The House of Mirth
walk with Mr. Gryce. She had sometimes been accused of being too
eager—even Judy Trenor had warned her to go slowly. Well, she would
not be too eager in this case; she would give her suitor a longer
taste of suspense. Where duty and inclination jumped together, it
was not in Lily’s nature to hold them asunder. She had excused
herself from the walk on the plea of a headache: the horrid
headache which, in the morning, had prevented her venturing to
church. Her appearance at luncheon justified the excuse. She looked
languid, full of a suffering sweetness; she carried a scent-bottle
in her hand. Mr. Gryce was new to such manifestations; he wondered
rather nervously if she were delicate, having far-reaching fears
about the future of his progeny. But sympathy won the day, and he
besought her not to expose herself: he always connected the outer
air with ideas of exposure.
Lily had received his sympathy with languid gratitude, urging him,
since she should be such poor company, to join the rest of the
party who, after luncheon, were starting in automobiles on a visit
to the Van Osburghs at Peekskill. Mr. Gryce was touched by her
disinterestedness, and, to escape from the threatened vacuity of
the afternoon, had taken her advice and departed mournfully, in a
dust-hood and goggles: as the motor-car plunged down the avenue she
smiled at his resemblance to a baffled beetle. Selden had watched
her manoeuvres with lazy amusement. She had made no reply to his
suggestion that they should spend the afternoon together, but as
her plan unfolded itself he felt fairly confident of being included
in it. The house was empty when at length he heard her step on the
stair and strolled out of the billiard-room to join her.
She had on a hat and walking-dress, and the dogs were bounding at
her feet.
“I thought, after all, the air might do me good,” she explained;
and he agreed that so simple a remedy was worth trying.
The excursionists would be gone at least four hours; Lily and
Selden had the whole afternoon before them, and the sense of
leisure and safety gave the last touch of lightness to her spirit.
With so much time to talk, and no definite object to be led up to,
she could taste the rare joys of mental vagrancy.
She felt so free from ulterior motives that she took up his charge
with a touch of resentment.
“I don’t know,” she said, “why you are always accusing me of
premeditation.”
“I thought you confessed to it: you told me the other day that you
had to follow a certain line—and if one does a thing at all it is a
merit to do it thoroughly.”
“If you mean that a girl who has no one to think for her is obliged
to think for herself, I am quite willing to accept the imputation.
But you must find me a dismal kind of person if you suppose that I
never yield to an impulse.”
“Ah, but I don’t suppose that: haven’t I told you that your genius
lies in converting impulses into intentions?”
“My genius?” she echoed with a sudden note of weariness. “Is there
any final test of genius but success? And I certainly haven’t
succeeded.”
Selden pushed his hat back and took a side-glance at her.
“Success—what is success? I shall be interested to have your
definition.”
“Success?” She hesitated. “Why, to get as much as one can out of
life, I suppose. It’s a relative quality, after all. Isn’t that
your idea of it?”
“My idea of it? God forbid!” He sat up with sudden energy, resting
his elbows on his knees and staring out upon the mellow fields. “My
idea of success,” he said, “is personal freedom.”
“Freedom? Freedom from worries?”
“From everything—from money, from poverty, from ease and anxiety,
from all the material accidents. To keep a kind of republic of the
spirit—that’s what I call success.”
She leaned forward with a responsive flash. “I know—I know—it’s
strange; but that’s just what I’ve been feeling today.”
He met her eyes with the latent sweetness of his. “Is the feeling
so rare with you?” he said.
She blushed a little under his gaze. “You think me horribly sordid,
don’t you? But perhaps it’s rather that I never had any choice.
There was no one, I mean, to tell me about the republic of the
spirit.”
“There never is—it’s a country one has to find the way to one’s
self.”
“But I should never have found my way there if you hadn’t told me.”
“Ah, there are sign-posts—but one has to know how to read them.”
“Well, I have known, I have known!” she cried with a glow of
eagerness. “Whenever I see you, I find myself spelling out a letter
of the sign—and yesterday—last evening at dinner—I suddenly saw a
little way into your republic.”
Selden was still looking at her, but with a changed eye. Hitherto
he had found, in her presence and her talk, the aesthetic amusement
which a reflective man is apt to seek in desultory intercourse with
pretty women. His attitude had been one of admiring spectatorship,
and he would have been almost sorry to detect in her any emotional
weakness which should interfere with the fulfilment of her aims.
But now the hint of this weakness had become the most interesting
thing about her. He had come on her that morning in a moment of
disarray; her face had been pale and altered, and the diminution
of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm. THAT IS HOW SHE LOOKS
WHEN SHE IS ALONE! had been his first thought; and the second was
to note in her the change which his coming produced. It was the
danger-point of their intercourse that he could not doubt the
spontaneity of her liking. From whatever angle he viewed their
dawning intimacy, he could not see it as part of her scheme of
life; and to be the unforeseen element in a career so accurately
planned was stimulating even to a man who had renounced sentimental
experiments.
“Well,” he said, “did it make you want to see more? Are you going
to become one of us?”
He had drawn out his cigarettes as he spoke, and she reached her
hand toward the case.
“Oh, do give me one—I haven’t smoked for days!”
“Why such unnatural abstinence? Everybody smokes at Bellomont.”
“Yes—but it is not considered becoming in a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER;
and at the present moment I am a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER.”
“Ah, then I’m afraid we can’t let you into the republic.”
“Why not? Is it a celibate order?”
“Not in the least, though I’m bound to say there are not many
married people in it. But you will marry some one very rich, and
it’s as hard for rich people to get into as the kingdom of heaven.”
“That’s unjust, I think, because, as I understand it, one of the
conditions of citizenship is not to think too much about money, and
the only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of
it.”
“You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is
to have enough to breathe. That is true enough in a sense; but your
lungs are thinking about the air, if you are not. And so it is with
your rich people—they may not be thinking of money, but they’re
breathing it all the while; take them into another element and see
how they squirm and gasp!”
Lily sat gazing absently through the blue rings of her
cigarette-smoke.
“It seems to me,” she said at length, “that you spend a good deal
of your time in the element you disapprove of.”
Selden received this thrust without discomposure. “Yes; but I have
tried to remain amphibious: it’s all right as long as one’s lungs
can work in another air. The real alchemy consists in being able
to turn gold back again into something else; and that’s the secret
that most of your friends have lost.”
Lily mused. “Don’t you think,” she rejoined after a moment, “that
the people who find fault with society are too apt to regard it as
an end and not a means, just as the people who despise money speak
as if its only use were to be kept in bags and gloated over? Isn’t
it fairer to look at them both as opportunities, which may be used
either stupidly or intelligently, according to the capacity of the
user?”
“That is certainly the sane view; but the queer thing about society
is that the people who regard it as an end are those who are in it,
and not the critics on the fence. It’s just the other way with most
shows—the audience may be under the illusion, but the actors know
that real life is on the other side of the footlights. The people
who take society as an escape from work are putting it to its
proper use; but when it becomes the thing worked for it distorts
all the relations of life.” Selden raised himself on his elbow.
“Good heavens!” he went on, “I don’t underrate the decorative side
of life. It seems to me the sense of splendour has justified itself
by what it has produced. The worst of it is that so much human
nature is used up in the process. If we’re all the raw stuff of the
cosmic effects, one would rather be the fire that tempers a sword
than the fish that dyes a purple cloak. And a society like ours
wastes such good material in producing its little patch of purple!
Look at a boy like Ned Silverton—he’s really too good to be used to
refurbish anybody’s social shabbiness. There’s a lad just setting
out to discover the universe: isn’t it a pity he should end by
finding it in Mrs. Fisher’s drawing-room?”
“Ned is a dear boy, and I hope he will keep his illusions long
enough to write some nice poetry about them; but do you think it is
only in society that he is likely to lose them?”
Selden answered her with a shrug. “Why do we call all our generous
ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths? Isn’t it a sufficient
condemnation of society to find one’s self accepting such
phraseology? I very nearly acquired the jargon at Silverton’s age,
and I know how names can alter the colour of beliefs.”
She had never heard him speak with such energy of affirmation. His
habitual touch was that of the eclectic, who lightly turns over
and compares; and she was moved by this sudden glimpse into the
laboratory where his faiths were formed.
“Ah, you are as bad as the other sectarians,” she exclaimed; “why
do you call your republic a republic? It is a closed corporation,
and you create arbitrary objections in order to keep people out.”
“It is not MY republic; if it were, I should have a COUP D’ETAT and
seat you on the throne.”
“Whereas, in reality, you think I can never even get my foot across
the threshold? Oh, I understand what you mean. You despise my
ambitions—you think them unworthy of me!”
Selden smiled, but not ironically. “Well, isn’t that a tribute? I
think them quite worthy of most of the people who live by them.”
She had turned to gaze on him gravely. “But isn’t it possible that,
if I had the opportunities of these people, I might make a better
use of them? Money stands for all kinds of things—its purchasing
quality isn’t limited to diamonds and motor-cars.”
“Not in the least: you might expiate your enjoyment of them by
founding a hospital.”
“But if you think they are what I should really enjoy, you must
think my ambitions are good enough for me.”
Selden met this appeal with a laugh. “Ah, my dear Miss Bart, I am
not divine Providence, to guarantee your enjoying the things you
are trying to get!”
“Then the best you can say for me is, that after struggling to get
them I probably shan’t like them?” She drew a deep breath. “What a
miserable future you foresee for me!”
“Well—have you never foreseen it for yourself?” The slow colour
rose to her cheek, not a blush of excitement but drawn from the
deep wells of feeling; it was as if the effort of her spirit had
produced it.
“Often and often,” she said. “But it looks so much darker when you
show it to me!”
He made no answer to this exclamation, and for a while they sat
silent, while something throbbed between them in the wide quiet of
the air.
But suddenly she turned on him with a kind of vehemence. “Why do