The House of Mirth
gentlemen’s rooms; leastways, I swep’ ’em out on Saturdays. Some
of the gentlemen got the greatest sight of letters: I never saw
the like of it. Their waste-paper baskets ’d be fairly brimming,
and papers falling over on the floor. Maybe havin’ so many is how
they get so careless. Some of ’em is worse than others. Mr. Selden,
Mr. Lawrence Selden, he was always one of the carefullest: burnt
his letters in winter, and tore ’em in little bits in summer. But
sometimes he’d have so many he’d just bunch ’em together, the way
the others did, and tear the lot through once—like this.”
While she spoke she had loosened the string from the parcel in her
hand, and now she drew forth a letter which she laid on the table
between Miss Bart and herself. As she had said, the letter was torn
in two; but with a rapid gesture she laid the torn edges together
and smoothed out the page.
A wave of indignation swept over Lily. She felt herself in the
presence of something vile, as yet but dimly conjectured—the kind
of vileness of which people whispered, but which she had never
thought of as touching her own life. She drew back with a motion
of disgust, but her withdrawal was checked by a sudden discovery:
under the glare of Mrs. Peniston’s chandelier she had recognized
the hand-writing of the letter. It was a large disjointed hand,
with a flourish of masculinity which but slightly disguised
its rambling weakness, and the words, scrawled in heavy ink on
pale-tinted notepaper, smote on Lily’s ear as though she had heard
them spoken.
At first she did not grasp the full import of the situation. She
understood only that before her lay a letter written by Bertha
Dorset, and addressed, presumably, to Lawrence Selden. There was
no date, but the blackness of the ink proved the writing to be
comparatively recent. The packet in Mrs. Haffen’s hand doubtless
contained more letters of the same kind—a dozen, Lily conjectured
from its thickness. The letter before her was short, but its few
words, which had leapt into her brain before she was conscious
of reading them, told a long history—a history over which, for
the last four years, the friends of the writer had smiled and
shrugged, viewing it merely as one among the countless “good
situations” of the mundane comedy. Now the other side presented
itself to Lily, the volcanic nether side of the surface over which
conjecture and innuendo glide so lightly till the first fissure
turns their whisper to a shriek. Lily knew that there is nothing
society resents so much as having given its protection to those who
have not known how to profit by it: it is for having betrayed its
connivance that the body social punishes the offender who is found
out. And in this case there was no doubt of the issue. The code
of Lily’s world decreed that a woman’s husband should be the only
judge of her conduct: she was technically above suspicion while
she had the shelter of his approval, or even of his indifference.
But with a man of George Dorset’s temper there could be no thought
of condonation—the possessor of his wife’s letters could overthrow
with a touch the whole structure of her existence. And into what
hands Bertha Dorset’s secret had been delivered! For a moment the
irony of the coincidence tinged Lily’s disgust with a confused
sense of triumph. But the disgust prevailed—all her instinctive
resistances, of taste, of training, of blind inherited scruples,
rose against the other feeling. Her strongest sense was one of
personal contamination.
She moved away, as though to put as much distance as possible
between herself and her visitor. “I know nothing of these letters,”
she said; “I have no idea why you have brought them here.”
Mrs. Haffen faced her steadily. “I’ll tell you why, Miss. I brought
’em to you to sell, because I ain’t got no other way of raising
money, and if we don’t pay our rent by tomorrow night we’ll be put
out. I never done anythin’ of the kind before, and if you’d speak
to Mr. Selden or to Mr. Rosedale about getting Haffen taken on
again at the Benedick—I seen you talking to Mr. Rosedale on the
steps that day you come out of Mr. Selden’s rooms——”
The blood rushed to Lily’s forehead. She understood now—Mrs. Haffen
supposed her to be the writer of the letters. In the first leap
of her anger she was about to ring and order the woman out; but
an obscure impulse restrained her. The mention of Selden’s name
had started a new train of thought. Bertha Dorset’s letters were
nothing to her—they might go where the current of chance carried
them! But Selden was inextricably involved in their fate. Men
do not, at worst, suffer much from such exposure; and in this
instance the flash of divination which had carried the meaning
of the letters to Lily’s brain had revealed also that they were
appeals—repeated and therefore probably unanswered—for the renewal
of a tie which time had evidently relaxed. Nevertheless, the fact
that the correspondence had been allowed to fall into strange hands
would convict Selden of negligence in a matter where the world
holds it least pardonable; and there were graver risks to consider
where a man of Dorset’s ticklish balance was concerned.
If she weighed all these things it was unconsciously: she was
aware only of feeling that Selden would wish the letters rescued,
and that therefore she must obtain possession of them. Beyond
that her mind did not travel. She had, indeed, a quick vision of
returning the packet to Bertha Dorset, and of the opportunities the
restitution offered; but this thought lit up abysses from which she
shrank back ashamed.
Meanwhile Mrs. Haffen, prompt to perceive her hesitation, had
already opened the packet and ranged its contents on the table. All
the letters had been pieced together with strips of thin paper.
Some were in small fragments, the others merely torn in half.
Though there were not many, thus spread out they nearly covered the
table. Lily’s glance fell on a word here and there—then she said in
a low voice: “What do you wish me to pay you?”
Mrs. Haffen’s face reddened with satisfaction. It was clear that
the young lady was badly frightened, and Mrs. Haffen was the woman
to make the most of such fears. Anticipating an easier victory than
she had foreseen, she named an exorbitant sum.
But Miss Bart showed herself a less ready prey than might have been
expected from her imprudent opening. She refused to pay the price
named, and after a moment’s hesitation, met it by a counter-offer
of half the amount.
Mrs. Haffen immediately stiffened. Her hand travelled toward the
outspread letters, and folding them slowly, she made as though to
restore them to their wrapping.
“I guess they’re worth more to you than to me, Miss, but the poor
has got to live as well as the rich,” she observed sententiously.
Lily was throbbing with fear, but the insinuation fortified her
resistance.
“You are mistaken,” she said indifferently. “I have offered all I
am willing to give for the letters; but there may be other ways of
getting them.”
Mrs. Haffen raised a suspicious glance: she was too experienced not
to know that the traffic she was engaged in had perils as great as
its rewards, and she had a vision of the elaborate machinery of
revenge which a word of this commanding young lady’s might set in
motion.
She applied the corner of her shawl to her eyes, and murmured
through it that no good came of bearing too hard on the poor, but
that for her part she had never been mixed up in such a business
before, and that on her honour as a Christian all she and Haffen
had thought of was that the letters mustn’t go any farther.
Lily stood motionless, keeping between herself and the char-woman
the greatest distance compatible with the need of speaking in low
tones. The idea of bargaining for the letters was intolerable to
her, but she knew that, if she appeared to weaken, Mrs. Haffen
would at once increase her original demand.
She could never afterward recall how long the duel lasted, or
what was the decisive stroke which finally, after a lapse of time
recorded in minutes by the clock, in hours by the precipitate beat
of her pulses, put her in possession of the letters; she knew only
that the door had finally closed, and that she stood alone with the
packet in her hand.
She had no idea of reading the letters; even to unfold Mrs.
Haffen’s dirty newspaper would have seemed degrading. But what did
she intend to do with its contents? The recipient of the letters
had meant to destroy them, and it was her duty to carry out his
intention. She had no right to keep them—to do so was to lessen
whatever merit lay in having secured their possession. But how
destroy them so effectually that there should be no second risk of
their falling in such hands? Mrs. Peniston’s icy drawing-room grate
shone with a forbidding lustre: the fire, like the lamps, was never
lit except when there was company.
Miss Bart was turning to carry the letters upstairs when she
heard the opening of the outer door, and her aunt entered the
drawing-room. Mrs. Peniston was a small plump woman, with a
colourless skin lined with trivial wrinkles. Her grey hair was
arranged with precision, and her clothes looked excessively new
and yet slightly old-fashioned. They were always black and tightly
fitting, with an expensive glitter: she was the kind of woman who
wore jet at breakfast. Lily had never seen her when she was not
cuirassed in shining black, with small tight boots, and an air of
being packed and ready to start; yet she never started.
She looked about the drawing-room with an expression of minute
scrutiny. “I saw a streak of light under one of the blinds as I
drove up: it’s extraordinary that I can never teach that woman to
draw them down evenly.”
Having corrected the irregularity, she seated herself on one of
the glossy purple arm-chairs; Mrs. Peniston always sat on a chair,
never in it.
Then she turned her glance to Miss Bart. “My dear, you look tired;
I suppose it’s the excitement of the wedding. Cornelia Van Alstyne
was full of it: Molly was there, and Gerty Farish ran in for a
minute to tell us about it. I think it was odd, their serving
melons before the CONSOMME: a wedding breakfast should always begin
with CONSOMME. Molly didn’t care for the bridesmaids’ dresses. She
had it straight from Julia Melson that they cost three hundred
dollars apiece at Celeste’s, but she says they didn’t look it. I’m
glad you decided not to be a bridesmaid; that shade of salmon-pink
wouldn’t have suited you.” Mrs. Peniston delighted in discussing
the minutest details of festivities in which she had not taken
part. Nothing would have induced her to undergo the exertion and
fatigue of attending the Van Osburgh wedding, but so great was her
interest in the event that, having heard two versions of it, she
now prepared to extract a third from her niece. Lily, however,
had been deplorably careless in noting the particulars of the
entertainment. She had failed to observe the colour of Mrs. Van
Osburgh’s gown, and could not even say whether the old Van Osburgh
Sevres had been used at the bride’s table: Mrs. Peniston, in short,
found that she was of more service as a listener than as a narrator.
“Really, Lily, I don’t see why you took the trouble to go to the
wedding, if you don’t remember what happened or whom you saw there.
When I was a girl I used to keep the MENU of every dinner I went
to, and write the names of the people on the back; and I never
threw away my cotillion favours till after your uncle’s death,
when it seemed unsuitable to have so many coloured things about
the house. I had a whole closet-full, I remember; and I can tell
to this day what balls I got them at. Molly Van Alstyne reminds me
of what I was at that age; it’s wonderful how she notices. She was