The House of Mirth
should know the truth about this transaction, and also that the
rumour of her intention to repay the money should reach Judy
Trenor’s ears. And it had suddenly occurred to her that Rosedale,
who had surprised Trenor’s confidence, was the fitting person to
receive and transmit her version of the facts. She had even felt
a momentary exhilaration at the thought of thus relieving herself
of her detested secret; but the sensation gradually faded in the
telling, and as she ended her pallor was suffused with a deep blush
of misery.
Rosedale continued to stare at her in wonder; but the wonder took
the turn she had least expected.
“But see here—if that’s the case, it cleans you out altogether?”
He put it to her as if she had not grasped the consequences of her
act; as if her incorrigible ignorance of business were about to
precipitate her into a fresh act of folly.
“Altogether—yes,” she calmly agreed.
He sat silent, his thick hands clasped on the table, his little
puzzled eyes exploring the recesses of the deserted restaurant.
“See here—that’s fine,” he exclaimed abruptly.
Lily rose from her seat with a deprecating laugh. “Oh, no—it’s
merely a bore,” she asserted, gathering together the ends of her
feather scarf.
Rosedale remained seated, too intent on his thoughts to notice her
movement. “Miss Lily, if you want any backing—I like pluck——” broke
from him disconnectedly.
“Thank you.” She held out her hand. “Your tea has given me a
tremendous backing. I feel equal to anything now.”
Her gesture seemed to show a definite intention of dismissal, but
her companion had tossed a bill to the waiter, and was slipping his
short arms into his expensive overcoat.
“Wait a minute—you’ve got to let me walk home with you,” he said.
Lily uttered no protest, and when he had paused to make sure of
his change they emerged from the hotel and crossed Sixth Avenue
again. As she led the way westward past a long line of areas which,
through the distortion of their paintless rails, revealed with
increasing candour the DISJECTA MEMBRA of bygone dinners, Lily felt
that Rosedale was taking contemptuous note of the neighbourhood;
and before the doorstep at which she finally paused he looked up
with an air of incredulous disgust.
“This isn’t the place? Some one told me you were living with Miss
Farish.”
“No: I am boarding here. I have lived too long on my friends.”
He continued to scan the blistered brown stone front, the windows
draped with discoloured lace, and the Pompeian decoration of the
muddy vestibule; then he looked back at her face and said with a
visible effort: “You’ll let me come and see you some day?”
She smiled, recognizing the heroism of the offer to the point of
being frankly touched by it. “Thank you—I shall be very glad,” she
made answer, in the first sincere words she had ever spoken to him.
* * * * *
That evening in her own room Miss Bart—who had fled early from
the heavy fumes of the basement dinner-table—sat musing upon the
impulse which had led her to unbosom herself to Rosedale. Beneath
it she discovered an increasing sense of loneliness—a dread of
returning to the solitude of her room, while she could be anywhere
else, or in any company but her own. Circumstances, of late, had
combined to cut her off more and more from her few remaining
friends. On Carry Fisher’s part the withdrawal was perhaps not
quite involuntary. Having made her final effort on Lily’s behalf,
and landed her safely in Mme. Regina’s work-room, Mrs. Fisher
seemed disposed to rest from her labours; and Lily, understanding
the reason, could not condemn her. Carry had in fact come
dangerously near to being involved in the episode of Mrs. Norma
Hatch, and it had taken some verbal ingenuity to extricate herself.
She frankly owned to having brought Lily and Mrs. Hatch together,
but then she did not know Mrs. Hatch—she had expressly warned Lily
that she did not know Mrs. Hatch—and besides, she was not Lily’s
keeper, and really the girl was old enough to take care of herself.
Carry did not put her own case so brutally, but she allowed it to
be thus put for her by her latest bosom friend, Mrs. Jack Stepney:
Mrs. Stepney, trembling over the narrowness of her only brother’s
escape, but eager to vindicate Mrs. Fisher, at whose house she
could count on the “jolly parties” which had become a necessity to
her since marriage had emancipated her from the Van Osburgh point
of view.
Lily understood the situation and could make allowances for it.
Carry had been a good friend to her in difficult days, and perhaps
only a friendship like Gerty’s could be proof against such an
increasing strain. Gerty’s friendship did indeed hold fast; yet
Lily was beginning to avoid her also. For she could not go to
Gerty’s without risk of meeting Selden; and to meet him now would
be pure pain. It was pain enough even to think of him, whether she
considered him in the distinctness of her waking thoughts, or felt
the obsession of his presence through the blur of her tormented
nights. That was one of the reasons why she had turned again to
Mrs. Hatch’s prescription. In the uneasy snatches of her natural
dreams he came to her sometimes in the old guise of fellowship and
tenderness; and she would rise from the sweet delusion mocked and
emptied of her courage. But in the sleep which the phial procured
she sank far below such half-waking visitations, sank into depths
of dreamless annihilation from which she woke each morning with an
obliterated past.
Gradually, to be sure, the stress of the old thoughts would return;
but at least they did not importune her waking hour. The drug
gave her a momentary illusion of complete renewal, from which she
drew strength to take up her daily work. The strength was more
and more needed as the perplexities of her future increased. She
knew that to Gerty and Mrs. Fisher she was only passing through
a temporary period of probation, since they believed that the
apprenticeship she was serving at Mme. Regina’s would enable her,
when Mrs. Peniston’s legacy was paid, to realize the vision of the
green-and-white shop with the fuller competence acquired by her
preliminary training. But to Lily herself, aware that the legacy
could not be put to such a use, the preliminary training seemed
a wasted effort. She understood clearly enough that, even if she
could ever learn to compete with hands formed from childhood
for their special work, the small pay she received would not be
a sufficient addition to her income to compensate her for such
drudgery. And the realization of this fact brought her recurringly
face to face with the temptation to use the legacy in establishing
her business. Once installed, and in command of her own work-women,
she believed she had sufficient tact and ability to attract a
fashionable CLIENTELE; and if the business succeeded she could
gradually lay aside money enough to discharge her debt to Trenor.
But the task might take years to accomplish, even if she continued
to stint herself to the utmost; and meanwhile her pride would be
crushed under the weight of an intolerable obligation.
These were her superficial considerations; but under them lurked
the secret dread that the obligation might not always remain
intolerable. She knew she could not count on her continuity of
purpose, and what really frightened her was the thought that she
might gradually accommodate herself to remaining indefinitely
in Trenor’s debt, as she had accommodated herself to the part
allotted her on the Sabrina, and as she had so nearly drifted
into acquiescing with Stancy’s scheme for the advancement of Mrs.
Hatch. Her danger lay, as she knew, in her old incurable dread
of discomfort and poverty; in the fear of that mounting tide of
dinginess against which her mother had so passionately warned her.
And now a new vista of peril opened before her. She understood
that Rosedale was ready to lend her money; and the longing to take
advantage of his offer began to haunt her insidiously. It was of
course impossible to accept a loan from Rosedale; but proximate
possibilities hovered temptingly before her. She was quite sure
that he would come and see her again, and almost sure that, if he
did, she could bring him to the point of offering to marry her on
the terms she had previously rejected. Would she still reject them
if they were offered? More and more, with every fresh mischance
befalling her, did the pursuing furies seem to take the shape of
Bertha Dorset; and close at hand, safely locked among her papers,
lay the means of ending their pursuit. The temptation, which her
scorn of Rosedale had once enabled her to reject, now insistently
returned upon her; and how much strength was left her to oppose it?
What little there was must at any rate be husbanded to the utmost;
she could not trust herself again to the perils of a sleepless
night. Through the long hours of silence the dark spirit of fatigue
and loneliness crouched upon her breast, leaving her so drained
of bodily strength that her morning thoughts swam in a haze of
weakness. The only hope of renewal lay in the little bottle at her
bed-side; and how much longer that hope would last she dared not
conjecture.
Chapter 11
Lily, lingering for a moment on the corner, looked out on the
afternoon spectacle of Fifth Avenue. It was a day in late April,
and the sweetness of spring was in the air. It mitigated the
ugliness of the long crowded thoroughfare, blurred the gaunt
roof-lines, threw a mauve veil over the discouraging perspective of
the side streets, and gave a touch of poetry to the delicate haze
of green that marked the entrance to the Park.
As Lily stood there, she recognized several familiar faces in the
passing carriages. The season was over, and its ruling forces had
disbanded; but a few still lingered, delaying their departure for
Europe, or passing through town on their return from the South.
Among them was Mrs. Van Osburgh, swaying majestically in her
C-spring barouche, with Mrs. Percy Gryce at her side, and the new
heir to the Gryce millions enthroned before them on his nurse’s
knees. They were succeeded by Mrs. Hatch’s electric victoria, in
which that lady reclined in the lonely splendour of a spring toilet
obviously designed for company; and a moment or two later came Judy
Trenor, accompanied by Lady Skiddaw, who had come over for her
annual tarpon fishing and a dip into “the street.”
This fleeting glimpse of her past served to emphasize the sense
of aimlessness with which Lily at length turned toward home. She
had nothing to do for the rest of the day, nor for the days to
come; for the season was over in millinery as well as in society,
and a week earlier Mme. Regina had notified her that her services
were no longer required. Mme. Regina always reduced her staff on
the first of May, and Miss Bart’s attendance had of late been so
irregular—she had so often been unwell, and had done so little work
when she came—that it was only as a favour that her dismissal had
hitherto been deferred.
Lily did not question the justice of the decision. She was
conscious of having been forgetful, awkward and slow to learn. It
was bitter to acknowledge her inferiority even to herself, but the
fact had been brought home to her that as a bread-winner she could
never compete with professional ability. Since she had been brought
up to be ornamental, she could hardly blame herself for failing to
serve any practical purpose; but the discovery put an end to her
consoling sense of universal efficiency.
As she turned homeward her thoughts shrank in anticipation from the
fact that there would be nothing to get up for the next morning.
The luxury of lying late in bed was a pleasure belonging to the