I
Lilah closed the door of the apartment and walked slowly across the
living-room to the window, removing her black hat and the chiffon veil
which had about it an unpleasant and penetrating odor of mourning. The
silence was good. To be rid of all those people, those eyes, trying to
gauge her grief, to measure it, as if it were soluble! Tears! Suppose
she hadn’t shed enough? Then they would have said that she had not
loved her father....
Well, she had.
Now she could do as she pleased about everything. She turned her back
to the window and with quick, critical eyes appraised the room her
father had liked to call the “library.” He had brought his books and
possessions from Ohio to New York when he accepted the professorship at
Columbia. “No, my dear, we mustn’t leave this, or this--these things
are very precious to me. They are--sanctified.”
Sanctified! A little burst of laughter shook Lilah. She wanted to sweep
everything into a great heap and set a match to it; to make a bonfire
of sanctified ugliness.
She felt very young and invincible as she stood there with her back
to the window. She had asked to be alone because she was afraid of
the exuberance that had taken possession of her on the way back
from the cemetery. Everything had looked so fresh, so gay, so
desirable--streets, houses, little flocks of sparrows, people passing
with disinterested glances at the long procession of funeral hacks. She
had wanted to jump out and walk. But she had kept her handkerchief over
her face to hide the upward curving of her lips, the look she knew must
be there of eagerness. She had gone through the business of burying
her father famously, had made all the conventional gestures. Something
within her had said: “I am free. This is the beginning for me.”
She was sorry that she had pitied her father. She would have preferred
to admire him. He had never understood, as she understood, life or
men. A failure, he had capitalized his defeat. She had seen through
him--his artful gentleness, his calculated patience, his martyrdom. He
never complained, but his eyes looked out at you like a startled deer;
you had a feeling that you had hurt him in some way. He was forever
turning the other cheek, accepting reverses and disappointments with
enthusiasm, as saints have worn and rejoiced in hair shirts.
Lilah thought: “Did I love him? Of course I did. Old hypocrite! I
shouldn’t. He lived his own life and never gave a thought to mine. And
he has left me penniless. He made me love beautiful things and I’ve got
to shift for myself in order to get them. But I loved him.”
She remembered his hands, large, hairy hands with freckles, that had
groped for hers in those last, terrified moments of wavering. And her
heart contracted with a deep pity, a shame, a pervading loneliness.
She began to cry....
She would save the books, of course. They were valuable. Her father,
who had been a gluttonous reader, had had excellent taste. Most of his
salary had gone into first editions--that rare Aretino, the Baudelaire,
the exquisite copy of Vasari’s “Vita di Leonardo da Vinci.” All the
book clerks in the city had gone to the funeral. He had belonged to
that rare genus, the veritable connoisseur.
“Your father was a wonderful man, Miss Norris. Wonderful. I’ll always
remember him prowling up and down between the shelves, peering and
questioning. He knew how to handle books! _He_ never broke their backs!”
Wiping the tears away, Lilah went into her bedroom. She hated herself
in black; she was too blonde and too slender. She decided, leaning
forward to stare at herself in the dressing-table mirror, that she
was positively plain.... And she made a little face at herself. She
undressed slowly, slipping out of the black dress she had bought for
the funeral. Then, sitting on the edge of the bed in her underthings,
she took stock of herself. She could still see herself in the mirror,
rather blurred by the dim light, but charming, not plain now that the
black was gone and her eyes were free of tears. She was one of those
women who take a serious pleasure in regarding themselves; she was
never unconscious of her cleverly modeled face, the misty quality of
her loveliness. And because of this preoccupation, her expression was
watchful, with something petulant in the droop of her mouth. She was
small and compact; she had the broad shoulders and meager hips of
a boy. Her hands were too large but she had inherited her mother’s
pointed and lustrous nails and a certain fineness, almost an elegance
of gesture. She was strong but indolent; she disliked fussy, unsteady
people.
She turned her head and gravely studied another angle of her face; she
had always taken a peculiar delight in the possession of her own nose;
its blunt, deft outlines were modern, audacious, “funny.” How lucky
not to be aquiline, or worse, Roman! It was part of her good fortune
to have been born in physical key with her period. She would have been
considered ugly in the sixteenth, the eighteenth centuries; in the
twentieth, she was delightful because her features were irregular and
provocative.
She thought again: “I am alone.”
All young lives, she reflected, must begin, be founded upon, the
death of some one already old. From the stale and disillusioned, such
soaring as hers! For she meant to soar. Change, decline, a difference
in her delicious outline, were remote and unimaginable calamities. She
remembered, with a shudder, her father’s last year. He had seemed to
surrender too easily to the little habits of senility--he had not been
always--quite nice. Why were old people so pathetic, so remote, so
unaware of their lack of grace?
Now, she knew, she was glad that it was over. She could be free of that
breathless pity, that impatience which had bordered on disgust and had
hurt her so--
She jumped up and went back to the library.
Her father’s chair was drawn up beside the table, so that the light
from the lamp might fall across his open book. He had been reading
Emerson. Not Nietzsche, at the end. He had said, with one of his
smiles, that as he drew nearer to the devil he sought a better
acquaintance with God.
Lilah wondered whether he had found God; whether, after that frantic
struggle not to die, he had come upon green hills and clouds white as
snow. She smiled at the thought of him, reading “Essays in Pessimism”
and neglecting his harp, or his pitch fork. Perhaps he had sought
acquaintance with God too late, as she herself was sure to.
She sat down in the old chair and contemplated her slippers, her
ankles, her legs. Pretty enough legs. She might try the stage. It was
an amusing thought, and while it lasted, she saw herself, very much
blonder, wearing one of those soubrette costumes with a bouffant skirt
and a “plate” hat tied under her chin....
The idea trailed off.
* * * * *
When the telephone rang, she hesitated. It might be Aunt Jo--one of the
relatives, who had made this pilgrimage to New York with the gusto of
the confirmed funeral enthusiast. Or it might be David, who had made
her grief an excuse for offering his shoulder again.
On the chance that it might be Robert Peabody, she answered.
His voice, with that peculiar hesitation, said: “Miss Norris?”
He wanted to see her. He had only just heard. Might he come? Of course!
To-night.... She was alone and unhappy, depressed. He could imagine....
“Eight o’clock, then.”
She put the instrument down and ran into her bedroom, her spirits
flying again, like a whir of swift birds across a sunset sky. The
window was open, and, bare-armed, she leaned on the sill, watching
the tide in the street, people hurrying home, with bundles, with
newspapers, with twisted cornucopias full of flowers. The sky was
slate blue and the street a deep cañon full of purple shadows. All
the ugliness was erased; the cornices had a sort of beauty. A tall
apartment house over on the Avenue rose like a tower, a shaft of white
stone set with lights and crowned with wisps of steam, purple-blue
plumes in a giant’s cap. The murmur of the city rose, confused, a vast
grumble. She thought again of her father, lying out there beneath
a heap of flowers, and of herself, here, alive, with everything
unfolding....
He had always said that he had given his life to her. What he had
really given her was a dubious inheritance. She had all of his
impatience, his detestation of the crude or the banal.
He had taken her with him on his annual vacations in Europe, meager
excursions to Switzerland and Italy. Lilah summered in innumerable,
obscure _pensions_. She wore crêpe waists that “did up” without ironing
and comfortable German-Swiss shoes with hob-nails, and tramped through
the Alpine valleys carrying a stick and a knapsack. Her quick eyes saw
everything, took things in, assorted, rejected, accepted. She spoke
French and Italian with a pert accent, and while her father sought out
and worried his intellectual bones she absorbed the European Blue Book.
Beyond the redolent _pensions_ with their grottoed gardens and dingy
dining-rooms, there were the Grands Hôtels d’Europe, emblazoned
_concièrges_ and _parcs_ equipped with statuary and pavilions. And
beyond the hotels, a sacred circle of _chateâux_ and _villine_
sheltering the lives of people whose very names stirred in her a
melancholy envy. She had never thought herself socially inferior;
she had the peculiar pride of the pedagogical aristocracy; she was,
moreover, American in her assumption of equality. But she could not
be patient, she could not accept what she knew to be a surrender to
mediocrity.
In the meantime, several men fell in love with her--a Swedish pianist
with a bang and long finger-nails, an Italian cavalry officer and an
English engineer who wanted her to go with him to South Africa. She
knew, before she was twenty, the depth and the danger of passion. A man
had groveled at her feet, begging for something she could not feel. She
had known disgust and terror; afterwards, an exultation. She seemed to
have a certain persuasion. Realizing it, she cultivated her charm, what
men called her “mystery.” Part artifice, part instinct, this charm of
hers was deepened, made permanent, during those summers in Europe. She
was feminine and adroit. She knew that, given the right soil, she might
cultivate a very rare garden indeed.
* * * * *
Now this....
She closed the window and began to dress. Black again, she supposed.
Robert Peabody was conventional enough to question grief in orchid
chiffon; he would expect pallor--and pearls. Her own string was
imitation and she threw it down again. The telephone was ringing ...
David.... She crinkled her nose at herself in the mirror. Let him ring!
He was one of those dumb, worshipful creatures made more ardent by
rebuffs. He would ring to-morrow, and the next day, and the next, until
she answered. Nothing must interfere with her seeing Robert Peabody
alone.
The bell stopped with a querulous note of surrender, and she went about
the library, straightening the chairs, pushing the ugliest ornaments
out of sight. She moved quickly, conscious of an unpleasant sensation
of fear. Her father seemed to be there, watching her, mournful and
beseeching, with those eyes of a dog or a wounded deer. She felt that
she had done something unfair; that she might, she might have held him
on this side a little longer--if she had resisted whatever it was that
was pulling him down and away! How horrible! Death should never come
near the living. It was unkind. Even to know--
She had put a silk scarf over her shoulders. The fringed ends touched
the floor; with one hand she held the heavy folds across her hips so
that the grace of her figure was visible.
When the door bell rang--it was one of the push-button variety--she
waited a moment before answering, an artistic interval intended to stir
a doubt in Peabody’s mind and then to reassure him so that he would
mount the four flights of carpeted stairs with a sense of victory, of
security.
While he climbed, she leaned over the banister. She could see his blond
head with the neat parting, his black and white muffler, a gloved hand
on the railing.... The ghost in the room behind her drifted out of the
window, back to the pyramid of flowers.
She thought: “He has never been here before. He’ll hate the room.”
But Robert Peabody seemed only to see her. His light eyes, not quick
like her own, but steady and almost expressionless, stared at her as he
took her hand: “I was so sorry to hear--so awfully sorry for you.”
Lilah’s lips trembled. She led him back to the library and took from
him the heavy overcoat, the silk muffler, his hat and gloves. The feel
of them pleased her; they were so exactly right in texture.
“I’ve been at the Point,” he said, taking her father’s chair. “I never
see a paper there. Gillow told me when I got back this morning.” He
hesitated. “I liked your father.”
“Every one did,” Lilah said.
“I know. I dare say he was better than most of us.”
“He was.”
“See here. I wish you wouldn’t cry! When people die, it’s a confounded
shame to talk about their good qualities. I’m a fool. I didn’t mean to
do what every one else does. I meant to cheer you up a bit.... Are you
alone?”
Lilah wiped her eyes. “Yes. I sent the relatives away. They enjoyed it
too much.”
He laughed. “Sensible of you! What can I talk to you about? Dogs?
People? Gardens?”
“Yourself,” Lilah answered. “I’m curious about you.”
This was obvious, but he was not the sort to be alarmed.
“Your father must have told you,” he said. And to her surprise he
flushed. “I was his worst pupil. I flunked everything. I’m terribly
stupid.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“But I am. I wouldn’t be anywhere to-day if it weren’t for my
grandfather. He created the family, and he still runs it. Funny
thing--he had all the creative instinct. He saw the possibilities in
lumber sixty years ago. He saw, and, he dared. Magnificent old chap! He
outlived my father. I dare say he’ll outlive me.”
“Hardly.”
“Eighty-four. Thin as a leaf and hard as steel! I’m third generation.
And drinkin’.”
“Why?”
“What else is there to do? My grandfather had all the fun. He broke
the ground and planted the seed. Now the trees are up--if I can put
it that way--and there’s nothing for me to do but sit in the shade....
Sometimes I envy him.”
Lilah glanced down at her slippers. “You shouldn’t. He gives you
everything.”
“And laughs at me! Because I’m soft. And thick-pated. He couldn’t hate
me any more than I hate myself. My God, Miss Norris, to be as rich as I
am and to look like an English governess.... Now, don’t I? Honest? You
ought to see my knees--they’re as pink as a baby’s! Look at my hands!
And this hair--it parts like that, neat, in the middle! Great God!” He
stared at her. “So I’m drinkin’.”
“You don’t blame your grandfather for your knees, do you?”
“Of course I do.” He slid forward and offered his cigarette case.
“Smoke?”
Lilah thought quickly: “Do I, or don’t I?”
She decided: “Yes.”
And leaning to the match he lighted, she puffed delicately, with quick
little intakes of breath. The smoke came through her nostrils. She
tipped her head back and let Peabody see the firm line of her throat,
her chin, round and feminine.
“I made you laugh, didn’t I? I wanted to.” His expression changed,
and she saw again that bland, sympathetic look, an intensification,
as if he were trying to focus on his emotion. He had no complexities
of feeling; he seemed to grope for the most simple reaction. It was,
Lilah thought, like one of those “slowed-up” pictures in the movies.
You saw his mood change as you watched him. She could anticipate
the conclusion before he was aware of it himself. Was he going to
bore her too much? Her mind was not always accurate but it was quick
as lightning. She saw--pounced--judged. She lay back in her chair
watching this man whose path had crossed hers only twice, once in
Europe, and again at a dinner given in honor of her father. He was
the only rich man she knew. The satellites that had revolved about
her in her _pension_ days had been on the lookout for the traditional
American heiress; she had no _dot_, and therefore no claim to their
serious attention. She knew this. And her attitude toward men had been
unconsciously established; she believed that she could not advance
without a compromise. She took it for granted that she would have to
forego love. She was too ironical to consider the possibility of a
lovable Robert Peabody.
“See here,” he said. The match burned out between his fingers and he
tossed it into the grate. “I have a suggestion.... You ought not to
stay here alone. Suppose you let me take you back to the Point? My
grandfather’s there. He’d love you. And there’s my Aunt Whiteside,
who’s a sort of housekeeper. It would do you good. What do you say?”
Lilah shook her head. “No.”
“Why not?”
She stood up, flicking the ashes into the hearth, with a gesture she
had perhaps copied from some one--it was not insolent, but it was very
“Russian.” She was picturesque, standing there, the lamplight on the
curious silver-gold of her hair, which she wore straight back from
her forehead. She had about her that peculiar and elusive element of
elegance which is usually the patina, unmistakable, of wealth. There
was no trace of her rather shoddy experience in either her carriage or
her attitude. She was not arrogant. She was assured. And this was her
most valuable asset.
She shook her head again. “I can’t. I’m penniless. I’ve got to do
something.”
Robert Peabody stared at his hands as if they offended him. “I’m sorry.
Terribly sorry. That’s rotten luck.”
The rich can be magnificently casual about money. It was rotten luck!
But to people like the Peabodys, financial calamity is too remote to be
classed among the realities of life.
Lilah, glancing down at the neat part in Robert Peabody’s hair, knew
that she had made a misstep.
“It’s all right,” she said lightly. “I’ll manage.”
“Of course you will! Only I’d hoped that you’d come. It would be jolly
for my grandfather. And for me.”
It would have been jolly for her, if she could have afforded it.
How could she tell Robert Peabody that she had only the one dress,
and nothing for evening? If she had been a personality, some one
established, a woman of importance, it would not have mattered. A
great woman needs only her wits and her name. But Lilah was nobody.
Twenty-seven years old, and nobody. She felt that her potentiality
had been walled in. Her father had had a streak of something common
in his nature; he had preferred mediocre people. He was always giving
money to blatant, down-at-the-heel sycophants whom he suspected of
talent or spiritual loveliness. He lent a sympathetic ear to tales
of degradation. There was something coarse in him--a streak aslant
the pure crystal of his intellect. His friends had called him a
humanitarian; to Lilah, his passion for derelicts meant a lack of
fastidiousness. She wanted him to be an epicurean; he had ended by
being a pathetic Nietzschan bleating for God....
Oh, to get away ... to forget, in the freshness of the country in May,
the stale odor of crêpe and wilted carnations....
“You ought to see the Point, Miss Norris. Some day, you must. I was
brought up there. I’m pretty much of a country chap. I’d like to show
you the kennels. D’you like spaniels?”
“Rather.”
“I’ve got a new litter. Four of the prettiest little chaps. Smooth as
silk with perfectly gorgeous ears.”
He went on, talking about spaniels, leaning back in her father’s chair.
She smiled. But her mind was busy making pictures of the Point; she
was walking down a garden path paved with brick between rose hedges.
The sun was warm on her back; she could feel it through the lace of
her gown, and on her neck, where her leghorn hat turned up and you saw
her hair twisted so smoothly, honey-colored. She was not with Robert
but with his grandfather. There was a look between them of perfect
understanding, something warm, mutual, delicious. And the sky was like
a Canaletto, flecked with “mackerel,” gentian and crystal. She saw the
chimneys of a house, and a sort of terrace where a cow grazed under
some trees....
“The little chaps hadn’t opened their eyes.”
“No?” she said. She came back out of the dream with a shiver of
pleasure. Then one by one the details of the room assailed her. This
was hers.
She twisted her shoulders and smiled. “Aren’t you hungry? I’ll make a
rarebit.”
Robert Peabody flushed again. “Will you?”
She led the way to the kitchen, and, letting the silk scarf fall
into Robert’s hands, she put on an apron. She was very expert and
swift, lighting the gas stove, opening and shutting the ice-box,
grating cheese, toasting crackers, stirring and measuring. She put
Robert in a corner, where he sat with her scarf between his hands,
caressing the stuff, not as some men would have caressed it, with
luxury, but with a sort of unconscious pleasure, as one strokes the
silky ears of a dog. All the while he watched her. She had decided
not to be ashamed of the way she lived; there was little or no use in
pretending luxury. A medley of sounds rose from the court outside,
and she closed the window. They were more alone in the silence. Their
intimacy and their strangeness demanded words, but he said nothing,
only watched, with emotions making their slow and obvious passage
across his eyes. He found her fascinating and she puzzled him. She
was practical, and pretty, a lady; you couldn’t be quite sure, these
days; he might have a shot at a flirtation; he pitied her; he was a
little afraid of her--but fascinating, by George. Damned attractive!
Something foreign about her.... And then the idea of love crossed his
mind. While she was stirring the rarebit, she watched the beginning of
that idea. His eyes were fixed on her hands and arms, from which the
black sleeves fell back. His eyes clouded with the poignant onslaught
of his conception--to love her, to be loved by her. Tremendous. A
responsibility. His mouth betrayed, by a droop at the corners, his
humility and discouragement. And his hands, touching the silk fringes,
began suddenly to caress them, gently.
When she leaned across the table to pour the rarebit, he bent quickly
and kissed her arm.
Lilah said: “Oh.”
“Forgive me, there’s a dear! I didn’t mean to. I swear I didn’t.”
“And you pretend to be stupid?”
“But I am. That’s just it.”
She shrugged. Her reaction was immediate and would have startled him
had he known how swift and inexorable her judgments were. She had
decided to make him suffer, and to land him full and fair in her net.
This one, and no other! You will see that she was romantic; only a
very sentimental woman enjoys making a man suffer. As a gauge of love
the process is primitive, even savage. It meant simply that in that
moment, so light, so brief, when he had put his lips to her arm, he had
attracted her.
“It’s a good rarebit,” he said. “And it seems to me you’re awfully cozy
here. Nice little flat. Everything comfortable.”
“But I haven’t any money.”
“Not literally?”
“Quite. When the nurses and doctors are paid, I shan’t have anything.”
She stifled a sudden depression. “I’ll do something. I can make hats!”
He looked up from the rarebit. “I bet you can! I’ll tell Aunt Whiteside
and the James girls. I know mobs of women....”
He branched off into the eccentricities of his Aunt Whiteside’s
hats. “Awful little bonnets with trees and crystal dew-dabs and
strings--everything shakes and shivers--all of her hats have the palsy.
But she pays like thunder for ’em. And the bills go to my grandfather.
He always says: ‘The price of virtue’ when he writes the check. She’s
sort of a mother superior in sequins. One day my grandfather said:
‘Robert, have you ever noticed Grace Whiteside’s legs?’ I’d never
thought of such a thing! But the next day I looked, and by George, they
were magnificent! Something terrible about it.... An old lady with
legs....”
“Go on,” Lilah said.
But Robert shook his head. “I’m shockin’ you.”
“No. I’ve known Italian men. They all talk like that, only, in Italian,
it sounds like d’Annunzio: _Le gambe belle di una vecchia donna_....”
They laughed.
He had forgotten about her poverty again.
Before he left, standing in the darkened hallway with his muffler on
and eyes sympathetic again, he said: “I’m going to ask Grace Fuller to
come around and see you. She’s looking for a room-mate. Splendid girl.
I’m rather sweet on her. You’d like her.”
“Grace Fuller?”
“She’s a nurse. Took care of me when I had my appendix. And she always
sees Aunt Whiteside through the gall-stones.”
He offered his hand.
Lilah felt that, behind her, the ghost had drifted in again. “I’d be
very glad,” she said faintly.
“Now you cheer up.” His voice deepened a note. He was genuinely sorry
for her. “Good night.”
Lilah leaned against the closed door.... Tired.... Tired.... Grace
Fuller.... Sweet on her.... What a damned fool of a man! What a bore!
Stupid! Stupid! To have had him here at all! To have tried....
She ran to the window and leaned out. A motor moved away with a silvery
clink of chains. It had been raining.... He was gone.... The street
lights were like balloons on sticks and an odor of wet dust rose,
pungent, acrid.
For a long time she leaned there, with dry eyes, her breath shallow.
The day flowed back over her spirit and she saw herself, little,
heartless, unsuccessful. She had better make up her mind to do with
what she had. To accustom herself to such ugliness as this.