The House of Mirth
affirmed.
Chapter 10
“Look at those spangles, Miss Bart—every one of ’em sewed on
crooked.”
The tall forewoman, a pinched perpendicular figure, dropped the
condemned structure of wire and net on the table at Lily’s side,
and passed on to the next figure in the line.
There were twenty of them in the work-room, their fagged profiles,
under exaggerated hair, bowed in the harsh north light above
the utensils of their art; for it was something more than an
industry, surely, this creation of ever-varied settings for the
face of fortunate womanhood. Their own faces were sallow with the
unwholesomeness of hot air and sedentary toil, rather than with any
actual signs of want: they were employed in a fashionable millinery
establishment, and were fairly well clothed and well paid; but the
youngest among them was as dull and colourless as the middle-aged.
In the whole work-room there was only one skin beneath which the
blood still visibly played; and that now burned with vexation as
Miss Bart, under the lash of the forewoman’s comment, began to
strip the hat-frame of its over-lapping spangles.
To Gerty Farish’s hopeful spirit a solution appeared to have been
reached when she remembered how beautifully Lily could trim hats.
Instances of young lady-milliners establishing themselves under
fashionable patronage, and imparting to their “creations” that
indefinable touch which the professional hand can never give, had
flattered Gerty’s visions of the future, and convinced even Lily
that her separation from Mrs. Norma Hatch need not reduce her to
dependence on her friends.
The parting had occurred a few weeks after Selden’s visit, and
would have taken place sooner had it not been for the resistance
set up in Lily by his ill-starred offer of advice. The sense of
being involved in a transaction she would not have cared to examine
too closely had soon afterward defined itself in the light of a
hint from Mr. Stancy that, if she “saw them through,” she would
have no reason to be sorry. The implication that such loyalty would
meet with a direct reward had hastened her flight, and flung her
back, ashamed and penitent, on the broad bosom of Gerty’s sympathy.
She did not, however, propose to lie there prone, and Gerty’s
inspiration about the hats at once revived her hopes of profitable
activity. Here was, after all, something that her charming listless
hands could really do; she had no doubt of their capacity for
knotting a ribbon or placing a flower to advantage. And of course
only these finishing touches would be expected of her: subordinate
fingers, blunt, grey, needle-pricked fingers, would prepare the
shapes and stitch the linings, while she presided over the charming
little front shop—a shop all white panels, mirrors, and moss-green
hangings—where her finished creations, hats, wreaths, aigrettes
and the rest, perched on their stands like birds just poising for
flight.
But at the very outset of Gerty’s campaign this vision of the
green-and-white shop had been dispelled. Other young ladies of
fashion had been thus “set up,” selling their hats by the mere
attraction of a name and the reputed knack of tying a bow; but
these privileged beings could command a faith in their powers
materially expressed by the readiness to pay their shop-rent and
advance a handsome sum for current expenses. Where was Lily to
find such support? And even could it have been found, how were
the ladies on whose approval she depended to be induced to give
her their patronage? Gerty learned that whatever sympathy her
friend’s case might have excited a few months since had been
imperilled, if not lost, by her association with Mrs. Hatch. Once
again, Lily had withdrawn from an ambiguous situation in time to
save her self-respect, but too late for public vindication. Freddy
Van Osburgh was not to marry Mrs. Hatch; he had been rescued at
the eleventh hour—some said by the efforts of Gus Trenor and
Rosedale—and despatched to Europe with old Ned Van Alstyne; but the
risk he had run would always be ascribed to Miss Bart’s connivance,
and would somehow serve as a summing-up and corroboration of the
vague general distrust of her. It was a relief to those who had
hung back from her to find themselves thus justified, and they were
inclined to insist a little on her connection with the Hatch case
in order to show that they had been right.
Gerty’s quest, at any rate, brought up against a solid wall of
resistance; and even when Carry Fisher, momentarily penitent
for her share in the Hatch affair, joined her efforts to Miss
Farish’s, they met with no better success. Gerty had tried to veil
her failure in tender ambiguities; but Carry, always the soul of
candour, put the case squarely to her friend.
“I went straight to Judy Trenor; she has fewer prejudices than the
others, and besides she’s always hated Bertha Dorset. But what HAVE
you done to her, Lily? At the very first word about giving you a
start she flamed out about some money you’d got from Gus; I never
knew her so hot before. You know she’ll let him do anything but
spend money on his friends: the only reason she’s decent to me now
is that she knows I’m not hard up.—He speculated for you, you say?
Well, what’s the harm? He had no business to lose. He DIDN’T lose?
Then what on earth—but I never COULD understand you, Lily!”
The end of it was that, after anxious enquiry and much
deliberation, Mrs. Fisher and Gerty, for once oddly united in
their effort to help their friend, decided on placing her in the
work-room of Mme. Regina’s renowned millinery establishment. Even
this arrangement was not effected without considerable negotiation,
for Mme. Regina had a strong prejudice against untrained
assistance, and was induced to yield only by the fact that she
owed the patronage of Mrs. Bry and Mrs. Gormer to Carry Fisher’s
influence. She had been willing from the first to employ Lily in
the show-room: as a displayer of hats, a fashionable beauty might
be a valuable asset. But to this suggestion Miss Bart opposed a
negative which Gerty emphatically supported, while Mrs. Fisher,
inwardly unconvinced, but resigned to this latest proof of Lily’s
unreason, agreed that perhaps in the end it would be more useful
that she should learn the trade. To Regina’s work-room Lily was
therefore committed by her friends, and there Mrs. Fisher left her
with a sigh of relief, while Gerty’s watchfulness continued to
hover over her at a distance.
Lily had taken up her work early in January: it was now two months
later, and she was still being rebuked for her inability to sew
spangles on a hat-frame. As she returned to her work she heard
a titter pass down the tables. She knew she was an object of
criticism and amusement to the other work-women. They were, of
course, aware of her history—the exact situation of every girl
in the room was known and freely discussed by all the others—but
the knowledge did not produce in them any awkward sense of class
distinction: it merely explained why her untutored fingers were
still blundering over the rudiments of the trade. Lily had no
desire that they should recognize any social difference in her; but
she had hoped to be received as their equal, and perhaps before
long to show herself their superior by a special deftness of touch,
and it was humiliating to find that, after two months of drudgery,
she still betrayed her lack of early training. Remote was the day
when she might aspire to exercise the talents she felt confident
of possessing; only experienced workers were entrusted with the
delicate art of shaping and trimming the hat, and the forewoman
still held her inexorably to the routine of preparatory work.
She began to rip the spangles from the frame, listening absently to
the buzz of talk which rose and fell with the coming and going of
Miss Haines’s active figure. The air was closer than usual, because
Miss Haines, who had a cold, had not allowed a window to be opened
even during the noon recess; and Lily’s head was so heavy with the
weight of a sleepless night that the chatter of her companions had
the incoherence of a dream.
“I TOLD her he’d never look at her again; and he didn’t. I wouldn’t
have, either—I think she acted real mean to him. He took her to
the Arion Ball, and had a hack for her both ways.... She’s taken
ten bottles, and her headaches don’t seem no better—but she’s
written a testimonial to say the first bottle cured her, and she
got five dollars and her picture in the paper.... Mrs. Trenor’s
hat? The one with the green Paradise? Here, Miss Haines—it’ll be
ready right off.... That was one of the Trenor girls here yesterday
with Mrs. George Dorset. How’d I know? Why, Madam sent for me to
alter the flower in that Virot hat—the blue tulle: she’s tall and
slight, with her hair fuzzed out—a good deal like Mamie Leach, on’y
thinner....”
On and on it flowed, a current of meaningless sound, on which,
startlingly enough, a familiar name now and then floated to the
surface. It was the strangest part of Lily’s strange experience,
the hearing of these names, the seeing the fragmentary and
distorted image of the world she had lived in reflected in the
mirror of the working-girls’ minds. She had never before suspected
the mixture of insatiable curiosity and contemptuous freedom with
which she and her kind were discussed in this underworld of toilers
who lived on their vanity and self-indulgence. Every girl in Mme.
Regina’s work-room knew to whom the headgear in her hands was
destined, and had her opinion of its future wearer, and a definite
knowledge of the latter’s place in the social system. That Lily
was a star fallen from that sky did not, after the first stir of
curiosity had subsided, materially add to their interest in her.
She had fallen, she had “gone under,” and true to the ideal of
their race, they were awed only by success—by the gross tangible
image of material achievement. The consciousness of her different
point of view merely kept them at a little distance from her, as
though she were a foreigner with whom it was an effort to talk.
“Miss Bart, if you can’t sew those spangles on more regular I guess
you’d better give the hat to Miss Kilroy.”
Lily looked down ruefully at her handiwork. The forewoman was
right: the sewing on of the spangles was inexcusably bad. What
made her so much more clumsy than usual? Was it a growing distaste
for her task, or actual physical disability? She felt tired and
confused: it was an effort to put her thoughts together. She rose
and handed the hat to Miss Kilroy, who took it with a suppressed
smile.
“I’m sorry; I’m afraid I am not well,” she said to the forewoman.
Miss Haines offered no comment. From the first she had augured ill
of Mme. Regina’s consenting to include a fashionable apprentice
among her workers. In that temple of art no raw beginners were
wanted, and Miss Haines would have been more than human had she not
taken a certain pleasure in seeing her forebodings confirmed.
“You’d better go back to binding edges,” she said drily. Lily
slipped out last among the band of liberated work-women. She
did not care to be mingled in their noisy dispersal: once in
the street, she always felt an irresistible return to her old
standpoint, an instinctive shrinking from all that was unpolished
and promiscuous. In the days—how distant they now seemed!—when she
had visited the Girls’ Club with Gerty Farish, she had felt an
enlightened interest in the working-classes; but that was because
she looked down on them from above, from the happy altitude of her
grace and her beneficence. Now that she was on a level with them,
the point of view was less interesting.
She felt a touch on her arm, and met the penitent eye of Miss
Kilroy. “Miss Bart, I guess you can sew those spangles on as well