The House of Mirth

ook I, Chapter 10

The autumn dragged on monotonously. Miss Bart had received one or
two notes from Judy Trenor, reproaching her for not returning to
Bellomont; but she replied evasively, alleging the obligation to
remain with her aunt. In truth, however, she was fast wearying of
her solitary existence with Mrs. Peniston, and only the excitement
of spending her newly-acquired money lightened the dulness of the
days.

All her life Lily had seen money go out as quickly as it came in,
and whatever theories she cultivated as to the prudence of setting
aside a part of her gains, she had unhappily no saving vision of
the risks of the opposite course. It was a keen satisfaction to
feel that, for a few months at least, she would be independent of
her friends’ bounty, that she could show herself abroad without
wondering whether some penetrating eye would detect in her dress
the traces of Judy Trenor’s refurbished splendour. The fact that
the money freed her temporarily from all minor obligations obscured
her sense of the greater one it represented, and having never
before known what it was to command so large a sum, she lingered
delectably over the amusement of spending it.

It was on one of these occasions that, leaving a shop where she
had spent an hour of deliberation over a dressing-case of the most
complicated elegance, she ran across Miss Farish, who had entered
the same establishment with the modest object of having her watch
repaired. Lily was feeling unusually virtuous. She had decided to
defer the purchase of the dressing-case till she should receive
the bill for her new opera cloak, and the resolve made her feel
much richer than when she had entered the shop. In this mood of
self-approval she had a sympathetic eye for others, and she was
struck by her friend’s air of dejection.

Miss Farish, it appeared, had just left the committee-meeting
of a struggling charity in which she was interested. The object
of the association was to provide comfortable lodgings, with a
reading-room and other modest distractions, where young women of
the class employed in downtown offices might find a home when
out of work, or in need of rest, and the first year’s financial
report showed so deplorably small a balance that Miss Farish, who
was convinced of the urgency of the work, felt proportionately
discouraged by the small amount of interest it aroused. The
other-regarding sentiments had not been cultivated in Lily, and
she was often bored by the relation of her friend’s philanthropic
efforts, but today her quick dramatizing fancy seized on the
contrast between her own situation and that represented by some of
Gerty’s “cases.” These were young girls, like herself; some perhaps
pretty, some not without a trace of her finer sensibilities. She
pictured herself leading such a life as theirs—a life in which
achievement seemed as squalid as failure—and the vision made her
shudder sympathetically. The price of the dressing-case was still
in her pocket; and drawing out her little gold purse she slipped a
liberal fraction of the amount into Miss Farish’s hand.

The satisfaction derived from this act was all that the most ardent
moralist could have desired. Lily felt a new interest in herself as
a person of charitable instincts: she had never before thought of
doing good with the wealth she had so often dreamed of possessing,
but now her horizon was enlarged by the vision of a prodigal
philanthropy. Moreover, by some obscure process of logic, she felt
that her momentary burst of generosity had justified all previous
extravagances, and excused any in which she might subsequently
indulge. Miss Farish’s surprise and gratitude confirmed this
feeling, and Lily parted from her with a sense of self-esteem which
she naturally mistook for the fruits of altruism.

About this time she was farther cheered by an invitation to spend
the Thanksgiving week at a camp in the Adirondacks. The invitation
was one which, a year earlier, would have provoked a less ready
response, for the party, though organized by Mrs. Fisher, was
ostensibly given by a lady of obscure origin and indomitable social
ambitions, whose acquaintance Lily had hitherto avoided. Now,
however, she was disposed to coincide with Mrs. Fisher’s view, that
it didn’t matter who gave the party, as long as things were well
done; and doing things well (under competent direction) was Mrs.
Wellington Bry’s strong point. The lady (whose consort was known
as “Welly” Bry on the Stock Exchange and in sporting circles) had
already sacrificed one husband, and sundry minor considerations, to
her determination to get on; and, having obtained a hold on Carry
Fisher, she was astute enough to perceive the wisdom of committing
herself entirely to that lady’s guidance. Everything, accordingly,
was well done, for there was no limit to Mrs. Fisher’s prodigality
when she was not spending her own money, and as she remarked to her
pupil, a good cook was the best introduction to society. If the
company was not as select as the CUISINE, the Welly Brys at least
had the satisfaction of figuring for the first time in the society
columns in company with one or two noticeable names; and foremost
among these was of course Miss Bart’s. The young lady was treated
by her hosts with corresponding deference; and she was in the mood
when such attentions are acceptable, whatever their source. Mrs.
Bry’s admiration was a mirror in which Lily’s self-complacency
recovered its lost outline. No insect hangs its nest on threads
as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity;
and the sense of being of importance among the insignificant was
enough to restore to Miss Bart the gratifying consciousness of
power. If these people paid court to her it proved that she was
still conspicuous in the world to which they aspired; and she was
not above a certain enjoyment in dazzling them by her fineness, in
developing their puzzled perception of her superiorities.

Perhaps, however, her enjoyment proceeded more than she was aware
from the physical stimulus of the excursion, the challenge of crisp
cold and hard exercise, the responsive thrill of her body to the
influences of the winter woods. She returned to town in a glow
of rejuvenation, conscious of a clearer colour in her cheeks, a
fresh elasticity in her muscles. The future seemed full of a vague
promise, and all her apprehensions were swept out of sight on the
buoyant current of her mood.

A few days after her return to town she had the unpleasant surprise
of a visit from Mr. Rosedale. He came late, at the confidential
hour when the tea-table still lingers by the fire in friendly
expectancy; and his manner showed a readiness to adapt itself to
the intimacy of the occasion.

Lily, who had a vague sense of his being somehow connected with her
lucky speculations, tried to give him the welcome he expected; but
there was something in the quality of his geniality which chilled
her own, and she was conscious of marking each step in their
acquaintance by a fresh blunder.

Mr. Rosedale—making himself promptly at home in an adjoining
easy-chair, and sipping his tea critically, with the comment: “You
ought to go to my man for something really good”—appeared totally
unconscious of the repugnance which kept her in frozen erectness
behind the urn. It was perhaps her very manner of holding herself
aloof that appealed to his collector’s passion for the rare and
unattainable. He gave, at any rate, no sign of resenting it and
seemed prepared to supply in his own manner all the ease that was
lacking in hers.

His object in calling was to ask her to go to the opera in his box
on the opening night, and seeing her hesitate he said persuasively:
“Mrs. Fisher is coming, and I’ve secured a tremendous admirer of
yours, who’ll never forgive me if you don’t accept.”

As Lily’s silence left him with this allusion on his hands, he
added with a confidential smile: “Gus Trenor has promised to come
to town on purpose. I fancy he’d go a good deal farther for the
pleasure of seeing you.”

Miss Bart felt an inward motion of annoyance: it was distasteful
enough to hear her name coupled with Trenor’s, and on Rosedale’s
lips the allusion was peculiarly unpleasant.

“The Trenors are my best friends—I think we should all go a
long way to see each other,” she said, absorbing herself in the
preparation of fresh tea.

Her visitor’s smile grew increasingly intimate. “Well, I wasn’t
thinking of Mrs. Trenor at the moment—they say Gus doesn’t always,
you know.” Then, dimly conscious that he had not struck the right
note, he added, with a well-meant effort at diversion: “How’s your
luck been going in Wall Street, by the way? I hear Gus pulled off a
nice little pile for you last month.”

Lily put down the tea-caddy with an abrupt gesture. She felt that
her hands were trembling, and clasped them on her knee to steady
them; but her lip trembled too, and for a moment she was afraid
the tremor might communicate itself to her voice. When she spoke,
however, it was in a tone of perfect lightness.

“Ah, yes—I had a little bit of money to invest, and Mr. Trenor,
who helps me about such matters, advised my putting it in stocks
instead of a mortgage, as my aunt’s agent wanted me to do; and as
it happened, I made a lucky ‘turn’—is that what you call it? For
you make a great many yourself, I believe.”

She was smiling back at him now, relaxing the tension of her
attitude, and admitting him, by imperceptible gradations of glance
and manner, a step farther toward intimacy. The protective instinct
always nerved her to successful dissimulation, and it was not the
first time she had used her beauty to divert attention from an
inconvenient topic.

When Mr. Rosedale took leave, he carried with him, not only her
acceptance of his invitation, but a general sense of having
comported himself in a way calculated to advance his cause. He
had always believed he had a light touch and a knowing way with
women, and the prompt manner in which Miss Bart (as he would have
phrased it) had “come into line,” confirmed his confidence in his
powers of handling this skittish sex. Her way of glossing over the
transaction with Trenor he regarded at once as a tribute to his
own acuteness, and a confirmation of his suspicions. The girl was
evidently nervous, and Mr. Rosedale, if he saw no other means of
advancing his acquaintance with her, was not above taking advantage
of her nervousness.

He left Lily to a passion of disgust and fear. It seemed incredible
that Gus Trenor should have spoken of her to Rosedale. With
all his faults, Trenor had the safeguard of his traditions,
and was the less likely to overstep them because they were so
purely instinctive. But Lily recalled with a pang that there
were convivial moments when, as Judy had confided to her, Gus
“talked foolishly”: in one of these, no doubt, the fatal word had
slipped from him. As for Rosedale, she did not, after the first
shock, greatly care what conclusions he had drawn. Though usually
adroit enough where her own interests were concerned, she made
the mistake, not uncommon to persons in whom the social habits
are instinctive, of supposing that the inability to acquire them
quickly implies a general dulness. Because a blue-bottle bangs
irrationally against a window-pane, the drawing-room naturalist
may forget that under less artificial conditions it is capable
of measuring distances and drawing conclusions with all the
accuracy needful to its welfare; and the fact that Mr. Rosedale’s
drawing-room manner lacked perspective made Lily class him with
Trenor and the other dull men she knew, and assume that a little
flattery, and the occasional acceptance of his hospitality, would
suffice to render him innocuous. However, there could be no doubt
of the expediency of showing herself in his box on the opening
night of the opera; and after all, since Judy Trenor had promised
to take him up that winter, it was as well to reap the advantage of
being first in the field.

For a day or two after Rosedale’s visit, Lily’s thoughts were
dogged by the consciousness of Trenor’s shadowy claim, and she
wished she had a clearer notion of the exact nature of the
transaction which seemed to have put her in his power; but her mind
shrank from any unusual application, and she was always helplessly
puzzled by figures. Moreover she had not seen Trenor since the day
of the Van Osburgh wedding, and in his continued absence the trace
of Rosedale’s words was soon effaced by other impressions.

When the opening night of the opera came, her apprehensions had so
completely vanished that the sight of Trenor’s ruddy countenance in
the back of Mr. Rosedale’s box filled her with a sense of pleasant
reassurance. Lily had not quite reconciled herself to the necessity
of appearing as Rosedale’s guest on so conspicuous an occasion, and
it was a relief to find herself supported by any one of her own
set—for Mrs. Fisher’s social habits were too promiscuous for her
presence to justify Miss Bart’s.

To Lily, always inspirited by the prospect of showing her beauty
in public, and conscious tonight of all the added enhancements of
dress, the insistency of Trenor’s gaze merged itself in the general
stream of admiring looks of which she felt herself the centre. Ah,
it was good to be young, to be radiant, to glow with the sense of
slenderness, strength and elasticity, of well-poised lines and
happy tints, to feel one’s self lifted to a height apart by that
incommunicable grace which is the bodily counterpart of genius!

All means seemed justifiable to attain such an end, or rather, by a
happy shifting of lights with which practice had familiarized Miss
Bart, the cause shrank to a pin-point in the general brightness
of the effect. But brilliant young ladies, a little blinded by
their own effulgence, are apt to forget that the modest satellite
drowned in their light is still performing its own revolutions
and generating heat at its own rate. If Lily’s poetic enjoyment
of the moment was undisturbed by the base thought that her gown
and opera cloak had been indirectly paid for by Gus Trenor, the
latter had not sufficient poetry in his composition to lose sight
of these prosaic facts. He knew only that he had never seen Lily
look smarter in her life, that there wasn’t a woman in the house
who showed off good clothes as she did, and that hitherto he, to
whom she owed the opportunity of making this display, had reaped no
return beyond that of gazing at her in company with several hundred
other pairs of eyes.

It came to Lily therefore as a disagreeable surprise when, in
the back of the box, where they found themselves alone between
two acts, Trenor said, without preamble, and in a tone of sulky
authority: “Look here, Lily, how is a fellow ever to see anything
of you? I’m in town three or four days in the week, and you know
a line to the club will always find me, but you don’t seem to
remember my existence nowadays unless you want to get a tip out of
me.”

The fact that the remark was in distinctly bad taste did not make
it any easier to answer, for Lily was vividly aware that it was not
the moment for that drawing up of her slim figure and surprised
lifting of the brows by which she usually quelled incipient signs
of familiarity.

“I’m very much flattered by your wanting to see me,” she returned,
essaying lightness instead, “but, unless you have mislaid my
address, it would have been easy to find me any afternoon at my
aunt’s—in fact, I rather expected you to look me up there.”

If she hoped to mollify him by this last concession the attempt
was a failure, for he only replied, with the familiar lowering of
the brows that made him look his dullest when he was angry: “Hang
going to your aunt’s, and wasting the afternoon listening to a lot
of other chaps talking to you! You know I’m not the kind to sit
in a crowd and jaw—I’d always rather clear out when that sort of
circus is going on. But why can’t we go off somewhere on a little
lark together—a nice quiet little expedition like that drive at
Bellomont, the day you met me at the station?”

He leaned unpleasantly close in order to convey this suggestion,
and she fancied she caught a significant aroma which explained the
dark flush on his face and the glistening dampness of his forehead.

The idea that any rash answer might provoke an unpleasant outburst
tempered her disgust with caution, and she answered with a laugh:
“I don’t see how one can very well take country drives in town, but
I am not always surrounded by an admiring throng, and if you will
let me know what afternoon you are coming I will arrange things so
that we can have a nice quiet talk.”

“Hang talking! That’s what you always say,” returned Trenor, whose
expletives lacked variety. “You put me off with that at the Van
Osburgh wedding—but the plain English of it is that, now you’ve
got what you wanted out of me, you’d rather have any other fellow
about.”

His voice had risen sharply with the last words, and Lily flushed
with annoyance, but she kept command of the situation and laid a
persuasive hand on his arm.

“Don’t be foolish, Gus; I can’t let you talk to me in that
ridiculous way. If you really want to see me, why shouldn’t we
take a walk in the Park some afternoon? I agree with you that it’s
amusing to be rustic in town, and if you like I’ll meet you there,
and we’ll go and feed the squirrels, and you shall take me out on
the lake in the steam-gondola.”

She smiled as she spoke, letting her eyes rest on his in a way that
took the edge from her banter and made him suddenly malleable to
her will.

“All right, then: that’s a go. Will you come tomorrow? Tomorrow
at three o’clock, at the end of the Mall. I’ll be there sharp,
remember; you won’t go back on me, Lily?”

But to Miss Bart’s relief the repetition of her promise was cut
short by the opening of the box door to admit George Dorset.

Trenor sulkily yielded his place, and Lily turned a brilliant smile
on the newcomer. She had not talked with Dorset since their visit
at Bellomont, but something in his look and manner told her that
he recalled the friendly footing on which they had last met. He
was not a man to whom the expression of admiration came easily:
his long sallow face and distrustful eyes seemed always barricaded
against the expansive emotions. But, where her own influence was
concerned, Lily’s intuitions sent out thread-like feelers, and as
she made room for him on the narrow sofa she was sure he found a
dumb pleasure in being near her. Few women took the trouble to
make themselves agreeable to Dorset, and Lily had been kind to him
at Bellomont, and was now smiling on him with a divine renewal of
kindness.

“Well, here we are, in for another six months of caterwauling,”
he began complainingly. “Not a shade of difference between this
year and last, except that the women have got new clothes and the
singers haven’t got new voices. My wife’s musical, you know—puts me
through a course of this every winter. It isn’t so bad on Italian
nights—then she comes late, and there’s time to digest. But when
they give Wagner we have to rush dinner, and I pay up for it. And
the draughts are damnable—asphyxia in front and pleurisy in the
back. There’s Trenor leaving the box without drawing the curtain!
With a hide like that draughts don’t make any difference. Did you
ever watch Trenor eat? If you did, you’d wonder why he’s alive; I
suppose he’s leather inside too.—But I came to say that my wife
wants you to come down to our place next Sunday. Do for heaven’s
sake say yes. She’s got a lot of bores coming—intellectual ones,
I mean; that’s her new line, you know, and I’m not sure it ain’t
worse than the music. Some of ’em have long hair, and they start
an argument with the soup, and don’t notice when things are handed
to them. The consequence is the dinner gets cold, and I have
dyspepsia. That silly ass Silverton brings them to the house—he
writes poetry, you know, and Bertha and he are getting tremendously
thick. She could write better than any of ’em if she chose, and I
don’t blame her for wanting clever fellows about; all I say is:
‘Don’t let me see ’em eat!’”

The gist of this strange communication gave Lily a distinct thrill
of pleasure. Under ordinary circumstances, there would have been
nothing surprising in an invitation from Bertha Dorset; but since
the Bellomont episode an unavowed hostility had kept the two women
apart. Now, with a start of inner wonder, Lily felt that her thirst
for retaliation had died out. IF YOU WOULD FORGIVE YOUR ENEMY,
says the Malay proverb, FIRST INFLICT A HURT ON HIM; and Lily was
experiencing the truth of the apothegm. If she had destroyed Mrs.
Dorset’s letters, she might have continued to hate her; but the
fact that they remained in her possession had fed her resentment to
satiety.

She uttered a smiling acceptance, hailing in the renewal of the tie
an escape from Trenor’s importunities.