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.