The days that followed were too crowded to hurt very much. A procession
of strangers came to the “Villino Sans-Souci”; Lilah was questioned,
with respect, with pity, with impudence, with disdain. She discovered
that she knew nothing of Flagg’s family, his affairs. Cables were
dispatched to his bank and, after a delay, a dry, unemotional and
explicit reply was received, not by Lilah, but by the Florentine bank
which had handled the small matter of Flagg’s account. Lilah was
visited by an Anglo-Italian who wore a white Imperial in the flamboyant
manner of Maximilian and who gesticulated with small, self-conscious
hands in black kid gloves. She was, he informed her, to leave Flagg in
Italy, since there was no one to receive him in America.
“Then I am not to be consulted?” she demanded with a smile that should
have humiliated him.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Those were our instructions, _signora_.”
He rose and bowed, his eyes veiling their curiosity, his attitude a
discreet expression of admiration. “We are also instructed to meet any
expense--any necessary expense.”
“I suppose you mean that I am to get back to America any way I can.”
“I suggest that you wire your own bank, _signora_.”
“Oh, yes,” she said crisply. “Of course! I was not referring to money
but to the indifference of Mr. Flagg’s family.”
Those little, initiated, trained hands made a gesture disposing of
families. “The world is cruel, _signora_. If there is anything I can do
for you, call upon me. I am not indifferent to distress. Permit me to
say that I am more than sorry--”
When he was gone, she wandered from room to room, from window to
window, peering out at the black sky, at the drenched cypresses, the
bedraggled arbor. The little cat asked to be let in. “I must find a
home for you,” Lilah said. Because, like Lilah, the little cat loved
soft and beautiful things, she was forever crying at closed doors,
begging to be let in to warmth and light. But no one cared, because it
is not enough to love soft things, beauty--
The house-agent, rattling his keys, interrupted her. He had an air of
relishing the situation and there was, at the same time, something sly
and insinuating in his manner. He stared, immediately, at everything
as if he expected to find that some of the furniture had been removed.
He asked whether Lilah intended to remain at the “Villino Sans-Souci,”
which had been leased by the “poor gentleman” for a year.
Lilah realized, with a shock of positive terror, that she must leave
the house at once.
“An English gentleman is most anxious to take the house. Perhaps,
next week--to be precise, Wednesday--the _signora_ will surrender the
property?”
Afraid of his eyes, Lilah said: “I cannot move before the first of the
month. The rent is paid until then.”
This was a mistake. The agent repeated that his English client must
take possession at once--or find another, suitable house. It was
not a simple matter to find tenants for houses in the country, the
_forestieri_ preferred, as a rule, the life and gayety of the city. “As
for me, _signora_, I would die of the melancholy in this place.”
“Wednesday, then,” Lilah said. She shut him out with a weary gesture.
Where on earth should she go? Now, of course, she could not ask Robert,
or Junius, for money. She had burned her bridges.
She packed Flagg’s things, vaguely intending to give them to some one
who might need them--the farmer next door or that tall idiot boy who
lived over the hill, the one who could imitate the birds and sat all
day calling them, delighted by his own cleverness. Lilah could not
kiss Flagg’s things, or caress them. Some women might have, but they
would not have been the kind of women who love deeply. Lilah shook his
clothes out, folded them, with a sort of frozen indifference, as if
they had belonged to some one else. She had had her hour of bravery,
alone with him. She had sat with death. No one, not even David Brenner,
could call her a coward now.... But at the end, Flagg’s eyes shut her
out. He had gone away without her, still cherishing his secrets....
Selfish.... The word rang in her ears.
She got up, went quickly downstairs and to his desk where that little
heap of manuscript lay untouched. She began to read eagerly, hearing
his voice in every word.... How long would it be before she would
forget his voice? How long must she suffer like this?
She could not understand what he had written.... No wonder that he had
never confided in her. He had either gone infinitely further along the
paths she feared and shrank from, or else he had been deluded, blinded
by glimpses of the infinite. His phrases had no meaning for her. How
far must she go, she wondered, before she could judge, appraise him?
She would know, some day, whether he had been selfish, or beyond the
proscribed, essential personality of the unenlightened being--Robert,
Junius, herself.
She had deceived him, in the beginning; he had thought that he saw
in her what, eventually, he found she did not have. He had little
by little uncovered her artifice, her ignorance, her evasions, her
frivolity, her fear, until in the end, he clasped, perhaps with shame,
a naked little body.... That was why, in the end, he smiled at her and
shut her out....
* * * * *
Hearing a carriage, she thrust the papers under a blotter, out of
sight, as if they had been a proclamation of her failure. The servant
came in, announcing the _contessa_.
“_Cara mia_, I have just heard.”
She offered both her hands to Lilah. She was dressed in the extreme of
fashion, and Lilah thought: “She must have made a match.”
The _contessa’s_ sharp, initiated eyes studied Lilah’s face through
a lorgnon. She wore, always, too many ornaments, chains, bracelets,
medallions and pins; her flat breast was hung with brilliants. “My poor
child. I hear that you were in Paris. What a terrible thing. What will
you do? Go back to your husband?”
“No.”
“Perhaps you will remarry.”
“My dear _contessa_,” Lilah said impatiently, “I am not yet divorced.
And I loved the man who is dead.”
“But you’ll have to do something with your life. You can’t live here,
alone, in this treasure-house of sweet memories! You’ll have to do
something! You’re young. I don’t believe in women sitting desolate
among the ruins, willfully mourning the irrevocable. Life is so
terribly short and cruel, so--so avaricious. I have always believed
in snapping my fingers in the face of destiny. You couldn’t imagine
the number of times I’ve been knocked down. I always get up again. I’m
clever. A woman alone has to be. You’ve got to understand men. If I
were beautiful, with my knowledge of men, I could achieve anything....
As it is--sixty, and a bag of bones--I manage--” Her voice trailed off.
A look of weariness and fright crossed her eyes. “I manage. Now, if I
were you--”
“I haven’t a cent,” Lilah cried suddenly. “I don’t know what to do. Can
you lend me a few hundred dollars?”
The _contessa_ closed her lorgnon with a snap. Her expression became
sly, sweet, and guarded. She stared down at her large, awkward
hands, at the glitter of small, inexpensive but ostentatious rings
which ornamented her fingers. She shook her head. “Impossible. Just
at the moment, I am what we Americans call flush. But you never can
tell.... You never can tell! It’s a precarious world. And the Italians
aren’t gifted with a sense of gratitude. I did wonderful things for a
_borghese_, a store-keeper, who wanted to enlarge his establishment....”
She broke off. “You might live with me for a while. I would enjoy your
companionship. Your presence would brighten my _salon_. I am quite in
earnest. I would not expect compensation. Gayety. Vivacity. Elegance.
And in return the advantage of my large acquaintance....”
“Thank you,” Lilah said. “No.”
She shivered. “No. You are very kind. But I am going back to America.”
She stood, and the _contessa_, her chains and bangles clinking
together, took her leave. “You are very foolish,” she said at the
door. “Perhaps you will reconsider. You are intelligent enough to know
that I am respectable. If you are afraid of facts....” She got into
her carriage, crossed one leg over the other, displaying an elaborate
slipper, and waved. “_Au ’voir!_”
* * * * *
Lilah thought: “Who knows? Some day.”
She sat before the fire, smoking and stroking the cat, that kept up
a remote humming, a sort of tea-kettle purring. She thought of the
simple existence of a cat. Either you were hungry and hunted, or you
weren’t, and purred, with no thought of the next day or the next. If
she were to leave the little black cat to the mercy of the agent, the
birds in the cypress groves would have to watch out--a lean, famished
little cat with lashing tail would creep through the under-brush,
stalking.... “I’ll give you to the doctor,” Lilah said aloud. The
little cat blinked and fell asleep.
Life wasn’t so simple for a woman whose only talent was knowing how
to dress well. To live. Just to live, and not be hungry! Suppose she
were to accept the _contessa’s_ invitation. She knew quite well what
it meant--a married woman, in Italy--even a divorcee would find it
almost impossible to remarry. She would become the mistress of one of
the _contessa’s_ friends, for a compensation. He would, of necessity,
be a wealthy _borghese_, since men of title were seeking dowries,
not adventures. She let the projected image of herself pass across
her imagination, an image of Lilah accentuated, for the moment more
brilliant, her mystery understored, her charm deepened by necessity to
a certain vulgarity--an actress pretending to be a lady.... She would
seek satisfaction in the possession of concrete adornments, tributes
to her first, untarnished success. She might, even, take her situation
seriously....
She threw her cigarette into the fire with a gesture that was both
violent and contemptuous. First her father, now Flagg, had left her to
shift for herself. Her mouth drooped. Her eyes, angry, dull with pain,
brooded. “I can’t bear this. What, in God’s name, am I going to do?”
It was not yet dark. Twilight was gathering, and the ugly, incongruous
objects in the room retreated into shadow. She thought of the
Thirty-eighth Street house, Shawhan’s flamboyant ladies, the dull
gold of shaded lights, the discreet, remote murmur of traffic in that
brazen, that fearless, that challenging city.... She went to the
window. The valley, Florence, was dark beneath a dark sky; there were
no lights; it might have been a city forgotten and deserted, a place
given over to the ghosts of a reckless, fearless, challenging yesterday.
“I must go back,” she thought.
She straightened herself, as if she were facing an antagonist. Across
the valley, beneath that dark sky, Flagg was alone with the secret
he had withheld from her. It seemed to Lilah that she must, somehow,
get to him, hear his voice, listen again to the beating of his heart,
caress his hair. But there was something she must do first. She must
bring him the Lilah he wanted.
* * * * *
Doctor Bacci lived across the river in an old house, narrow, tall,
toppling, in the Via dei Bardi. There was a garden at the rear, where,
he assured her, the little black cat and her kitten would be free to
caper or to bask in the sun. He opened the hat-box Lilah had brought
from the Ponte a Mensola, from which emerged a continuous scratching
and mewing. Damp and disheveled, the two cats jumped out and began
at once to investigate, under tables, behind doors, into cupboards,
everywhere.
“You’re sure you don’t mind?”
The doctor smiled. “I am, on the contrary, flattered.”
He touched a bell and a man servant came in. The doctor said in
Italian: “These are my two children. The little, black female is called
Simonetta. The other, Moro. Will you ask Tata to feed them?”
“_Si, signore._”
He turned to find Lilah in tears. “Now, there is nothing,” she said.
“You have forgotten the future.”
With a flash of scorn, she answered: “What cold comfort!”
“I have nothing better to offer.” The doctor looked away from her,
through the French door to the patch of garden. Lilah wondered whether
pity embarrassed him. “What are you going to do?” he asked.
She told him, at once, her situation. “There is no one else I can go
to. I’m alone. I don’t want my husband or his grandfather to know
anything about me. I am afraid that if I should see them I might
weaken. I might go back. I have told you enough about myself to make it
plain to you that if I should go back it would be--”
“Unthinkable,” the doctor interrupted.
He rose politely. “There are a few patients--When I have seen them, I
will join you in the garden.”
He opened the door and Lilah passed him, conscious of his glance, both
curious and eager. Before the door closed again, he watched her cross
the garden and seat herself on a stone bench beneath the polished
foliage of a camelia tree. There, in that square pool of green, at the
bottom of a well formed by the walls of houses, beneath another square
of cloudless sky, Lilah felt a pervading loneliness. An emotional
courage had carried her so far. Could she go farther? Everything,
literally everything, depended on this man. If he should open the door
and come toward her with a certain expression, she would know that she
was to be forever the victim of her negative philosophy; her vision
could not outlast the attack of a calculated and intelligent cynicism.
Her balance was too precarious. If he came toward her with another
expression--and she could tell, when he had no more than opened the
door--she would be forever under obligation to her new self. There
could be no backsliding.
She relaxed suddenly. The sunlight, after so many weeks of rain, had
about it an almost personal warmth; it lay across her hands, her cheek,
her shoulders. The walls dripped moisture and a shallow fountain kept
up a thin tinkle as a jet rose and fell. A door opened, some one said
“_Via!_” and the two cats scampered out, their tails very stiff. They
sat down in a patch of sunlight and began to lick themselves, first
their haunches, then their stomachs, and at last their heads, over
and over with their paws. Finished, one of them fell asleep, his paws
tucked under so that he was heart-shaped. The other, Simonetta,
explored the garden, daintily, stepping over everything lightly, her
tail twitching....
“She has forgotten him already,” Lilah thought. And she remembered
Flagg’s fingers caressing the black fur.... Her own hair.... A wild
sweetness possessed her. She closed her eyes, abandoned to it. It
flowed over her like light, this remembering. It was bitter and
wonderful and exquisite. If she could remember like this, she would
never be altogether alone; she could summon the recollection of his
touch....
The sensation passed. She was cold. She opened her eyes to the bright
immobility of the garden.
The French doors of the doctor’s office opened. He came toward her
quickly, but she did not look at his face.
He said without preface: “I will see that you get back to New York
and that you are provided for until you can find something to do.
Florence isn’t the place for you. Here you would never reach the final
step--purification. It is too old, too settled a beauty. You need the
struggle America offers--competition, enthusiasm. I could show you an
Italy you don’t dream of, but it is mine, not yours! You would never
understand it and, in the end, it would destroy you, since you are
weakened by perfection. You will have to cut your way out of ugliness.”
He paused. Then in a different, casual voice he said: “Simonetta has
come to stay. She is asleep on the kitchen step.” And he called:
“_Vieni! Gattinino!_”
Lilah returned to New York. It was Spring of the year. She mingled in
the restless stream flowing up one side of the Avenue, down the other,
broken by cross-currents, flowing on again, resistlessly, to no purpose.
The doctor’s generosity had been limited by his resources; he was not,
in the American sense, well-to-do. When Lilah counted her pennies and
considered her debt, she realized that he had spoken the truth; she
must cut her way out of ugliness. Poverty in a cottage might be, at
least, picturesque, immaterial; in New York it was ponderable, a sordid
weight of petty obstacles; so much for so much and never quite enough.
Lilah established herself in a room not far from Astor Place.
New York was a desert. She was alone in a crowded wilderness. She
was shabby, in debt and desperate. But if Robert had reappeared and
had asked her to return to the Thirty-eighth Street house, to the
sumptuous, familiar extravagances of her life there, she would have
lacked the courage to accept.
She had a new thirst for power, a new eagerness to escape. She wanted
the power that comes with personal success. She wanted to escape from
the curse of materialism. She had lived in a sham world; the shabby,
dark room, the dingy window-panes, the worn carpet were reality.
Lilah’s daily search for work took her through streets where there
was not even a remote chance of being recognized by old friends; she
threaded the crowded mazes of commerce, anonymous and frightened.
It did not occur to her to go back to the fashionable couturier in the
’Fifties who had “built” her trousseau. She remembered his first curt
dismissal, the card tossed to her across his desk. “Learn to put hats
together; then, perhaps, you can design them.”
She avoided those up-town streets given over to fashionable shops and
hotels, establishments haunted by women of her acquaintance whose whims
carried them from one dressmaker to another, from one antiquarian to
another. She wanted to lose herself, to be immersed in an unfamiliar
atmosphere, to be alone with this strange, new Lilah. Now that Flagg
was dead, he was more than ever real. He had never been so insistently
near her, more insistently a part of her. But their life together had
lost all reality. It seemed, now, to have happened in a half-forgotten
dream. She had dreamed and had wakened to the commonplace business of
living. The actual became confused with the vision; she experienced a
new, strong sense of distaste, almost fear, at the proximity of people
who might break the comforting nostalgia.
She saw no one but David Brenner. The young Jew fitted her mood. He was
not, now, in love with her but with some scheme of his own. He called
her his “little sardine” but he did not accuse her of being a humbug.
She lunched with him at the identical restaurant of their last meeting,
and Lilah traced with her finger recent signatures scratched in the
pine table by unknowns craving an easy notoriety.
David Brenner’s talk was of people, things, she knew nothing about.
A dozen personalities had flashed across the American intellectual
firmament trailing sparks and shedding inhibitions--rockets, most of
them, that shot up with a tremendous dazzle and were destined soon
to snuff out, to zig-zag to earth. David Brenner spoke of them with
immense seriousness. He was like most Americans, she decided, in his
facile enthusiasms, his sudden, scornful shifts of opinion.
“I’m broke, David,” she said.
He did not take her seriously. He knew nothing about her. And behind
his bantering admiration there was always distrust. When she told him
that she could not find work, he shrugged his shoulders. “You’ll never
get the sort of job you’re looking for, Lilah. Try Fifth Avenue and
your own particular brand of bluff.”
There it was again. Her own particular brand of bluff.
It was lonely, living by herself. She left David Brenner and went back
to the room just off Astor Place. Day after day at five o’clock she
went there because there was nowhere else to go. She had lost her sense
of the pageantry of the streets and of her part in it. No one turned
to look at her, because she no longer had the assurance, the air of
victory, which attracts attention.
She took David Brenner’s advice. After all, what did it matter if
Robert’s friends should happen to see her? She had been stupid.
She was not the type of woman they wanted in East Side shirtwaist
factories. Over and over again she had failed because she had had no
“experience,” that vague attribute of anemic, gum-chewing, bobbed girls
who always “got the job” Lilah failed to get. Her manner, her charm
counted for nothing. She discovered that she was too old to serve the
necessary apprenticeship. Girls of fifteen were doing, efficiently,
what she could not do. Others, thousands of them, were trained, ready
to take the succeeding steps toward the few high-salaried positions
available to women in business. At eight o’clock, at five o’clock, the
streets were choked with women, all of them initiated--
Lilah sat before her mirror and took stock of herself.
“Twenty-nine,” she said aloud.
In the fashionable world she had left, twenty-nine was at the beginning
of experience. At thirty, a woman tried her wings; if she were clever
and ambitious, it was the age of marital re-adjustment, of social
expansion, of thrilling experiment, leadership. But to be a lonely
little nobody at thirty! To climb endless iron stairs to innumerable
glazed doors marked: _Private_. To answer advertisements a day too
late. To be told to leave her name and address, to come again, to
telephone, to write. To thread the crowded streets, pretending
eagerness. To try and fail....
It would be easier to write Robert something evasive, something
pathetic ... she could always touch his heart ... and, to-morrow, she
would be at the Point, laughing with Junius, everything forgotten....
She actually went to the table and took up a pen, dipping it several
times in the ink. She wrote: _March 30_. But she could not write: _Dear
Robert_. Could not. The letters would not go down.
She put her head on the paper and cried. She cried until she fell
asleep. She was very tired and she was beginning to be hungry. The
doctor’s loan would not carry her another week and she could not ask
him for more. It was enough that he was caring for Simonetta and
Moro.... It was enough that he had seen Flagg die....
In the morning she went up town. Someone, very optimistic, had set out
English daisies in window boxes. It was warm on the sunny side of the
street. And what shops! What clothes! Lilah, drunk, paused to stare
at a chinchilla wrap, a Leghorn hat, a pair of brocaded sandals, a
fan made of pheasants’ feathers set in onyx sticks.... She felt the
old hunger for possession. She shook her head and straightened her
shoulders. She groped for her dim, new faith, what it was that drove
her on, why it was that she must win this obscure, personal game....
She went into the employee’s entrance of a department store. A
doorman, who was sitting on a stool, directed her to the office of
“Miss Craig--she sees everybody.” Miss Craig was young, and a lady.
From behind spectacles with tortoise-shell rims her eyes investigated
Lilah’s unmistakable elegance. Maurice’s black gown was a miracle of
simplicity; it had outlasted two seasons. Miss Craig wrote something
on a pad. Her expression was purposefully enigmatic, but the corners
of her mouth twitched. “There isn’t much chance just at present....
I could try you in the cotton good’s department. It’s quite hard.
You’d have to learn the stock. The material isn’t heavy, but the bolts
are--it means lifting all day and standing on your feet. Our employees
are expected to go to school in the beginning. We have to be sure that
they are reasonably good mathematicians--honest--intelligent--” She
paused, flushing.
“Anything,” Lilah said. “I’ll do anything. I’m at the end.”
After a moment, Miss Craig said: “I’m terribly sorry. I guessed as
much. Would twenty-five dollars a week help any? I can’t offer you
more. For a novice, you know--”
“Yes. Yes. Anything.”
Lilah went to school. Fractions terrified her. Graduated, she pasted
labels, and, for a week, wrote undecipherable, meaningless numbers and
letters on pasteboard tickets. She did not see Miss Craig again. She
learned of the men “higher up”; the floor-walkers, department managers,
buyers and sales managers who dominated this world of workers. She
encountered the “politics” of a big store. She heard gossip, the
bitter, querulous backbiting of tired women.
The day came when, with a sense of dread and excitement, she was put
“on the floor.” All day she lifted heavy rolls of gingham, muslin,
cotton, crêpe, twisted them, measured them, rolled them up again.
Pink. Yellow. Hideous checks and nauseating plaids. Pretty, crisp
organdies, like the starched skirts of little girls at a picnic....
All day she was questioned, bullied, scolded. She passed close to
the other clerks, brushed them with her own body and yet never saw
them. This was not Lilah. This was a common, clever, indifferent girl
who was rolling and unrolling cotton goods. “How many yards, madam?”
That was not Lilah’s voice; it was too high and sharp; the accent too
clipped.... Once she thrust her pencil through her hair, and something
apart from Lilah laughed. Junius had said that she was an actress....
“Two sixty-four. At one thirty-two a yard. Anything else?”
A young girl with a broad face and gray eyes said: “Say, you can’t wear
that dress. Mr. Mansfield will get after you. It has to be plain black,
and no frills.”
* * * * *
Twenty-five a week was not enough. Lilah left the room near Astor Place
and moved to Tenth Street. An old house, the house of a merchant of the
’Eighties, had resisted the tide of factories and sweatshops. It stood,
peeling, cracked and damp, between two towering buildings occupied by
fur manufacturers and printers. A smell of hides dominated, indoors
and out of doors. Packing cases littered the sidewalks and trucks
stood wheel to wheel for blocks. Spring, a hint of sunlight, brought
out an army of workers. Before the aquiline façade of the old house a
polyglot crowd lock-stepped, making wide gestures and speaking the dim
languages of southeastern Europe. At night, the street was deserted.
Lilah’s room, three flights up, faced a courtyard which must have been,
in the old days, a formal garden. Now, in a litter of boxes, cans and
barrels, a lilac tree fought to live. Lilah recalled the cypresses of
Vincigliata.
She had lost the last vestiges of her hard brightness, her security.
She lunched every day with the young girl who had warned her not to
wear the Maurice dress, that conspicuous miracle of simplicity. And
painstakingly, as if everything depended on it, Lilah acquired from
this girl a new standard of judgment based on the unpalatable facts
of life. She was surprised at her own flexibility. But something
unalterable, fixed, in her nature demanded achievement, justification.
There would be, must be, a way out....
Summer was stifling; the city seemed closed beneath a dome of steel,
its reverberations intensified, the air was thick and hot.
In the store, a few limp and wilted shoppers wandered aimlessly
about, but there was so little business that, it was rumored, some of
the sales force would be dropped. Lilah knew the daily panic which
comes of uncertainty. Her record was not good; she had never reached
the average sales required to justify her presence in the shop, her
salary, which was, after all, percentage on an investment. The other
clerks were sharper; they had the tenacity of women born in poverty.
Her instinctive mental attitudes, beyond their comprehension, made
competition, playing the game on their terms, impossible.
She was not surprised when Miss Craig sent for her.
“I’m sorry. We’re letting fifty people go. There’s no business.”
“And I’m one of the fifty?”
“Yes.” Miss Craig looked away, as if Lilah’s expression hurt her. “It
isn’t _me_, Mrs. Peabody. _I_ don’t decide these things. I’m told that
fifty must go. I look through the averages--”
“Like the massacre at Dinard,” Lilah said. She felt cold and stiff and
her fingers tingled.
“Don’t you know any one--” Miss Craig suggested.
Lilah shook her head. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll manage.”
“I’m _sure_ you will.” Miss Craig was evidently relieved. She said
brightly: “Why not try the uptown shops? You don’t belong here. I’ll
give you a letter to ‘Emilie.’ He’s Irish. He’ll like you.”
“You are very kind.”
* * * * *
Lilah knew, now, that there were two phases of life--life with illusion
and life without it. To exist, to reconcile living with life, something
must take the place of the lost beliefs. There must be faith in the
abstract promise, the idea, withheld, mysterious and penetrating, of
immortality.... She did what she always did, in moments of questioning.
Facing herself in a mirror she thought: “Flagg would have told me
this, only I wouldn’t have understood. I wasn’t ready.”
She was conscious, too, of an apathy that was new to her, an
indifference, a shadow of the lassitude which comes with a surrender
of personality. She shrugged the feeling away. She must live. She must
take, while there was still time, the advantage offered by her youth,
her charm. “Humbug! Humbug!” she said to her reflection.
She glanced at Miss Craig’s letter addressed to the firm of “Emilie.”
“Dear Reilly: Mrs. Peabody is the rustle of silk in our cotton goods
department. Have a heart. Edna.”
Lilah smiled. This letter was so sharp and bright and cold, so
cocksure. It might mean everything or nothing. She wondered how any
one--a woman--could scratch off a letter like that and give it to
another woman who was desperate and friendless. “Have a heart!”
She found “Emilie” on Park Avenue. A small, ornate, Venetian house with
grilled windows and a loggia beneath a tiled roof had been converted
into an “establishment.” A man in livery opened the heavy door and
scrutinized the letter. “Mr. Reilly’s busy. Come Wednesday at four
o’clock.”
Lilah pushed her way in. “I’ll wait. I’ve got to see him. Tell him the
letter is from Miss Craig. He’ll see me.”
The man hesitated, turning the letter over and over between
cotton-gloved fingers. “I’m sorry, but Mr. Reilly gave particular
orders--”
Lilah glanced beyond him. A thin, spry man in a cutaway coat was
running down a flight of carpeted stairs, yards of purple chiffon
hanging across his arm and trailing behind him like the robes of a
Pharaoh. Lilah’s heart contracted. She was amazed to hear herself
saying: “Oh, Mr. Reilly!” in a loud, confident voice. Inwardly she
quaked. She had never done such a thing. She had no idea whether or not
this was the dressmaker.
He bounded toward her, gathering up the chiffon, all the time staring
at her as if he intended to take a bite out of her. He looked like a
very angry fox-terrier.
“Mr. Reilly--”
“Oh, God.”
He tripped over the chiffon and threw it on the ground. He snatched at
the letter, read it, showed his teeth and almost growled. “Can’t you
wait? I’m busy. No. Come upstairs. I’ll let you help. Bring this stuff,
Fred.”
While they mounted the stairs, Reilly running just ahead, his patent
shoes and white gaiters twinkling, he carried on an irritable
monologue. “Everyone’s sick. Mrs. Mason went to Lake George this
morning. I’m short-handed. Twenty-five models came on the _Olympic_
yesterday and they’ve got to be photographed. If you can wear hats you
can go over to the studio with Duncan and he’ll get the collection.”
“I’m not a model,” Lilah interrupted.
He turned sharply and surveyed her. She felt that he could see more
than it was decent for any stranger to see--he could see her crouching
within herself, afraid of hunger. “We’ll try.” He kicked open a door
and she followed him into a room paneled from floor to ceiling with
mirrors. She encountered herself, little, with scared eyes, profile,
three-quarters, her back turned, face to face. She raised her hand and
a dozen images of herself all raised their hands in a sort of salute.
The floor was littered with packing cases from which spilled tissue
paper and hats. “We’ll try,” Reilly repeated. He swooped down, growled,
came up with a bonnet. Lilah understood that she was to remove her
own hat and assume this fashionable coal-scuttle, this modern, French
adaptation of a mode seventy-five years old. “My dress is wrong,” she
said. The challenge excited her. She felt, suddenly, re-animated,
alive, after a period of stillness.
Reilly said: “Never mind. You have a charming head.”
She bent her head quickly and looked up at herself.
“Very good. Now, this one.” He swooped again. Lilah had never seen such
a flexible human being; he seemed not to have any bones. “Don’t wear it
too far forward. These hats need eyes.... Too violent for you. You’re
pale....” He made a vague gesture. “Paisley. Amber. Blonde lace. Pink
net and camelias.... _Ah!_” He emerged from a heap of tissue-paper with
a small _cloche_. “Try this.”
A dozen Lilahs adjusted the expensive trifle of straw, a hat
magnificently disdainful, unornamented, copyrighted by an astute and
talented milliner.
“I’ll call Duncan.”
Reilly disappeared and Lilah was left alone with the manifold
reflection of herself.
Well, it was over, now. She had known from the beginning that she could
not escape--
Reilly returned with a stout, breathless man in an alpaca coat who wore
a straw hat pushed back.
After a brief inspection, wholly impersonal, he said: “Too blonde.
She’d photygraph like a white mouse.”
Reilly waved him out again. The sense, the implication of the
photographer’s remark was clear. Lilah removed the _cloche_ and tossed
it aside. She groped for her own hat. “Don’t go,” Reilly interrupted
sharply. “Wait. You can take Katherine’s place--”
He beckoned to her.
The front of the house, from basement to loggia, was given over to
salesrooms, luxurious, miniature shops designed to attract and hold
devotees at the shrine of that elusive deity, the mode. Reilly was an
astute priest. He had capitalized his serious interest in women; he
was unaware of his own incongruity. Sharp, alert, inexhaustible, he
worshipped women and exacted payment from them--he “burned incense and
passed the plate” he told Lilah. Something effeminate in his gesture,
the use of his hands, was contradicted by the shrewdness of his eyes.
He preceded Lilah into a room furnished in the Venetian manner, dimly
lighted, opening upon the loggia. Through the delicate, turned columns,
a prismatic confusion of vertical stone shafts picketed the smoky
sky--the city. A girl rose from a bench, approached with the languid
gait of the trained _mannequin_. “Duncan wants you. This is Mrs.
Peabody. She’ll take your place.”
Reilly turned. “There’s no business at this time of year. But if any
one should come in, sell! The hats are in these cases. Use your own
judgment and get as much as you can for them. Nothing under thirty-five
dollars. Poor models, more. Good models, less. That’s excellent
psychology. A woman who pays fifty dollars for an ugly hat will wear it
to spite the devil, and she’ll like it, in spite of herself. A woman
who gets a beautiful hat for thirty-five dollars will advertise it--and
us!”
He sat down, clasped his knees and asked abruptly: “Who are you? Not
Mrs. Robert Peabody?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t tell any one! Call yourself Mrs. Isaac Peabody--anything! If
you stay here, you are not likely to meet your friends. I cater to
actresses, rich middle-westerners and fashionable demi-mondaines.
They’ll like your looks and your manners. Women are always fascinated
by the unattainable.”
“Thank you.”
“We’ll say thirty to start with. If you make good, I’ll give you this
department, at seventy-five. Katherine is a beautiful bonehead....”
He leaped up. “I’ll send a stock-girl. For God’s sake don’t ask any
questions. Use your common sense and sell hats.”
He stepped forward and with no softening of his expression, touched her
hair. “That’s a good girl.”
* * * * *
Lilah discovered before long that Reilly was withholding the reward,
the promise of that first day. Summer melted into the stifling heat of
September and beneath a metallic, dark blue sky the city shimmered,
quivered as if licked by the minute flames of an infernal fire. “My
God, it’s hot,” the stately Katherine remarked. She stood by the open
window, in silhouette, her attitude reminiscent of Francesca, the
disdainful melancholy of Duse. “My God, it’s hot. Why don’t Reilly
close on Saturday?”
“I don’t know.”
“I do. He might lose a dollar.”
Lilah had changed her opinion of Reilly; he paid very little attention
to her; she had never again had to endure that brief, impersonal
caress. He had called her, without preface of any sort: “Lilah.” And he
had left her to her own devices.
She came to the conclusion that Reilly was either a fraud or an artist.
The room in which he received his clients had only one window and three
doors, one leading into the workroom, one into his bath and the other
into the “Salotto d’Oro.” His desk bore, in addition to an alabaster
lamp, stacked copies of _La Vie Parisienne_: a copy, in French of _Le
Mariage de Loti_; a box made of lacquered leather heavily embossed;
and a small colored bust in terra-cotta that at first glance might
have been Florentine but was, actually, Egyptian. Behind him, in an
angle of the wall, a secretary of inlaid wood towered almost to the
ceiling. There were three Venetian chairs, ornate and faded. And hung
together above a small cabinet, signed photographs of Ibanez, Poiret,
Chaliapin and Nora Bayes.
Lilah found that Reilly was a man of violent enthusiasms. His interest
in her had been immediate, sharp; he had, perhaps, been studying her.
There was a certain zest in competing for his attention, since he
had indicated in the beginning, a definite award. Lilah held aloof
from the other women of the establishment, because Reilly had warned
her that she could expect jealousy, and that she must avoid conflict
if she expected to advance. Her ambition was trivial. But faith in
herself, her potentiality, returned slowly. She was humble and, in her
recollection of Flagg, disciplined. As the actuality of that experience
receded, its meaning became more clear.
Katherine, stretching her long arms above her head, yawned. “I could
stand the present if it wasn’t for the future,” she said. “Waiting’s
hell when nothing happens.”
She caught herself as the mirror-paneled door of the elevator slid
back and two women stepped into the room. “_B’ jour, mesdames_,” she
murmured; her body undulated; she swam toward them.
Lilah’s expression of polite concern deepened into surprise, dismay.
She recognized Grace Whiteside, fat, over-ornamented, placid in the
secure possession of family and position, and, behind her, Miss Fuller,
as always, in gray with a little pan-cake hat made of leaves.
Lilah held up her hand to ward off their recognition. Grace Whiteside
came to a full stop; she seemed to spread, to puff out, like an angry
turkey.
“Don’t,” Lilah said faintly. She turned and ran out of the room.
She waited, leaning against the closed door. She heard a murmur of
voices, Katherine’s suave and insinuating: “Very _chic, madame_. Very
new. Reboux. Just try this one, _madame_.”
Presently they were gone. The elevator came up; the door rattled; it
descended again, making a hollow, reverberating sound in the wall.
Lilah wondered at her own fear; it was not a moral cowardice, of that
she was certain; she was not ashamed. She had a different sense of
responsibility toward herself and the opinion people had of her. She
was unwilling to face Miss Whiteside and Grace Fuller because she had
not, as far as they could see, progressed; the change that had taken
place within her was beyond their comprehension. The new self had
always been there, dormant; but it had been disclosed by Flagg’s death,
by the questioning which had followed.
Katherine emerged from the “Salotto d’Oro” suddenly. Her expression was
sly and gratified, as if she had caught Lilah in an indiscretion. She
passed, without a word, going toward Reilly’s office, the black satin
drapery of her skirt slipping over the carpet like a smooth serpent.
Lilah went back to the salesroom. Grace Whiteside had been trying on
bonnets, Reilly’s rare confections of lace and spangles designed for
grandmothers of the stage. It had been, apparently, a perfunctory
inspection.
As Lilah put the hats back in their place, she pictured Miss Whiteside
rushing to the nearest telegraph office to wire Junius Peabody....
Grace Fuller would probably try to prevent what, in the end, would mean
her own happiness. But nothing could turn aside the fanatical thrusts
of the outraged spinster; she would plant her vengeance sooner or
later. Now, Lilah must let herself be divorced; an eventuality which
would deprive her of her position with Reilly, since the inevitable
scandal would affect her usefulness. Reilly was beginning to cast in
social waters, and he was baiting his hook cautiously. He was shrewd
but he was not sophisticated. His knowledge of society had been derived
at second hand. Into his vocabulary the word “form” had appeared. He
had subjugated the theatrical world and now, longing for other, more
difficult attainment, he was angling for what he termed, in a whisper,
“Newport and Bar Harbor....”
Lilah’s mind went off at a tangent; she caught herself wondering
whether Grace Fuller had been chaperoning Robert’s aunt through another
attack of gallstones, or whether--
Reilly came in, shutting the door with an irritable bang. “What’s
this? What’s Katherine trying to put over?” Lilah did not answer and
snatching the bonnet away from her, Reilly tossed it aside. “I hate
tittle-tattle! She came down stairs, gloating, as if she had caught you
picking the safe. What happened?”
With a sense of the futility of any explanation, Lilah said: “I lost my
head and Katherine lost a sale....”
“Damn the sale!”
Reilly stood, wrapped in a sort of angry contemplation, his hands in
his pockets, his small, gaitered feet spread. “You’d better let me go,”
Lilah said. “It might happen again.” She added, with a curious smile:
“I’m sorry, more so than I can say.”
He fixed his eyes on her face.
“I’ll let you know,” he answered sharply and left the room.
A week later, he sent for her.
“I’m going to put you in the workroom. I think you have the makings of
a designer. Later, perhaps, I’ll send you to Paris, Vienna.... It won’t
do to have you upstairs.”
He hesitated and then said sharply: “I’ve heard from your family.”
Lilah had not expected this. She leaned against the desk with a feeling
of faintness.
“They’ve written me. One of them--a Mr. Junius Peabody--wants to see
you.”
“I can’t! No.... For heaven’s sake, no! I don’t want to see him.”
Reilly considered her. “I thought I’d warn you. He’s downstairs.
There’s his card.” He tossed it across the desk. “You’d better see
him.” Reilly rose and came around to her; his hand fell on her
shoulder. “You’re not a coward, are you?”
“No.”
“Then face things! If you don’t, they steal up behind you and knock you
down. Always keep your eye on your fears.” His clasp tightened. “Do
you know why I hired you? I was afraid of you! I’m not familiar with
your sort. You made me ashamed of what I am.... Now, it seems, you are
ashamed of what you are.... Either you’re stubborn or you’re guilty. I
don’t pretend to understand. I’d like to put across to you--well, don’t
make a mistake.”
Lilah smiled, made a gesture of surrender. “I’ll see him.”
“That’s a good girl.” Reilly paused on the threshold. “And listen.
Don’t hold out against him because of any resentment ... don’t be a
damn fool. There is more than one way of making good.”
A moment later, rigid, consciously and painfully correct, he bowed
Junius Peabody into the room and closed the door again, softly, as if
he were closing it upon the sacred essence of good form.
Lilah faced Junius with a trace of confusion; her lips trembled; she
smiled unsteadily, because he was so unfalteringly Junius in spite
of everything. He carried his overcoat on his arm; his head, bared,
was held erect, the white, thick hair brushed carefully back from the
veined forehead. Immaculate, even exquisite, at eighty-seven he still
gave the impression of vigorous and aristocratic possession. He said:
“Lilah,” and, leaning forward, she kissed him, clung to him suddenly
with a passionate eagerness to be understood. Forgiveness was not
required, looked for, since she had had to do what she had done.
She felt his hand, patting, patting her back. “_There, there_,” he said.
She made an effort and controlled herself, remembering that at Junius’
age emotion is painful and perhaps ugly.
He sat down; disposed of his coat, his hat and the heavy, goldmounted
cane, and glanced about him. “My first visit to a dressmaker’s since
’Eighty-six,” he said. “They’ve changed. No ribbons here!” He made a
gesture of dislike. “That fellow--that popinjay--”
“Emilie,” Lilah said, wiping her eyes. A flash of her old self came
through, evoked by Junius’ presence. But she could not, now, laugh at
Reilly. He was her destiny. She was forced to admit that without Reilly
she might be caught in the tide and carried out to sea.
“He’s really very clever.”
“A man dressmaker,” Junius stated dryly, “puts me on edge. I will never
be reconciled--”
He broke off and scrutinized her. “Well, Lilah.”
With sudden violence she burst out: “I know! You can’t understand why
I’ve hidden myself away. I had to. You and I are alike, but you’ve
never had to remake yourself. You still look down on people you
consider inferior, and I’ve had to learn to respect them. I’ve had to
kill my old self--or starve.”
“I have always admired you inordinately,” he remarked.
“But you have never cared--how could you--whether I was being cowardly
and selfish, so long as I was superior, like you, a snob. We’re both
materialists, you, because you could afford to be and I because I
wanted to be. I haven’t changed. I want finished, rare, superlative
things as much as ever. But I hate myself because I am a materialist.
And that’s as good as changing.”
“You’ve been unhappy.”
She turned away. And Junius continued: “You are coming back, of course?”
She shook her head.
With a trace of impatience, Junius Peabody demanded: “Why not? There
isn’t any one else--another attachment--” Rebuked by her quick glance,
he apologized: “I know. What you felt was genuine. But since it is
over, done with--”
She interrupted: “I wonder if you can understand. What happened is as
immaterial as a dream. I can’t repent. Atone. Do any of the expected
things.... I’m not sorry or ashamed. I am not even, in the accepted
sense, chastened. As you say, it is over. But I am different, deep
down, out of sight, beyond my knowledge....”
She smiled at him. “It’s a mixed-up world. I know, now, that it isn’t
nasty.... We, ourselves, are nasty.”
“Robert needs you.”
With a flash of scorn she demanded: “Did he expect you to tell me so?”
Junius shook his head. “Don’t misunderstand. Robert hasn’t any
illusions. They are all gone. He is burned out, Lilah. But I like him
better than I ever did when he was moon-struck. I think, at times, he
hates you because you took away his belief in that moon of his. I could
have told him that he was worshipping, not a moon but a glow-worm,
because, as you say, we are very much alike, you and I.”
“We give a lovely light,” Lilah said.
The memory of an old appreciation warmed them both. The door of the
workroom opened suddenly, and violently a head was thrust in. “Mr.
Reilly, here’s that fitting--_Oh, excuse me!_” The door slammed again,
shutting out the noisy clatter of machines, the snip-snip of scissors,
the staccato treble of women’s voices.
Junius rose.
“We are living very quietly at the Point,” he said. “I came down on
purpose to see you, talk to you. I won’t urge you. After all, what more
can I say than that you are needed?”
Lilah cried desperately. “But I don’t love Robert, Junius.”
Junius Peabody faced her, a moment, in silence. She noticed that every
detail of his dress was correct, meticulous; he displayed the interest
of a young man in the outward semblance of superiority, of pride.
Something unfamiliar in her nature caused her to recoil, almost to
resent this deliberate conforming to prejudice.... Then, as suddenly,
she admired him for this very tenacity, this unswerving adherence to an
ideal of behavior, of appearance. He took her hand. “There is such a
thing as being beyond personal happiness. I hoped that you had learned
to do without it. There is no other serenity.... You’ll come back?”
“Perhaps.”
She covered her face with her hands.
She saw herself, not in the garden, not in the forest, but on the green
before the kennels, where Robert’s spaniels romped and barked. She saw
herself kneeling in the grass, fondling a wriggling puppy, stroking and
kissing the soft fur. She heard herself saying: “Oh, Robert, aren’t
they darlings!”