The House of Mirth
had always felt in him, he was making his way through the dense
mass of social antagonisms. Already his wealth, and the masterly
use he had made of it, were giving him an enviable prominence in
the world of affairs, and placing Wall Street under obligations
which only Fifth Avenue could repay. In response to these claims,
his name began to figure on municipal committees and charitable
boards; he appeared at banquets to distinguished strangers, and
his candidacy at one of the fashionable clubs was discussed with
diminishing opposition. He had figured once or twice at the Trenor
dinners, and had learned to speak with just the right note of
disdain of the big Van Osburgh crushes; and all he now needed was a
wife whose affiliations would shorten the last tedious steps of his
ascent. It was with that object that, a year earlier, he had fixed
his affections on Miss Bart; but in the interval he had mounted
nearer to the goal, while she had lost the power to abbreviate the
remaining steps of the way. All this she saw with the clearness of
vision that came to her in moments of despondency. It was success
that dazzled her—she could distinguish facts plainly enough in the
twilight of failure. And the twilight, as she now sought to pierce
it, was gradually lighted by a faint spark of reassurance. Under
the utilitarian motive of Rosedale’s wooing she had felt, clearly
enough, the heat of personal inclination. She would not have
detested him so heartily had she not known that he dared to admire
her. What, then, if the passion persisted, though the other motive
had ceased to sustain it? She had never even tried to please him—he
had been drawn to her in spite of her manifest disdain. What if she
now chose to exert the power which, even in its passive state, he
had felt so strongly? What if she made him marry her for love, now
that he had no other reason for marrying her?
Chapter 6
As became persons of their rising consequence, the Gormers were
engaged in building a country-house on Long Island; and it was a
part of Miss Bart’s duty to attend her hostess on frequent visits
of inspection to the new estate. There, while Mrs. Gormer plunged
into problems of lighting and sanitation, Lily had leisure to
wander, in the bright autumn air, along the tree-fringed bay to
which the land declined. Little as she was addicted to solitude,
there had come to be moments when it seemed a welcome escape
from the empty noises of her life. She was weary of being swept
passively along a current of pleasure and business in which she
had no share; weary of seeing other people pursue amusement and
squander money, while she felt herself of no more account among
them than an expensive toy in the hands of a spoiled child.
It was in this frame of mind that, striking back from the shore
one morning into the windings of an unfamiliar lane, she came
suddenly upon the figure of George Dorset. The Dorset place was in
the immediate neighbourhood of the Gormers’ newly-acquired estate,
and in her motor-flights thither with Mrs. Gormer, Lily had caught
one or two passing glimpses of the couple; but they moved in so
different an orbit that she had not considered the possibility of a
direct encounter.
Dorset, swinging along with bent head, in moody abstraction, did
not see Miss Bart till he was close upon her; but the sight,
instead of bringing him to a halt, as she had half-expected, sent
him toward her with an eagerness which found expression in his
opening words.
“Miss Bart!—You’ll shake hands, won’t you? I’ve been hoping to meet
you—I should have written to you if I’d dared.” His face, with its
tossed red hair and straggling moustache, had a driven uneasy look,
as though life had become an unceasing race between himself and the
thoughts at his heels.
The look drew a word of compassionate greeting from Lily, and he
pressed on, as if encouraged by her tone: “I wanted to apologize—to
ask you to forgive me for the miserable part I played——”
She checked him with a quick gesture. “Don’t let us speak of it: I
was very sorry for you,” she said, with a tinge of disdain which,
as she instantly perceived, was not lost on him.
He flushed to his haggard eyes, flushed so cruelly that she
repented the thrust. “You might well be; you don’t know—you must
let me explain. I was deceived: abominably deceived——”
“I am still more sorry for you, then,” she interposed, without
irony; “but you must see that I am not exactly the person with whom
the subject can be discussed.”
He met this with a look of genuine wonder. “Why not? Isn’t it to
you, of all people, that I owe an explanation——”
“No explanation is necessary: the situation was perfectly clear to
me.”
“Ah——” he murmured, his head drooping again, and his irresolute
hand switching at the underbrush along the lane. But as Lily made a
movement to pass on, he broke out with fresh vehemence: “Miss Bart,
for God’s sake don’t turn from me! We used to be good friends—you
were always kind to me—and you don’t know how I need a friend now.”
The lamentable weakness of the words roused a motion of pity in
Lily’s breast. She too needed friends—she had tasted the pang of
loneliness; and her resentment of Bertha Dorset’s cruelty softened
her heart to the poor wretch who was after all the chief of
Bertha’s victims.
“I still wish to be kind; I feel no ill-will toward you,” she said.
“But you must understand that after what has happened we can’t be
friends again—we can’t see each other.”
“Ah, you ARE kind—you’re merciful—you always were!” He fixed his
miserable gaze on her. “But why can’t we be friends—why not, when
I’ve repented in dust and ashes? Isn’t it hard that you should
condemn me to suffer for the falseness, the treachery of others? I
was punished enough at the time—is there to be no respite for me?”
“I should have thought you had found complete respite in the
reconciliation which was effected at my expense,” Lily began, with
renewed impatience; but he broke in imploringly: “Don’t put it in
that way—when that’s been the worst of my punishment. My God! what
could I do—wasn’t I powerless? You were singled out as a sacrifice:
any word I might have said would have been turned against you——”
“I have told you I don’t blame you; all I ask you to understand is
that, after the use Bertha chose to make of me—after all that her
behaviour has since implied—it’s impossible that you and I should
meet.”
He continued to stand before her, in his dogged weakness. “Is
it—need it be? Mightn’t there be circumstances——?” he checked
himself, slashing at the wayside weeds in a wider radius. Then he
began again: “Miss Bart, listen—give me a minute. If we’re not to
meet again, at least let me have a hearing now. You say we can’t be
friends after—after what has happened. But can’t I at least appeal
to your pity? Can’t I move you if I ask you to think of me as a
prisoner—a prisoner you alone can set free?”
Lily’s inward start betrayed itself in a quick blush: was it
possible that this was really the sense of Carry Fisher’s
adumbrations?
“I can’t see how I can possibly be of any help to you,” she
murmured, drawing back a little from the mounting excitement of his
look.
Her tone seemed to sober him, as it had so often done in his
stormiest moments. The stubborn lines of his face relaxed, and he
said, with an abrupt drop to docility: “You WOULD see, if you’d be
as merciful as you used to be: and heaven knows I’ve never needed
it more!”
She paused a moment, moved in spite of herself by this reminder of
her influence over him. Her fibres had been softened by suffering,
and the sudden glimpse into his mocked and broken life disarmed her
contempt for his weakness.
“I am very sorry for you—I would help you willingly; but you must
have other friends, other advisers.”
“I never had a friend like you,” he answered simply. “And
besides—can’t you see?—you’re the only person”—his voice dropped to
a whisper—“the only person who knows.”
Again she felt her colour change; again her heart rose in
precipitate throbs to meet what she felt was coming. He lifted his
eyes to her entreatingly. “You do see, don’t you? You understand?
I’m desperate—I’m at the end of my tether. I want to be free, and
you can free me. I know you can. You don’t want to keep me bound
fast in hell, do you? You can’t want to take such a vengeance as
that. You were always kind—your eyes are kind now. You say you’re
sorry for me. Well, it rests with you to show it; and heaven knows
there’s nothing to keep you back. You understand, of course—there
wouldn’t be a hint of publicity—not a sound or a syllable to
connect you with the thing. It would never come to that, you know:
all I need is to be able to say definitely: ‘I know this—and
this—and this’—and the fight would drop, and the way be cleared,
and the whole abominable business swept out of sight in a second.”
He spoke pantingly, like a tired runner, with breaks of exhaustion
between his words; and through the breaks she caught, as through
the shifting rents of a fog, great golden vistas of peace and
safety. For there was no mistaking the definite intention behind
his vague appeal; she could have filled up the blanks without the
help of Mrs. Fisher’s insinuations. Here was a man who turned to
her in the extremity of his loneliness and his humiliation: if she
came to him at such a moment he would be hers with all the force of
his deluded faith. And the power to make him so lay in her hand—lay
there in a completeness he could not even remotely conjecture.
Revenge and rehabilitation might be hers at a stroke—there was
something dazzling in the completeness of the opportunity.
She stood silent, gazing away from him down the autumnal stretch
of the deserted lane. And suddenly fear possessed her—fear of
herself, and of the terrible force of the temptation. All her past
weaknesses were like so many eager accomplices drawing her toward
the path their feet had already smoothed. She turned quickly, and
held out her hand to Dorset.
“Goodbye—I’m sorry; there’s nothing in the world that I can do.”
“Nothing? Ah, don’t say that,” he cried; “say what’s true: that you
abandon me like the others. You, the only creature who could have
saved me!”
“Goodbye—goodbye,” she repeated hurriedly; and as she moved away
she heard him cry out on a last note of entreaty: “At least you’ll
let me see you once more?”
* * * * *
Lily, on regaining the Gormer grounds, struck rapidly across the
lawn toward the unfinished house, where she fancied that her
hostess might be speculating, not too resignedly, on the cause of
her delay; for, like many unpunctual persons, Mrs. Gormer disliked
to be kept waiting.
As Miss Bart reached the avenue, however, she saw a smart phaeton
with a high-stepping pair disappear behind the shrubbery in the
direction of the gate; and on the doorstep stood Mrs. Gormer, with
a glow of retrospective pleasure on her open countenance. At sight
of Lily the glow deepened to an embarrassed red, and she said
with a slight laugh: “Did you see my visitor? Oh, I thought you
came back by the avenue. It was Mrs. George Dorset—she said she’d
dropped in to make a neighbourly call.”
Lily met the announcement with her usual composure, though her
experience of Bertha’s idiosyncrasies would not have led her to
include the neighbourly instinct among them; and Mrs. Gormer,
relieved to see that she gave no sign of surprise, went on with
a deprecating laugh: “Of course what really brought her was
curiosity—she made me take her all over the house. But no one could
have been nicer—no airs, you know, and so good-natured: I can quite
see why people think her so fascinating.”
This surprising event, coinciding too completely with her