The House of Mirth
“No; you wouldn’t have thought it; but you’ll know better now.
That’s what you’re here for tonight. I’ve been waiting for a quiet
time to talk things over, and now I’ve got it I mean to make you
hear me out.”
His first rush of inarticulate resentment had been followed by a
steadiness and concentration of tone more disconcerting to Lily
than the excitement preceding it. For a moment her presence of mind
forsook her. She had more than once been in situations where a
quick sword-play of wit had been needful to cover her retreat; but
her frightened heart-throbs told her that here such skill would not
avail.
To gain time she repeated: “I don’t understand what you want.”
Trenor had pushed a chair between herself and the door. He threw
himself in it, and leaned back, looking up at her.
“I’ll tell you what I want: I want to know just where you and
I stand. Hang it, the man who pays for the dinner is generally
allowed to have a seat at table.”
She flamed with anger and abasement, and the sickening need of
having to conciliate where she longed to humble.
“I don’t know what you mean—but you must see, Gus, that I can’t
stay here talking to you at this hour——”
“Gad, you go to men’s houses fast enough in broad day light—strikes
me you’re not always so deuced careful of appearances.”
The brutality of the thrust gave her the sense of dizziness that
follows on a physical blow. Rosedale had spoken then—this was the
way men talked of her—She felt suddenly weak and defenceless: there
was a throb of self-pity in her throat. But all the while another
self was sharpening her to vigilance, whispering the terrified
warning that every word and gesture must be measured.
“If you have brought me here to say insulting things——” she began.
Trenor laughed. “Don’t talk stage-rot. I don’t want to insult you.
But a man’s got his feelings—and you’ve played with mine too long.
I didn’t begin this business—kept out of the way, and left the
track clear for the other chaps, till you rummaged me out and set
to work to make an ass of me—and an easy job you had of it, too.
That’s the trouble—it was too easy for you—you got reckless—thought
you could turn me inside out, and chuck me in the gutter like an
empty purse. But, by gad, that ain’t playing fair: that’s dodging
the rules of the game. Of course I know now what you wanted—it
wasn’t my beautiful eyes you were after—but I tell you what, Miss
Lily, you’ve got to pay up for making me think so——”
He rose, squaring his shoulders aggressively, and stepped toward
her with a reddening brow; but she held her footing, though every
nerve tore at her to retreat as he advanced.
“Pay up?” she faltered. “Do you mean that I owe you money?”
He laughed again. “Oh, I’m not asking for payment in kind. But
there’s such a thing as fair play—and interest on one’s money—and
hang me if I’ve had as much as a look from you——”
“Your money? What have I to do with your money? You advised me
how to invest mine . . . you must have seen I knew nothing of
business . . . you told me it was all right——”
“It WAS all right—it is, Lily: you’re welcome to all of it, and ten
times more. I’m only asking for a word of thanks from you.” He was
closer still, with a hand that grew formidable; and the frightened
self in her was dragging the other down.
“I HAVE thanked you; I’ve shown I was grateful. What more have you
done than any friend might do, or any one accept from a friend?”
Trenor caught her up with a sneer. “I don’t doubt you’ve accepted
as much before—and chucked the other chaps as you’d like to chuck
me. I don’t care how you settled your score with them—if you fooled
’em I’m that much to the good. Don’t stare at me like that—I know
I’m not talking the way a man is supposed to talk to a girl—but,
hang it, if you don’t like it you can stop me quick enough—you know
I’m mad about you—damn the money, there’s plenty more of it—if THAT
bothers you.... I was a brute, Lily—Lily!—just look at me——”
Over and over her the sea of humiliation broke—wave crashing on
wave so close that the moral shame was one with the physical
dread. It seemed to her that self-esteem would have made her
invulnerable—that it was her own dishonour which put a fearful
solitude about her.
His touch was a shock to her drowning consciousness. She drew back
from him with a desperate assumption of scorn.
“I’ve told you I don’t understand—but if I owe you money you shall
be paid——”
Trenor’s face darkened to rage: her recoil of abhorrence had called
out the primitive man.
“Ah—you’ll borrow from Selden or Rosedale—and take your chances of
fooling them as you’ve fooled me! Unless—unless you’ve settled your
other scores already—and I’m the only one left out in the cold!”
She stood silent, frozen to her place. The words—the words were
worse than the touch! Her heart was beating all over her body—in
her throat, her limbs, her helpless useless hands. Her eyes
travelled despairingly about the room—they lit on the bell, and
she remembered that help was in call. Yes, but scandal with it—a
hideous mustering of tongues. No, she must fight her way out alone.
It was enough that the servants knew her to be in the house with
Trenor—there must be nothing to excite conjecture in her way of
leaving it.
She raised her head, and achieved a last clear look at him.
“I am here alone with you,” she said. “What more have you to say?”
To her surprise, Trenor answered the look with a speechless stare.
With his last gust of words the flame had died out, leaving him
chill and humbled. It was as though a cold air had dispersed the
fumes of his libations, and the situation loomed before him black
and naked as the ruins of a fire. Old habits, old restraints, the
hand of inherited order, plucked back the bewildered mind which
passion had jolted from its ruts. Trenor’s eye had the haggard look
of the sleep-walker waked on a deathly ledge.
“Go home! Go away from here”——he stammered, and turning his back on
her walked toward the hearth.
The sharp release from her fears restored Lily to immediate
lucidity. The collapse of Trenor’s will left her in control, and
she heard herself, in a voice that was her own yet outside herself,
bidding him ring for the servant, bidding him give the order for
a hansom, directing him to put her in it when it came. Whence the
strength came to her she knew not; but an insistent voice warned
her that she must leave the house openly, and nerved her, in the
hall before the hovering care taker, to exchange light words with
Trenor, and charge him with the usual messages for Judy, while all
the while she shook with inward loathing. On the doorstep, with the
street before her, she felt a mad throb of liberation, intoxicating
as the prisoner’s first draught of free air; but the clearness of
brain continued, and she noted the mute aspect of Fifth Avenue,
guessed at the lateness of the hour, and even observed a man’s
figure—was there something half-familiar in its outline?—which,
as she entered the hansom, turned from the opposite corner and
vanished in the obscurity of the side street.
But with the turn of the wheels reaction came, and shuddering
darkness closed on her. “I can’t think—I can’t think,” she moaned,
and leaned her head against the rattling side of the cab. She
seemed a stranger to herself, or rather there were two selves
in her, the one she had always known, and a new abhorrent being
to which it found itself chained. She had once picked up, in a
house where she was staying, a translation of the EUMENIDES, and
her imagination had been seized by the high terror of the scene
where Orestes, in the cave of the oracle, finds his implacable
huntresses asleep, and snatches an hour’s repose. Yes, the Furies
might sometimes sleep, but they were there, always there in the
dark corners, and now they were awake and the iron clang of their
wings was in her brain.... She opened her eyes and saw the streets
passing—the familiar alien streets. All she looked on was the
same and yet changed. There was a great gulf fixed between today
and yesterday. Everything in the past seemed simple, natural,
full of daylight—and she was alone in a place of darkness and
pollution.—Alone! It was the loneliness that frightened her. Her
eyes fell on an illuminated clock at a street corner, and she saw
that the hands marked the half hour after eleven. Only half-past
eleven—there were hours and hours left of the night! And she
must spend them alone, shuddering sleepless on her bed. Her soft
nature recoiled from this ordeal, which had none of the stimulus
of conflict to goad her through it. Oh, the slow cold drip of the
minutes on her head! She had a vision of herself lying on the
black walnut bed—and the darkness would frighten her, and if she
left the light burning the dreary details of the room would brand
themselves forever on her brain. She had always hated her room at
Mrs. Peniston’s—its ugliness, its impersonality, the fact that
nothing in it was really hers. To a torn heart uncomforted by
human nearness a room may open almost human arms, and the being to
whom no four walls mean more than any others, is, at such hours,
expatriate everywhere.
Lily had no heart to lean on. Her relation with her aunt was as
superficial as that of chance lodgers who pass on the stairs. But
even had the two been in closer contact, it was impossible to think
of Mrs. Peniston’s mind as offering shelter or comprehension to
such misery as Lily’s. As the pain that can be told is but half a
pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch.
What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the
silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.
She started up and looked forth on the passing streets. Gerty!—they
were nearing Gerty’s corner. If only she could reach there before
this labouring anguish burst from her breast to her lips—if only
she could feel the hold of Gerty’s arms while she shook in the
ague-fit of fear that was coming upon her! She pushed up the door
in the roof and called the address to the driver. It was not
so late—Gerty might still be waking. And even if she were not,
the sound of the bell would penetrate every recess of her tiny
apartment, and rouse her to answer her friend’s call.
Chapter 14
Gerty Farish, the morning after the Wellington Brys’ entertainment,
woke from dreams as happy as Lily’s. If they were less vivid in
hue, more subdued to the half-tints of her personality and her
experience, they were for that very reason better suited to her
mental vision. Such flashes of joy as Lily moved in would have
blinded Miss Farish, who was accustomed, in the way of happiness,
to such scant light as shone through the cracks of other people’s
lives.
Now she was the centre of a little illumination of her own: a mild
but unmistakable beam, compounded of Lawrence Selden’s growing
kindness to herself and the discovery that he extended his liking
to Lily Bart. If these two factors seem incompatible to the student
of feminine psychology, it must be remembered that Gerty had always
been a parasite in the moral order, living on the crumbs of other
tables, and content to look through the window at the banquet
spread for her friends. Now that she was enjoying a little private
feast of her own, it would have seemed incredibly selfish not to
lay a plate for a friend; and there was no one with whom she would
rather have shared her enjoyment than Miss Bart.
As to the nature of Selden’s growing kindness, Gerty would no
more have dared to define it than she would have tried to learn
a butterfly’s colours by knocking the dust from its wings. To
seize on the wonder would be to brush off its bloom, and perhaps
see it fade and stiffen in her hand: better the sense of beauty