The House of Mirth
your kindness. But perhaps you don’t quite realize the expense a
girl is put to nowadays——”
“I don’t realize that YOU are put to any expense except for your
clothes and your railway fares. I expect you to be handsomely
dressed; but I paid Celeste’s bill for you last October.”
Lily hesitated: her aunt’s implacable memory had never been more
inconvenient. “You were as kind as possible; but I have had to get
a few things since——”
“What kind of things? Clothes? How much have you spent? Let me see
the bill—I daresay the woman is swindling you.”
“Oh, no, I think not: clothes have grown so frightfully expensive;
and one needs so many different kinds, with country visits, and
golf and skating, and Aiken and Tuxedo——”
“Let me see the bill,” Mrs. Peniston repeated.
Lily hesitated again. In the first place, Mme. Celeste had not yet
sent in her account, and secondly, the amount it represented was
only a fraction of the sum that Lily needed.
“She hasn’t sent in the bill for my winter things, but I KNOW it’s
large; and there are one or two other things; I’ve been careless
and imprudent—I’m frightened to think of what I owe——”
She raised the troubled loveliness of her face to Mrs. Peniston,
vainly hoping that a sight so moving to the other sex might not be
without effect upon her own. But the effect produced was that of
making Mrs. Peniston shrink back apprehensively.
“Really, Lily, you are old enough to manage your own affairs, and
after frightening me to death by your performance of last night you
might at least choose a better time to worry me with such matters.”
Mrs. Peniston glanced at the clock, and swallowed a tablet of
digitalis. “If you owe Celeste another thousand, she may send me
her account,” she added, as though to end the discussion at any
cost.
“I am very sorry, Aunt Julia; I hate to trouble you at such a time;
but I have really no choice—I ought to have spoken sooner—I owe a
great deal more than a thousand dollars.”
“A great deal more? Do you owe two? She must have robbed you!”
“I told you it was not only Celeste. I—there are other bills—more
pressing—that must be settled.”
“What on earth have you been buying? Jewelry? You must have gone
off your head,” said Mrs. Peniston with asperity. “But if you have
run into debt, you must suffer the consequences, and put aside your
monthly income till your bills are paid. If you stay quietly here
until next spring, instead of racing about all over the country,
you will have no expenses at all, and surely in four or five months
you can settle the rest of your bills if I pay the dress-maker now.”
Lily was again silent. She knew she could not hope to extract
even a thousand dollars from Mrs. Peniston on the mere plea of
paying Celeste’s bill: Mrs. Peniston would expect to go over the
dress-maker’s account, and would make out the cheque to her and not
to Lily. And yet the money must be obtained before the day was over!
“The debts I speak of are—different—not like tradesmen’s bills,”
she began confusedly; but Mrs. Peniston’s look made her almost
afraid to continue. Could it be that her aunt suspected anything?
The idea precipitated Lily’s avowal.
“The fact is, I’ve played cards a good deal—bridge; the women all
do it; girls too—it’s expected. Sometimes I’ve won—won a good
deal—but lately I’ve been unlucky—and of course such debts can’t be
paid off gradually——”
She paused: Mrs. Peniston’s face seemed to be petrifying as she
listened.
“Cards—you’ve played cards for money? It’s true, then: when I was
told so I wouldn’t believe it. I won’t ask if the other horrors
I was told were true too; I’ve heard enough for the state of my
nerves. When I think of the example you’ve had in this house! But I
suppose it’s your foreign bringing-up—no one knew where your mother
picked up her friends. And her Sundays were a scandal—that I know.”
Mrs. Peniston wheeled round suddenly. “You play cards on Sunday?”
Lily flushed with the recollection of certain rainy Sundays at
Bellomont and with the Dorsets.
“You’re hard on me, Aunt Julia: I have never really cared for
cards, but a girl hates to be thought priggish and superior, and
one drifts into doing what the others do. I’ve had a dreadful
lesson, and if you’ll help me out this time I promise you—”
Mrs. Peniston raised her hand warningly. “You needn’t make any
promises: it’s unnecessary. When I offered you a home I didn’t
undertake to pay your gambling debts.”
“Aunt Julia! You don’t mean that you won’t help me?”
“I shall certainly not do anything to give the impression that I
countenance your behaviour. If you really owe your dress-maker,
I will settle with her—beyond that I recognize no obligation to
assume your debts.”
Lily had risen, and stood pale and quivering before her aunt. Pride
stormed in her, but humiliation forced the cry from her lips: “Aunt
Julia, I shall be disgraced—I—” But she could go no farther. If her
aunt turned such a stony ear to the fiction of the gambling debts,
in what spirit would she receive the terrible avowal of the truth?
“I consider that you ARE disgraced, Lily: disgraced by your conduct
far more than by its results. You say your friends have persuaded
you to play cards with them; well, they may as well learn a lesson
too. They can probably afford to lose a little money—and at any
rate, I am not going to waste any of mine in paying them. And now I
must ask you to leave me—this scene has been extremely painful, and
I have my own health to consider. Draw down the blinds, please; and
tell Jennings I will see no one this afternoon but Grace Stepney.”
Lily went up to her own room and bolted the door. She was trembling
with fear and anger—the rush of the furies’ wings was in her ears.
She walked up and down the room with blind irregular steps. The
last door of escape was closed—she felt herself shut in with her
dishonour.
Suddenly her wild pacing brought her before the clock on the
chimney-piece. Its hands stood at half-past three, and she
remembered that Selden was to come to her at four. She had meant
to put him off with a word—but now her heart leaped at the
thought of seeing him. Was there not a promise of rescue in his
love? As she had lain at Gerty’s side the night before, she had
thought of his coming, and of the sweetness of weeping out her
pain upon his breast. Of course she had meant to clear herself of
its consequences before she met him—she had never really doubted
that Mrs. Peniston would come to her aid. And she had felt, even
in the full storm of her misery, that Selden’s love could not be
her ultimate refuge; only it would be so sweet to take a moment’s
shelter there, while she gathered fresh strength to go on.
But now his love was her only hope, and as she sat alone with her
wretchedness the thought of confiding in him became as seductive
as the river’s flow to the suicide. The first plunge would be
terrible—but afterward, what blessedness might come! She remembered
Gerty’s words: “I know him—he will help you”; and her mind clung
to them as a sick person might cling to a healing relic. Oh, if
he really understood—if he would help her to gather up her broken
life, and put it together in some new semblance in which no trace
of the past should remain! He had always made her feel that she
was worthy of better things, and she had never been in greater
need of such solace. Once and again she shrank at the thought of
imperilling his love by her confession: for love was what she
needed—it would take the glow of passion to weld together the
shattered fragments of her self-esteem. But she recurred to Gerty’s
words and held fast to them. She was sure that Gerty knew Selden’s
feeling for her, and it had never dawned upon her blindness that
Gerty’s own judgment of him was coloured by emotions far more
ardent than her own.
Four o’clock found her in the drawing-room: she was sure that
Selden would be punctual. But the hour came and passed—it moved
on feverishly, measured by her impatient heart-beats. She had
time to take a fresh survey of her wretchedness, and to fluctuate
anew between the impulse to confide in Selden and the dread of
destroying his illusions. But as the minutes passed the need of
throwing herself on his comprehension became more urgent: she could
not bear the weight of her misery alone. There would be a perilous
moment, perhaps: but could she not trust to her beauty to bridge it
over, to land her safe in the shelter of his devotion?
But the hour sped on and Selden did not come. Doubtless he had been
detained, or had misread her hurriedly scrawled note, taking the
four for a five. The ringing of the door-bell a few minutes after
five confirmed this supposition, and made Lily hastily resolve to
write more legibly in future. The sound of steps in the hall, and
of the butler’s voice preceding them, poured fresh energy into her
veins. She felt herself once more the alert and competent moulder
of emergencies, and the remembrance of her power over Selden
flushed her with sudden confidence. But when the drawing-room door
opened it was Rosedale who came in.
The reaction caused her a sharp pang, but after a passing
movement of irritation at the clumsiness of fate, and at her
own carelessness in not denying the door to all but Selden, she
controlled herself and greeted Rosedale amicably. It was annoying
that Selden, when he came, should find that particular visitor in
possession, but Lily was mistress of the art of ridding herself
of superfluous company, and to her present mood Rosedale seemed
distinctly negligible.
His own view of the situation forced itself upon her after a few
moments’ conversation. She had caught at the Brys’ entertainment as
an easy impersonal subject, likely to tide them over the interval
till Selden appeared, but Mr. Rosedale, tenaciously planted beside
the tea-table, his hands in his pockets, his legs a little too
freely extended, at once gave the topic a personal turn.
“Pretty well done—well, yes, I suppose it was: Welly Bry’s got his
back up and don’t mean to let go till he’s got the hang of the
thing. Of course, there were things here and there—things Mrs.
Fisher couldn’t be expected to see to—the champagne wasn’t cold,
and the coats got mixed in the coat-room. I would have spent more
money on the music. But that’s my character: if I want a thing I’m
willing to pay: I don’t go up to the counter, and then wonder if
the article’s worth the price. I wouldn’t be satisfied to entertain
like the Welly Brys; I’d want something that would look more easy
and natural, more as if I took it in my stride. And it takes just
two things to do that, Miss Bart: money, and the right woman to
spend it.”
He paused, and examined her attentively while she affected to
rearrange the tea-cups.
“I’ve got the money,” he continued, clearing his throat, “and what
I want is the woman—and I mean to have her too.”
He leaned forward a little, resting his hands on the head of his
walking-stick. He had seen men of Ned Van Alstyne’s type bring
their hats and sticks into a drawing-room, and he thought it added
a touch of elegant familiarity to their appearance.
Lily was silent, smiling faintly, with her eyes absently resting on
his face. She was in reality reflecting that a declaration would
take some time to make, and that Selden must surely appear before
the moment of refusal had been reached. Her brooding look, as of
a mind withdrawn yet not averted, seemed to Mr. Rosedale full of
a subtle encouragement. He would not have liked any evidence of
eagerness.
“I mean to have her too,” he repeated, with a laugh intended to
strengthen his self-assurance. “I generally HAVE got what I wanted
in life, Miss Bart. I wanted money, and I’ve got more than I know
how to invest; and now the money doesn’t seem to be of any account