hand and added, with the
faintest inflection of sadness in her voice: “Before we bid each
other goodbye, I want at least to thank you for having once thought
of me as you did.”

The touch of her hand, the moving softness of her look,
thrilled a vulnerable fibre in Rosedale. It was her exquisite
inaccessibleness, the sense of distance she could convey without a
hint of disdain, that made it most difficult for him to give her up.

“Why do you talk of saying goodbye? Ain’t we going to be good
friends all the same?” he urged, without releasing her hand.

She drew it away quietly. “What is your idea of being good
friends?” she returned with a slight smile. “Making love to me
without asking me to marry you?” Rosedale laughed with a recovered
sense of ease.

“Well, that’s about the size of it, I suppose. I can’t help making
love to you—I don’t see how any man could; but I don’t mean to ask
you to marry me as long as I can keep out of it.”

She continued to smile. “I like your frankness; but I am afraid our
friendship can hardly continue on those terms.” She turned away, as
though to mark that its final term had in fact been reached, and
he followed her for a few steps with a baffled sense of her having
after all kept the game in her own hands.

“Miss Lily——” he began impulsively; but she walked on without
seeming to hear him.

He overtook her in a few quick strides, and laid an entreating hand
on her arm. “Miss Lily—don’t hurry away like that. You’re beastly
hard on a fellow; but if you don’t mind speaking the truth I don’t
see why you shouldn’t allow me to do the same.”

She had paused a moment with raised brows, drawing away
instinctively from his touch, though she made no effort to evade
his words.

“I was under the impression,” she rejoined, “that you had done so
without waiting for my permission.”

“Well—why shouldn’t you hear my reasons for doing it, then? We’re
neither of us such new hands that a little plain speaking is going
to hurt us. I’m all broken up on you: there’s nothing new in that.
I’m more in love with you than I was this time last year; but I’ve
got to face the fact that the situation is changed.”

She continued to confront him with the same air of ironic
composure. “You mean to say that I’m not as desirable a match as
you thought me?”

“Yes; that’s what I do mean,” he answered resolutely. “I won’t go
into what’s happened. I don’t believe the stories about you—I don’t
WANT to believe them. But they’re there, and my not believing them
ain’t going to alter the situation.”

She flushed to her temples, but the extremity of her need checked
the retort on her lip and she continued to face him composedly. “If
they are not true,” she said, “doesn’t THAT alter the situation?”

He met this with a steady gaze of his small stock-taking eyes,
which made her feel herself no more than some superfine human
merchandise. “I believe it does in novels; but I’m certain it don’t
in real life. You know that as well as I do: if we’re speaking the
truth, let’s speak the whole truth. Last year I was wild to marry
you, and you wouldn’t look at me: this year—well, you appear to be
willing. Now, what has changed in the interval? Your situation,
that’s all. Then you thought you could do better; now——”

“You think you can?” broke from her ironically.

“Why, yes, I do: in one way, that is.” He stood before her, his
hands in his pockets, his chest sturdily expanded under its vivid
waistcoat. “It’s this way, you see: I’ve had a pretty steady grind
of it these last years, working up my social position. Think it’s
funny I should say that? Why should I mind saying I want to get
into society? A man ain’t ashamed to say he wants to own a racing
stable or a picture gallery. Well, a taste for society’s just
another kind of hobby. Perhaps I want to get even with some of
the people who cold-shouldered me last year—put it that way if it
sounds better. Anyhow, I want to have the run of the best houses;
and I’m getting it too, little by little. But I know the quickest
way to queer yourself with the right people is to be seen with the
wrong ones; and that’s the reason I want to avoid mistakes.”

Miss Bart continued to stand before him in a silence that might
have expressed either mockery or a half-reluctant respect for his
candour, and after a moment’s pause he went on: “There it is, you
see. I’m more in love with you than ever, but if I married you now
I’d queer myself for good and all, and everything I’ve worked for
all these years would be wasted.”

She received this with a look from which all tinge of resentment
had faded. After the tissue of social falsehoods in which she had
so long moved it was refreshing to step into the open daylight of
an avowed expediency.

“I understand you,” she said. “A year ago I should have been of
use to you, and now I should be an encumbrance; and I like you for
telling me so quite honestly.” She extended her hand with a smile.

Again the gesture had a disturbing effect upon Mr. Rosedale’s
self-command. “By George, you’re a dead game sport, you are!” he
exclaimed; and as she began once more to move away, he broke out
suddenly—“Miss Lily—stop. You know I don’t believe those stories—I
believe they were all got up by a woman who didn’t hesitate to
sacrifice you to her own convenience——”

Lily drew away with a movement of quick disdain: it was easier to
endure his insolence than his commiseration.

“You are very kind; but I don’t think we need discuss the matter
farther.”

But Rosedale’s natural imperviousness to hints made it easy for him
to brush such resistance aside. “I don’t want to discuss anything;
I just want to put a plain case before you,” he persisted.

She paused in spite of herself, held by the note of a new purpose
in his look and tone; and he went on, keeping his eyes firmly
upon her: “The wonder to me is that you’ve waited so long to get
square with that woman, when you’ve had the power in your hands.”
She continued silent under the rush of astonishment that his
words produced, and he moved a step closer to ask with low-toned
directness: “Why don’t you use those letters of hers you bought
last year?”

Lily stood speechless under the shock of the interrogation. In the
words preceding it she had conjectured, at most, an allusion to
her supposed influence over George Dorset; nor did the astonishing
indelicacy of the reference diminish the likelihood of Rosedale’s
resorting to it. But now she saw how far short of the mark she had
fallen; and the surprise of learning that he had discovered the
secret of the letters left her, for the moment, unconscious of the
special use to which he was in the act of putting his knowledge.

Her temporary loss of self-possession gave him time to press his
point; and he went on quickly, as though to secure completer
control of the situation: “You see I know where you stand—I know
how completely she’s in your power. That sounds like stage-talk,
don’t it?—but there’s a lot of truth in some of those old gags;
and I don’t suppose you bought those letters simply because you’re
collecting autographs.”

She continued to look at him with a deepening bewilderment: her
only clear impression resolved itself into a scared sense of his
power.

“You’re wondering how I found out about ’em?” he went on, answering
her look with a note of conscious pride. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten
that I’m the owner of the Benedick—but never mind about that now.
Getting on to things is a mighty useful accomplishment in business,
and I’ve simply extended it to my private affairs. For this IS
partly my affair, you see—at least, it depends on you to make it
so. Let’s look the situation straight in the eye. Mrs. Dorset, for
reasons we needn’t go into, did you a beastly bad turn last spring.
Everybody knows what Mrs. Dorset is, and her best friends wouldn’t
believe her on oath where their own interests were concerned; but
as long as they’re out of the row it’s much easier to follow her
lead than to set themselves against it, and you’ve simply been
sacrificed to their laziness and selfishness. Isn’t that a pretty
fair statement of the case?—Well, some people say you’ve got the
neatest kind of an answer in your hands: that George Dorset would
marry you tomorrow, if you’d tell him all you know, and give him
the chance to show the lady the door. I daresay he would; but you
don’t seem to care for that particular form of getting even, and,
taking a purely business view of the question, I think you’re
right. In a deal like that, nobody comes out with perfectly clean
hands, and the only way for you to start fresh is to get Bertha
Dorset to back you up, instead of trying to fight her.”

He paused long enough to draw breath, but not to give her time
for the expression of her gathering resistance; and as he pressed
on, expounding and elucidating his idea with the directness of
the man who has no doubts of his cause, she found the indignation
gradually freezing on her lip, found herself held fast in the grasp
of his argument by the mere cold strength of its presentation.
There was no time now to wonder how he had heard of her obtaining
the letters: all her world was dark outside the monstrous glare
of his scheme for using them. And it was not, after the first
moment, the horror of the idea that held her spell-bound, subdued
to his will; it was rather its subtle affinity to her own inmost
cravings. He would marry her tomorrow if she could regain Bertha
Dorset’s friendship; and to induce the open resumption of that
friendship, and the tacit retractation of all that had caused its
withdrawal, she had only to put to the lady the latent menace
contained in the packet so miraculously delivered into her hands.
Lily saw in a flash the advantage of this course over that which
poor Dorset had pressed upon her. The other plan depended for its
success on the infliction of an open injury, while this reduced
the transaction to a private understanding, of which no third
person need have the remotest hint. Put by Rosedale in terms of
businesslike give-and-take, this understanding took on the harmless
air of a mutual accommodation, like a transfer of property or a
revision of boundary lines. It certainly simplified life to view it
as a perpetual adjustment, a play of party politics, in which every
concession had its recognized equivalent: Lily’s tired mind was
fascinated by this escape from fluctuating ethical estimates into a
region of concrete weights and measures.

Rosedale, as she listened, seemed to read in her silence not only
a gradual acquiescence in his plan, but a dangerously far-reaching
perception of the chances it offered; for as she continued to stand
before him without speaking, he broke out, with a quick return
upon himself: “You see how simple it is, don’t you? Well, don’t be
carried away by the idea that it’s TOO simple. It isn’t exactly
as if you’d started in with a clean bill of health. Now we’re
talking let’s call things by their right names, and clear the whole
business up. You know well enough that Bertha Dorset couldn’t have
touched you if there hadn’t been—well—questions asked before—little
points of interrogation, eh? Bound to happen to a good-looking girl
with stingy relatives, I suppose; anyhow, they DID happen, and she
found the ground prepared for her. Do you see where I’m coming out?
You don’t want these little questions cropping up again. It’s one
thing to get Bertha Dorset into line—but what you want is to keep
her there. You can frighten her fast enough—but how are you going
to keep her frightened? By showing her that you’re as powerful as
she is. All the letters in the world won’t do that for you as you
are now; but with a big backing behind you, you’ll keep her just
where you want her to be. That’s MY share in the business—that’s
what I’m offering you. You can’t put the thing through without
me—don’t run away with any idea that you can. In six months you’d
be back again among your old worries, or worse ones; and here I am,
ready to lift you out of ’em tomorrow if you say so. DO you say so,
Miss Lily?” he added, moving suddenly nearer.

The words, and the movement which accompanied them, combined to
startle Lily out of the state of tranced subservience into which
she had insensibly slipped. Light comes in devious ways to the
groping consciousness, and it came to her now through the disgusted
perception that her would-be accomplice assumed, as a matter of
course, the likelihood of her distrusting him and perhaps trying
to cheat him of his share of the spoils. This glimpse of his inner
mind seemed to present the whole transaction in a new aspect, and
she saw that the essential baseness of the act lay in its freedom
from risk.

She drew back with a quick gesture of rejection, saying, in a
voice that was a surprise to her own ears: “You are mistaken—quite
mistaken—both in the facts and in what you infer from them.”

Rosedale stared a moment, puzzled by her sudden dash in a direction
so different from that toward which she had appeared to be letting
him guide her.

“Now what on earth does that mean? I thought we understood each
other!” he exclaimed; and to her murmur of “Ah, we do NOW,” he
retorted with a sudden burst of violence: “I suppose it’s because
the letters are to HIM, then? Well, I’ll be damned if I see what
thanks you’ve got from him!”




Chapter 8


The autumn days declined to winter. Once more the leisure world was
in transition between country and town, and Fifth Avenue, still
deserted at the week-end, showed from Monday to Friday a broadening
stream of carriages between house-fronts gradually restored to
consciousness.

The Horse Show, some two weeks earlier, had produced a passing
semblance of reanimation, filling the theatres and restaurants
with a human display of the same costly and high-stepping kind as
circled daily about its ring. In Miss Bart’s world the Horse Show,
and the public it attracted, had ostensibly come to be classed
among the spectacles disdained of the elect; but, as the feudal
lord might sally forth to join in the dance on his village green,
so society, unofficially and incidentally, still condescended
to look in upon the scene. Mrs. Gormer, among the rest, was not
above seizing such an occasion for the display of herself and her
horses; and Lily was given one or two opportunities of appearing at
her friend’s side in the most conspicuous box the house afforded.
But this lingering semblance of intimacy made her only the more
conscious of a change in the relation between Mattie and herself,
of a dawning discrimination, a gradually formed social standard,
emerging from Mrs. Gormer’s chaotic view of life. It was inevitable
that Lily herself should constitute the first sacrifice to this
new ideal, and she knew that, once the Gormers were established in
town, the whole drift of fashionable life would facilitate Mattie’s
detachment from her. She had, in short, failed to make herself
indispensable; or rather, her attempt to do so had been thwarted by
an influence stronger than any she could exert. That influence, in
its last analysis, was simply the power of money: Bertha Dorset’s
social credit was based on an impregnable bank-account.

Lily knew that Rosedale had overstated neither the difficulty
of her own position nor the completeness of the vindication he
offered: once Bertha’s match in material resources, her superior
gifts would make it easy for her to dominate her adversary. An
understanding of what such domination would mean, and of the
disadvantages accruing from her rejection of it, was brought home
to Lily with increasing clearness during the early weeks of the
winter. Hitherto, she had kept up a semblance of movement outside
the main flow of the social current; but with the return to town,
and the concentrating of scattered activities, the mere fact of
not slipping back naturally into her old habits of life marked
her as being unmistakably excluded from them. If one were not a
part of the season’s fixed routine, one swung unsphered in a void
of social non-existence. Lily, for all her dissatisfied dreaming,
had never really conceived the possibility of revolving about a
different centre: it was easy enough to despise the world, but
decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region. Her sense
of irony never quite deserted her, and she could still note, with
self-directed derision, the abnormal value suddenly acquired by the
most tiresome and insignificant details of her former life. Its
very drudgeries had a charm now that she was involuntarily released
from them: card-leaving, note-writing, enforced civilities to the
dull and elderly, and the smiling endurance of tedious dinners—how
pleasantly such obligations would have filled the emptiness of her
days! She did indeed leave cards in plenty; she kept herself, with
a smiling and valiant persistence, well in the eye of her world;
nor did she suffer any of those gross rebuffs which sometimes
produce a wholesome reaction of contempt in their victim. Society
did not turn away from her, it simply drifted by, preoccupied and
inattentive, letting her feel, to the full measure of her humbled
pride, how completely she had been the creature of its favour.

She had rejected Rosedale’s suggestion with a promptness of scorn
almost surprising to herself: she had not lost her capacity for
high flashes of indignation. But she could not breathe long on the
heights; there had been nothing in her training to develop any
continuity of moral strength: what she craved, and really felt
herself entitled to, was a situation in which the noblest attitude
should also be the easiest. Hitherto her intermittent impulses
of resistance had sufficed to maintain her self-respect. If she
slipped she recovered her footing, and it was only afterward that
she was aware of having recovered it each time on a slightly lower
level. She had rejected Rosedale’s offer without conscious effort;
her whole being had risen against it; and she did not yet perceive
that, by the mere act of listening to him, she had learned to live
with ideas which would once have been intolerable to her.

       *       *       *       *       *

To Gerty Farish, keeping watch over her with a tenderer if less
discerning eye than Mrs. Fisher’s, the results of the struggle were
already distinctly visible. She did not, indeed, know what hostages
Lily had already given to expediency; but she saw her passionately
and irretrievably pledged to the ruinous policy of “keeping up.”
Gerty could smile now at her own early dream of her friend’s
renovation through adversity: she understood clearly enough that
Lily was not of those to whom privation teaches the unimportance of
what they have lost. But this very fact, to Gerty, made her friend
the more piteously in want of aid, the more exposed to the claims
of a tenderness she was so little conscious of needing.

Lily, since her return to town, had not often climbed Miss
Farish’s stairs. There was something irritating to her in the
mute interrogation of Gerty’s sympathy: she felt the real
difficulties of her situation to be incommunicable to any one
whose theory of values was so different from her own, and the
restrictions of Gerty’s life, which had once had the charm of
contrast, now reminded her too painfully of the limits to which
her own existence was shrinking. When at length, one afternoon,
she put into execution the belated resolve to visit her friend,
this sense of shrunken opportunities possessed her with unusual
intensity. The walk up Fifth Avenue, unfolding before her, in the
brilliance of the hard winter sunlight, an interminable procession
of fastidiously-equipped carriages—giving her, through the little
squares of brougham-windows, peeps of familiar profiles bent above
visiting-lists, of hurried hands dispensing notes and cards to
attendant footmen—this glimpse of the ever-revolving wheels of the
great social machine made Lily more than ever conscious of the
steepness and narrowness of Gerty’s stairs, and of the cramped
blind alley of life to which they led. Dull stairs destined to
be mounted by dull people: how many thousands of insignificant
figures were going up and down such stairs all over the world at
that very moment—figures as shabby and uninteresting as that of the
middle-aged lady in limp black who descended Gerty’s flight as Lily
climbed to it!

“That was poor Miss Jane Silverton—she came to talk things over
with me: she and her sister want to do something to support
themselves,” Gerty explained, as Lily followed her into the
sitting-room.

“To support themselves? Are they so hard up?” Miss Bart asked with
a touch of irritation: she had not come to listen to the woes of
other people.

“I’m afraid they have nothing left: Ned’s debts have swallowed
up everything. They had such hopes, you know, when he broke away
from Carry Fisher; they thought Bertha Dorset would be such a good
influence, because she doesn’t care for cards, and—well, she talked
quite beautifully to poor Miss Jane about feeling as if Ned were
her younger brother, and wanting to carry him off on the yacht, so
that he might have a chance to drop cards and racing, and take up
his literary work again.”

Miss Farish paused with a sigh which reflected the perplexity of
her departing visitor. “But that isn’t all; it isn’t even the
worst. It seems that Ned has quarrelled with the Dorsets; or at
least Bertha won’t allow him to see her, and he is so unhappy about
it that he has taken to gambling again, and going about with all
sorts of queer people. And cousin Grace Van Osburgh accuses him of
having had a very bad influence on Freddy, who left Harvard last
spring, and has been a great deal with Ned ever since. She sent
for Miss Jane, and made a dreadful scene; and Jack Stepney and
Herbert Melson, who were there too, told Miss Jane that Freddy was
threatening to marry some dreadful woman to whom Ned had introduced
him, and that they could do nothing with him because now he’s of
age he has his own money. You can fancy how poor Miss Jane felt—she
came to me at once, and seemed to think that if I could get her
something to do she could earn enough to pay Ned’s debts and send
him away—I’m afraid she has no idea how long it would take her to
pay for one of his evenings at bridge. And he was horribly in debt
when he came back from the cruise—I can’t see why he should have
spent so much more money under Bertha’s influence than Carry’s: can
you?”

Lily met this query with an impatient gesture. “My dear Gerty, I
always understand how people can spend much more money—never how
they can spend any less!”

She loosened her furs and settled herself in Gerty’s easy-chair,
while her friend busied herself with the tea-cups.

“But what can they do—the Miss Silvertons? How do they mean
to support themselves?” she asked, conscious that the note of
irritation still persisted in her voice. It was the very last
topic she had meant to discuss—it really did not interest her in
the least—but she was seized by a sudden perverse curiosity to
know how the two colourless shrinking victims of young Silverton’s
sentimental experiments meant to cope with the grim necessity which
lurked so close to her own threshold.

“I don’t know—I am trying to find something for them. Miss Jane
reads aloud very nicely—but it’s so hard to find any one who is
willing to be read to. And Miss Annie paints a little——”

“Oh, I know—apple-blossoms on blotting-paper; just the kind of
thing I shall be doing myself before long!” exclaimed Lily,
starting up with a vehemence of movement that threatened
destruction to Miss Farish’s fragile tea-table.

Lily bent over to steady the cups; then she sank back into her
seat. “I’d forgotten there was no room to dash about in—how
beautifully one does have to behave in a small flat! Oh, Gerty, I
wasn’t meant to be good,” she sighed out incoherently.

Gerty lifted an apprehensive look to her pale face, in which the
eyes shone with a peculiar sleepless lustre.

“You look horribly tired, Lily; take your tea, and let me give you
this cushion to lean against.”

Miss Bart accepted the cup of tea, but put back the cushion with an
impatient hand.

“Don’t give me that! I don’t want to lean back—I shall go to sleep
if I do.”

“Well, why not, dear? I’ll be as quiet as a mouse,” Gerty urged
affectionately.

“No—no; don’t be quiet; talk to me—keep me awake! I don’t sleep at
night, and in the afternoon a dreadful drowsiness creeps over me.”

“You don’t sleep at night? Since when?”

“I don’t know—I can’t remember.” She rose and put the empty cup on
the tea-tray. “Another, and stronger, please; if I don’t keep awake
now I shall see horrors tonight—perfect horrors!”

“But they’ll be worse if you drink too much tea.”

“No, no—give it to me; and don’t preach, please,” Lily returned
imperiously. Her voice had a dangerous edge, and Gerty noticed that
her hand shook as she held it out to receive the second cup.

“But you look so tired: I’m sure you must be ill——”

Miss Bart set down her cup with a start. “Do I look ill? Does my
face show it?” She rose and walked quickly toward the little mirror
above the writing-table. “What a horrid looking-glass—it’s all
blotched and discoloured. Any one would look ghastly in it!” She
turned back, fixing her plaintive eyes on Gerty. “You stupid dear,
why do you say such odious things to me? It’s enough to make one
ill to be told one looks so! And looking ill means looking ugly.”
She caught Gerty’s wrists, and drew her close to the window. “After
all, I’d rather know the truth. Look me straight in the face,
Gerty, and tell me: am I perfectly frightful?”

“You’re perfectly beautiful now, Lily: your eyes are shining, and
your cheeks have grown so pink all of a sudden——”

“Ah, they WERE pale, then—ghastly pale, when I came in? Why don’t
you tell me frankly that I’m a wreck? My eyes are bright now
because I’m so nervous—but in the mornings they look like lead.
And I can see the lines coming in my face—the lines of worry and
disappointment and failure! Every sleepless night leaves a new
one—and how can I sleep, when I have such dreadful things to think
about?”

“Dreadful things—what things?” asked Gerty, gently detaching her
wrists from her friend’s feverish fingers.

“What things? Well, poverty, for one—and I don’t know any that’s
more dreadful.” Lily turned away and sank with sudden weariness
into the easy-chair near the tea-table. “You asked me just now if I
could understand why Ned Silverton spent so much money. Of course I
understand—he spends it on living with the rich. You think we live
ON the rich, rather than with them: and so we do, in a sense—but
it’s a privilege we have to pay for! We eat their dinners, and
drink their wine, and smoke their cigarettes, and use their
carriages and their opera-boxes and their private cars—yes, but
there’s a tax to pay on every one of those luxuries. The man pays
it by big tips to the servants, by playing cards beyond his means,
by flowers and presents—and—and—lots of other things that cost;
the girl pays it by tips and cards too—oh, yes, I’ve had to take
up bridge again—and by going to the best dress-makers, and having
just the right dress for every occasion, and always keeping herself
fresh and exquisite and amusing!”

She leaned back for a moment, closing her eyes, and as she sat
there, her pale lips slightly parted, and the lids dropped above
her fagged brilliant gaze, Gerty had a startled perception of the
change in her face—of the way in which an ashen daylight seemed
suddenly to extinguish its artificial brightness. She looked up,
and the vision vanished.

“It doesn’t sound very amusing, does it? And it isn’t—I’m sick to
death of it! And yet the thought of giving it all up nearly kills
me—it’s what keeps me awake at night, and makes me so crazy for
your strong tea. For I can’t go on in this way much longer, you
know—I’m nearly at the end of my tether. And then what can I do—how
on earth am I to keep myself alive? I see myself reduced to the
fate of that poor Silverton woman—slinking about to employment
agencies, and trying to sell painted blotting-pads to Women’s
Exchanges! And there are thousands and thousands of women trying to
do the same thing already, and not one of the number who has less
idea how to earn a dollar than I have!”

She rose again with a hurried glance at the clock. “It’s late, and
I must be off—I have an appointment with Carry Fisher. Don’t look
so worried, you dear thing—don’t think too much about the nonsense
I’ve been talking.” She was before the mirror again, adjusting
her hair with a light hand, drawing down her veil, and giving a
dexterous touch to her furs. “Of course, you know, it hasn’t come
to the employment agencies and the painted blotting-pads yet;
but I’m rather hard up just for the moment, and if I could find
something to do—notes to write and visiting-lists to make up, or
that kind of thing—it would tide me over till the legacy is paid.
And Carry has promised to find somebody who wants a kind of social
secretary—you know she makes a specialty of the helpless rich.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Miss Bart had not revealed to Gerty the full extent of her anxiety.
She was in fact in urgent and immediate need of money: money to
meet the vulgar weekly claims which could neither be deferred nor
evaded. To give up her apartment, and shrink to the obscurity of a
boarding-house, or the provisional hospitality of a bed in Gerty
Farish’s sitting-room, was an expedient which could only postpone
the problem confronting her; and it seemed wiser as well as more
agreeable to remain where she was and find some means of earning
her living. The possibility of having to do this was one which she
had never before seriously considered, and the discovery that, as a
bread-winner, she was likely to prove as helpless and ineffectual
as poor Miss Silverton, was a severe shock to her self-confidence.

Having been accustomed to take herself at the popular valuation,
as a person of energy and resource, naturally fitted to dominate
any situation in which she found herself, she vaguely imagined that
such gifts would be of value to seekers after social guidance;
but there was unfortunately no specific head under which the
art of saying and doing the right thing could be offered in the
market, and even Mrs. Fisher’s resourcefulness failed before the
difficulty of discovering a workable vein in the vague wealth of
Lily’s graces. Mrs. Fisher was full of indirect expedients for
enabling her friends to earn a living, and could conscientiously
assert that she had put several opportunities of this kind before
Lily; but more legitimate methods of bread-winning were as much out
of her line as they were beyond the capacity of the sufferers she
was generally called upon to assist. Lily’s failure to profit by
the chances already afforded her might, moreover, have justified
the abandonment of farther effort on her behalf; but Mrs. Fisher’s
inexhaustible good-nature made her an adept at creating artificial
demands in response to an actual supply. In the pursuance of this
end she at once started on a voyage of discovery in Miss Bart’s
behalf; and as the result of her explorations she now summoned the
latter with the announcement that she had “found something.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Left to herself, Gerty mused distressfully upon her friend’s
plight, and her own inability to relieve it. It was clear to her
that Lily, for the present, had no wish for the kind of help she
could give. Miss Farish could see no hope for her friend but in a
life completely reorganized and detached from its old associations;
whereas all Lily’s energies were centred in the determined effort
to hold fast to those associations, to keep herself visibly
identified with them, as long as the illusion could be maintained.
Pitiable as such an attitude seemed to Gerty, she could not judge
it as harshly as Selden, for instance, might have done. She had
not forgotten the night of emotion when she and Lily had lain in
each other’s arms, and she had seemed to feel her very heart’s
blood passing into her friend. The sacrifice she had made had
seemed unavailing enough; no trace remained in Lily of the subduing
influences of that hour; but Gerty’s tenderness, disciplined by
long years of contact with obscure and inarticulate suffering,
could wait on its object with a silent forbearance which took no
account of time. She could not, however, deny herself the solace of
taking anxious counsel with Lawrence Selden, with whom, since his
return from Europe, she had renewed her old relation of cousinly
confidence.

Selden himself had never been aware of any change in their
relation. He found Gerty as he had left her, simple, undemanding
and devoted, but with a quickened intelligence of the heart which
he recognized without seeking to explain it. To Gerty herself it
would once have seemed impossible that she should ever again talk
freely with him of Lily Bart; but what had passed in the secrecy
of her own breast seemed to resolve itself, when the mist of the
struggle cleared, into a breaking down of the bounds of self, a
deflecting of the wasted personal emotion into the general current
of human understanding.

It was not till some two weeks after her visit from Lily that
Gerty had the opportunity of communicating her fears to Selden.
The latter, having presented himself on a Sunday afternoon, had
lingered on through the dowdy animation of his cousin’s tea-hour,
conscious of something in her voice and eye which solicited a word
apart; and as soon as the last visitor was gone Gerty opened her
case by asking how lately he had seen Miss Bart.

Selden’s perceptible pause gave her time for a slight stir of
surprise.

“I haven’t seen her at all—I’ve perpetually missed seeing her since
she came back.”

This unexpected admission made Gerty pause too; and she was still
hesitating on the brink of her subject when he relieved her by
adding: “I’ve wanted to see her—but she seems to have been absorbed
by the Gormer set since her return from Europe.”

“That’s all the more reason: she’s been very unhappy.”

“Unhappy at being with the Gormers?”

“Oh, I don’t defend her intimacy with the Gormers; but that too is
at an end now, I think. You know people have been very unkind since
Bertha Dorset quarrelled with her.”

“Ah——” Selden exclaimed, rising abruptly to walk to the window,
where he remained with his eyes on the darkening street while
his cousin continued to explain: “Judy Trenor and her own family
have deserted her too—and all because Bertha Dorset has said such
horrible things. And she is very poor—you know Mrs. Peniston cut
her off with a small legacy, after giving her to understand that
she was to have everything.”

“Yes—I know,” Selden assented curtly, turning back into the room,
but only to stir about with restless steps in the circumscribed
space between door and window. “Yes—she’s been abominably treated;
but it’s unfortunately the precise thing that a man who wants to
show his sympathy can’t say to her.”

His words caused Gerty a slight chill of disappointment. “There
would be other ways of showing your sympathy,” she suggested.

Selden, with a slight laugh, sat down beside her on the little sofa
which projected from the hearth. “What are you thinking of, you
incorrigible missionary?” he asked.

Gerty’s colour rose, and her blush was for a moment her only
answer. Then she made it more explicit by saying: “I am thinking of
the fact that you and she used to be great friends—that she used to
care immensely for what you thought of her—and that, if she takes
your staying away as a sign of what you think now, I can imagine
its adding a great deal to her unhappiness.”

“My dear child, don’t add to it still more—at least to
your conception of it—by attributing to her all sorts of
susceptibilities of your own.” Selden, for his life, could not
keep a note of dryness out of his voice; but he met Gerty’s look
of perplexity by saying more mildly: “But, though you immensely
exaggerate the importance of anything I could do for Miss Bart, you
can’t exaggerate my readiness to do it—if you ask me to.” He laid
his hand for a moment on hers, and there passed between them, on
the current of the rare contact, one of those exchanges of meaning
which fill the hidden reservoirs of affection. Gerty had the
feeling that he measured the cost of her request as plainly as she
read the significance of his reply; and the sense of all that was
suddenly clear between them made her next words easier to find.

“I do ask you, then; I ask you because she once told me that you
had been a help to her, and because she needs help now as she has
never needed it before. You know how dependent she has always been
on ease and luxury—how she has hated what was shabby and ugly and
uncomfortable. She can’t help it—she was brought up with those
ideas, and has never been able to find her way out of them. But
now all the things she cared for have been taken from her, and the
people who taught her to care for them have abandoned her too; and
it seems to me that if some one could reach out a hand and show her
the other side—show her how much is left in life and in herself——”
Gerty broke off, abashed at the sound of her own eloquence, and
impeded by the difficulty of giving precise expression to her vague
yearning for her friend’s retrieval. “I can’t help her myself:
she’s passed out of my reach,” she continued. “I think she’s afraid
of being a burden to me. When she was last here, two weeks ago, she
seemed dreadfully worried about her future: she said Carry Fisher
was trying to find something for her to do. A few days later she
wrote me that she had taken a position as private secretary, and
that I was not to be anxious, for everything was all right, and
she would come in and tell me about it when she had time; but she
has never come, and I don’t like to go to her, because I am afraid
of forcing myself on her when I’m not wanted. Once, when we were
children, and I had rushed up after a long separation, and thrown
my arms about her, she said: ‘Please don’t kiss me unless I ask you
to, Gerty’—and she DID ask me, a minute later; but since then I’ve
always waited to be asked.”

Selden had listened in silence, with the concentrated look which
his thin dark face could assume when he wished to guard it against
any involuntary change of expression. When his cousin ended, he
said with a slight smile: “Since you’ve learned the wisdom of
waiting, I don’t see why you urge me to rush in—” but the troubled
appeal of her eyes made him add, as he rose to take leave: “Still,
I’ll do what you wish, and not hold you responsible for my failure.”

Selden’s avoidance of Miss Bart had not been as unintentional as he
had allowed his cousin to think. At first, indeed, while the memory
of their last hour at Monte Carlo still held the full heat of his
indignation, he had anxiously watched for her return; but she had
disappointed him by lingering in England, and when she finally
reappeared it happened that business had called him to the West,
whence he came back only to learn that she was starting for Alaska
with the Gormers. The revelation of this suddenly-established
intimacy effectually chilled his desire to see her. If, at a moment
when her whole life seemed to be breaking up, she could cheerfully
commit its reconstruction to the Gormers, there was no reason why
such accidents should ever strike her as irreparable. Every step
she took seemed in fact to carry her farther from the region where,
once or twice, he and she had met for an illumined moment; and the
recognition of this fact, when its first pang had been surmounted,
produced in him a sense of negative relief. It was much simpler for
him to judge Miss Bart by her habitual conduct than by the rare
deviations from it which had thrown her so disturbingly in his way;
and every act of hers which made the recurrence of such deviations
more unlikely, confirmed the sense of relief with which he returned
to the conventional view of her.

But Gerty Farish’s words had sufficed to make him see how little
this view was really his, and how impossible it was for him to live
quietly with the thought of Lily Bart. To hear that she was in
need of help—even such vague help as he could offer—was to be at
once repossessed by that thought; and by the time he reached the
street he had sufficiently convinced himself of the urgency of his
cousin’s appeal to turn his steps directly toward Lily’s hotel.

There his zeal met a check in the unforeseen news that Miss Bart
had moved away; but, on his pressing his enquiries, the clerk
remembered that she had left an address, for which he presently
began to search through his books.

It was certainly strange that she should have taken this step
without letting Gerty Farish know of her decision; and Selden
waited with a vague sense of uneasiness while the address was
sought for. The process lasted long enough for uneasiness to turn
to apprehension; but when at length a slip of paper was handed him,
and he read on it: “Care of Mrs. Norma Hatch, Emporium Hotel,” his
apprehension passed into an incredulous stare, and this into the
gesture of disgust with which he tore the paper in two, and turned
to walk quickly homeward.




Chapter 9


When Lily woke on the morning after her translation to the Emporium
Hotel, her first feeling was one of purely physical satisfaction.
The force of contrast gave an added keenness to the luxury of lying
once more in a soft-pillowed bed, and looking across a spacious
sunlit room at a breakfast-table set invitingly near the fire.
Analysis and introspection might come later; but for the moment
she was not even troubled by the excesses of the upholstery or
the restless convolutions of the furniture. The sense of being
once more lapped and folded in ease, as in some dense mild medium
impenetrable to discomfort, effectually stilled the faintest note
of criticism.

When, the afternoon before, she had presented herself to the lady
to whom Carry Fisher had directed her, she had been conscious of
entering a new world. Carry’s vague presentment of Mrs. Norma
Hatch (whose reversion to her Christian name was explained as the
result of her latest divorce), left her under the implication
of coming “from the West,” with the not unusual extenuation of
having brought a great deal of money with her. She was, in short,
rich, helpless, unplaced: the very subject for Lily’s hand. Mrs.
Fisher had not specified the line her friend was to take; she
owned herself unacquainted with Mrs. Hatch, whom she “knew about”
through Melville Stancy, a lawyer in his leisure moments, and the
Falstaff of a certain section of festive club life. Socially, Mr.
Stancy might have been said to form a connecting link between the
Gormer world and the more dimly-lit region on which Miss Bart
now found herself entering. It was, however, only figuratively
that the illumination of Mrs. Hatch’s world could be described as
dim: in actual fact, Lily found her seated in a blaze of electric
light, impartially projected from various ornamental excrescences
on a vast concavity of pink damask and gilding, from which she
rose like Venus from her shell. The analogy was justified by the
appearance of the lady, whose large-eyed prettiness had the fixity
of something impaled and shown under glass. This did not preclude
the immediate discovery that she was some years younger than her
visitor, and that under her showiness, her ease, the aggression of
her dress and voice, there persisted that ineradicable innocence
which, in ladies of her nationality, so curiously coexists with
startling extremes of experience.

The environment in which Lily found herself was as strange to her
as its inhabitants. She was unacquainted with the world of the
fashionable New York hotel—a world over-heated, over-upholstered,
and over-fitted with mechanical appliances for the gratification
of fantastic requirements, while the comforts of a civilized life
were as unattainable as in a desert. Through this atmosphere of
torrid splendour moved wan beings as richly upholstered as the
furniture, beings without definite pursuits or permanent relations,
who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity from restaurant to
concert-hall, from palm-garden to music-room, from “art exhibit” to
dress-maker’s opening. High-stepping horses or elaborately equipped
motors waited to carry these ladies into vague metropolitan
distances, whence they returned, still more wan from the weight of
their sables, to be sucked back into the stifling inertia of the
hotel routine. Somewhere behind them, in the background of their
lives, there was doubtless a real past, peopled by real human
activities: they themselves were probably the product of strong
ambitions, persistent energies, diversified contacts with the
wholesome roughness of life; yet they had no more real existence
than the poet’s shades in limbo.

Lily had not been long in this pallid world without discovering
that Mrs. Hatch was its most substantial figure. That lady, though
still floating in the void, showed faint symptoms of developing
an outline; and in this endeavour she was actively seconded by
Mr. Melville Stancy. It was Mr. Stancy, a man of large resounding
presence, suggestive of convivial occasions and of a chivalry
finding expression in “first-night” boxes and thousand dollar
bonbonnieres, who had transplanted Mrs. Hatch from the scene of
her first development to the higher stage of hotel life in the
metropolis. It was he who had selected the horses with which she
had taken the blue ribbon at the Show, had introduced her to the
photographer whose portraits of her formed the recurring ornament
of “Sunday Supplements,” and had got together the group which
constituted her social world. It was a small group still, with
heterogeneous figures suspended in large unpeopled spaces; but Lily
did not take long to learn that its regulation was no longer in Mr.
Stancy’s hands. As often happens, the pupil had outstripped the
teacher, and Mrs. Hatch was already aware of heights of elegance
as well as depths of luxury beyond the world of the Emporium. This
discovery at once produced in her a craving for higher guidance,
for the adroit feminine hand which should give the right turn
to her correspondence, the right “look” to her hats, the right
succession to the items of her MENUS. It was, in short, as the
regulator of a germinating social life that Miss Bart’s guidance
was required; her ostensible duties as secretary being restricted
by the fact that Mrs. Hatch, as yet, knew hardly any one to write
to.

The daily details of Mrs. Hatch’s existence were as strange to
Lily as its general tenor. The lady’s habits were marked by an
Oriental indolence and disorder peculiarly trying to her companion.
Mrs. Hatch and her friends seemed to float together outside the
bounds of time and space. No definite hours were kept; no fixed
obligations existed: night and day flowed into one another in a
blur of confused and retarded engagements, so that one had the
impression of lunching at the tea-hour, while dinner was often
merged in the noisy after-theatre supper which prolonged Mrs.
Hatch’s vigil till daylight.

Through this jumble of futile activities came and went a strange
throng of hangers-on—manicures, beauty-doctors, hair-dressers,
teachers of bridge, of French, of “physical development”: figures
sometimes indistinguishable, by their appearance, or by Mrs.
Hatch’s relation to them, from the visitors constituting her
recognized society. But strangest of all to Lily was the encounter,
in this latter group, of several of her acquaintances. She had
supposed, and not without relief, that she was passing, for the
moment, completely out of her own circle; but she found that Mr.
Stancy, one side of whose sprawling existence overlapped the
edge of Mrs. Fisher’s world, had drawn several of its brightest
ornaments into the circle of the Emporium. To find Ned Silverton
among the habitual frequenters of Mrs. Hatch’s drawing-room
was one of Lily’s first astonishments; but she soon discovered
that he was not Mr. Stancy’s most important recruit. It was on
little Freddy Van Osburgh, the small slim heir of the Van Osburgh
millions, that the attention of Mrs. Hatch’s group was centred.
Freddy, barely out of college, had risen above the horizon since
Lily’s eclipse, and she now saw with surprise what an effulgence he
shed on the outer twilight of Mrs. Hatch’s existence. This, then,
was one of the things that young men “went in” for when released
from the official social routine; this was the kind of “previous
engagement” that so frequently caused them to disappoint the hopes
of anxious hostesses. Lily had an odd sense of being behind the
social tapestry, on the side where the threads were knotted and
the loose ends hung. For a moment she found a certain amusement in
the show, and in her own share of it: the situation had an ease
and unconventionality distinctly refreshing after her experience
of the irony of conventions. But these flashes of amusement were
but brief reactions from the long disgust of her days. Compared
with the vast gilded void of Mrs. Hatch’s existence, the life of
Lily’s former friends seemed packed with ordered activities. Even
the most irresponsible pretty woman of her acquaintance had her
inherited obligations, her conventional benevolences, her share in
the working of the great civic machine; and all hung together in
the solidarity of these traditional functions. The performance of
specific duties would have simplified Miss Bart’s position; but the
vague attendance on Mrs. Hatch was not without its perplexities.

It was not her employer who created these perplexities. Mrs.
Hatch showed from the first an almost touching desire for Lily’s
approval. Far from asserting the superiority of wealth, her
beautiful eyes seemed to urge the plea of inexperience: she wanted
to do what was “nice,” to be taught how to be “lovely.” The
difficulty was to find any point of contact between her ideals and
Lily’s.

Mrs. Hatch swam in a haze of indeterminate enthusiasms, of
aspirations culled from the stage, the newspapers, the fashion
journals, and a gaudy world of sport still more completely beyond
her companion’s ken. To separate from these confused conceptions
those most likely to advance the lady on her way, was Lily’s
obvious duty; but its performance was hampered by rapidly-growing
doubts. Lily was in fact becoming more and more aware of a certain
ambiguity in her situation. It was not that she had, in the
conventional sense, any doubt of Mrs. Hatch’s irreproachableness.
The lady’s offences were always against taste rather than conduct;
her divorce record seemed due to geographical rather than ethical
conditions; and her worst laxities were likely to proceed from
a wandering and extravagant good-nature. But if Lily did not
mind her detaining her manicure for luncheon, or offering the
“Beauty-Doctor” a seat in Freddy Van Osburgh’s box at the play,
she was not equally at ease in regard to some less apparent lapses
from convention. Ned Silverton’s relation to Stancy seemed, for
instance, closer and less clear than any natural affinities would
warrant; and both appeared united in the effort to cultivate Freddy
Van Osburgh’s growing taste for Mrs. Hatch. There was as yet
nothing definable in the situation, which might well resolve itself
into a huge joke on the part of the other two; but Lily had a vague
sense that the subject of their experiment was too young, too rich
and too credulous. Her embarrassment was increased by the fact that
Freddy seemed to regard her as cooperating with himself in the
social development of Mrs. Hatch: a view that suggested, on his
part, a permanent interest in the lady’s future. There were moments
when Lily found an ironic amusement in this aspect of the case. The
thought of launching such a missile as Mrs. Hatch at the perfidious
bosom of society was not without its charm: Miss Bart had even
beguiled her leisure with visions of the fair Norma introduced for
the first time to a family banquet at the Van Osburghs’. But the
thought of being personally connected with the transaction was less
agreeable; and her momentary flashes of amusement were followed by
increasing periods of doubt.

The sense of these doubts was uppermost when, late one afternoon,
she was surprised by a visit from Lawrence Selden. He found her
alone in the wilderness of pink damask, for in Mrs. Hatch’s world
the tea-hour was not dedicated to social rites, and the lady was in
the hands of her masseuse.

Selden’s entrance had caused Lily an inward start of embarrassment;
but his air of constraint had the effect of restoring her
self-possession, and she took at once the tone of surprise and
pleasure, wondering frankly that he should have traced her to so
unlikely a place, and asking what had inspired him to make the
search.

Selden met this with an unusual seriousness: she had never seen him
so little master of the situation, so plainly at the mercy of any
obstructions she might put in his way. “I wanted to see you,” he
said; and she could not resist observing in reply that he had kept
his wishes under remarkable control. She had in truth felt his long
absence as one of the chief bitternesses of the last months: his
desertion had wounded sensibilities far below the surface of her
pride.

Selden met the challenge with directness. “Why should I have come,
unless I thought I could be of use to you? It is my only excuse for
imagining you could want me.”

This struck her as a clumsy evasion, and the thought gave a flash
of keenness to her answer. “Then you have come now because you
think you can be of use to me?”

He hesitated again. “Yes: in the modest capacity of a person to
talk things over with.”

For a clever man it was certainly a stupid beginning; and the
idea that his awkwardness was due to the fear of her attaching a
personal significance to his visit, chilled her pleasure in seeing
him. Even under the most adverse conditions, that pleasure always
made itself felt: she might hate him, but she had never been able
to wish him out of the room. She was very near hating him now;
yet the sound of his voice, the way the light fell on his thin
dark hair, the way he sat and moved and wore his clothes—she was
conscious that even these trivial things were inwoven with her
deepest life. In his presence a sudden stillness came upon her, and
the turmoil of her spirit ceased; but an impulse of resistance to
this stealing influence now prompted her to say: “It’s very good of
you to present yourself in that capacity; but what makes you think
I have anything particular to talk about?”

Though she kept the even tone of light intercourse, the question
was framed in a way to remind him that his good offices were
unsought; and for a moment Selden was checked by it. The situation
between them was one which could have been cleared up only by a
sudden explosion of feeling; and their whole training and habit
of mind were against the chances of such an explosion. Selden’s
calmness seemed rather to harden into resistance, and Miss Bart’s
into a surface of glittering irony, as they faced each other from
the opposite corners of one of Mrs. Hatch’s elephantine sofas. The
sofa in question, and the apartment peopled by its monstrous mates,
served at length to suggest the turn of Selden’s reply.

“Gerty told me that you were acting as Mrs. Hatch’s secretary; and
I knew she was anxious to hear how you were getting on.”

Miss Bart received this explanation without perceptible softening.
“Why didn’t she look me up herself, then?” she asked.

“Because, as you didn’t send her your address, she was afraid of
being importunate.” Selden continued with a smile: “You see no such
scruples restrained me; but then I haven’t as much to risk if I
incur your displeasure.”

Lily answered his smile. “You haven’t incurred it as yet; but I
have an idea that you are going to.”

“That rests with you, doesn’t it? You see my initiative doesn’t go
beyond putting myself at your disposal.”

“But in what capacity? What am I to do with you?” she asked in the
same light tone.

Selden again glanced about Mrs. Hatch’s drawing-room; then he said,
with a decision which he seemed to have gathered from this final
inspection: “You are to let me take you away from here.”

Lily flushed at the suddenness of the attack; then she stiffened
under it and said coldly: “And may I ask where you mean me to go?”

“Back to Gerty in the first place, if you will; the essential thing
is that it should be away from here.”

The unusual harshness of his tone might have shown her how much the
words cost him; but she was in no state to measure his feelings
while her own were in a flame of revolt. To neglect her, perhaps
even to avoid her, at a time when she had most need of her friends,
and then suddenly and unwarrantably to break into her life with
this strange assumption of authority, was to rouse in her every
instinct of pride and self-defence.

“I am very much obliged to you,” she said, “for taking such an
interest in my plans; but I am quite contented where I am, and have
no intention of leaving.”

Selden had risen, and was standing before her in an attitude of
uncontrollable expectancy.

“That simply means that you don’t know where you are!” he exclaimed.

Lily rose also, with a quick flash of anger. “If you have come here
to say disagreeable things about Mrs. Hatch——”

“It is only with your relation to Mrs. Hatch that I am concerned.”

“My relation to Mrs. Hatch is one I have no reason to be ashamed
of. She has helped me to earn a living when my old friends were
quite resigned to seeing me starve.”

“Nonsense! Starvation is not the only alternative. You know you can
always find a home with Gerty till you are independent again.”

“You show such an intimate acquaintance with my affairs that I
suppose you mean—till my aunt’s legacy is paid?”

“I do mean that; Gerty told me of it,” Selden acknowledged without
embarrassment. He was too much in earnest now to feel any false
constraint in speaking his mind.

“But Gerty does not happen to know,” Miss Bart rejoined, “that I
owe every penny of that legacy.”

“Good God!” Selden exclaimed, startled out of his composure by the
abruptness of the statement.

“Every penny of it, and more too,” Lily repeated; “and you now
perhaps see why I prefer to remain with Mrs. Hatch rather than take
advantage of Gerty’s kindness. I have no money left, except my
small income, and I must earn something more to keep myself alive.”

Selden hesitated a moment; then he rejoined in a quieter tone:
“But with your income and Gerty’s—since you allow me to go so
far into the details of the situation—you and she could surely
contrive a life together which would put you beyond the need of
having to support yourself. Gerty, I know, is eager to make such an
arrangement, and would be quite happy in it——”

“But I should not,” Miss Bart interposed. “There are many reasons
why it would be neither kind to Gerty nor wise for myself.” She
paused a moment, and as he seemed to await a farther explanation,
added with a quick lift of her head: “You will perhaps excuse me
from giving you these reasons.”

“I have no claim to know them,” Selden answered, ignoring her tone;
“no claim to offer any comment or suggestion beyond the one I have
already made. And my right to make that is simply the universal
right of a man to enlighten a woman when he sees her unconsciously
placed in a false position.”

Lily smiled. “I suppose,” she rejoined, “that by a false position
you mean one outside of what we call society; but you must remember
that I had been excluded from those sacred precincts long before
I met Mrs. Hatch. As far as I can see, there is very little real
difference in being inside or out, and I remember your once telling
me that it was only those inside who took the difference seriously.”

She had not been without intention in making this allusion to their
memorable talk at Bellomont, and she waited with an odd tremor of
the nerves to see what response it would bring; but the result of
the experiment was disappointing. Selden did not allow the allusion
to deflect him from his point; he merely said with completer
fulness of emphasis: “The question of being inside or out is, as
you say, a small one, and it happens to have nothing to do with the
case, except in so far as Mrs. Hatch’s desire to be inside may put
you in the position I call false.”

In spite of the moderation of his tone, each word he spoke had the
effect of confirming Lily’s resistance. The very apprehensions he
aroused hardened her against him: she had been on the alert for the
note of personal sympathy, for any sign of recovered power over
him; and his attitude of sober impartiality, the absence of all
response to her appeal, turned her hurt pride to blind resentment
of his interference. The conviction that he had been sent by Gerty,
and that, whatever straits he conceived her to be in, he would
never voluntarily have come to her aid, strengthened her resolve
not to admit him a hair’s breadth farther into her confidence.
However doubtful she might feel her situation to be, she would
rather persist in darkness than owe her enlightenment to Selden.

“I don’t know,” she said, when he had ceased to speak, “why you
imagine me to be situated as you describe; but as you have always
told me that the sole object of a bringing-up like mine was to
teach a girl to get what she wants, why not assume that that is
precisely what I am doing?”

The smile with which she summed up her case was like a clear
barrier raised against farther confidences: its brightness held
him at such a distance that he had a sense of being almost out of
hearing as he rejoined: “I am not sure that I have ever called you
a successful example of that kind of bringing-up.”

Her colour rose a little at the implication, but she steeled
herself with a light laugh. “Ah, wait a little longer—give me a
little more time before you decide!” And as he wavered before her,
still watching for a break in the impenetrable front she presented:
“Don’t give me up; I may still do credit to my training!” she
affirmed.




Chapter 10


“Look at those spangles, Miss Bart—every one of ’em sewed on
crooked.”

The tall forewoman, a pinched perpendicular figure, dropped the
condemned structure of wire and net on the table at Lily’s side,
and passed on to the next figure in the line.

There were twenty of them in the work-room, their fagged profiles,
under exaggerated hair, bowed in the harsh north light above
the utensils of their art; for it was something more than an
industry, surely, this creation of ever-varied settings for the
face of fortunate womanhood. Their own faces were sallow with the
unwholesomeness of hot air and sedentary toil, rather than with any
actual signs of want: they were employed in a fashionable millinery
establishment, and were fairly well clothed and well paid; but the
youngest among them was as dull and colourless as the middle-aged.
In the whole work-room there was only one skin beneath which the
blood still visibly played; and that now burned with vexation as
Miss Bart, under the lash of the forewoman’s comment, began to
strip the hat-frame of its over-lapping spangles.

To Gerty Farish’s hopeful spirit a solution appeared to have been
reached when she remembered how beautifully Lily could trim hats.
Instances of young lady-milliners establishing themselves under
fashionable patronage, and imparting to their “creations” that
indefinable touch which the professional hand can never give, had
flattered Gerty’s visions of the future, and convinced even Lily
that her separation from Mrs. Norma Hatch need not reduce her to
dependence on her friends.

The parting had occurred a few weeks after Selden’s visit, and
would have taken place sooner had it not been for the resistance
set up in Lily by his ill-starred offer of advice. The sense of
being involved in a transaction she would not have cared to examine
too closely had soon afterward defined itself in the light of a
hint from Mr. Stancy that, if she “saw them through,” she would
have no reason to be sorry. The implication that such loyalty would
meet with a direct reward had hastened her flight, and flung her
back, ashamed and penitent, on the broad bosom of Gerty’s sympathy.
She did not, however, propose to lie there prone, and Gerty’s
inspiration about the hats at once revived her hopes of profitable
activity. Here was, after all, something that her charming listless
hands could really do; she had no doubt of their capacity for
knotting a ribbon or placing a flower to advantage. And of course
only these finishing touches would be expected of her: subordinate
fingers, blunt, grey, needle-pricked fingers, would prepare the
shapes and stitch the linings, while she presided over the charming
little front shop—a shop all white panels, mirrors, and moss-green
hangings—where her finished creations, hats, wreaths, aigrettes
and the rest, perched on their stands like birds just poising for
flight.

But at the very outset of Gerty’s campaign this vision of the
green-and-white shop had been dispelled. Other young ladies of
fashion had been thus “set up,” selling their hats by the mere
attraction of a name and the reputed knack of tying a bow; but
these privileged beings could command a faith in their powers
materially expressed by the readiness to pay their shop-rent and
advance a handsome sum for current expenses. Where was Lily to
find such support? And even could it have been found, how were
the ladies on whose approval she depended to be induced to give
her their patronage? Gerty learned that whatever sympathy her
friend’s case might have excited a few months since had been
imperilled, if not lost, by her association with Mrs. Hatch. Once
again, Lily had withdrawn from an ambiguous situation in time to
save her self-respect, but too late for public vindication. Freddy
Van Osburgh was not to marry Mrs. Hatch; he had been rescued at
the eleventh hour—some said by the efforts of Gus Trenor and
Rosedale—and despatched to Europe with old Ned Van Alstyne; but the
risk he had run would always be ascribed to Miss Bart’s connivance,
and would somehow serve as a summing-up and corroboration of the
vague general distrust of her. It was a relief to those who had
hung back from her to find themselves thus justified, and they were
inclined to insist a little on her connection with the Hatch case
in order to show that they had been right.

Gerty’s quest, at any rate, brought up against a solid wall of
resistance; and even when Carry Fisher, momentarily penitent
for her share in the Hatch affair, joined her efforts to Miss
Farish’s, they met with no better success. Gerty had tried to veil
her failure in tender ambiguities; but Carry, always the soul of
candour, put the case squarely to her friend.

“I went straight to Judy Trenor; she has fewer prejudices than the
others, and besides she’s always hated Bertha Dorset. But what HAVE
you done to her, Lily? At the very first word about giving you a
start she flamed out about some money you’d got from Gus; I never
knew her so hot before. You know she’ll let him do anything but
spend money on his friends: the only reason she’s decent to me now
is that she knows I’m not hard up.—He speculated for you, you say?
Well, what’s the harm? He had no business to lose. He DIDN’T lose?
Then what on earth—but I never COULD understand you, Lily!”

The end of it was that, after anxious enquiry and much
deliberation, Mrs. Fisher and Gerty, for once oddly united in
their effort to help their friend, decided on placing her in the
work-room of Mme. Regina’s renowned millinery establishment. Even
this arrangement was not effected without considerable negotiation,
for Mme. Regina had a strong prejudice against untrained
assistance, and was induced to yield only by the fact that she
owed the patronage of Mrs. Bry and Mrs. Gormer to Carry Fisher’s
influence. She had been willing from the first to employ Lily in
the show-room: as a displayer of hats, a fashionable beauty might
be a valuable asset. But to this suggestion Miss Bart opposed a
negative which Gerty emphatically supported, while Mrs. Fisher,
inwardly unconvinced, but resigned to this latest proof of Lily’s
unreason, agreed that perhaps in the end it would be more useful
that she should learn the trade. To Regina’s work-room Lily was
therefore committed by her friends, and there Mrs. Fisher left her
with a sigh of relief, while Gerty’s watchfulness continued to
hover over her at a distance.

Lily had taken up her work early in January: it was now two months
later, and she was still being rebuked for her inability to sew
spangles on a hat-frame. As she returned to her work she heard
a titter pass down the tables. She knew she was an object of
criticism and amusement to the other work-women. They were, of
course, aware of her history—the exact situation of every girl
in the room was known and freely discussed by all the others—but
the knowledge did not produce in them any awkward sense of class
distinction: it merely explained why her untutored fingers were
still blundering over the rudiments of the trade. Lily had no
desire that they should recognize any social difference in her; but
she had hoped to be received as their equal, and perhaps before
long to show herself their superior by a special deftness of touch,
and it was humiliating to find that, after two months of drudgery,
she still betrayed her lack of early training. Remote was the day
when she might aspire to exercise the talents she felt confident
of possessing; only experienced workers were entrusted with the
delicate art of shaping and trimming the hat, and the forewoman
still held her inexorably to the routine of preparatory work.

She began to rip the spangles from the frame, listening absently to
the buzz of talk which rose and fell with the coming and going of
Miss Haines’s active figure. The air was closer than usual, because
Miss Haines, who had a cold, had not allowed a window to be opened
even during the noon recess; and Lily’s head was so heavy with the
weight of a sleepless night that the chatter of her companions had
the incoherence of a dream.

“I TOLD her he’d never look at her again; and he didn’t. I wouldn’t
have, either—I think she acted real mean to him. He took her to
the Arion Ball, and had a hack for her both ways.... She’s taken
ten bottles, and her headaches don’t seem no better—but she’s
written a testimonial to say the first bottle cured her, and she
got five dollars and her picture in the paper.... Mrs. Trenor’s
hat? The one with the green Paradise? Here, Miss Haines—it’ll be
ready right off.... That was one of the Trenor girls here yesterday
with Mrs. George Dorset. How’d I know? Why, Madam sent for me to
alter the flower in that Virot hat—the blue tulle: she’s tall and
slight, with her hair fuzzed out—a good deal like Mamie Leach, on’y
thinner....”

On and on it flowed, a current of meaningless sound, on which,
startlingly enough, a familiar name now and then floated to the
surface. It was the strangest part of Lily’s strange experience,
the hearing of these names, the seeing the fragmentary and
distorted image of the world she had lived in reflected in the
mirror of the working-girls’ minds. She had never before suspected
the mixture of insatiable curiosity and contemptuous freedom with
which she and her kind were discussed in this underworld of toilers
who lived on their vanity and self-indulgence. Every girl in Mme.
Regina’s work-room knew to whom the headgear in her hands was
destined, and had her opinion of its future wearer, and a definite
knowledge of the latter’s place in the social system. That Lily
was a star fallen from that sky did not, after the first stir of
curiosity had subsided, materially add to their interest in her.
She had fallen, she had “gone under,” and true to the ideal of
their race, they were awed only by success—by the gross tangible
image of material achievement. The consciousness of her different
point of view merely kept them at a little distance from her, as
though she were a foreigner with whom it was an effort to talk.

“Miss Bart, if you can’t sew those spangles on more regular I guess
you’d better give the hat to Miss Kilroy.”

Lily looked down ruefully at her handiwork. The forewoman was
right: the sewing on of the spangles was inexcusably bad. What
made her so much more clumsy than usual? Was it a growing distaste
for her task, or actual physical disability? She felt tired and
confused: it was an effort to put her thoughts together. She rose
and handed the hat to Miss Kilroy, who took it with a suppressed
smile.

“I’m sorry; I’m afraid I am not well,” she said to the forewoman.

Miss Haines offered no comment. From the first she had augured ill
of Mme. Regina’s consenting to include a fashionable apprentice
among her workers. In that temple of art no raw beginners were
wanted, and Miss Haines would have been more than human had she not
taken a certain pleasure in seeing her forebodings confirmed.

“You’d better go back to binding edges,” she said drily. Lily
slipped out last among the band of liberated work-women. She
did not care to be mingled in their noisy dispersal: once in
the street, she always felt an irresistible return to her old
standpoint, an instinctive shrinking from all that was unpolished
and promiscuous. In the days—how distant they now seemed!—when she
had visited the Girls’ Club with Gerty Farish, she had felt an
enlightened interest in the working-classes; but that was because
she looked down on them from above, from the happy altitude of her
grace and her beneficence. Now that she was on a level with them,
the point of view was less interesting.

She felt a touch on her arm, and met the penitent eye of Miss
Kilroy. “Miss Bart, I guess you can sew those spangles on as well
as I can when you’re feeling right. Miss Haines didn’t act fair to
you.”

Lily’s colour rose at the unexpected advance: it was a long time
since real kindness had looked at her from any eyes but Gerty’s.

“Oh, thank you: I’m not particularly well, but Miss Haines was
right. I AM clumsy.”

“Well, it’s mean work for anybody with a headache.” Miss Kilroy
paused irresolutely. “You ought to go right home and lay down. Ever
try orangeine?”

“Thank you.” Lily held out her hand. “It’s very kind of you—I mean
to go home.”

She looked gratefully at Miss Kilroy, but neither knew what more
to say. Lily was aware that the other was on the point of offering
to go home with her, but she wanted to be alone and silent—even
kindness, the sort of kindness that Miss Kilroy could give, would
have jarred on her just then.

“Thank you,” she repeated as she turned away.

She struck westward through the dreary March twilight, toward
the street where her boarding-house stood. She had resolutely
refused Gerty’s offer of hospitality. Something of her mother’s
fierce shrinking from observation and sympathy was beginning to
develop in her, and the promiscuity of small quarters and close
intimacy seemed, on the whole, less endurable than the solitude of
a hall bedroom in a house where she could come and go unremarked
among other workers. For a while she had been sustained by this
desire for privacy and independence; but now, perhaps from
increasing physical weariness, the lassitude brought about by
hours of unwonted confinement, she was beginning to feel acutely
the ugliness and discomfort of her surroundings. The day’s task
done, she dreaded to return to her narrow room, with its blotched
wall-paper and shabby paint; and she hated every step of the walk
thither, through the degradation of a New York street in the last
stages of decline from fashion to commerce.

But what she dreaded most of all was having to pass the chemist’s
at the corner of Sixth Avenue. She had meant to take another
street: she had usually done so of late. But today her steps were
irresistibly drawn toward the flaring plate-glass corner; she tried
to take the lower crossing, but a laden dray crowded her back, and
she struck across the street obliquely, reaching the sidewalk just
opposite the chemist’s door.

Over the counter she caught the eye of the clerk who had waited
on her before, and slipped the prescription into his hand. There
could be no question about the prescription: it was a copy of one
of Mrs. Hatch’s, obligingly furnished by that lady’s chemist. Lily
was confident that the clerk would fill it without hesitation;
yet the nervous dread of a refusal, or even of an expression of
doubt, communicated itself to her restless hands as she affected to
examine the bottles of perfume stacked on the glass case before her.

The clerk had read the prescription without comment; but in the act
of handing out the bottle he paused.

“You don’t want to increase the dose, you know,” he remarked.
Lily’s heart contracted.

What did he mean by looking at her in that way?

“Of course not,” she murmured, holding out her hand.

“That’s all right: it’s a queer-acting drug. A drop or two more,
and off you go—the doctors don’t know why.”

The dread lest he should question her, or keep the bottle back,
choked the murmur of acquiescence in her throat; and when at length
she emerged safely from the shop she was almost dizzy with the
intensity of her relief. The mere touch of the packet thrilled her
tired nerves with the delicious promise of a night of sleep, and in
the reaction from her momentary fear she felt as if the first fumes
of drowsiness were already stealing over her.

In her confusion she stumbled against a man who was hurrying down
the last steps of the elevated station. He drew back, and she heard
her name uttered with surprise. It was Rosedale, fur-coated, glossy
and prosperous—but why did she seem to see him so far off, and as
if through a mist of splintered crystals? Before she could account
for the phenomenon she found herself shaking hands with him. They
had parted with scorn on her side and anger upon his; but all trace
of these emotions seemed to vanish as their hands met, and she was
only aware of a confused wish that she might continue to hold fast
to him.

“Why, what’s the matter, Miss Lily? You’re not well!” he exclaimed;
and she forced her lips into a pallid smile of reassurance.

“I’m a little tired—it’s nothing. Stay with me a moment, please,”
she faltered. That she should be asking this service of Rosedale!

He glanced at the dirty and unpropitious corner on which they
stood, with the shriek of the “elevated” and the tumult of trams
and waggons contending hideously in their ears.

“We can’t stay here; but let me take you somewhere for a cup of
tea. The LONGWORTH is only a few yards off, and there’ll be no one
there at this hour.”

A cup of tea in quiet, somewhere out of the noise and ugliness,
seemed for the moment the one solace she could bear. A few steps
brought them to the ladies’ door of the hotel he had named, and
a moment later he was seated opposite to her, and the waiter had
placed the tea-tray between them.

“Not a drop of brandy or whiskey first? You look regularly done up,
Miss Lily. Well, take your tea strong, then; and, waiter, get a
cushion for the lady’s back.”

Lily smiled faintly at the injunction to take her tea strong.
It was the temptation she was always struggling to resist. Her
craving for the keen stimulant was forever conflicting with that
other craving for sleep—the midnight craving which only the little
phial in her hand could still. But today, at any rate, the tea
could hardly be too strong: she counted on it to pour warmth and
resolution into her empty veins.

As she leaned back before him, her lids drooping in utter
lassitude, though the first warm draught already tinged her face
with returning life, Rosedale was seized afresh by the poignant
surprise of her beauty. The dark pencilling of fatigue under her
eyes, the morbid blue-veined pallor of the temples, brought out the
brightness of her hair and lips, as though all her ebbing vitality
were centred there. Against the dull chocolate-coloured background
of the restaurant, the purity of her head stood out as it had
never done in the most brightly lit ball-room. He looked at her
with a startled uncomfortable feeling, as though her beauty were a
forgotten enemy that had lain in ambush and now sprang out on him
unawares.

To clear the air he tried to take an easy tone with her. “Why, Miss
Lily, I haven’t seen you for an age. I didn’t know what had become
of you.”

As he spoke, he was checked by an embarrassing sense of the
complications to which this might lead. Though he had not seen her
he had heard of her; he knew of her connection with Mrs. Hatch, and
of the talk resulting from it. Mrs. Hatch’s MILIEU was one which he
had once assiduously frequented, and now as devoutly shunned.

Lily, to whom the tea had restored her usual clearness of mind, saw
what was in his thoughts and said with a slight smile: “You would
not be likely to know about me. I have joined the working-classes.”

He stared in genuine wonder. “You don’t mean—? Why, what on earth
are you doing?”

“Learning to be a milliner—at least TRYING to learn,” she hastily
qualified the statement.

Rosedale suppressed a low whistle of surprise. “Come off—you ain’t
serious, are you?”

“Perfectly serious. I’m obliged to work for my living.”

“But I understood—I thought you were with Norma Hatch.”

“You heard I had gone to her as her secretary?”

“Something of the kind, I believe.” He leaned forward to refill her
cup.

Lily guessed the possibilities of embarrassment which the topic
held for him, and raising her eyes to his, she said suddenly: “I
left her two months ago.”

Rosedale continued to fumble awkwardly with the tea-pot, and she
felt sure that he had heard what had been said of her. But what was
there that Rosedale did not hear?

“Wasn’t it a soft berth?” he enquired, with an attempt at lightness.

“Too soft—one might have sunk in too deep.” Lily rested one arm on
the edge of the table, and sat looking at him more intently than
she had ever looked before. An uncontrollable impulse was urging
her to put her case to this man, from whose curiosity she had
always so fiercely defended herself.

“You know Mrs. Hatch, I think? Well, perhaps you can understand
that she might make things too easy for one.”

Rosedale looked faintly puzzled, and she remembered that
allusiveness was lost on him.

“It was no place for you, anyhow,” he agreed, so suffused and
immersed in the light of her full gaze that he found himself being
drawn into strange depths of intimacy. He who had had to subsist
on mere fugitive glances, looks winged in flight and swiftly lost
under covert, now found her eyes settling on him with a brooding
intensity that fairly dazzled him.

“I left,” Lily continued, “lest people should say I was helping
Mrs. Hatch to marry Freddy Van Osburgh—who is not in the least too
good for her—and as they still continue to say it, I see that I
might as well have stayed where I was.”

“Oh, Freddy——” Rosedale brushed aside the topic with an air of its
unimportance which gave a sense of the immense perspective he had
acquired. “Freddy don’t count—but I knew YOU weren’t mixed up in
that. It ain’t your style.”

Lily coloured slightly: she could not conceal from herself that
the words gave her pleasure. She would have liked to sit there,
drinking more tea, and continuing to talk of herself to Rosedale.
But the old habit of observing the conventions reminded her that it
was time to bring their colloquy to an end, and she made a faint
motion to push back her chair.

Rosedale stopped her with a protesting gesture. “Wait a
minute—don’t go yet; sit quiet and rest a little longer. You look
thoroughly played out. And you haven’t told me——” He broke off,
conscious of going farther than he had meant. She saw the struggle
and understood it; understood also the nature of the spell to which
he yielded as, with his eyes on her face, he began again abruptly:
“What on earth did you mean by saying just now that you were
learning to be a milliner?”

“Just what I said. I am an apprentice at Regina’s.”

“Good Lord—YOU? But what for? I knew your aunt had turned you down:
Mrs. Fisher told me about it. But I understood you got a legacy
from her——”

“I got ten thousand dollars; but the legacy is not to be paid till
next summer.”

“Well, but—look here: you could BORROW on it any time you wanted.”

She shook her head gravely. “No; for I owe it already.”

“Owe it? The whole ten thousand?”

“Every penny.” She paused, and then continued abruptly, with her
eyes on his face: “I think Gus Trenor spoke to you once about
having made some money for me in stocks.”

She waited, and Rosedale, congested with embarrassment, muttered
that he remembered something of the kind.

“He made about nine thousand dollars,” Lily pursued, in the same
tone of eager communicativeness. “At the time, I understood that
he was speculating with my own money: it was incredibly stupid of
me, but I knew nothing of business. Afterward I found out that he
had NOT used my money—that what he said he had made for me he had
really given me. It was meant in kindness, of course; but it was
not the sort of obligation one could remain under. Unfortunately
I had spent the money before I discovered my mistake; and so my
legacy will have to go to pay it back. That is the reason why I am
trying to learn a trade.”

She made the statement clearly, deliberately, with pauses between
the sentences, so that each should have time to sink deeply into
her hearer’s mind. She had a passionate desire that some one
should know the truth about this transaction, and also that the
rumour of her intention to repay the money should reach Judy
Trenor’s ears. And it had suddenly occurred to her that Rosedale,
who had surprised Trenor’s confidence, was the fitting person to
receive and transmit her version of the facts. She had even felt
a momentary exhilaration at the thought of thus relieving herself
of her detested secret; but the sensation gradually faded in the
telling, and as she ended her pallor was suffused with a deep blush
of misery.

Rosedale continued to stare at her in wonder; but the wonder took
the turn she had least expected.

“But see here—if that’s the case, it cleans you out altogether?”

He put it to her as if she had not grasped the consequences of her
act; as if her incorrigible ignorance of business were about to
precipitate her into a fresh act of folly.

“Altogether—yes,” she calmly agreed.

He sat silent, his thick hands clasped on the table, his little
puzzled eyes exploring the recesses of the deserted restaurant.

“See here—that’s fine,” he exclaimed abruptly.

Lily rose from her seat with a deprecating laugh. “Oh, no—it’s
merely a bore,” she asserted, gathering together the ends of her
feather scarf.

Rosedale remained seated, too intent on his thoughts to notice her
movement. “Miss Lily, if you want any backing—I like pluck——” broke
from him disconnectedly.

“Thank you.” She held out her hand. “Your tea has given me a
tremendous backing. I feel equal to anything now.”

Her gesture seemed to show a definite intention of dismissal, but
her companion had tossed a bill to the waiter, and was slipping his
short arms into his expensive overcoat.

“Wait a minute—you’ve got to let me walk home with you,” he said.

Lily uttered no protest, and when he had paused to make sure of
his change they emerged from the hotel and crossed Sixth Avenue
again. As she led the way westward past a long line of areas which,
through the distortion of their paintless rails, revealed with
increasing candour the DISJECTA MEMBRA of bygone dinners, Lily felt
that Rosedale was taking contemptuous note of the neighbourhood;
and before the doorstep at which she finally paused he looked up
with an air of incredulous disgust.

“This isn’t the place? Some one told me you were living with Miss
Farish.”

“No: I am boarding here. I have lived too long on my friends.”

He continued to scan the blistered brown stone front, the windows
draped with discoloured lace, and the Pompeian decoration of the
muddy vestibule; then he looked back at her face and said with a
visible effort: “You’ll let me come and see you some day?”

She smiled, recognizing the heroism of the offer to the point of
being frankly touched by it. “Thank you—I shall be very glad,” she
made answer, in the first sincere words she had ever spoken to him.

       *       *       *       *       *

That evening in her own room Miss Bart—who had fled early from
the heavy fumes of the basement dinner-table—sat musing upon the
impulse which had led her to unbosom herself to Rosedale. Beneath
it she discovered an increasing sense of loneliness—a dread of
returning to the solitude of her room, while she could be anywhere
else, or in any company but her own. Circumstances, of late, had
combined to cut her off more and more from her few remaining
friends. On Carry Fisher’s part the withdrawal was perhaps not
quite involuntary. Having made her final effort on Lily’s behalf,
and landed her safely in Mme. Regina’s work-room, Mrs. Fisher
seemed disposed to rest from her labours; and Lily, understanding
the reason, could not condemn her. Carry had in fact come
dangerously near to being involved in the episode of Mrs. Norma
Hatch, and it had taken some verbal ingenuity to extricate herself.
She frankly owned to having brought Lily and Mrs. Hatch together,
but then she did not know Mrs. Hatch—she had expressly warned Lily
that she did not know Mrs. Hatch—and besides, she was not Lily’s
keeper, and really the girl was old enough to take care of herself.
Carry did not put her own case so brutally, but she allowed it to
be thus put for her by her latest bosom friend, Mrs. Jack Stepney:
Mrs. Stepney, trembling over the narrowness of her only brother’s
escape, but eager to vindicate Mrs. Fisher, at whose house she
could count on the “jolly parties” which had become a necessity to
her since marriage had emancipated her from the Van Osburgh point
of view.

Lily understood the situation and could make allowances for it.
Carry had been a good friend to her in difficult days, and perhaps
only a friendship like Gerty’s could be proof against such an
increasing strain. Gerty’s friendship did indeed hold fast; yet
Lily was beginning to avoid her also. For she could not go to
Gerty’s without risk of meeting Selden; and to meet him now would
be pure pain. It was pain enough even to think of him, whether she
considered him in the distinctness of her waking thoughts, or felt
the obsession of his presence through the blur of her tormented
nights. That was one of the reasons why she had turned again to
Mrs. Hatch’s prescription. In the uneasy snatches of her natural
dreams he came to her sometimes in the old guise of fellowship and
tenderness; and she would rise from the sweet delusion mocked and
emptied of her courage. But in the sleep which the phial procured
she sank far below such half-waking visitations, sank into depths
of dreamless annihilation from which she woke each morning with an
obliterated past.

Gradually, to be sure, the stress of the old thoughts would return;
but at least they did not importune her waking hour. The drug
gave her a momentary illusion of complete renewal, from which she
drew strength to take up her daily work. The strength was more
and more needed as the perplexities of her future increased. She
knew that to Gerty and Mrs. Fisher she was only passing through
a temporary period of probation, since they believed that the
apprenticeship she was serving at Mme. Regina’s would enable her,
when Mrs. Peniston’s legacy was paid, to realize the vision of the
green-and-white shop with the fuller competence acquired by her
preliminary training. But to Lily herself, aware that the legacy
could not be put to such a use, the preliminary training seemed
a wasted effort. She understood clearly enough that, even if she
could ever learn to compete with hands formed from childhood
for their special work, the small pay she received would not be
a sufficient addition to her income to compensate her for such
drudgery. And the realization of this fact brought her recurringly
face to face with the temptation to use the legacy in establishing
her business. Once installed, and in command of her own work-women,
she believed she had sufficient tact and ability to attract a
fashionable CLIENTELE; and if the business succeeded she could
gradually lay aside money enough to discharge her debt to Trenor.
But the task might take years to accomplish, even if she continued
to stint herself to the utmost; and meanwhile her pride would be
crushed under the weight of an intolerable obligation.

These were her superficial considerations; but under them lurked
the secret dread that the obligation might not always remain
intolerable. She knew she could not count on her continuity of
purpose, and what really frightened her was the thought that she
might gradually accommodate herself to remaining indefinitely
in Trenor’s debt, as she had accommodated herself to the part
allotted her on the Sabrina, and as she had so nearly drifted
into acquiescing with Stancy’s scheme for the advancement of Mrs.
Hatch. Her danger lay, as she knew, in her old incurable dread
of discomfort and poverty; in the fear of that mounting tide of
dinginess against which her mother had so passionately warned her.
And now a new vista of peril opened before her. She understood
that Rosedale was ready to lend her money; and the longing to take
advantage of his offer began to haunt her insidiously. It was of
course impossible to accept a loan from Rosedale; but proximate
possibilities hovered temptingly before her. She was quite sure
that he would come and see her again, and almost sure that, if he
did, she could bring him to the point of offering to marry her on
the terms she had previously rejected. Would she still reject them
if they were offered? More and more, with every fresh mischance
befalling her, did the pursuing furies seem to take the shape of
Bertha Dorset; and close at hand, safely locked among her papers,
lay the means of ending their pursuit. The temptation, which her
scorn of Rosedale had once enabled her to reject, now insistently
returned upon her; and how much strength was left her to oppose it?

What little there was must at any rate be husbanded to the utmost;
she could not trust herself again to the perils of a sleepless
night. Through the long hours of silence the dark spirit of fatigue
and loneliness crouched upon her breast, leaving her so drained
of bodily strength that her morning thoughts swam in a haze of
weakness. The only hope of renewal lay in the little bottle at her
bed-side; and how much longer that hope would last she dared not
conjecture.




Chapter 11


Lily, lingering for a moment on the corner, looked out on the
afternoon spectacle of Fifth Avenue. It was a day in late April,
and the sweetness of spring was in the air. It mitigated the
ugliness of the long crowded thoroughfare, blurred the gaunt
roof-lines, threw a mauve veil over the discouraging perspective of
the side streets, and gave a touch of poetry to the delicate haze
of green that marked the entrance to the Park.

As Lily stood there, she recognized several familiar faces in the
passing carriages. The season was over, and its ruling forces had
disbanded; but a few still lingered, delaying their departure for
Europe, or passing through town on their return from the South.
Among them was Mrs. Van Osburgh, swaying majestically in her
C-spring barouche, with Mrs. Percy Gryce at her side, and the new
heir to the Gryce millions enthroned before them on his nurse’s
knees. They were succeeded by Mrs. Hatch’s electric victoria, in
which that lady reclined in the lonely splendour of a spring toilet
obviously designed for company; and a moment or two later came Judy
Trenor, accompanied by Lady Skiddaw, who had come over for her
annual tarpon fishing and a dip into “the street.”

This fleeting glimpse of her past served to emphasize the sense
of aimlessness with which Lily at length turned toward home. She
had nothing to do for the rest of the day, nor for the days to
come; for the season was over in millinery as well as in society,
and a week earlier Mme. Regina had notified her that her services
were no longer required. Mme. Regina always reduced her staff on
the first of May, and Miss Bart’s attendance had of late been so
irregular—she had so often been unwell, and had done so little work
when she came—that it was only as a favour that her dismissal had
hitherto been deferred.

Lily did not question the justice of the decision. She was
conscious of having been forgetful, awkward and slow to learn. It
was bitter to acknowledge her inferiority even to herself, but the
fact had been brought home to her that as a bread-winner she could
never compete with professional ability. Since she had been brought
up to be ornamental, she could hardly blame herself for failing to
serve any practical purpose; but the discovery put an end to her
consoling sense of universal efficiency.

As she turned homeward her thoughts shrank in anticipation from the
fact that there would be nothing to get up for the next morning.
The luxury of lying late in bed was a pleasure belonging to the
life of ease; it had no part in the utilitarian existence of the
boarding-house. She liked to leave her room early, and to return to
it as late as possible; and she was walking slowly now in order to
postpone the detested approach to her doorstep.

But the doorstep, as she drew near it, acquired a sudden interest
from the fact that it was occupied—and indeed filled—by the
conspicuous figure of Mr. Rosedale, whose presence seemed to take
on an added amplitude from the meanness of his surroundings.

The sight stirred Lily with an irresistible sense of triumph.
Rosedale, a day or two after their chance meeting, had called to
enquire if she had recovered from her indisposition; but since
then she had not seen or heard from him, and his absence seemed
to betoken a struggle to keep away, to let her pass once more out
of his life. If this were the case, his return showed that the
struggle had been unsuccessful, for Lily knew he was not the man to
waste his time in an ineffectual sentimental dalliance. He was too
busy, too practical, and above all too much preoccupied with his
own advancement, to indulge in such unprofitable asides.

In the peacock-blue parlour, with its bunches of dried pampas
grass, and discoloured steel engravings of sentimental episodes,
he looked about him with unconcealed disgust, laying his hat
distrustfully on the dusty console adorned with a Rogers statuette.

Lily sat down on one of the plush and rosewood sofas, and he
deposited himself in a rocking-chair draped with a starched
antimacassar which scraped unpleasantly against the pink fold of
skin above his collar.

“My goodness—you can’t go on living here!” he exclaimed.

Lily smiled at his tone. “I am not sure that I can; but I have gone
over my expenses very carefully, and I rather think I shall be able
to manage it.”

“Be able to manage it? That’s not what I mean—it’s no place for
you!”

“It’s what I mean; for I have been out of work for the last week.”

“Out of work—out of work! What a way for you to talk! The idea
of your having to work—it’s preposterous.” He brought out his
sentences in short violent jerks, as though they were forced up
from a deep inner crater of indignation. “It’s a farce—a crazy
farce,” he repeated, his eyes fixed on the long vista of the room
reflected in the blotched glass between the windows.

Lily continued to meet his expostulations with a smile. “I don’t
know why I should regard myself as an exception——” she began.

“Because you ARE; that’s why; and your being in a place like this
is a damnable outrage. I can’t talk of it calmly.”

She had in truth never seen him so shaken out of his usual
glibness; and there was something almost moving to her in his
inarticulate struggle with his emotions.

He rose with a start which left the rocking-chair quivering on its
beam ends, and placed himself squarely before her.

“Look here, Miss Lily, I’m going to Europe next week: going over
to Paris and London for a couple of months—and I can’t leave you
like this. I can’t do it. I know it’s none of my business—you’ve
let me understand that often enough; but things are worse with you
now than they have been before, and you must see that you’ve got to
accept help from somebody. You spoke to me the other day about some
debt to Trenor. I know what you mean—and I respect you for feeling
as you do about it.”

A blush of surprise rose to Lily’s pale face, but before she could
interrupt him he had continued eagerly: “Well, I’ll lend you the
money to pay Trenor; and I won’t—I—see here, don’t take me up
till I’ve finished. What I mean is, it’ll be a plain business
arrangement, such as one man would make with another. Now, what
have you got to say against that?”

Lily’s blush deepened to a glow in which humiliation and gratitude
were mingled; and both sentiments revealed themselves in the
unexpected gentleness of her reply.

“Only this: that it is exactly what Gus Trenor proposed; and that
I can never again be sure of understanding the plainest business
arrangement.” Then, realizing that this answer contained a germ
of injustice, she added, even more kindly: “Not that I don’t
appreciate your kindness—that I’m not grateful for it. But a
business arrangement between us would in any case be impossible,
because I shall have no security to give when my debt to Gus Trenor
has been paid.”

Rosedale received this statement in silence: he seemed to feel the
note of finality in her voice, yet to be unable to accept it as
closing the question between them.

In the silence Lily had a clear perception of what was passing
through his mind. Whatever perplexity he felt as to the
inexorableness of her course—however little he penetrated its
motive—she saw that it unmistakably tended to strengthen her hold
over him. It was as though the sense in her of unexplained scruples
and resistances had the same attraction as the delicacy of feature,
the fastidiousness of manner, which gave her an external rarity,
an air of being impossible to match. As he advanced in social
experience this uniqueness had acquired a greater value for him,
as though he were a collector who had learned to distinguish minor
differences of design and quality in some long-coveted object.

Lily, perceiving all this, understood that he would marry her
at once, on the sole condition of a reconciliation with Mrs.
Dorset; and the temptation was the less easy to put aside because,
little by little, circumstances were breaking down her dislike
for Rosedale. The dislike, indeed, still subsisted; but it was
penetrated here and there by the perception of mitigating qualities
in him: of a certain gross kindliness, a rather helpless fidelity
of sentiment, which seemed to be struggling through the hard
surface of his material ambitions.

Reading his dismissal in her eyes, he held out his hand with a
gesture which conveyed something of this inarticulate conflict.

“If you’d only let me, I’d set you up over them all—I’d put you
where you could wipe your feet on ’em!” he declared; and it touched
her oddly to see that his new passion had not altered his old
standard of values.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lily took no sleeping-drops that night. She lay awake viewing her
situation in the crude light which Rosedale’s visit had shed on
it. In fending off the offer he was so plainly ready to renew, had
she not sacrificed to one of those abstract notions of honour that
might be called the conventionalities of the moral life? What debt
did she owe to a social order which had condemned and banished her
without trial? She had never been heard in her own defence; she was
innocent of the charge on which she had been found guilty; and the
irregularity of her conviction might seem to justify the use of
methods as irregular in recovering her lost rights. Bertha Dorset,
to save herself, had not scrupled to ruin her by an open falsehood;
why should she hesitate to make private use of the facts that
chance had put in her way? After all, half the opprobrium of such
an act lies in the name attached to it. Call it blackmail and it
becomes unthinkable; but explain that it injures no one, and that
the rights regained by it were unjustly forfeited, and he must be a
formalist indeed who can find no plea in its defence.

The arguments pleading for it with Lily were the old unanswerable
ones of the personal situation: the sense of injury, the sense
of failure, the passionate craving for a fair chance against the
selfish despotism of society. She had learned by experience that
she had neither the aptitude nor the moral constancy to remake her
life on new lines; to become a worker among workers, and let the
world of luxury and pleasure sweep by her unregarded. She could not
hold herself much to blame for this ineffectiveness, and she was
perhaps less to blame than she believed. Inherited tendencies had
combined with early training to make her the highly specialized
product she was: an organism as helpless out of its narrow range as
the sea-anemone torn from the rock. She had been fashioned to adorn
and delight; to what other end does nature round the rose-leaf and
paint the humming-bird’s breast? And was it her fault that the
purely decorative mission is less easily and harmoniously fulfilled
among social beings than in the world of nature? That it is apt
to be hampered by material necessities or complicated by moral
scruples?

These last were the two antagonistic forces which fought out their
battle in her breast during the long watches of the night; and
when she rose the next morning she hardly knew where the victory
lay. She was exhausted by the reaction of a night without sleep,
coming after many nights of rest artificially obtained; and in the
distorting light of fatigue the future stretched out before her
grey, interminable and desolate.

She lay late in bed, refusing the coffee and fried eggs which the
friendly Irish servant thrust through her door, and hating the
intimate domestic noises of the house and the cries and rumblings
of the street. Her week of idleness had brought home to her with
exaggerated force these small aggravations of the boarding-house
world, and she yearned for that other luxurious world, whose
machinery is so carefully concealed that one scene flows into
another without perceptible agency.

At length she rose and dressed. Since she had left Mme. Regina’s
she had spent her days in the streets, partly to escape from the
uncongenial promiscuities of the boarding-house, and partly in the
hope that physical fatigue would help her to sleep. But once out of
the house, she could not decide where to go; for she had avoided
Gerty since her dismissal from the milliner’s, and she was not sure
of a welcome anywhere else.

The morning was in harsh contrast to the previous day. A cold grey
sky threatened rain, and a high wind drove the dust in wild spirals
up and down the streets. Lily walked up Fifth Avenue toward the
Park, hoping to find a sheltered nook where she might sit; but the
wind chilled her, and after an hour’s wandering under the tossing
boughs she yielded to her increasing weariness, and took refuge in
a little restaurant in Fifty-ninth Street. She was not hungry, and
had meant to go without luncheon; but she was too tired to return
home, and the long perspective of white tables showed alluringly
through the windows.

The room was full of women and girls, all too much engaged in the
rapid absorption of tea and pie to remark her entrance. A hum
of shrill voices reverberated against the low ceiling, leaving
Lily shut out in a little circle of silence. She felt a sudden
pang of profound loneliness. She had lost the sense of time, and
it seemed to her as though she had not spoken to any one for
days. Her eyes sought the faces about her, craving a responsive
glance, some sign of an intuition of her trouble. But the sallow
preoccupied women, with their bags and note-books and rolls of
music, were all engrossed in their own affairs, and even those who
sat by themselves were busy running over proof-sheets or devouring
magazines between their hurried gulps of tea. Lily alone was
stranded in a great waste of disoccupation.

She drank several cups of the tea which was served with her portion
of stewed oysters, and her brain felt clearer and livelier when
she emerged once more into the street. She realized now that, as
she sat in the restaurant, she had unconsciously arrived at a
final decision. The discovery gave her an immediate illusion of
activity: it was exhilarating to think that she had actually a
reason for hurrying home. To prolong her enjoyment of the sensation
she decided to walk; but the distance was so great that she found
herself glancing nervously at the clocks on the way. One of the
surprises of her unoccupied state was the discovery that time, when
it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot
be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters; but
just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly
break into a wild irrational gallop.

She found, however, on reaching home, that the hour was still early
enough for her to sit down and rest a few minutes before putting
her plan into execution. The delay did not perceptibly weaken her
resolve. She was frightened and yet stimulated by the reserved
force of resolution which she felt within herself: she saw it was
going to be easier, a great deal easier, than she had imagined.

At five o’clock she rose, unlocked her trunk, and took out a
sealed packet which she slipped into the bosom of her dress. Even
the contact with the packet did not shake her nerves as she had
half-expected it would. She seemed encased in a strong armour of
indifference, as though the vigorous exertion of her will had
finally benumbed her finer sensibilities.

She dressed herself once more for the street, locked her door and
went out. When she emerged on the pavement, the day was still
high, but a threat of rain darkened the sky and cold gusts shook
the signs projecting from the basement shops along the street. She
reached Fifth Avenue and began to walk slowly northward. She was
sufficiently familiar with Mrs. Dorset’s habits to know that she
could always be found at home after five. She might not, indeed, be
accessible to visitors, especially to a visitor so unwelcome, and
against whom it was quite possible that she had guarded herself by
special orders; but Lily had written a note which she meant to send
up with her name, and which she thought would secure her admission.

She had allowed herself time to walk to Mrs. Dorset’s, thinking
that the quick movement through the cold evening air would help
to steady her nerves; but she really felt no need of being
tranquillized. Her survey of the situation remained calm and
unwavering.

As she reached Fiftieth Street the clouds broke abruptly, and
a rush of cold rain slanted into her face. She had no umbrella
and the moisture quickly penetrated her thin spring dress. She
was still half a mile from her destination, and she decided to
walk across to Madison Avenue and take the electric car. As she
turned into the side street, a vague memory stirred in her. The
row of budding trees, the new brick and limestone house-fronts,
the Georgian flat-house with flower-boxes on its balconies, were
merged together into the setting of a familiar scene. It was
down this street that she had walked with Selden, that September
day two years ago; a few yards ahead was the doorway they had
entered together. The recollection loosened a throng of benumbed
sensations—longings, regrets, imaginings, the throbbing brood of
the only spring her heart had ever known. It was strange to find
herself passing his house on such an errand. She seemed suddenly
to see her action as he would see it—and the fact of his own
connection with it, the fact that, to attain her end, she must
trade on his name, and profit by a secret of his past, chilled her
blood with shame. What a long way she had travelled since the day
of their first talk together! Even then her feet had been set in
the path she was now following—even then she had resisted the hand
he had held out.

All her resentment of his fancied coldness was swept away in this
overwhelming rush of recollection. Twice he had been ready to
help her—to help her by loving her, as he had said—and if, the
third time, he had seemed to fail her, whom but herself could she
accuse?... Well, that part of her life was over; she did not know
why her thoughts still clung to it. But the sudden longing to see
him remained; it grew to hunger as she paused on the pavement
opposite his door. The street was dark and empty, swept by the
rain. She had a vision of his quiet room, of the bookshelves,
and the fire on the hearth. She looked up and saw a light in his
window; then she crossed the street and entered the house.




Chapter 12


The library looked as she had pictured it. The green-shaded lamps
made tranquil circles of light in the gathering dusk, a little fire
flickered on the hearth, and Selden’s easy-chair, which stood near
it, had been pushed aside when he rose to admit her.

He had checked his first movement of surprise, and stood silent,
waiting for her to speak, while she paused a moment on the
threshold, assailed by a rush of memories.

The scene was unchanged. She recognized the row of shelves from
which he had taken down his La Bruyere, and the worn arm of the
chair he had leaned against while she examined the precious volume.
But then the wide September light had filled the room, making it
seem a part of the outer world: now the shaded lamps and the warm
hearth, detaching it from the gathering darkness of the street,
gave it a sweeter touch of intimacy.

Becoming gradually aware of the surprise under Selden’s silence,
Lily turned to him and said simply: “I came to tell you that I was
sorry for the way we parted—for what I said to you that day at Mrs.
Hatch’s.”

The words rose to her lips spontaneously. Even on her way up
the stairs, she had not thought of preparing a pretext for her
visit, but she now felt an intense longing to dispel the cloud of
misunderstanding that hung between them.

Selden returned her look with a smile. “I was sorry too that we
should have parted in that way; but I am not sure I didn’t bring it
on myself. Luckily I had foreseen the risk I was taking——”

“So that you really didn’t care——?” broke from her with a flash of
her old irony.

“So that I was prepared for the consequences,” he corrected
good-humouredly. “But we’ll talk of all this later. Do come and sit
by the fire. I can recommend that arm-chair, if you’ll let me put a
cushion behind you.”

While he spoke she had moved slowly to the middle of the room, and
paused near his writing-table, where the lamp, striking upward,
cast exaggerated shadows on the pallor of her delicately-hollowed
face.

“You look tired—do sit down,” he repeated gently.

She did not seem to hear the request. “I wanted you to know that I
left Mrs. Hatch immediately after I saw you,” she said, as though
continuing her confession.

“Yes—yes; I know,” he assented, with a rising tinge of
embarrassment.

“And that I did so because you told me to. Before you came I had
already begun to see that it would be impossible to remain with
her—for the reasons you gave me; but I wouldn’t admit it—I wouldn’t
let you see that I understood what you meant.”

“Ah, I might have trusted you to find your own way out—don’t
overwhelm me with the sense of my officiousness!”

His light tone, in which, had her nerves been steadier, she would
have recognized the mere effort to bridge over an awkward moment,
jarred on her passionate desire to be understood. In her strange
state of extra-lucidity, which gave her the sense of being already
at the heart of the situation, it seemed incredible that any one
should think it necessary to linger in the conventional outskirts
of word-play and evasion.

“It was not that—I was not ungrateful,” she insisted. But the power
of expression failed her suddenly; she felt a tremor in her throat,
and two tears gathered and fell slowly from her eyes.

Selden moved forward and took her hand. “You are very tired. Why
won’t you sit down and let me make you comfortable?”

He drew her to the arm-chair near the fire, and placed a cushion
behind her shoulders.

“And now you must let me make you some tea: you know I always have
that amount of hospitality at my command.”

She shook her head, and two more tears ran over. But she did not
weep easily, and the long habit of self-control reasserted itself,
though she was still too tremulous to speak.

“You know I can coax the water to boil in five minutes,” Selden
continued, speaking as though she were a troubled child.

His words recalled the vision of that other afternoon when they
had sat together over his tea-table and talked jestingly of her
future. There were moments when that day seemed more remote than
any other event in her life; and yet she could always relive it in
its minutest detail.

She made a gesture of refusal. “No: I drink too much tea. I would
rather sit quiet—I must go in a moment,” she added confusedly.

Selden continued to stand near her, leaning against the
mantelpiece. The tinge of constraint was beginning to be more
distinctly perceptible under the friendly ease of his manner. Her
self-absorption had not allowed her to perceive it at first; but
now that her consciousness was once more putting forth its eager
feelers, she saw that her presence was becoming an embarrassment
to him. Such a situation can be saved only by an immediate outrush
of feeling; and on Selden’s side the determining impulse was still
lacking.

The discovery did not disturb Lily as it might once have done.
She had passed beyond the phase of well-bred reciprocity, in
which every demonstration must be scrupulously proportioned to
the emotion it elicits, and generosity of feeling is the only
ostentation condemned. But the sense of loneliness returned with
redoubled force as she saw herself forever shut out from Selden’s
inmost self. She had come to him with no definite purpose; the mere
longing to see him had directed her; but the secret hope she had
carried with her suddenly revealed itself in its death-pang.

“I must go,” she repeated, making a motion to rise from her chair.
“But I may not see you again for a long time, and I wanted to
tell you that I have never forgotten the things you said to me at
Bellomont, and that sometimes—sometimes when I seemed farthest from
remembering them—they have helped me, and kept me from mistakes;
kept me from really becoming what many people have thought me.”

Strive as she would to put some order in her thoughts, the words
would not come more clearly; yet she felt that she could not leave
him without trying to make him understand that she had saved
herself whole from the seeming ruin of her life.

A change had come over Selden’s face as she spoke. Its guarded look
had yielded to an expression still untinged by personal emotion,
but full of a gentle understanding.

“I am glad to have you tell me that; but nothing I have said has
really made the difference. The difference is in yourself—it will
always be there. And since it IS there, it can’t really matter
to you what people think: you are so sure that your friends will
always understand you.”

“Ah, don’t say that—don’t say that what you have told me has made
no difference. It seems to shut me out—to leave me all alone
with the other people.” She had risen and stood before him, once
more completely mastered by the inner urgency of the moment. The
consciousness of his half-divined reluctance had vanished. Whether
he wished it or not, he must see her wholly for once before they
parted.

Her voice had gathered strength, and she looked him gravely in the
eyes as she continued. “Once—twice—you gave me the chance to escape
from my life, and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward.
Afterward I saw my mistake—I saw I could never be happy with what
had contented me before. But it was too late: you had judged me—I
understood. It was too late for happiness—but not too late to be
helped by the thought of what I had missed. That is all I have
lived on—don’t take it from me now! Even in my worst moments it has
been like a little light in the darkness. Some women are strong
enough to be good by themselves, but I needed the help of your
belief in me. Perhaps I might have resisted a great temptation, but
the little ones would have pulled me down. And then I remembered—I
remembered your saying that such a life could never satisfy me;
and I was ashamed to admit to myself that it could. That is what
you did for me—that is what I wanted to thank you for. I wanted to
tell you that I have always remembered; and that I have tried—tried
hard....”

She broke off suddenly. Her tears had risen again, and in drawing
out her handkerchief her fingers touched the packet in the folds
of her dress. A wave of colour suffused her, and the words died on
her lips. Then she lifted her eyes to his and went on in an altered
voice.

“I have tried hard—but life is difficult, and I am a very useless
person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I
was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and
when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else.
What can one do when one finds that one only fits into one hole?
One must get back to it or be thrown out into the rubbish heap—and
you don’t know what it’s like in the rubbish heap!”

Her lips wavered into a smile—she had been distracted by the
whimsical remembrance of the confidences she had made to him, two
years earlier, in that very room. Then she had been planning to
marry Percy Gryce—what was it she was planning now?

The blood had risen strongly under Selden’s dark skin, but his
emotion showed itself only in an added seriousness of manner.

“You have something to tell me—do you mean to marry?” he said
abruptly.

Lily’s eyes did not falter, but a look of wonder, of puzzled
self-interrogation, formed itself slowly in their depths. In
the light of his question, she had paused to ask herself if her
decision had really been taken when she entered the room.

“You always told me I should have to come to it sooner or later!”
she said with a faint smile.

“And you have come to it now?”

“I shall have to come to it—presently. But there is something else
I must come to first.” She paused again, trying to transmit to her
voice the steadiness of her recovered smile. “There is some one
I must say goodbye to. Oh, not YOU—we are sure to see each other
again—but the Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this
time, but now we are going to part, and I have brought her back
to you—I am going to leave her here. When I go out presently she
will not go with me. I shall like to think that she has stayed with
you—and she’ll be no trouble, she’ll take up no room.”

She went toward him, and put out her hand, still smiling. “Will you
let her stay with you?” she asked.

He caught her hand, and she felt in his the vibration of feeling
that had not yet risen to his lips. “Lily—can’t I help you?” he
exclaimed.

She looked at him gently. “Do you remember what you said to me
once? That you could help me only by loving me? Well—you did love
me for a moment; and it helped me. It has always helped me. But the
moment is gone—it was I who let it go. And one must go on living.
Goodbye.”

She laid her other hand on his, and they looked at each other with
a kind of solemnity, as though they stood in the presence of death.
Something in truth lay dead between them—the love she had killed in
him and could no longer call to life. But something lived between
them also, and leaped up in her like an imperishable flame: it was
the love his love had kindled, the passion of her soul for his.

In its light everything else dwindled and fell away from her. She
understood now that she could not go forth and leave her old self
with him: that self must indeed live on in his presence, but it
must still continue to be hers.

Selden had retained her hand, and continued to scrutinize her with
a strange sense of foreboding. The external aspect of the situation
had vanished for him as completely as for her: he felt it only as
one of those rare moments which lift the veil from their faces as
they pass.

“Lily,” he said in a low voice, “you mustn’t speak in this way. I
can’t let you go without knowing what you mean to do. Things may
change—but they don’t pass. You can never go out of my life.”

She met his eyes with an illumined look. “No,” she said. “I see
that now. Let us always be friends. Then I shall feel safe,
whatever happens.”

“Whatever happens? What do you mean? What is going to happen?”

She turned away quietly and walked toward the hearth.

“Nothing at present—except that I am very cold, and that before I
go you must make up the fire for me.”

She knelt on the hearth-rug, stretching her hands to the embers.
Puzzled by the sudden change in her tone, he mechanically gathered
a handful of wood from the basket and tossed it on the fire. As he
did so, he noticed how thin her hands looked against the rising
light of the flames. He saw too, under the loose lines of her
dress, how the curves of her figure had shrunk to angularity; he
remembered long afterward how the red play of the flame sharpened
the depression of her nostrils, and intensified the blackness of
the shadows which struck up from her cheekbones to her eyes. She
knelt there for a few moments in silence; a silence which he dared
not break. When she rose he fancied that he saw her draw something
from her dress and drop it into the fire; but he hardly noticed
the gesture at the time. His faculties seemed tranced, and he was
still groping for the word to break the spell. She went up to him
and laid her hands on his shoulders. “Goodbye,” she said, and as he
bent over her she touched his forehead with her lips.




Chapter 13


The street-lamps were lit, but the rain had ceased, and there was
a momentary revival of light in the upper sky. Lily walked on
unconscious of her surroundings. She was still treading the buoyant
ether which emanates from the high moments of life. But gradually
it shrank away from her and she felt the dull pavement beneath
her feet. The sense of weariness returned with accumulated force,
and for a moment she felt that she could walk no farther. She had
reached the corner of Forty-first Street and Fifth Avenue, and she
remembered that in Bryant Park there were seats where she might
rest.

That melancholy pleasure-ground was almost deserted when she
entered it, and she sank down on an empty bench in the glare of
an electric street-lamp. The warmth of the fire had passed out of
her veins, and she told herself that she must not sit long in the
penetrating dampness which struck up from the wet asphalt. But her
will-power seemed to have spent itself in a last great effort, and
she was lost in the blank reaction which follows on an unwonted
expenditure of energy. And besides, what was there to go home to?
Nothing but the silence of her cheerless room—that silence of the
night which may be more racking to tired nerves than the most
discordant noises: that, and the bottle of chloral by her bed.
The thought of the chloral was the only spot of light in the dark
prospect: she could feel its lulling influence stealing over her
already. But she was troubled by the thought that it was losing
its power—she dared not go back to it too soon. Of late the sleep
it had brought her had been more broken and less profound; there
had been nights when she was perpetually floating up through it
to consciousness. What if the effect of the drug should gradually
fail, as all narcotics were said to fail? She remembered the
chemist’s warning against increasing the dose; and she had heard
before of the capricious and incalculable action of the drug. Her
dread of returning to a sleepless night was so great that she
lingered on, hoping that excessive weariness would reinforce the
waning power of the chloral.

Night had now closed in, and the roar of traffic in Forty-second
Street was dying out. As complete darkness fell on the square the
lingering occupants of the benches rose and dispersed; but now and
then a stray figure, hurrying homeward, struck across the path
where Lily sat, looming black for a moment in the white circle of
electric light. One or two of these passers-by slackened their
pace to glance curiously at her lonely figure; but she was hardly
conscious of their scrutiny.

Suddenly, however, she became aware that one of the passing shadows
remained stationary between her line of vision and the gleaming
asphalt; and raising her eyes she saw a young woman bending over
her.

“Excuse me—are you sick?—Why, it’s Miss Bart!” a half-familiar
voice exclaimed.

Lily looked up. The speaker was a poorly-dressed young woman
with a bundle under her arm. Her face had the air of unwholesome
refinement which ill-health and over-work may produce, but its
common prettiness was redeemed by the strong and generous curve of
the lips.

“You don’t remember me,” she continued, brightening with the
pleasure of recognition, “but I’d know you anywhere, I’ve thought
of you such a lot. I guess my folks all know your name by heart.
I was one of the girls at Miss Farish’s club—you helped me to go
to the country that time I had lung-trouble. My name’s Nettie
Struther. It was Nettie Crane then—but I daresay you don’t remember
that either.”

Yes: Lily was beginning to remember. The episode of Nettie Crane’s
timely rescue from disease had been one of the most satisfying
incidents of her connection with Gerty’s charitable work. She had
furnished the girl with the means to go to a sanatorium in the
mountains: it struck her now with a peculiar irony that the money
she had used had been Gus Trenor’s.

She tried to reply, to assure the speaker that she had not
forgotten; but her voice failed in the effort, and she felt herself
sinking under a great wave of physical weakness. Nettie Struther,
with a startled exclamation, sat down and slipped a shabbily-clad
arm behind her back.

“Why, Miss Bart, you ARE sick. Just lean on me a little till you
feel better.”

A faint glow of returning strength seemed to pass into Lily from
the pressure of the supporting arm.

“I’m only tired—it is nothing,” she found voice to say in a moment;
and then, as she met the timid appeal of her companion’s eyes, she
added involuntarily: “I have been unhappy—in great trouble.”

“YOU in trouble? I’ve always thought of you as being so high up,
where everything was just grand. Sometimes, when I felt real mean,
and got to wondering why things were so queerly fixed in the world,
I used to remember that you were having a lovely time, anyhow, and
that seemed to show there was a kind of justice somewhere. But
you mustn’t sit here too long—it’s fearfully damp. Don’t you feel
strong enough to walk on a little ways now?” she broke off.

“Yes—yes; I must go home,” Lily murmured, rising.

Her eyes rested wonderingly on the thin shabby figure at her side.
She had known Nettie Crane as one of the discouraged victims of
over-work and anaemic parentage: one of the superfluous fragments
of life destined to be swept prematurely into that social
refuse-heap of which Lily had so lately expressed her dread. But
Nettie Struther’s frail envelope was now alive with hope and
energy: whatever fate the future reserved for her, she would not be
cast into the refuse-heap without a struggle.

“I am very glad to have seen you,” Lily continued, summoning a
smile to her unsteady lips. “It’ll be my turn to think of you as
happy—and the world will seem a less unjust place to me too.”

“Oh, but I can’t leave you like this—you’re not fit to go home
alone. And I can’t go with you either!” Nettie Struther wailed
with a start of recollection. “You see, it’s my husband’s
night-shift—he’s a motor-man—and the friend I leave the baby with
has to step upstairs to get HER husband’s supper at seven. I didn’t
tell you I had a baby, did I? She’ll be four months old day after
tomorrow, and to look at her you wouldn’t think I’d ever had a sick
day. I’d give anything to show you the baby, Miss Bart, and we live
right down the street here—it’s only three blocks off.” She lifted
her eyes tentatively to Lily’s face, and then added with a burst
of courage: “Why won’t you get right into the cars and come home
with me while I get baby’s supper? It’s real warm in our kitchen,
and you can rest there, and I’ll take YOU home as soon as ever she
drops off to sleep.”

It WAS warm in the kitchen, which, when Nettie Struther’s match had
made a flame leap from the gas-jet above the table, revealed itself
to Lily as extraordinarily small and almost miraculously clean. A
fire shone through the polished flanks of the iron stove, and near
it stood a crib in which a baby was sitting upright, with incipient
anxiety struggling for expression on a countenance still placid
with sleep.

Having passionately celebrated her reunion with her offspring, and
excused herself in cryptic language for the lateness of her return,
Nettie restored the baby to the crib and shyly invited Miss Bart to
the rocking-chair near the stove.

“We’ve got a parlour too,” she explained with pardonable pride;
“but I guess it’s warmer in here, and I don’t want to leave you
alone while I’m getting baby’s supper.”

On receiving Lily’s assurance that she much preferred the friendly
proximity of the kitchen fire, Mrs. Struther proceeded to prepare a
bottle of infantile food, which she tenderly applied to the baby’s
impatient lips; and while the ensuing degustation went on, she
seated herself with a beaming countenance beside her visitor.

“You’re sure you won’t let me warm up a drop of coffee for you,
Miss Bart? There’s some of baby’s fresh milk left over—well,
maybe you’d rather just sit quiet and rest a little while. It’s
too lovely having you here. I’ve thought of it so often that I
can’t believe it’s really come true. I’ve said to George again
and again: ‘I just wish Miss Bart could see me NOW—’ and I used
to watch for your name in the papers, and we’d talk over what you
were doing, and read the descriptions of the dresses you wore. I
haven’t seen your name for a long time, though, and I began to be
afraid you were sick, and it worried me so that George said I’d get
sick myself, fretting about it.” Her lips broke into a reminiscent
smile. “Well, I can’t afford to be sick again, that’s a fact: the
last spell nearly finished me. When you sent me off that time I
never thought I’d come back alive, and I didn’t much care if I did.
You see I didn’t know about George and the baby then.”

She paused to readjust the bottle to the child’s bubbling mouth.

“You precious—don’t you be in too much of a hurry! Was it mad with
mommer for getting its supper so late? Marry Anto’nette—that’s what
we call her: after the French queen in that play at the Garden—I
told George the actress reminded me of you, and that made me fancy
the name.... I never thought I’d get married, you know, and I’d
never have had the heart to go on working just for myself.”

She broke off again, and meeting the encouragement in Lily’s eyes,
went on, with a flush rising under her anaemic skin: “You see I
wasn’t only just SICK that time you sent me off—I was dreadfully
unhappy too. I’d known a gentleman where I was employed—I don’t
know as you remember I did type-writing in a big importing
firm—and—well—I thought we were to be married: he’d gone steady
with me six months and given me his mother’s wedding ring. But I
presume he was too stylish for me—he travelled for the firm, and
had seen a great deal of society. Work girls aren’t looked after
the way you are, and they don’t always know how to look after
themselves. I didn’t . . . and it pretty near killed me when he
went away and left off writing....

“It was then I came down sick—I thought it was the end of
everything. I guess it would have been if you hadn’t sent me off.
But when I found I was getting well I began to take heart in spite
of myself. And then, when I got back home, George came round and
asked me to marry him. At first I thought I couldn’t, because we’d
been brought up together, and I knew he knew about me. But after a
while I began to see that that made it easier. I never could have
told another man, and I’d never have married without telling; but
if George cared for me enough to have me as I was, I didn’t see why
I shouldn’t begin over again—and I did.”

The strength of the victory shone forth from her as she lifted
her irradiated face from the child on her knees. “But, mercy, I
didn’t mean to go on like this about myself, with you sitting there
looking so fagged out. Only it’s so lovely having you here, and
letting you see just how you’ve helped me.” The baby had sunk back
blissfully replete, and Mrs. Struther softly rose to lay the bottle
aside. Then she paused before Miss Bart.

“I only wish I could help YOU—but I suppose there’s nothing on
earth I could do,” she murmured wistfully.

Lily, instead of answering, rose with a smile and held out her
arms; and the mother, understanding the gesture, laid her child in
them.

The baby, feeling herself detached from her habitual anchorage,
made an instinctive motion of resistance; but the soothing
influences of digestion prevailed, and Lily felt the soft weight
sink trustfully against her breast. The child’s confidence in its
safety thrilled her with a sense of warmth and returning life, and
she bent over, wondering at the rosy blur of the little face, the
empty clearness of the eyes, the vague tendrilly motions of the
folding and unfolding fingers. At first the burden in her arms
seemed as light as a pink cloud or a heap of down, but as she
continued to hold it the weight increased, sinking deeper, and
penetrating her with a strange sense of weakness, as though the
child entered into her and became a part of herself.

She looked up, and saw Nettie’s eyes resting on her with tenderness
and exultation.

“Wouldn’t it be too lovely for anything if she could grow up to be
just like you? Of course I know she never COULD—but mothers are
always dreaming the craziest things for their children.”

Lily clasped the child close for a moment and laid her back in her
mother’s arms.

“Oh, she must not do that—I should be afraid to come and see
her too often!” she said with a smile; and then, resisting Mrs.
Struther’s anxious offer of companionship, and reiterating the
promise that of course she would come back soon, and make George’s
acquaintance, and see the baby in her bath, she passed out of the
kitchen and went alone down the tenement stairs.

       *       *       *       *       *

As she reached the street she realized that she felt stronger
and happier: the little episode had done her good. It was the
first time she had ever come across the results of her spasmodic
benevolence, and the surprised sense of human fellowship took the
mortal chill from her heart.

It was not till she entered her own door that she felt the reaction
of a deeper loneliness. It was long after seven o’clock, and the
light and odours proceeding from the basement made it manifest that
the boarding-house dinner had begun. She hastened up to her room,
lit the gas, and began to dress. She did not mean to pamper herself
any longer, to go without food because her surroundings made it
unpalatable. Since it was her fate to live in a boarding-house, she
must learn to fall in with the conditions of the life. Nevertheless
she was glad that, when she descended to the heat and glare of the
dining-room, the repast was nearly over.

       *       *       *       *       *

In her own room again, she was seized with a sudden fever of
activity. For weeks past she had been too listless and indifferent
to set her possessions in order, but now she began to examine
systematically the contents of her drawers and cupboard. She had a
few handsome dresses left—survivals of her last phase of splendour,
on the Sabrina and in London—but when she had been obliged to
part with her maid she had given the woman a generous share of
her cast-off apparel. The remaining dresses, though they had lost
their freshness, still kept the long unerring lines, the sweep
and amplitude of the great artist’s stroke, and as she spread
them out on the bed the scenes in which they had been worn rose
vividly before her. An association lurked in every fold: each fall
of lace and gleam of embroidery was like a letter in the record
of her past. She was startled to find how the atmosphere of her
old life enveloped her. But, after all, it was the life she had
been made for: every dawning tendency in her had been carefully
directed toward it, all her interests and activities had been
taught to centre around it. She was like some rare flower grown for
exhibition, a flower from which every bud had been nipped except
the crowning blossom of her beauty.

Last of all, she drew forth from the bottom of her trunk a heap
of white drapery which fell shapelessly across her arm. It was
the Reynolds dress she had worn in the Bry TABLEAUX. It had been
impossible for her to give it away, but she had never seen it since
that night, and the long flexible folds, as she shook them out,
gave forth an odour of violets which came to her like a breath
from the flower-edged fountain where she had stood with Lawrence
Selden and disowned her fate. She put back the dresses one by one,
laying away with each some gleam of light, some note of laughter,
some stray waft from the rosy shores of pleasure. She was still in
a state of highly-wrought impressionability, and every hint of the
past sent a lingering tremor along her nerves.

She had just closed her trunk on the white folds of the Reynolds
dress when she heard a tap at her door, and the red fist of the
Irish maid-servant thrust in a belated letter. Carrying it to the
light, Lily read with surprise the address stamped on the upper
corner of the envelope. It was a business communication from the
office of her aunt’s executors, and she wondered what unexpected
development had caused them to break silence before the appointed
time. She opened the envelope and a cheque fluttered to the floor.
As she stooped to pick it up the blood rushed to her face. The
cheque represented the full amount of Mrs. Peniston’s legacy, and
the letter accompanying it explained that the executors, having
adjusted the business of the estate with less delay than they had
expected, had decided to anticipate the date fixed for the payment
of the bequests.

Lily sat down beside the desk at the foot of her bed, and spreading
out the cheque, read over and over the TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS written
across it in a steely business hand. Ten months earlier the amount
it stood for had represented the depths of penury; but her standard
of values had changed in the interval, and now visions of wealth
lurked in every flourish of the pen. As she continued to gaze at
it, she felt the glitter of the visions mounting to her brain,
and after a while she lifted the lid of the desk and slipped the
magic formula out of sight. It was easier to think without those
five figures dancing before her eyes; and she had a great deal of
thinking to do before she slept.

She opened her cheque-book, and plunged into such anxious
calculations as had prolonged her vigil at Bellomont on the night
when she had decided to marry Percy Gryce. Poverty simplifies
book-keeping, and her financial situation was easier to ascertain
than it had been then; but she had not yet learned the control of
money, and during her transient phase of luxury at the Emporium she
had slipped back into habits of extravagance which still impaired
her slender balance. A careful examination of her cheque-book, and
of the unpaid bills in her desk, showed that, when the latter had
been settled, she would have barely enough to live on for the next
three or four months; and even after that, if she were to continue
her present way of living, without earning any additional money,
all incidental expenses must be reduced to the vanishing point.
She hid her eyes with a shudder, beholding herself at the entrance
of that ever-narrowing perspective down which she had seen Miss
Silverton’s dowdy figure take its despondent way.

It was no longer, however, from the vision of material poverty that
she turned with the greatest shrinking. She had a sense of deeper
impoverishment—of an inner destitution compared to which outward
conditions dwindled into insignificance. It was indeed miserable to
be poor—to look forward to a shabby, anxious middle-age, leading
by dreary degrees of economy and self-denial to gradual absorption
in the dingy communal existence of the boarding-house. But there
was something more miserable still—it was the clutch of solitude at
her heart, the sense of being swept like a stray uprooted growth
down the heedless current of the years. That was the feeling which
possessed her now—the feeling of being something rootless and
ephemeral, mere spin-drift of the whirling surface of existence,
without anything to which the poor little tentacles of self could
cling before the awful flood submerged them. And as she looked
back she saw that there had never been a time when she had had any
real relation to life. Her parents too had been rootless, blown
hither and thither on every wind of fashion, without any personal
existence to shelter them from its shifting gusts. She herself had
grown up without any one spot of earth being dearer to her than
another: there was no centre of early pieties, of grave endearing
traditions, to which her heart could revert and from which it could
draw strength for itself and tenderness for others. In whatever
form a slowly-accumulated past lives in the blood—whether in the
concrete image of the old house stored with visual memories, or
in the conception of the house not built with hands, but made
up of inherited passions and loyalties—it has the same power of
broadening and deepening the individual existence, of attaching
it by mysterious links of kinship to all the mighty sum of human
striving.

Such a vision of the solidarity of life had never before come to
Lily. She had had a premonition of it in the blind motions of her
mating-instinct; but they had been checked by the disintegrating
influences of the life about her. All the men and women she
knew were like atoms whirling away from each other in some wild
centrifugal dance: her first glimpse of the continuity of life had
come to her that evening in Nettie Struther’s kitchen.

The poor little working-girl who had found strength to gather up
the fragments of her life, and build herself a shelter with them,
seemed to Lily to have reached the central truth of existence. It
was a meagre enough life, on the grim edge of poverty, with scant
margin for possibilities of sickness or mischance, but it had the
frail audacious permanence of a bird’s nest built on the edge of a
cliff—a mere wisp of leaves and straw, yet so put together that the
lives entrusted to it may hang safely over the abyss.

Yes—but it had taken two to build the nest; the man’s faith as well
as the woman’s courage. Lily remembered Nettie’s words: I KNEW HE
KNEW ABOUT ME. Her husband’s faith in her had made her renewal
possible—it is so easy for a woman to become what the man she loves
believes her to be! Well—Selden had twice been ready to stake his
faith on Lily Bart; but the third trial had been too severe for
his endurance. The very quality of his love had made it the more
impossible to recall to life. If it had been a simple instinct of
the blood, the power of her beauty might have revived it. But the
fact that it struck deeper, that it was inextricably wound up with
inherited habits of thought and feeling, made it as impossible to
restore to growth as a deep-rooted plant torn from its bed. Selden
had given her of his best; but he was as incapable as herself of an
uncritical return to former states of feeling.

There remained to her, as she had told him, the uplifting memory
of his faith in her; but she had not reached the age when a woman
can live on her memories. As she held Nettie Struther’s child in
her arms the frozen currents of youth had loosed themselves and
run warm in her veins: the old life-hunger possessed her, and all
her being clamoured for its share of personal happiness. Yes—it
was happiness she still wanted, and the glimpse she had caught of
it made everything else of no account. One by one she had detached
herself from the baser possibilities, and she saw that nothing now
remained to her but the emptiness of renunciation.

It was growing late, and an immense weariness once more possessed
her. It was not the stealing sense of sleep, but a vivid wakeful
fatigue, a wan lucidity of mind against which all the possibilities
of the future were shadowed forth gigantically. She was appalled
by the intense cleanness of the vision; she seemed to have broken
through the merciful veil which intervenes between intention and
action, and to see exactly what she would do in all the long
days to come. There was the cheque in her desk, for instance—she
meant to use it in paying her debt to Trenor; but she foresaw
that when the morning came she would put off doing so, would slip
into gradual tolerance of the debt. The thought terrified her—she
dreaded to fall from the height of her last moment with Lawrence
Selden. But how could she trust herself to keep her footing?
She knew the strength of the opposing impulses—she could feel
the countless hands of habit dragging her back into some fresh
compromise with fate. She felt an intense longing to prolong,
to perpetuate, the momentary exaltation of her spirit. If only
life could end now—end on this tragic yet sweet vision of lost
possibilities, which gave her a sense of kinship with all the
loving and foregoing in the world!

She reached out suddenly and, drawing the cheque from her
writing-desk, enclosed it in an envelope which she addressed to
her bank. She then wrote out a cheque for Trenor, and placing it,
without an accompanying word, in an envelope inscribed with his
name, laid the two letters side by side on her desk. After that
she continued to sit at the table, sorting her papers and writing,
till the intense silence of the house reminded her of the lateness
of the hour. In the street the noise of wheels had ceased, and
the rumble of the “elevated” came only at long intervals through
the deep unnatural hush. In the mysterious nocturnal separation
from all outward signs of life, she felt herself more strangely
confronted with her fate. The sensation made her brain reel,
and she tried to shut out consciousness by pressing her hands
against her eyes. But the terrible silence and emptiness seemed to
symbolize her future—she felt as though the house, the street, the
world were all empty, and she alone left sentient in a lifeless
universe.

But this was the verge of delirium . . . she had never hung so
near the dizzy brink of the unreal. Sleep was what she wanted—she
remembered that she had not closed her eyes for two nights. The
little bottle was at her bed-side, waiting to lay its spell upon
her. She rose and undressed hastily, hungering now for the touch of
her pillow. She felt so profoundly tired that she thought she must
fall asleep at once; but as soon as she had lain down every nerve
started once more into separate wakefulness. It was as though a
great blaze of electric light had been turned on in her head, and
her poor little anguished self shrank and cowered in it, without
knowing where to take refuge.

She had not imagined that such a multiplication of wakefulness
was possible: her whole past was reenacting itself at a hundred
different points of consciousness. Where was the drug that could
still this legion of insurgent nerves? The sense of exhaustion
would have been sweet compared to this shrill beat of activities;
but weariness had dropped from her as though some cruel stimulant
had been forced into her veins.

She could bear it—yes, she could bear it; but what strength would
be left her the next day? Perspective had disappeared—the next day
pressed close upon her, and on its heels came the days that were to
follow—they swarmed about her like a shrieking mob. She must shut
them out for a few hours; she must take a brief bath of oblivion.
She put out her hand, and measured the soothing drops into a glass;
but as she did so, she knew they would be powerless against the
supernatural lucidity of her brain. She had long since raised the
dose to its highest limit, but tonight she felt she must increase
it. She knew she took a slight risk in doing so—she remembered
the chemist’s warning. If sleep came at all, it might be a sleep
without waking. But after all that was but one chance in a hundred:
the action of the drug was incalculable, and the addition of a few
drops to the regular dose would probably do no more than procure
for her the rest she so desperately needed....

She did not, in truth, consider the question very closely—the
physical craving for sleep was her only sustained sensation. Her
mind shrank from the glare of thought as instinctively as eyes
contract in a blaze of light—darkness, darkness was what she must
have at any cost. She raised herself in bed and swallowed the
contents of the glass; then she blew out her candle and lay down.

She lay very still, waiting with a sensuous pleasure for the first
effects of the soporific. She knew in advance what form they would
take—the gradual cessation of the inner throb, the soft approach
of passiveness, as though an invisible hand made magic passes over
her in the darkness. The very slowness and hesitancy of the effect
increased its fascination: it was delicious to lean over and look
down into the dim abysses of unconsciousness. Tonight the drug
seemed to work more slowly than usual: each passionate pulse had to
be stilled in turn, and it was long before she felt them dropping
into abeyance, like sentinels falling asleep at their posts. But
gradually the sense of complete subjugation came over her, and she
wondered languidly what had made her feel so uneasy and excited.
She saw now that there was nothing to be excited about—she had
returned to her normal view of life. Tomorrow would not be so
difficult after all: she felt sure that she would have the strength
to meet it. She did not quite remember what it was that she had
been afraid to meet, but the uncertainty no longer troubled her.
She had been unhappy, and now she was happy—she had felt herself
alone, and now the sense of loneliness had vanished.

She stirred once, and turned on her side, and as she did so, she
suddenly understood why she did not feel herself alone. It was
odd—but Nettie Struther’s child was lying on her arm: she felt
the pressure of its little head against her shoulder. She did not
know how it had come there, but she felt no great surprise at the
fact, only a gentle penetrating thrill of warmth and pleasure.
She settled herself into an easier position, hollowing her arm to
pillow the round downy head, and holding her breath lest a sound
should disturb the sleeping child.

As she lay there she said to herself that there was something she
must tell Selden, some word she had found that should make life
clear between them. She tried to repeat the word, which lingered
vague and luminous on the far edge of thought—she was afraid of not
remembering it when she woke; and if she could only remember it and
say it to him, she felt that everything would be well.

Slowly the thought of the word faded, and sleep began to enfold
her. She struggled faintly against it, feeling that she ought
to keep awake on account of the baby; but even this feeling was
gradually lost in an indistinct sense of drowsy peace, through
which, of a sudden, a dark flash of loneliness and terror tore its
way.

She started up again, cold and trembling with the shock: for a
moment she seemed to have lost her hold of the child. But no—she
was mistaken—the tender pressure of its body was still close to
hers: the recovered warmth flowed through her once more, she
yielded to it, sank into it, and slept.




Chapter 14


The next morning rose mild and bright, with a promise of summer
in the air. The sunlight slanted joyously down Lily’s street,
mellowed the blistered house-front, gilded the paintless railings
of the doorstep, and struck prismatic glories from the panes of her
darkened window.

When such a day coincides with the inner mood there is intoxication
in its breath; and Selden, hastening along the street through the
squalor of its morning confidences, felt himself thrilling with a
youthful sense of adventure. He had cut loose from the familiar
shores of habit, and launched himself on uncharted seas of emotion;
all the old tests and measures were left behind, and his course was
to be shaped by new stars.

That course, for the moment, led merely to Miss Bart’s
boarding-house; but its shabby doorstep had suddenly become the
threshold of the untried. As he approached he looked up at the
triple row of windows, wondering boyishly which one of them
was hers. It was nine o’clock, and the house, being tenanted
by workers, already showed an awakened front to the street. He
remembered afterward having noticed that only one blind was down.
He noticed too that there was a pot of pansies on one of the window
sills, and at once concluded that the window must be hers: it was
inevitable that he should connect her with the one touch of beauty
in the dingy scene.

Nine o’clock was an early hour for a visit, but Selden had passed
beyond all such conventional observances. He only knew that he must
see Lily Bart at once—he had found the word he meant to say to her,
and it could not wait another moment to be said. It was strange
that it had not come to his lips sooner—that he had let her pass
from him the evening before without being able to speak it. But
what did that matter, now that a new day had come? It was not a
word for twilight, but for the morning.

Selden ran eagerly up the steps and pulled the bell; and even in
his state of self-absorption it came as a sharp surprise to him
that the door should open so promptly. It was still more of a
surprise to see, as he entered, that it had been opened by Gerty
Farish—and that behind her, in an agitated blur, several other
figures ominously loomed.

“Lawrence!” Gerty cried in a strange voice, “how could you get
here so quickly?”—and the trembling hand she laid on him seemed
instantly to close about his heart.

He noticed the other faces, vague with fear and conjecture—he saw
the landlady’s imposing bulk sway professionally toward him; but
he shrank back, putting up his hand, while his eyes mechanically
mounted the steep black walnut stairs, up which he was immediately
aware that his cousin was about to lead him.

A voice in the background said that the doctor might be back at any
minute—and that nothing, upstairs, was to be disturbed. Some one
else exclaimed: “It was the greatest mercy—” then Selden felt that
Gerty had taken him gently by the hand, and that they were to be
suffered to go up alone.

In silence they mounted the three flights, and walked along the
passage to a closed door. Gerty opened the door, and Selden went
in after her. Though the blind was down, the irresistible sunlight
poured a tempered golden flood into the room, and in its light
Selden saw a narrow bed along the wall, and on the bed, with
motionless hands and calm unrecognizing face, the semblance of Lily
Bart.

That it was her real self, every pulse in him ardently denied. Her
real self had lain warm on his heart but a few hours earlier—what
had he to do with this estranged and tranquil face which, for the
first time, neither paled nor brightened at his coming?

Gerty, strangely tranquil too, with the conscious self-control of
one who has ministered to much pain, stood by the bed, speaking
gently, as if transmitting a final message.

“The doctor found a bottle of chloral—she had been sleeping badly
for a long time, and she must have taken an overdose by mistake....
There is no doubt of that—no doubt—there will be no question—he has
been very kind. I told him that you and I would like to be left
alone with her—to go over her things before any one else comes. I
know it is what she would have wished.”

Selden was hardly conscious of what she said. He stood looking down
on the sleeping face which seemed to lie like a delicate impalpable
mask over the living lineaments he had known. He felt that the real
Lily was still there, close to him, yet invisible and inaccessible;
and the tenuity of the barrier between them mocked him with a sense
of helplessness. There had never been more than a little impalpable
barrier between them—and yet he had suffered it to keep them apart!
And now, though it seemed slighter and frailer than ever, it had
suddenly hardened to adamant, and he might beat his life out
against it in vain.

He had dropped on his knees beside the bed, but a touch from Gerty
aroused him. He stood up, and as their eyes met he was struck by
the extraordinary light in his cousin’s face.

“You understand what the doctor has gone for? He has promised that
there shall be no trouble—but of course the formalities must be
gone through. And I asked him to give us time to look through her
things first——”

He nodded, and she glanced about the small bare room. “It won’t
take long,” she concluded.

“No—it won’t take long,” he agreed.

She held his hand in hers a moment longer, and then, with a last
look at the bed, moved silently toward the door. On the threshold
she paused to add: “You will find me downstairs if you want me.”

Selden roused himself to detain her. “But why are you going? She
would have wished——”

Gerty shook her head with a smile. “No: this is what she would have
wished——” and as she spoke a light broke through Selden’s stony
misery, and he saw deep into the hidden things of love.

The door closed on Gerty, and he stood alone with the motionless
sleeper on the bed. His impulse was to return to her side, to fall
on his knees, and rest his throbbing head against the peaceful
cheek on the pillow. They had never been at peace together, they
two; and now he felt himself drawn downward into the strange
mysterious depths of her tranquillity.

But he remembered Gerty’s warning words—he knew that, though time
had ceased in this room, its feet were hastening relentlessly
toward the door. Gerty had given him this supreme half hour, and he
must use it as she willed.

He turned and looked about him, sternly compelling himself to
regain his consciousness of outward things. There was very little
furniture in the room. The shabby chest of drawers was spread
with a lace cover, and set out with a few gold-topped boxes and
bottles, a rose-coloured pin-cushion, a glass tray strewn with
tortoise-shell hair-pins—he shrank from the poignant intimacy of
these trifles, and from the blank surface of the toilet-mirror
above them.

These were the only traces of luxury, of that clinging to the
minute observance of personal seemliness, which showed what her
other renunciations must have cost. There was no other token
of her personality about the room, unless it showed itself in
the scrupulous neatness of the scant articles of furniture: a
washing-stand, two chairs, a small writing-desk, and the little
table near the bed. On this table stood the empty bottle and glass,
and from these also he averted his eyes.

The desk was closed, but on its slanting lid lay two letters which
he took up. One bore the address of a bank, and as it was stamped
and sealed, Selden, after a moment’s hesitation, laid it aside. On
the other letter he read Gus Trenor’s name; and the flap of the
envelope was still ungummed.

Temptation leapt on him like the stab of a knife. He staggered
under it, steadying himself against the desk. Why had she been
writing to Trenor—writing, presumably, just after their parting
of the previous evening? The thought unhallowed the memory of
that last hour, made a mock of the word he had come to speak, and
defiled even the reconciling silence upon which it fell. He felt
himself flung back on all the ugly uncertainties from which he
thought he had cast loose forever. After all, what did he know of
her life? Only as much as she had chosen to show him, and measured
by the world’s estimate, how little that was! By what right—the
letter in his hand seemed to ask—by what right was it he who now
passed into her confidence through the gate which death had left
unbarred? His heart cried out that it was by right of their last
hour together, the hour when she herself had placed the key in
his hand. Yes—but what if the letter to Trenor had been written
afterward?

He put it from him with sudden loathing, and setting his lips,
addressed himself resolutely to what remained of his task. After
all, that task would be easier to perform, now that his personal
stake in it was annulled.

He raised the lid of the desk, and saw within it a cheque-book
and a few packets of bills and letters, arranged with the orderly
precision which characterized all her personal habits. He looked
through the letters first, because it was the most difficult part
of the work. They proved to be few and unimportant, but among them
he found, with a strange commotion of the heart, the note he had
written her the day after the Brys’ entertainment.

“When may I come to you?”—his words overwhelmed him with a
realization of the cowardice which had driven him from her at the
very moment of attainment. Yes—he had always feared his fate, and
he was too honest to disown his cowardice now; for had not all his
old doubts started to life again at the mere sight of Trenor’s name?

He laid the note in his card-case, folding it away carefully, as
something made precious by the fact that she had held it so; then,
growing once more aware of the lapse of time, he continued his
examination of the papers.

To his surprise, he found that all the bills were receipted; there
was not an unpaid account among them. He opened the cheque-book,
and saw that, the very night before, a cheque of ten thousand
dollars from Mrs. Peniston’s executors had been entered in it.
The legacy, then, had been paid sooner than Gerty had led him
to expect. But, turning another page or two, he discovered with
astonishment that, in spite of this recent accession of funds, the
balance had already declined to a few dollars. A rapid glance at
the stubs of the last cheques, all of which bore the date of the
previous day, showed that between four or five hundred dollars of
the legacy had been spent in the settlement of bills, while the
remaining thousands were comprehended in one cheque, made out, at
the same time, to Charles Augustus Trenor.

Selden laid the book aside, and sank into the chair beside the
desk. He leaned his elbows on it, and hid his face in his hands.
The bitter waters of life surged high about him, their sterile
taste was on his lips. Did the cheque to Trenor explain the mystery
or deepen it? At first his mind refused to act—he felt only the
taint of such a transaction between a man like Trenor and a girl
like Lily Bart. Then, gradually, his troubled vision cleared,
old hints and rumours came back to him, and out of the very
insinuations he had feared to probe, he constructed an explanation
of the mystery. It was true, then, that she had taken money from
Trenor; but true also, as the contents of the little desk declared,
that the obligation had been intolerable to her, and that at the
first opportunity she had freed herself from it, though the act
left her face to face with bare unmitigated poverty.

That was all he knew—all he could hope to unravel of the story.
The mute lips on the pillow refused him more than this—unless
indeed they had told him the rest in the kiss they had left upon
his forehead. Yes, he could now read into that farewell all that
his heart craved to find there; he could even draw from it courage
not to accuse himself for having failed to reach the height of his
opportunity.

He saw that all the conditions of life had conspired to keep them
apart; since his very detachment from the external influences which
swayed her had increased his spiritual fastidiousness, and made it
more difficult for him to live and love uncritically. But at least
he HAD loved her—had been willing to stake his future on his faith
in her—and if the moment had been fated to pass from them before
they could seize it, he saw now that, for both, it had been saved
whole out of the ruin of their lives.

It was this moment of love, this fleeting victory over themselves,
which had kept them from atrophy and extinction; which, in her, had
reached out to him in every struggle against the influence of her
surroundings, and in him, had kept alive the faith that now drew
him penitent and reconciled to her side.

He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment
to its lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word
which made all clear.


THE END




=Transcriber’s Note=:


  1. I have modernized this text by modernizing the contractions: do
     n’t becomes don’t, etc.

  2. I have retained the British spelling of words like favour and
     colour.

  3. I found and corrected one instance of the name “Gertie,” which I
     changed to “Gerty” to be consistent with rest of the book.

  Linda Ruoff