The House of Mirth
trustfully sure of his sympathy and understanding, that Trenor felt
himself wishing that his wife could see how other women treated
him—not battered wire-pullers like Mrs. Fisher, but a girl that
most men would have given their boots to get such a look from.
“Out of spirits? Why on earth should you ever be out of spirits? Is
your last box of Doucet dresses a failure, or did Judy rook you out
of everything at bridge last night?”
Lily shook her head with a sigh. “I have had to give up Doucet;
and bridge too—I can’t afford it. In fact I can’t afford any of
the things my friends do, and I am afraid Judy often thinks me a
bore because I don’t play cards any longer, and because I am not as
smartly dressed as the other women. But you will think me a bore
too if I talk to you about my worries, and I only mention them
because I want you to do me a favour—the very greatest of favours.”
Her eyes sought his once more, and she smiled inwardly at the tinge
of apprehension that she read in them.
“Why, of course—if it’s anything I can manage——” He broke off, and
she guessed that his enjoyment was disturbed by the remembrance of
Mrs. Fisher’s methods.
“The greatest of favours,” she rejoined gently. “The fact is, Judy
is angry with me, and I want you to make my peace.”
“Angry with you? Oh, come, nonsense——” his relief broke through in
a laugh. “Why, you know she’s devoted to you.”
“She is the best friend I have, and that is why I mind having to
vex her. But I daresay you know what she has wanted me to do. She
has set her heart—poor dear—on my marrying—marrying a great deal of
money.”
She paused with a slight falter of embarrassment, and Trenor,
turning abruptly, fixed on her a look of growing intelligence.
“A great deal of money? Oh, by Jove—you don’t mean Gryce? What—you
do? Oh, no, of course I won’t mention it—you can trust me to keep
my mouth shut—but Gryce—good Lord, GRYCE! Did Judy really think you
could bring yourself to marry that portentous little ass? But you
couldn’t, eh? And so you gave him the sack, and that’s the reason
why he lit out by the first train this morning?” He leaned back,
spreading himself farther across the seat, as if dilated by the
joyful sense of his own discernment. “How on earth could Judy think
you would do such a thing? I could have told her you’d never put up
with such a little milksop!”
Lily sighed more deeply. “I sometimes think,” she murmured, “that
men understand a woman’s motives better than other women do.”
“Some men—I’m certain of it! I could have TOLD Judy,” he repeated,
exulting in the implied superiority over his wife.
“I thought you would understand; that’s why I wanted to speak to
you,” Miss Bart rejoined. “I can’t make that kind of marriage; it’s
impossible. But neither can I go on living as all the women in my
set do. I am almost entirely dependent on my aunt, and though she
is very kind to me she makes me no regular allowance, and lately
I’ve lost money at cards, and I don’t dare tell her about it. I
have paid my card debts, of course, but there is hardly anything
left for my other expenses, and if I go on with my present life I
shall be in horrible difficulties. I have a tiny income of my own,
but I’m afraid it’s badly invested, for it seems to bring in less
every year, and I am so ignorant of money matters that I don’t
know if my aunt’s agent, who looks after it, is a good adviser.”
She paused a moment, and added in a lighter tone: “I didn’t mean
to bore you with all this, but I want your help in making Judy
understand that I can’t, at present, go on living as one must
live among you all. I am going away tomorrow to join my aunt at
Richfield, and I shall stay there for the rest of the autumn, and
dismiss my maid and learn how to mend my own clothes.”
At this picture of loveliness in distress, the pathos of which
was heightened by the light touch with which it was drawn, a
murmur of indignant sympathy broke from Trenor. Twenty-four hours
earlier, if his wife had consulted him on the subject of Miss
Bart’s future, he would have said that a girl with extravagant
tastes and no money had better marry the first rich man she could
get; but with the subject of discussion at his side, turning to
him for sympathy, making him feel that he understood her better
than her dearest friends, and confirming the assurance by the
appeal of her exquisite nearness, he was ready to swear that such
a marriage was a desecration, and that, as a man of honour, he was
bound to do all he could to protect her from the results of her
disinterestedness. This impulse was reinforced by the reflection
that if she had married Gryce she would have been surrounded
by flattery and approval, whereas, having refused to sacrifice
herself to expediency, she was left to bear the whole cost of
her resistance. Hang it, if he could find a way out of such
difficulties for a professional sponge like Carry Fisher, who was
simply a mental habit corresponding to the physical titillations
of the cigarette or the cock-tail, he could surely do as much for
a girl who appealed to his highest sympathies, and who brought her
troubles to him with the trustfulness of a child.
Trenor and Miss Bart prolonged their drive till long after sunset;
and before it was over he had tried, with some show of success, to
prove to her that, if she would only trust him, he could make a
handsome sum of money for her without endangering the small amount
she possessed. She was too genuinely ignorant of the manipulations
of the stock-market to understand his technical explanations, or
even perhaps to perceive that certain points in them were slurred;
the haziness enveloping the transaction served as a veil for her
embarrassment, and through the general blur her hopes dilated like
lamps in a fog. She understood only that her modest investments
were to be mysteriously multiplied without risk to herself; and the
assurance that this miracle would take place within a short time,
that there would be no tedious interval for suspense and reaction,
relieved her of her lingering scruples.
Again she felt the lightening of her load, and with it the release
of repressed activities. Her immediate worries conjured, it was
easy to resolve that she would never again find herself in such
straits, and as the need of economy and self-denial receded
from her foreground she felt herself ready to meet any other
demand which life might make. Even the immediate one of letting
Trenor, as they drove homeward, lean a little nearer and rest
his hand reassuringly on hers, cost her only a momentary shiver
of reluctance. It was part of the game to make him feel that her
appeal had been an uncalculated impulse, provoked by the liking he
inspired; and the renewed sense of power in handling men, while it
consoled her wounded vanity, helped also to obscure the thought of
the claim at which his manner hinted. He was a coarse dull man who,
under all his show of authority, was a mere supernumerary in the
costly show for which his money paid: surely, to a clever girl, it
would be easy to hold him by his vanity, and so keep the obligation
on his side.
Chapter 8
The first thousand dollar cheque which Lily received with a blotted
scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence in the
exact degree to which it effaced her debts.
The transaction had justified itself by its results: she saw now
how absurd it would have been to let any primitive scruple deprive
her of this easy means of appeasing her creditors. Lily felt really
virtuous as she dispensed the sum in sops to her tradesmen, and the
fact that a fresh order accompanied each payment did not lessen her
sense of disinterestedness. How many women, in her place, would
have given the orders without making the payment!
She had found it reassuringly easy to keep Trenor in a good humour.
To listen to his stories, to receive his confidences and laugh at
his jokes, seemed for the moment all that was required of her, and
the complacency with which her hostess regarded these attentions
freed them of the least hint of ambiguity. Mrs. Trenor evidently
assumed that Lily’s growing intimacy with her husband was simply an
indirect way of returning her own kindness.
“I’m so glad you and Gus have become such good friends,” she said
approvingly. “It’s too delightful of you to be so nice to him, and
put up with all his tiresome stories. I know what they are, because
I had to listen to them when we were engaged—I’m sure he is telling
the same ones still. And now I shan’t always have to be asking
Carry Fisher here to keep him in a good humour. She’s a perfect
vulture, you know; and she hasn’t the least moral sense. She is
always getting Gus to speculate for her, and I’m sure she never
pays when she loses.”
Miss Bart could shudder at this state of things without the
embarrassment of a personal application. Her own position was
surely quite different. There could be no question of her not
paying when she lost, since Trenor had assured her that she was
certain not to lose. In sending her the cheque he had explained
that he had made five thousand for her out of Rosedale’s “tip,” and
had put four thousand back in the same venture, as there was the
promise of another “big rise”; she understood therefore that he
was now speculating with her own money, and that she consequently
owed him no more than the gratitude which such a trifling service
demanded. She vaguely supposed that, to raise the first sum, he had
borrowed on her securities; but this was a point over which her
curiosity did not linger. It was concentrated, for the moment, on
the probable date of the next “big rise.”
The news of this event was received by her some weeks later, on
the occasion of Jack Stepney’s marriage to Miss Van Osburgh. As
a cousin of the bridegroom, Miss Bart had been asked to act as
bridesmaid; but she had declined on the plea that, since she was
much taller than the other attendant virgins, her presence might
mar the symmetry of the group. The truth was, she had attended too
many brides to the altar: when next seen there she meant to be the
chief figure in the ceremony. She knew the pleasantries made at the
expense of young girls who have been too long before the public,
and she was resolved to avoid such assumptions of youthfulness as
might lead people to think her older than she really was.
The Van Osburgh marriage was celebrated in the village church near
the paternal estate on the Hudson. It was the “simple country
wedding” to which guests are convoyed in special trains, and
from which the hordes of the uninvited have to be fended off by
the intervention of the police. While these sylvan rites were
taking place, in a church packed with fashion and festooned with
orchids, the representatives of the press were threading their
way, note-book in hand, through the labyrinth of wedding presents,
and the agent of a cinematograph syndicate was setting up his
apparatus at the church door. It was the kind of scene in which
Lily had often pictured herself as taking the principal part, and
on this occasion the fact that she was once more merely a casual
spectator, instead of the mystically veiled figure occupying
the centre of attention, strengthened her resolve to assume the
latter part before the year was over. The fact that her immediate
anxieties were relieved did not blind her to a possibility of
their recurrence; it merely gave her enough buoyancy to rise once
more above her doubts and feel a renewed faith in her beauty, her
power, and her general fitness to attract a brilliant destiny.
It could not be that one conscious of such aptitudes for mastery
and enjoyment was doomed to a perpetuity of failure; and her
mistakes looked easily reparable in the light of her restored
self-confidence.