The House of Mirth
lucky speculations, tried to give him the welcome he expected; but
there was something in the quality of his geniality which chilled
her own, and she was conscious of marking each step in their
acquaintance by a fresh blunder.
Mr. Rosedale—making himself promptly at home in an adjoining
easy-chair, and sipping his tea critically, with the comment: “You
ought to go to my man for something really good”—appeared totally
unconscious of the repugnance which kept her in frozen erectness
behind the urn. It was perhaps her very manner of holding herself
aloof that appealed to his collector’s passion for the rare and
unattainable. He gave, at any rate, no sign of resenting it and
seemed prepared to supply in his own manner all the ease that was
lacking in hers.
His object in calling was to ask her to go to the opera in his box
on the opening night, and seeing her hesitate he said persuasively:
“Mrs. Fisher is coming, and I’ve secured a tremendous admirer of
yours, who’ll never forgive me if you don’t accept.”
As Lily’s silence left him with this allusion on his hands, he
added with a confidential smile: “Gus Trenor has promised to come
to town on purpose. I fancy he’d go a good deal farther for the
pleasure of seeing you.”
Miss Bart felt an inward motion of annoyance: it was distasteful
enough to hear her name coupled with Trenor’s, and on Rosedale’s
lips the allusion was peculiarly unpleasant.
“The Trenors are my best friends—I think we should all go a
long way to see each other,” she said, absorbing herself in the
preparation of fresh tea.
Her visitor’s smile grew increasingly intimate. “Well, I wasn’t
thinking of Mrs. Trenor at the moment—they say Gus doesn’t always,
you know.” Then, dimly conscious that he had not struck the right
note, he added, with a well-meant effort at diversion: “How’s your
luck been going in Wall Street, by the way? I hear Gus pulled off a
nice little pile for you last month.”
Lily put down the tea-caddy with an abrupt gesture. She felt that
her hands were trembling, and clasped them on her knee to steady
them; but her lip trembled too, and for a moment she was afraid
the tremor might communicate itself to her voice. When she spoke,
however, it was in a tone of perfect lightness.
“Ah, yes—I had a little bit of money to invest, and Mr. Trenor,
who helps me about such matters, advised my putting it in stocks
instead of a mortgage, as my aunt’s agent wanted me to do; and as
it happened, I made a lucky ‘turn’—is that what you call it? For
you make a great many yourself, I believe.”
She was smiling back at him now, relaxing the tension of her
attitude, and admitting him, by imperceptible gradations of glance
and manner, a step farther toward intimacy. The protective instinct
always nerved her to successful dissimulation, and it was not the
first time she had used her beauty to divert attention from an
inconvenient topic.
When Mr. Rosedale took leave, he carried with him, not only her
acceptance of his invitation, but a general sense of having
comported himself in a way calculated to advance his cause. He
had always believed he had a light touch and a knowing way with
women, and the prompt manner in which Miss Bart (as he would have
phrased it) had “come into line,” confirmed his confidence in his
powers of handling this skittish sex. Her way of glossing over the
transaction with Trenor he regarded at once as a tribute to his
own acuteness, and a confirmation of his suspicions. The girl was
evidently nervous, and Mr. Rosedale, if he saw no other means of
advancing his acquaintance with her, was not above taking advantage
of her nervousness.
He left Lily to a passion of disgust and fear. It seemed incredible
that Gus Trenor should have spoken of her to Rosedale. With
all his faults, Trenor had the safeguard of his traditions,
and was the less likely to overstep them because they were so
purely instinctive. But Lily recalled with a pang that there
were convivial moments when, as Judy had confided to her, Gus
“talked foolishly”: in one of these, no doubt, the fatal word had
slipped from him. As for Rosedale, she did not, after the first
shock, greatly care what conclusions he had drawn. Though usually
adroit enough where her own interests were concerned, she made
the mistake, not uncommon to persons in whom the social habits
are instinctive, of supposing that the inability to acquire them
quickly implies a general dulness. Because a blue-bottle bangs
irrationally against a window-pane, the drawing-room naturalist
may forget that under less artificial conditions it is capable
of measuring distances and drawing conclusions with all the
accuracy needful to its welfare; and the fact that Mr. Rosedale’s
drawing-room manner lacked perspective made Lily class him with
Trenor and the other dull men she knew, and assume that a little
flattery, and the occasional acceptance of his hospitality, would
suffice to render him innocuous. However, there could be no doubt
of the expediency of showing herself in his box on the opening
night of the opera; and after all, since Judy Trenor had promised
to take him up that winter, it was as well to reap the advantage of
being first in the field.
For a day or two after Rosedale’s visit, Lily’s thoughts were
dogged by the consciousness of Trenor’s shadowy claim, and she
wished she had a clearer notion of the exact nature of the
transaction which seemed to have put her in his power; but her mind
shrank from any unusual application, and she was always helplessly
puzzled by figures. Moreover she had not seen Trenor since the day
of the Van Osburgh wedding, and in his continued absence the trace
of Rosedale’s words was soon effaced by other impressions.
When the opening night of the opera came, her apprehensions had so
completely vanished that the sight of Trenor’s ruddy countenance in
the back of Mr. Rosedale’s box filled her with a sense of pleasant
reassurance. Lily had not quite reconciled herself to the necessity
of appearing as Rosedale’s guest on so conspicuous an occasion, and
it was a relief to find herself supported by any one of her own
set—for Mrs. Fisher’s social habits were too promiscuous for her
presence to justify Miss Bart’s.
To Lily, always inspirited by the prospect of showing her beauty
in public, and conscious tonight of all the added enhancements of
dress, the insistency of Trenor’s gaze merged itself in the general
stream of admiring looks of which she felt herself the centre. Ah,
it was good to be young, to be radiant, to glow with the sense of
slenderness, strength and elasticity, of well-poised lines and
happy tints, to feel one’s self lifted to a height apart by that
incommunicable grace which is the bodily counterpart of genius!
All means seemed justifiable to attain such an end, or rather, by a
happy shifting of lights with which practice had familiarized Miss
Bart, the cause shrank to a pin-point in the general brightness
of the effect. But brilliant young ladies, a little blinded by
their own effulgence, are apt to forget that the modest satellite
drowned in their light is still performing its own revolutions
and generating heat at its own rate. If Lily’s poetic enjoyment
of the moment was undisturbed by the base thought that her gown
and opera cloak had been indirectly paid for by Gus Trenor, the
latter had not sufficient poetry in his composition to lose sight
of these prosaic facts. He knew only that he had never seen Lily
look smarter in her life, that there wasn’t a woman in the house
who showed off good clothes as she did, and that hitherto he, to
whom she owed the opportunity of making this display, had reaped no
return beyond that of gazing at her in company with several hundred
other pairs of eyes.
It came to Lily therefore as a disagreeable surprise when, in
the back of the box, where they found themselves alone between
two acts, Trenor said, without preamble, and in a tone of sulky
authority: “Look here, Lily, how is a fellow ever to see anything
of you? I’m in town three or four days in the week, and you know
a line to the club will always find me, but you don’t seem to
remember my existence nowadays unless you want to get a tip out of
me.”
The fact that the remark was in distinctly bad taste did not make
it any easier to answer, for Lily was vividly aware that it was not
the moment for that drawing up of her slim figure and surprised
lifting of the brows by which she usually quelled incipient signs
of familiarity.
“I’m very much flattered by your wanting to see me,” she returned,
essaying lightness instead, “but, unless you have mislaid my
address, it would have been easy to find me any afternoon at my
aunt’s—in fact, I rather expected you to look me up there.”
If she hoped to mollify him by this last concession the attempt
was a failure, for he only replied, with the familiar lowering of
the brows that made him look his dullest when he was angry: “Hang
going to your aunt’s, and wasting the afternoon listening to a lot
of other chaps talking to you! You know I’m not the kind to sit
in a crowd and jaw—I’d always rather clear out when that sort of
circus is going on. But why can’t we go off somewhere on a little
lark together—a nice quiet little expedition like that drive at
Bellomont, the day you met me at the station?”
He leaned unpleasantly close in order to convey this suggestion,
and she fancied she caught a significant aroma which explained the
dark flush on his face and the glistening dampness of his forehead.
The idea that any rash answer might provoke an unpleasant outburst
tempered her disgust with caution, and she answered with a laugh:
“I don’t see how one can very well take country drives in town, but
I am not always surrounded by an admiring throng, and if you will
let me know what afternoon you are coming I will arrange things so
that we can have a nice quiet talk.”
“Hang talking! That’s what you always say,” returned Trenor, whose
expletives lacked variety. “You put me off with that at the Van
Osburgh wedding—but the plain English of it is that, now you’ve
got what you wanted out of me, you’d rather have any other fellow
about.”
His voice had risen sharply with the last words, and Lily flushed
with annoyance, but she kept command of the situation and laid a
persuasive hand on his arm.
“Don’t be foolish, Gus; I can’t let you talk to me in that
ridiculous way. If you really want to see me, why shouldn’t we
take a walk in the Park some afternoon? I agree with you that it’s
amusing to be rustic in town, and if you like I’ll meet you there,
and we’ll go and feed the squirrels, and you shall take me out on
the lake in the steam-gondola.”
She smiled as she spoke, letting her eyes rest on his in a way that
took the edge from her banter and made him suddenly malleable to
her will.
“All right, then: that’s a go. Will you come tomorrow? Tomorrow
at three o’clock, at the end of the Mall. I’ll be there sharp,
remember; you won’t go back on me, Lily?”
But to Miss Bart’s relief the repetition of her promise was cut
short by the opening of the box door to admit George Dorset.
Trenor sulkily yielded his place, and Lily turned a brilliant smile
on the newcomer. She had not talked with Dorset since their visit
at Bellomont, but something in his look and manner told her that
he recalled the friendly footing on which they had last met. He
was not a man to whom the expression of admiration came easily:
his long sallow face and distrustful eyes seemed always barricaded
against the expansive emotions. But, where her own influence was
concerned, Lily’s intuitions sent out thread-like feelers, and as
she made room for him on the narrow sofa she was sure he found a
dumb pleasure in being near her. Few women took the trouble to