The House of Mirth
In Mrs. Peniston’s youth, fashion had returned to town in October;
therefore on the tenth day of the month the blinds of her Fifth
Avenue residence were drawn up, and the eyes of the Dying Gladiator
in bronze who occupied the drawing-room window resumed their survey
of that deserted thoroughfare.
The first two weeks after her return represented to Mrs. Peniston
the domestic equivalent of a religious retreat. She “went through”
the linen and blankets in the precise spirit of the penitent
exploring the inner folds of conscience; she sought for moths
as the stricken soul seeks for lurking infirmities. The topmost
shelf of every closet was made to yield up its secret, cellar and
coal-bin were probed to their darkest depths and, as a final stage
in the lustral rites, the entire house was swathed in penitential
white and deluged with expiatory soapsuds.
It was on this phase of the proceedings that Miss Bart entered
on the afternoon of her return from the Van Osburgh wedding. The
journey back to town had not been calculated to soothe her nerves.
Though Evie Van Osburgh’s engagement was still officially a secret,
it was one of which the innumerable intimate friends of the family
were already possessed; and the trainful of returning guests buzzed
with allusions and anticipations. Lily was acutely aware of her
own part in this drama of innuendo: she knew the exact quality
of the amusement the situation evoked. The crude forms in which
her friends took their pleasure included a loud enjoyment of such
complications: the zest of surprising destiny in the act of playing
a practical joke. Lily knew well enough how to bear herself in
difficult situations. She had, to a shade, the exact manner between
victory and defeat: every insinuation was shed without an effort
by the bright indifference of her manner. But she was beginning to
feel the strain of the attitude; the reaction was more rapid, and
she lapsed to a deeper self-disgust.
As was always the case with her, this moral repulsion found a
physical outlet in a quickened distaste for her surroundings. She
revolted from the complacent ugliness of Mrs. Peniston’s black
walnut, from the slippery gloss of the vestibule tiles, and the
mingled odour of sapolio and furniture-polish that met her at the
door.
The stairs were still carpetless, and on the way up to her room she
was arrested on the landing by an encroaching tide of soapsuds.
Gathering up her skirts, she drew aside with an impatient gesture;
and as she did so she had the odd sensation of having already found
herself in the same situation but in different surroundings. It
seemed to her that she was again descending the staircase from
Selden’s rooms; and looking down to remonstrate with the dispenser
of the soapy flood, she found herself met by a lifted stare which
had once before confronted her under similar circumstances. It was
the char-woman of the Benedick who, resting on crimson elbows,
examined her with the same unflinching curiosity, the same apparent
reluctance to let her pass. On this occasion, however, Miss Bart
was on her own ground.
“Don’t you see that I wish to go by? Please move your pail,” she
said sharply.
The woman at first seemed not to hear; then, without a word of
excuse, she pushed back her pail and dragged a wet floor-cloth
across the landing, keeping her eyes fixed on Lily while the latter
swept by. It was insufferable that Mrs. Peniston should have such
creatures about the house; and Lily entered her room resolved that
the woman should be dismissed that evening.
Mrs. Peniston, however, was at the moment inaccessible to
remonstrance: since early morning she had been shut up with her
maid, going over her furs, a process which formed the culminating
episode in the drama of household renovation. In the evening also
Lily found herself alone, for her aunt, who rarely dined out, had
responded to the summons of a Van Alstyne cousin who was passing
through town. The house, in its state of unnatural immaculateness
and order, was as dreary as a tomb, and as Lily, turning from
her brief repast between shrouded sideboards, wandered into the
newly-uncovered glare of the drawing-room she felt as though
she were buried alive in the stifling limits of Mrs. Peniston’s
existence.
She usually contrived to avoid being at home during the season
of domestic renewal. On the present occasion, however, a variety
of reasons had combined to bring her to town; and foremost among
them was the fact that she had fewer invitations than usual for
the autumn. She had so long been accustomed to pass from one
country-house to another, till the close of the holidays brought
her friends to town, that the unfilled gaps of time confronting
her produced a sharp sense of waning popularity. It was as she
had said to Selden—people were tired of her. They would welcome
her in a new character, but as Miss Bart they knew her by heart.
She knew herself by heart too, and was sick of the old story.
There were moments when she longed blindly for anything different,
anything strange, remote and untried; but the utmost reach of
her imagination did not go beyond picturing her usual life in a
new setting. She could not figure herself as anywhere but in a
drawing-room, diffusing elegance as a flower sheds perfume.
Meanwhile, as October advanced she had to face the alternative
of returning to the Trenors or joining her aunt in town. Even
the desolating dulness of New York in October, and the soapy
discomforts of Mrs. Peniston’s interior, seemed preferable to what
might await her at Bellomont; and with an air of heroic devotion
she announced her intention of remaining with her aunt till the
holidays.
Sacrifices of this nature are sometimes received with feelings as
mixed as those which actuate them; and Mrs. Peniston remarked to
her confidential maid that, if any of the family were to be with
her at such a crisis (though for forty years she had been thought
competent to see to the hanging of her own curtains), she would
certainly have preferred Miss Grace to Miss Lily. Grace Stepney was
an obscure cousin, of adaptable manners and vicarious interests,
who “ran in” to sit with Mrs. Peniston when Lily dined out too
continuously; who played bezique, picked up dropped stitches, read
out the deaths from the Times, and sincerely admired the purple
satin drawing-room curtains, the Dying Gladiator in the window, and
the seven-by-five painting of Niagara which represented the one
artistic excess of Mr. Peniston’s temperate career.
Mrs. Peniston, under ordinary circumstances, was as much bored by
her excellent cousin as the recipient of such services usually
is by the person who performs them. She greatly preferred the
brilliant and unreliable Lily, who did not know one end of a
crochet-needle from the other, and had frequently wounded her
susceptibilities by suggesting that the drawing-room should be
“done over.” But when it came to hunting for missing napkins, or
helping to decide whether the backstairs needed re-carpeting,
Grace’s judgment was certainly sounder than Lily’s: not to mention
the fact that the latter resented the smell of beeswax and brown
soap, and behaved as though she thought a house ought to keep clean
of itself, without extraneous assistance.
Seated under the cheerless blaze of the drawing-room
chandelier—Mrs. Peniston never lit the lamps unless there was
“company”—Lily seemed to watch her own figure retreating down
vistas of neutral-tinted dulness to a middle-age like Grace
Stepney’s. When she ceased to amuse Judy Trenor and her friends she
would have to fall back on amusing Mrs. Peniston; whichever way she
looked she saw only a future of servitude to the whims of others,
never the possibility of asserting her own eager individuality.
A ring at the door-bell, sounding emphatically through the empty
house, roused her suddenly to the extent of her boredom. It was
as though all the weariness of the past months had culminated in
the vacuity of that interminable evening. If only the ring meant a
summons from the outer world—a token that she was still remembered
and wanted!
After some delay a parlour-maid presented herself with the
announcement that there was a person outside who was asking to see
Miss Bart; and on Lily’s pressing for a more specific description,
she added:
“It’s Mrs. Haffen, Miss; she won’t say what she wants.”
Lily, to whom the name conveyed nothing, opened the door upon a
woman in a battered bonnet, who stood firmly planted under the
hall-light. The glare of the unshaded gas shone familiarly on her
pock-marked face and the reddish baldness visible through thin
strands of straw-coloured hair. Lily looked at the char-woman in
surprise.
“Do you wish to see me?” she asked.
“I should like to say a word to you, Miss.” The tone was neither
aggressive nor conciliatory: it revealed nothing of the speaker’s
errand. Nevertheless, some precautionary instinct warned Lily to
withdraw beyond ear-shot of the hovering parlour-maid.
She signed to Mrs. Haffen to follow her into the drawing-room, and
closed the door when they had entered.
“What is it that you wish?” she enquired.
The char-woman, after the manner of her kind, stood with her arms
folded in her shawl. Unwinding the latter, she produced a small
parcel wrapped in dirty newspaper.
“I have something here that you might like to see, Miss Bart.”
She spoke the name with an unpleasant emphasis, as though her
knowing it made a part of her reason for being there. To Lily the
intonation sounded like a threat.
“You have found something belonging to me?” she asked, extending
her hand.
Mrs. Haffen drew back. “Well, if it comes to that, I guess it’s
mine as much as anybody’s,” she returned.
Lily looked at her perplexedly. She was sure, now, that her
visitor’s manner conveyed a threat; but, expert as she was in
certain directions, there was nothing in her experience to prepare
her for the exact significance of the present scene. She felt,
however, that it must be ended as promptly as possible.
“I don’t understand; if this parcel is not mine, why have you asked
for me?”
The woman was unabashed by the question. She was evidently prepared
to answer it, but like all her class she had to go a long way
back to make a beginning, and it was only after a pause that she
replied: “My husband was janitor to the Benedick till the first of
the month; since then he can’t get nothing to do.”
Lily remained silent and she continued: “It wasn’t no fault of our
own, neither: the agent had another man he wanted the place for,
and we was put out, bag and baggage, just to suit his fancy. I had
a long sickness last winter, and an operation that ate up all we’d
put by; and it’s hard for me and the children, Haffen being so long
out of a job.”
After all, then, she had come only to ask Miss Bart to find a
place for her husband; or, more probably, to seek the young lady’s
intervention with Mrs. Peniston. Lily had such an air of always
getting what she wanted that she was used to being appealed to as
an intermediary, and, relieved of her vague apprehension, she took
refuge in the conventional formula.
“I am sorry you have been in trouble,” she said.
“Oh, that we have, Miss, and it’s on’y just beginning. If on’y we’d
’a got another situation—but the agent, he’s dead against us. It
ain’t no fault of ours, neither, but——”
At this point Lily’s impatience overcame her. “If you have anything
to say to me——” she interposed.
The woman’s resentment of the rebuff seemed to spur her lagging
ideas.
“Yes, Miss; I’m coming to that,” she said. She paused again,
with her eyes on Lily, and then continued, in a tone of diffuse
narrative: “When we was at the Benedick I had charge of some of the