The House of Mirth
inexorableness of the law, and was astonished that Lily had not
realized the exact similarity of their positions. Did she think
that only the payment of the legacies had been delayed? Why, Miss
Stepney herself had not received a penny of her inheritance, and
was paying rent—yes, actually!—for the privilege of living in a
house that belonged to her. She was sure it was not what poor dear
cousin Julia would have wished—she had told the executors so to
their faces; but they were inaccessible to reason, and there was
nothing to do but to wait. Let Lily take example by her, and be
patient—let them both remember how beautifully patient cousin Julia
had always been.
Lily made a movement which showed her imperfect assimilation of
this example. “But you will have everything, Grace—it would be easy
for you to borrow ten times the amount I am asking for.”
“Borrow—easy for me to borrow?” Grace Stepney rose up before her
in sable wrath. “Do you imagine for a moment that I would raise
money on my expectations from cousin Julia, when I know so well her
unspeakable horror of every transaction of the sort? Why, Lily, if
you must know the truth, it was the idea of your being in debt that
brought on her illness—you remember she had a slight attack before
you sailed. Oh, I don’t know the particulars, of course—I don’t
WANT to know them—but there were rumours about your affairs that
made her most unhappy—no one could be with her without seeing that.
I can’t help it if you are offended by my telling you this now—if I
can do anything to make you realize the folly of your course, and
how deeply SHE disapproved of it, I shall feel it is the truest way
of making up to you for her loss.”
Chapter 5
It seemed to Lily, as Mrs. Peniston’s door closed on her, that she
was taking a final leave of her old life. The future stretched
before her dull and bare as the deserted length of Fifth Avenue,
and opportunities showed as meagrely as the few cabs trailing in
quest of fares that did not come. The completeness of the analogy
was, however, disturbed as she reached the sidewalk by the rapid
approach of a hansom which pulled up at sight of her.
From beneath its luggage-laden top, she caught the wave of a
signalling hand; and the next moment Mrs. Fisher, springing to the
street, had folded her in a demonstrative embrace.
“My dear, you don’t mean to say you’re still in town? When I saw
you the other day at Sherry’s I didn’t have time to ask——” She
broke off, and added with a burst of frankness: “The truth is I was
HORRID, Lily, and I’ve wanted to tell you so ever since.”
“Oh——” Miss Bart protested, drawing back from her penitent clasp;
but Mrs. Fisher went on with her usual directness: “Look here,
Lily, don’t let’s beat about the bush: half the trouble in life is
caused by pretending there isn’t any. That’s not my way, and I can
only say I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself for following the other
women’s lead. But we’ll talk of that by and bye—tell me now where
you’re staying and what your plans are. I don’t suppose you’re
keeping house in there with Grace Stepney, eh?—and it struck me you
might be rather at loose ends.”
In Lily’s present mood there was no resisting the honest
friendliness of this appeal, and she said with a smile: “I am at
loose ends for the moment, but Gerty Farish is still in town, and
she’s good enough to let me be with her whenever she can spare the
time.”
Mrs. Fisher made a slight grimace. “H’m—that’s a temperate joy. Oh,
I know—Gerty’s a trump, and worth all the rest of us put together;
but A LA LONGUE you’re used to a little higher seasoning, aren’t
you, dear? And besides, I suppose she’ll be off herself before
long—the first of August, you say? Well, look here, you can’t spend
your summer in town; we’ll talk of that later too. But meanwhile,
what do you say to putting a few things in a trunk and coming down
with me to the Sam Gormers’ tonight?”
And as Lily stared at the breathless suddenness of the suggestion,
she continued with her easy laugh: “You don’t know them and they
don’t know you; but that don’t make a rap of difference. They’ve
taken the Van Alstyne place at Roslyn, and I’ve got CARTE BLANCHE
to bring my friends down there—the more the merrier. They do
things awfully well, and there’s to be rather a jolly party there
this week——” she broke off, checked by an undefinable change in
Miss Bart’s expression. “Oh, I don’t mean YOUR particular set,
you know: rather a different crowd, but very good fun. The fact
is, the Gormers have struck out on a line of their own: what they
want is to have a good time, and to have it in their own way. They
gave the other thing a few months’ trial, under my distinguished
auspices, and they were really doing extremely well—getting on a
good deal faster than the Brys, just because they didn’t care as
much—but suddenly they decided that the whole business bored them,
and that what they wanted was a crowd they could really feel at
home with. Rather original of them, don’t you think so? Mattie
Gormer HAS got aspirations still; women always have; but she’s
awfully easy-going, and Sam won’t be bothered, and they both like
to be the most important people in sight, so they’ve started a sort
of continuous performance of their own, a kind of social Coney
Island, where everybody is welcome who can make noise enough and
doesn’t put on airs. I think it’s awfully good fun myself—some
of the artistic set, you know, any pretty actress that’s going,
and so on. This week, for instance, they have Audrey Anstell,
who made such a hit last spring in ‘The Winning of Winny’; and
Paul Morpeth—he’s painting Mattie Gormer—and the Dick Bellingers,
and Kate Corby—well, every one you can think of who’s jolly and
makes a row. Now don’t stand there with your nose in the air, my
dear—it will be a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town,
and you’ll find clever people as well as noisy ones—Morpeth, who
admires Mattie enormously, always brings one or two of his set.”
Mrs. Fisher drew Lily toward the hansom with friendly authority.
“Jump in now, there’s a dear, and we’ll drive round to your hotel
and have your things packed, and then we’ll have tea, and the two
maids can meet us at the train.”
* * * * *
It was a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town—of that
no doubt remained to Lily as, reclining in the shade of a leafy
verandah, she looked seaward across a stretch of greensward
picturesquely dotted with groups of ladies in lace raiment and men
in tennis flannels. The huge Van Alstyne house and its rambling
dependencies were packed to their fullest capacity with the
Gormers’ week-end guests, who now, in the radiance of the Sunday
forenoon, were dispersing themselves over the grounds in quest of
the various distractions the place afforded: distractions ranging
from tennis-courts to shooting-galleries, from bridge and whiskey
within doors to motors and steam-launches without. Lily had the
odd sense of having been caught up into the crowd as carelessly
as a passenger is gathered in by an express train. The blonde and
genial Mrs. Gormer might, indeed, have figured the conductor,
calmly assigning seats to the rush of travellers, while Carry
Fisher represented the porter pushing their bags into place, giving
them their numbers for the dining-car, and warning them when their
station was at hand. The train, meanwhile, had scarcely slackened
speed—life whizzed on with a deafening’ rattle and roar, in which
one traveller at least found a welcome refuge from the sound of
her own thoughts. The Gormer MILIEU represented a social out-skirt
which Lily had always fastidiously avoided; but it struck her, now
that she was in it, as only a flamboyant copy of her own world,
a caricature approximating the real thing as the “society play”
approaches the manners of the drawing-room. The people about her
were doing the same things as the Trenors, the Van Osburghs and
the Dorsets: the difference lay in a hundred shades of aspect and
manner, from the pattern of the men’s waistcoats to the inflexion
of the women’s voices. Everything was pitched in a higher key,
and there was more of each thing: more noise, more colour, more
champagne, more familiarity—but also greater good-nature, less
rivalry, and a fresher capacity for enjoyment.
Miss Bart’s arrival had been welcomed with an uncritical
friendliness that first irritated her pride and then brought her
to a sharp sense of her own situation—of the place in life which,
for the moment, she must accept and make the best of. These people
knew her story—of that her first long talk with Carry Fisher had
left no doubt: she was publicly branded as the heroine of a “queer”
episode—but instead of shrinking from her as her own friends had
done, they received her without question into the easy promiscuity
of their lives. They swallowed her past as easily as they did Miss
Anstell’s, and with no apparent sense of any difference in the size
of the mouthful: all they asked was that she should—in her own way,
for they recognized a diversity of gifts—contribute as much to the
general amusement as that graceful actress, whose talents, when
off the stage, were of the most varied order. Lily felt at once
that any tendency to be “stuck-up,” to mark a sense of differences
and distinctions, would be fatal to her continuance in the Gormer
set. To be taken in on such terms—and into such a world!—was hard
enough to the lingering pride in her; but she realized, with a
pang of self-contempt, that to be excluded from it would, after
all, be harder still. For, almost at once, she had felt the
insidious charm of slipping back into a life where every material
difficulty was smoothed away. The sudden escape from a stifling
hotel in a dusty deserted city to the space and luxury of a great
country-house fanned by sea breezes, had produced a state of moral
lassitude agreeable enough after the nervous tension and physical
discomfort of the past weeks. For the moment she must yield to the
refreshment her senses craved—after that she would reconsider her
situation, and take counsel with her dignity. Her enjoyment of her
surroundings was, indeed, tinged by the unpleasant consideration
that she was accepting the hospitality and courting the approval
of people she had disdained under other conditions. But she was
growing less sensitive on such points: a hard glaze of indifference
was fast forming over her delicacies and susceptibilities, and each
concession to expediency hardened the surface a little more.
On the Monday, when the party disbanded with uproarious adieux,
the return to town threw into stronger relief the charms of the
life she was leaving. The other guests were dispersing to take
up the same existence in a different setting: some at Newport,
some at Bar Harbour, some in the elaborate rusticity of an
Adirondack camp. Even Gerty Farish, who welcomed Lily’s return
with tender solicitude, would soon be preparing to join the aunt
with whom she spent her summers on Lake George: only Lily herself
remained without plan or purpose, stranded in a backwater of the
great current of pleasure. But Carry Fisher, who had insisted on
transporting her to her own house, where she herself was to perch
for a day or two on the way to the Brys’ camp, came to the rescue
with a new suggestion.
“Look here, Lily—I’ll tell you what it is: I want you to take my
place with Mattie Gormer this summer. They’re taking a party out
to Alaska next month in their private car, and Mattie, who is the
laziest woman alive, wants me to go with them, and relieve her
of the bother of arranging things; but the Brys want me too—oh,
yes, we’ve made it up: didn’t I tell you?—and, to put it frankly,
though I like the Gormers best, there’s more profit for me in