The House of Mirth
of the life she had chosen stretched before her like a long white
road without dip or turning: it was true she was to roll over it
in a carriage instead of trudging it on foot, but sometimes the
pedestrian enjoys the diversion of a short cut which is denied to
those on wheels.
She was roused by a chuckle which Mr. Dorset seemed to eject from
the depths of his lean throat.
“I say, do look at her,” he exclaimed, turning to Miss Bart with
lugubrious merriment—“I beg your pardon, but do just look at my
wife making a fool of that poor devil over there! One would really
suppose she was gone on him—and it’s all the other way round, I
assure you.”
Thus adjured, Lily turned her eyes on the spectacle which was
affording Mr. Dorset such legitimate mirth. It certainly appeared,
as he said, that Mrs. Dorset was the more active participant in
the scene: her neighbour seemed to receive her advances with a
temperate zest which did not distract him from his dinner. The
sight restored Lily’s good humour, and knowing the peculiar
disguise which Mr. Dorset’s marital fears assumed, she asked gaily:
“Aren’t you horribly jealous of her?”
Dorset greeted the sally with delight. “Oh, abominably—you’ve
just hit it—keeps me awake at night. The doctors tell me that’s
what has knocked my digestion out—being so infernally jealous of
her.—I can’t eat a mouthful of this stuff, you know,” he added
suddenly, pushing back his plate with a clouded countenance;
and Lily, unfailingly adaptable, accorded her radiant attention
to his prolonged denunciation of other people’s cooks, with a
supplementary tirade on the toxic qualities of melted butter.
It was not often that he found so ready an ear; and, being a man
as well as a dyspeptic, it may be that as he poured his grievances
into it he was not insensible to its rosy symmetry. At any rate he
engaged Lily so long that the sweets were being handed when she
caught a phrase on her other side, where Miss Corby, the comic
woman of the company, was bantering Jack Stepney on his approaching
engagement. Miss Corby’s role was jocularity: she always entered
the conversation with a handspring.
“And of course you’ll have Sim Rosedale as best man!” Lily heard
her fling out as the climax of her prognostications; and Stepney
responded, as if struck: “Jove, that’s an idea. What a thumping
present I’d get out of him!”
SIM ROSEDALE! The name, made more odious by its diminutive,
obtruded itself on Lily’s thoughts like a leer. It stood for one
of the many hated possibilities hovering on the edge of life. If
she did not marry Percy Gryce, the day might come when she would
have to be civil to such men as Rosedale. IF SHE DID NOT MARRY
HIM? But she meant to marry him—she was sure of him and sure of
herself. She drew back with a shiver from the pleasant paths in
which her thoughts had been straying, and set her feet once more in
the middle of the long white road.... When she went upstairs that
night she found that the late post had brought her a fresh batch of
bills. Mrs. Peniston, who was a conscientious woman, had forwarded
them all to Bellomont.
* * * * *
Miss Bart, accordingly, rose the next morning with the most earnest
conviction that it was her duty to go to church. She tore herself
betimes from the lingering enjoyment of her breakfast tray, rang to
have her grey gown laid out, and despatched her maid to borrow a
prayer-book from Mrs. Trenor.
But her course was too purely reasonable not to contain the germs
of rebellion. No sooner were her preparations made than they roused
a smothered sense of resistance. A small spark was enough to
kindle Lily’s imagination, and the sight of the grey dress and the
borrowed prayer-book flashed a long light down the years. She would
have to go to church with Percy Gryce every Sunday. They would have
a front pew in the most expensive church in New York, and his name
would figure handsomely in the list of parish charities. In a few
years, when he grew stouter, he would be made a warden. Once in the
winter the rector would come to dine, and her husband would beg
her to go over the list and see that no DIVORCEES were included,
except those who had showed signs of penitence by being re-married
to the very wealthy. There was nothing especially arduous in this
round of religious obligations; but it stood for a fraction of that
great bulk of boredom which loomed across her path. And who could
consent to be bored on such a morning? Lily had slept well, and
her bath had filled her with a pleasant glow, which was becomingly
reflected in the clear curve of her cheek. No lines were visible
this morning, or else the glass was at a happier angle.
And the day was the accomplice of her mood: it was a day for
impulse and truancy. The light air seemed full of powdered gold;
below the dewy bloom of the lawns the woodlands blushed and
smouldered, and the hills across the river swam in molten blue.
Every drop of blood in Lily’s veins invited her to happiness.
The sound of wheels roused her from these musings, and leaning
behind her shutters she saw the omnibus take up its freight. She
was too late, then—but the fact did not alarm her. A glimpse of Mr.
Gryce’s crestfallen face even suggested that she had done wisely
in absenting herself, since the disappointment he so candidly
betrayed would surely whet his appetite for the afternoon walk.
That walk she did not mean to miss; one glance at the bills on her
writing-table was enough to recall its necessity. But meanwhile
she had the morning to herself, and could muse pleasantly on the
disposal of its hours. She was familiar enough with the habits of
Bellomont to know that she was likely to have a free field till
luncheon. She had seen the Wetheralls, the Trenor girls and Lady
Cressida packed safely into the omnibus; Judy Trenor was sure to
be having her hair shampooed; Carry Fisher had doubtless carried
off her host for a drive; Ned Silverton was probably smoking
the cigarette of young despair in his bedroom; and Kate Corby
was certain to be playing tennis with Jack Stepney and Miss Van
Osburgh. Of the ladies, this left only Mrs. Dorset unaccounted for,
and Mrs. Dorset never came down till luncheon: her doctors, she
averred, had forbidden her to expose herself to the crude air of
the morning.
To the remaining members of the party Lily gave no special thought;
wherever they were, they were not likely to interfere with her
plans. These, for the moment, took the shape of assuming a dress
somewhat more rustic and summerlike in style than the garment she
had first selected, and rustling downstairs, sunshade in hand, with
the disengaged air of a lady in quest of exercise. The great hall
was empty but for the knot of dogs by the fire, who, taking in at
a glance the outdoor aspect of Miss Bart, were upon her at once
with lavish offers of companionship. She put aside the ramming paws
which conveyed these offers, and assuring the joyous volunteers
that she might presently have a use for their company, sauntered
on through the empty drawing-room to the library at the end of the
house. The library was almost the only surviving portion of the
old manor-house of Bellomont: a long spacious room, revealing the
traditions of the mother-country in its classically-cased doors,
the Dutch tiles of the chimney, and the elaborate hob-grate with
its shining brass urns. A few family portraits of lantern-jawed
gentlemen in tie-wigs, and ladies with large head-dresses and small
bodies, hung between the shelves lined with pleasantly-shabby
books: books mostly contemporaneous with the ancestors in question,
and to which the subsequent Trenors had made no perceptible
additions. The library at Bellomont was in fact never used for
reading, though it had a certain popularity as a smoking room or
a quiet retreat for flirtation. It had occurred to Lily, however,
that it might on this occasion have been resorted to by the only
member of the party in the least likely to put it to its original
use. She advanced noiselessly over the dense old rug scattered
with easy-chairs, and before she reached the middle of the room
she saw that she had not been mistaken. Lawrence Selden was in
fact seated at its farther end; but though a book lay on his knee,
his attention was not engaged with it, but directed to a lady
whose lace-clad figure, as she leaned back in an adjoining chair,
detached itself with exaggerated slimness against the dusky leather
upholstery.
Lily paused as she caught sight of the group; for a moment she
seemed about to withdraw, but thinking better of this, she
announced her approach by a slight shake of her skirts which made
the couple raise their heads, Mrs. Dorset with a look of frank
displeasure, and Selden with his usual quiet smile. The sight of
his composure had a disturbing effect on Lily; but to be disturbed
was in her case to make a more brilliant effort at self-possession.
“Dear me, am I late?” she asked, putting a hand in his as he
advanced to greet her.
“Late for what?” enquired Mrs. Dorset tartly. “Not for luncheon,
certainly—but perhaps you had an earlier engagement?”
“Yes, I had,” said Lily confidingly.
“Really? Perhaps I am in the way, then? But Mr. Selden is entirely
at your disposal.” Mrs. Dorset was pale with temper, and her
antagonist felt a certain pleasure in prolonging her distress.
“Oh, dear, no—do stay,” she said good-humouredly. “I don’t in the
least want to drive you away.”
“You’re awfully good, dear, but I never interfere with Mr. Selden’s
engagements.”
The remark was uttered with a little air of proprietorship not lost
on its object, who concealed a faint blush of annoyance by stooping
to pick up the book he had dropped at Lily’s approach. The latter’s
eyes widened charmingly and she broke into a light laugh.
“But I have no engagement with Mr. Selden! My engagement was to go
to church; and I’m afraid the omnibus has started without me. HAS
it started, do you know?”
She turned to Selden, who replied that he had heard it drive away
some time since.
“Ah, then I shall have to walk; I promised Hilda and Muriel to go
to church with them. It’s too late to walk there, you say? Well, I
shall have the credit of trying, at any rate—and the advantage of
escaping part of the service. I’m not so sorry for myself, after
all!”
And with a bright nod to the couple on whom she had intruded, Miss
Bart strolled through the glass doors and carried her rustling
grace down the long perspective of the garden walk.
She was taking her way churchward, but at no very quick pace; a
fact not lost on one of her observers, who stood in the doorway
looking after her with an air of puzzled amusement. The truth is
that she was conscious of a somewhat keen shock of disappointment.
All her plans for the day had been built on the assumption that it
was to see her that Selden had come to Bellomont. She had expected,
when she came downstairs, to find him on the watch for her; and
she had found him, instead, in a situation which might well denote
that he had been on the watch for another lady. Was it possible,
after all, that he had come for Bertha Dorset? The latter had
acted on the assumption to the extent of appearing at an hour when
she never showed herself to ordinary mortals, and Lily, for the
moment, saw no way of putting her in the wrong. It did not occur
to her that Selden might have been actuated merely by the desire
to spend a Sunday out of town: women never learn to dispense with
the sentimental motive in their judgments of men. But Lily was not
easily disconcerted; competition put her on her mettle, and she
reflected that Selden’s coming, if it did not declare him to be
still in Mrs. Dorset’s toils, showed him to be so completely free