The House of Mirth

ook I, Chapter 15

When Lily woke she had the bed to herself, and the winter light was
in the room.

She sat up, bewildered by the strangeness of her surroundings;
then memory returned, and she looked about her with a shiver.
In the cold slant of light reflected from the back wall of a
neighbouring building, she saw her evening dress and opera
cloak lying in a tawdry heap on a chair. Finery laid off is as
unappetizing as the remains of a feast, and it occurred to Lily
that, at home, her maid’s vigilance had always spared her the
sight of such incongruities. Her body ached with fatigue, and with
the constriction of her attitude in Gerty’s bed. All through her
troubled sleep she had been conscious of having no space to toss
in, and the long effort to remain motionless made her feel as if
she had spent her night in a train.

This sense of physical discomfort was the first to assert itself;
then she perceived, beneath it, a corresponding mental prostration,
a languor of horror more insufferable than the first rush of her
disgust. The thought of having to wake every morning with this
weight on her breast roused her tired mind to fresh effort. She
must find some way out of the slough into which she had stumbled:
it was not so much compunction as the dread of her morning thoughts
that pressed on her the need of action. But she was unutterably
tired; it was weariness to think connectedly. She lay back, looking
about the poor slit of a room with a renewal of physical distaste.
The outer air, penned between high buildings, brought no freshness
through the window; steam-heat was beginning to sing in a coil of
dingy pipes, and a smell of cooking penetrated the crack of the
door.

The door opened, and Gerty, dressed and hatted, entered with a cup
of tea. Her face looked sallow and swollen in the dreary light, and
her dull hair shaded imperceptibly into the tones of her skin.

She glanced shyly at Lily, asking in an embarrassed tone how she
felt; Lily answered with the same constraint, and raised herself up
to drink the tea.

“I must have been over-tired last night; I think I had a nervous
attack in the carriage,” she said, as the drink brought clearness
to her sluggish thoughts.

“You were not well; I am so glad you came here,” Gerty returned.

“But how am I to get home? And Aunt Julia—?”

“She knows; I telephoned early, and your maid has brought your
things. But won’t you eat something? I scrambled the eggs myself.”

Lily could not eat; but the tea strengthened her to rise and dress
under her maid’s searching gaze. It was a relief to her that Gerty
was obliged to hasten away: the two kissed silently, but without a
trace of the previous night’s emotion.

Lily found Mrs. Peniston in a state of agitation. She had sent for
Grace Stepney and was taking digitalis. Lily breasted the storm of
enquiries as best she could, explaining that she had had an attack
of faintness on her way back from Carry Fisher’s; that, fearing
she would not have strength to reach home, she had gone to Miss
Farish’s instead; but that a quiet night had restored her, and that
she had no need of a doctor.

This was a relief to Mrs. Peniston, who could give herself up
to her own symptoms, and Lily was advised to go and lie down,
her aunt’s panacea for all physical and moral disorders. In
the solitude of her own room she was brought back to a sharp
contemplation of facts. Her daylight view of them necessarily
differed from the cloudy vision of the night. The winged furies
were now prowling gossips who dropped in on each other for tea. But
her fears seemed the uglier, thus shorn of their vagueness; and
besides, she had to act, not rave. For the first time she forced
herself to reckon up the exact amount of her debt to Trenor; and
the result of this hateful computation was the discovery that she
had, in all, received nine thousand dollars from him. The flimsy
pretext on which it had been given and received shrivelled up
in the blaze of her shame: she knew that not a penny of it was
her own, and that to restore her self-respect she must at once
repay the whole amount. The inability thus to solace her outraged
feelings gave her a paralyzing sense of insignificance. She was
realizing for the first time that a woman’s dignity may cost more
to keep up than her carriage; and that the maintenance of a moral
attribute should be dependent on dollars and cents, made the world
appear a more sordid place than she had conceived it.

After luncheon, when Grace Stepney’s prying eyes had been
removed, Lily asked for a word with her aunt. The two ladies
went upstairs to the sitting-room, where Mrs. Peniston seated
herself in her black satin arm-chair tufted with yellow buttons,
beside a bead-work table bearing a bronze box with a miniature
of Beatrice Cenci in the lid. Lily felt for these objects the
same distaste which the prisoner may entertain for the fittings
of the court-room. It was here that her aunt received her rare
confidences, and the pink-eyed smirk of the turbaned Beatrice was
associated in her mind with the gradual fading of the smile from
Mrs. Peniston’s lips. That lady’s dread of a scene gave her an
inexorableness which the greatest strength of character could not
have produced, since it was independent of all considerations of
right or wrong; and knowing this, Lily seldom ventured to assail
it. She had never felt less like making the attempt than on the
present occasion; but she had sought in vain for any other means of
escape from an intolerable situation.

Mrs. Peniston examined her critically. “You’re a bad colour, Lily:
this incessant rushing about is beginning to tell on you,” she said.

Miss Bart saw an opening. “I don’t think it’s that, Aunt Julia;
I’ve had worries,” she replied.

“Ah,” said Mrs. Peniston, shutting her lips with the snap of a
purse closing against a beggar.

“I’m sorry to bother you with them,” Lily continued, “but I really
believe my faintness last night was brought on partly by anxious
thoughts—”

“I should have said Carry Fisher’s cook was enough to account for
it. She has a woman who was with Maria Melson in 1891—the spring of
the year we went to Aix—and I remember dining there two days before
we sailed, and feeling SURE the coppers hadn’t been scoured.”

“I don’t think I ate much; I can’t eat or sleep.” Lily paused, and
then said abruptly: “The fact is, Aunt Julia, I owe some money.”

Mrs. Peniston’s face clouded perceptibly, but did not express the
astonishment her niece had expected. She was silent, and Lily was
forced to continue: “I have been foolish——”

“No doubt you have: extremely foolish,” Mrs. Peniston interposed.
“I fail to see how any one with your income, and no expenses—not to
mention the handsome presents I’ve always given you——”

“Oh, you’ve been most generous, Aunt Julia; I shall never forget
your kindness. But perhaps you don’t quite realize the expense a
girl is put to nowadays——”

“I don’t realize that YOU are put to any expense except for your
clothes and your railway fares. I expect you to be handsomely
dressed; but I paid Celeste’s bill for you last October.”

Lily hesitated: her aunt’s implacable memory had never been more
inconvenient. “You were as kind as possible; but I have had to get
a few things since——”

“What kind of things? Clothes? How much have you spent? Let me see
the bill—I daresay the woman is swindling you.”

“Oh, no, I think not: clothes have grown so frightfully expensive;
and one needs so many different kinds, with country visits, and
golf and skating, and Aiken and Tuxedo——”

“Let me see the bill,” Mrs. Peniston repeated.

Lily hesitated again. In the first place, Mme. Celeste had not yet
sent in her account, and secondly, the amount it represented was
only a fraction of the sum that Lily needed.

“She hasn’t sent in the bill for my winter things, but I KNOW it’s
large; and there are one or two other things; I’ve been careless
and imprudent—I’m frightened to think of what I owe——”

She raised the troubled loveliness of her face to Mrs. Peniston,
vainly hoping that a sight so moving to the other sex might not be
without effect upon her own. But the effect produced was that of
making Mrs. Peniston shrink back apprehensively.

“Really, Lily, you are old enough to manage your own affairs, and
after frightening me to death by your performance of last night you
might at least choose a better time to worry me with such matters.”
Mrs. Peniston glanced at the clock, and swallowed a tablet of
digitalis. “If you owe Celeste another thousand, she may send me
her account,” she added, as though to end the discussion at any
cost.

“I am very sorry, Aunt Julia; I hate to trouble you at such a time;
but I have really no choice—I ought to have spoken sooner—I owe a
great deal more than a thousand dollars.”

“A great deal more? Do you owe two? She must have robbed you!”

“I told you it was not only Celeste. I—there are other bills—more
pressing—that must be settled.”

“What on earth have you been buying? Jewelry? You must have gone
off your head,” said Mrs. Peniston with asperity. “But if you have
run into debt, you must suffer the consequences, and put aside your
monthly income till your bills are paid. If you stay quietly here
until next spring, instead of racing about all over the country,
you will have no expenses at all, and surely in four or five months
you can settle the rest of your bills if I pay the dress-maker now.”

Lily was again silent. She knew she could not hope to extract
even a thousand dollars from Mrs. Peniston on the mere plea of
paying Celeste’s bill: Mrs. Peniston would expect to go over the
dress-maker’s account, and would make out the cheque to her and not
to Lily. And yet the money must be obtained before the day was over!

“The debts I speak of are—different—not like tradesmen’s bills,”
she began confusedly; but Mrs. Peniston’s look made her almost
afraid to continue. Could it be that her aunt suspected anything?
The idea precipitated Lily’s avowal.

“The fact is, I’ve played cards a good deal—bridge; the women all
do it; girls too—it’s expected. Sometimes I’ve won—won a good
deal—but lately I’ve been unlucky—and of course such debts can’t be
paid off gradually——”

She paused: Mrs. Peniston’s face seemed to be petrifying as she
listened.

“Cards—you’ve played cards for money? It’s true, then: when I was
told so I wouldn’t believe it. I won’t ask if the other horrors
I was told were true too; I’ve heard enough for the state of my
nerves. When I think of the example you’ve had in this house! But I
suppose it’s your foreign bringing-up—no one knew where your mother
picked up her friends. And her Sundays were a scandal—that I know.”

Mrs. Peniston wheeled round suddenly. “You play cards on Sunday?”

Lily flushed with the recollection of certain rainy Sundays at
Bellomont and with the Dorsets.

“You’re hard on me, Aunt Julia: I have never really cared for
cards, but a girl hates to be thought priggish and superior, and
one drifts into doing what the others do. I’ve had a dreadful
lesson, and if you’ll help me out this time I promise you—”

Mrs. Peniston raised her hand warningly. “You needn’t make any
promises: it’s unnecessary. When I offered you a home I didn’t
undertake to pay your gambling debts.”

“Aunt Julia! You don’t mean that you won’t help me?”

“I shall certainly not do anything to give the impression that I
countenance your behaviour. If you really owe your dress-maker,
I will settle with her—beyond that I recognize no obligation to
assume your debts.”

Lily had risen, and stood pale and quivering before her aunt. Pride
stormed in her, but humiliation forced the cry from her lips: “Aunt
Julia, I shall be disgraced—I—” But she could go no farther. If her
aunt turned such a stony ear to the fiction of the gambling debts,
in what spirit would she receive the terrible avowal of the truth?

“I consider that you ARE disgraced, Lily: disgraced by your conduct
far more than by its results. You say your friends have persuaded
you to play cards with them; well, they may as well learn a lesson
too. They can probably afford to lose a little money—and at any
rate, I am not going to waste any of mine in paying them. And now I
must ask you to leave me—this scene has been extremely painful, and
I have my own health to consider. Draw down the blinds, please; and
tell Jennings I will see no one this afternoon but Grace Stepney.”

Lily went up to her own room and bolted the door. She was trembling
with fear and anger—the rush of the furies’ wings was in her ears.
She walked up and down the room with blind irregular steps. The
last door of escape was closed—she felt herself shut in with her
dishonour.

Suddenly her wild pacing brought her before the clock on the
chimney-piece. Its hands stood at half-past three, and she
remembered that Selden was to come to her at four. She had meant
to put him off with a word—but now her heart leaped at the
thought of seeing him. Was there not a promise of rescue in his
love? As she had lain at Gerty’s side the night before, she had
thought of his coming, and of the sweetness of weeping out her
pain upon his breast. Of course she had meant to clear herself of
its consequences before she met him—she had never really doubted
that Mrs. Peniston would come to her aid. And she had felt, even
in the full storm of her misery, that Selden’s love could not be
her ultimate refuge; only it would be so sweet to take a moment’s
shelter there, while she gathered fresh strength to go on.

But now his love was her only hope, and as she sat alone with her
wretchedness the thought of confiding in him became as seductive
as the river’s flow to the suicide. The first plunge would be
terrible—but afterward, what blessedness might come! She remembered
Gerty’s words: “I know him—he will help you”; and her mind clung
to them as a sick person might cling to a healing relic. Oh, if
he really understood—if he would help her to gather up her broken
life, and put it together in some new semblance in which no trace
of the past should remain! He had always made her feel that she
was worthy of better things, and she had never been in greater
need of such solace. Once and again she shrank at the thought of
imperilling his love by her confession: for love was what she
needed—it would take the glow of passion to weld together the
shattered fragments of her self-esteem. But she recurred to Gerty’s
words and held fast to them. She was sure that Gerty knew Selden’s
feeling for her, and it had never dawned upon her blindness that
Gerty’s own judgment of him was coloured by emotions far more
ardent than her own.

Four o’clock found her in the drawing-room: she was sure that
Selden would be punctual. But the hour came and passed—it moved
on feverishly, measured by her impatient heart-beats. She had
time to take a fresh survey of her wretchedness, and to fluctuate
anew between the impulse to confide in Selden and the dread of
destroying his illusions. But as the minutes passed the need of
throwing herself on his comprehension became more urgent: she could
not bear the weight of her misery alone. There would be a perilous
moment, perhaps: but could she not trust to her beauty to bridge it
over, to land her safe in the shelter of his devotion?

But the hour sped on and Selden did not come. Doubtless he had been
detained, or had misread her hurriedly scrawled note, taking the
four for a five. The ringing of the door-bell a few minutes after
five confirmed this supposition, and made Lily hastily resolve to
write more legibly in future. The sound of steps in the hall, and
of the butler’s voice preceding them, poured fresh energy into her
veins. She felt herself once more the alert and competent moulder
of emergencies, and the remembrance of her power over Selden
flushed her with sudden confidence. But when the drawing-room door
opened it was Rosedale who came in.

The reaction caused her a sharp pang, but after a passing
movement of irritation at the clumsiness of fate, and at her
own carelessness in not denying the door to all but Selden, she
controlled herself and greeted Rosedale amicably. It was annoying
that Selden, when he came, should find that particular visitor in
possession, but Lily was mistress of the art of ridding herself
of superfluous company, and to her present mood Rosedale seemed
distinctly negligible.

His own view of the situation forced itself upon her after a few
moments’ conversation. She had caught at the Brys’ entertainment as
an easy impersonal subject, likely to tide them over the interval
till Selden appeared, but Mr. Rosedale, tenaciously planted beside
the tea-table, his hands in his pockets, his legs a little too
freely extended, at once gave the topic a personal turn.

“Pretty well done—well, yes, I suppose it was: Welly Bry’s got his
back up and don’t mean to let go till he’s got the hang of the
thing. Of course, there were things here and there—things Mrs.
Fisher couldn’t be expected to see to—the champagne wasn’t cold,
and the coats got mixed in the coat-room. I would have spent more
money on the music. But that’s my character: if I want a thing I’m
willing to pay: I don’t go up to the counter, and then wonder if
the article’s worth the price. I wouldn’t be satisfied to entertain
like the Welly Brys; I’d want something that would look more easy
and natural, more as if I took it in my stride. And it takes just
two things to do that, Miss Bart: money, and the right woman to
spend it.”

He paused, and examined her attentively while she affected to
rearrange the tea-cups.

“I’ve got the money,” he continued, clearing his throat, “and what
I want is the woman—and I mean to have her too.”

He leaned forward a little, resting his hands on the head of his
walking-stick. He had seen men of Ned Van Alstyne’s type bring
their hats and sticks into a drawing-room, and he thought it added
a touch of elegant familiarity to their appearance.

Lily was silent, smiling faintly, with her eyes absently resting on
his face. She was in reality reflecting that a declaration would
take some time to make, and that Selden must surely appear before
the moment of refusal had been reached. Her brooding look, as of
a mind withdrawn yet not averted, seemed to Mr. Rosedale full of
a subtle encouragement. He would not have liked any evidence of
eagerness.

“I mean to have her too,” he repeated, with a laugh intended to
strengthen his self-assurance. “I generally HAVE got what I wanted
in life, Miss Bart. I wanted money, and I’ve got more than I know
how to invest; and now the money doesn’t seem to be of any account
unless I can spend it on the right woman. That’s what I want to do
with it: I want my wife to make all the other women feel small. I’d
never grudge a dollar that was spent on that. But it isn’t every
woman can do it, no matter how much you spend on her. There was a
girl in some history book who wanted gold shields, or something,
and the fellows threw ’em at her, and she was crushed under ’em:
they killed her. Well, that’s true enough: some women looked buried
under their jewelry. What I want is a woman who’ll hold her head
higher the more diamonds I put on it. And when I looked at you the
other night at the Brys’, in that plain white dress, looking as if
you had a crown on, I said to myself: ‘By gad, if she had one she’d
wear it as if it grew on her.’”

Still Lily did not speak, and he continued, warming with his theme:
“Tell you what it is, though, that kind of woman costs more than
all the rest of ’em put together. If a woman’s going to ignore her
pearls, they want to be better than anybody else’s—and so it is
with everything else. You know what I mean—you know it’s only the
showy things that are cheap. Well, I should want my wife to be able
to take the earth for granted if she wanted to. I know there’s one
thing vulgar about money, and that’s the thinking about it; and my
wife would never have to demean herself in that way.” He paused,
and then added, with an unfortunate lapse to an earlier manner: “I
guess you know the lady I’ve got in view, Miss Bart.”

Lily raised her head, brightening a little under the challenge.
Even through the dark tumult of her thoughts, the clink of Mr.
Rosedale’s millions had a faintly seductive note. Oh, for enough of
them to cancel her one miserable debt! But the man behind them grew
increasingly repugnant in the light of Selden’s expected coming.
The contrast was too grotesque: she could scarcely suppress the
smile it provoked. She decided that directness would be best.

“If you mean me, Mr. Rosedale, I am very grateful—very much
flattered; but I don’t know what I have ever done to make you
think—”

“Oh, if you mean you’re not dead in love with me, I’ve got sense
enough left to see that. And I ain’t talking to you as if you
were—I presume I know the kind of talk that’s expected under those
circumstances. I’m confoundedly gone on you—that’s about the size
of it—and I’m just giving you a plain business statement of the
consequences. You’re not very fond of me—YET—but you’re fond of
luxury, and style, and amusement, and of not having to worry about
cash. You like to have a good time, and not have to settle for it;
and what I propose to do is to provide for the good time and do the
settling.”

He paused, and she returned with a chilling smile: “You are
mistaken in one point, Mr. Rosedale: whatever I enjoy I am prepared
to settle for.”

She spoke with the intention of making him see that, if his words
implied a tentative allusion to her private affairs, she was
prepared to meet and repudiate it. But if he recognized her meaning
it failed to abash him, and he went on in the same tone: “I didn’t
mean to give offence; excuse me if I’ve spoken too plainly. But
why ain’t you straight with me—why do you put up that kind of
bluff? You know there’ve been times when you were bothered—damned
bothered—and as a girl gets older, and things keep moving along,
why, before she knows it, the things she wants are liable to move
past her and not come back. I don’t say it’s anywhere near that
with you yet; but you’ve had a taste of bothers that a girl like
yourself ought never to have known about, and what I’m offering you
is the chance to turn your back on them once for all.”

The colour burned in Lily’s face as he ended; there was no
mistaking the point he meant to make, and to permit it to pass
unheeded was a fatal confession of weakness, while to resent it too
openly was to risk offending him at a perilous moment. Indignation
quivered on her lip; but it was quelled by the secret voice which
warned her that she must not quarrel with him. He knew too much
about her, and even at the moment when it was essential that he
should show himself at his best, he did not scruple to let her
see how much he knew. How then would he use his power when her
expression of contempt had dispelled his one motive for restraint?
Her whole future might hinge on her way of answering him: she had
to stop and consider that, in the stress of her other anxieties, as
a breathless fugitive may have to pause at the cross-roads and try
to decide coolly which turn to take.

“You are quite right, Mr. Rosedale. I HAVE had bothers; and I am
grateful to you for wanting to relieve me of them. It is not always
easy to be quite independent and self-respecting when one is poor
and lives among rich people; I have been careless about money, and
have worried about my bills. But I should be selfish and ungrateful
if I made that a reason for accepting all you offer, with no better
return to make than the desire to be free from my anxieties. You
must give me time—time to think of your kindness—and of what I
could give you in return for it——”

She held out her hand with a charming gesture in which dismissal
was shorn of its rigour. Its hint of future leniency made Rosedale
rise in obedience to it, a little flushed with his unhoped-for
success, and disciplined by the tradition of his blood to accept
what was conceded, without undue haste to press for more. Something
in his prompt acquiescence frightened her; she felt behind it the
stored force of a patience that might subdue the strongest will.
But at least they had parted amicably, and he was out of the house
without meeting Selden—Selden, whose continued absence now smote
her with a new alarm. Rosedale had remained over an hour, and she
understood that it was now too late to hope for Selden. He would
write explaining his absence, of course; there would be a note
from him by the late post. But her confession would have to be
postponed; and the chill of the delay settled heavily on her fagged
spirit.

It lay heavier when the postman’s last ring brought no note for
her, and she had to go upstairs to a lonely night—a night as grim
and sleepless as her tortured fancy had pictured it to Gerty.
She had never learned to live with her own thoughts, and to be
confronted with them through such hours of lucid misery made the
confused wretchedness of her previous vigil seem easily bearable.

Daylight disbanded the phantom crew, and made it clear to her
that she would hear from Selden before noon; but the day passed
without his writing or coming. Lily remained at home, lunching and
dining alone with her aunt, who complained of flutterings of the
heart, and talked icily on general topics. Mrs. Peniston went to
bed early, and when she had gone Lily sat down and wrote a note to
Selden. She was about to ring for a messenger to despatch it when
her eye fell on a paragraph in the evening paper which lay at her
elbow: “Mr. Lawrence Selden was among the passengers sailing this
afternoon for Havana and the West Indies on the Windward Liner
Antilles.”

She laid down the paper and sat motionless, staring at her note.
She understood now that he was never coming—that he had gone away
because he was afraid that he might come. She rose, and walking
across the floor stood gazing at herself for a long time in the
brightly lit mirror above the mantelpiece. The lines in her face
came out terribly—she looked old; and when a girl looks old to
herself, how does she look to other people? She moved away, and
began to wander aimlessly about the room, fitting her steps with
mechanical precision between the monstrous roses of Mrs. Peniston’s
Axminster. Suddenly she noticed that the pen with which she had
written to Selden still rested against the uncovered inkstand.
She seated herself again, and taking out an envelope, addressed
it rapidly to Rosedale. Then she laid out a sheet of paper, and
sat over it with suspended pen. It had been easy enough to write
the date, and “Dear Mr. Rosedale”—but after that her inspiration
flagged. She meant to tell him to come to her, but the words
refused to shape themselves. At length she began: “I have been
thinking——” then she laid the pen down, and sat with her elbows on
the table and her face hidden in her hands.

Suddenly she started up at the sound of the door-bell. It was
not late—barely ten o’clock—and there might still be a note from
Selden, or a message—or he might be there himself, on the other
side of the door! The announcement of his sailing might have been
a mistake—it might be another Lawrence Selden who had gone to
Havana—all these possibilities had time to flash through her mind,
and build up the conviction that she was after all to see or hear
from him, before the drawing-room door opened to admit a servant
carrying a telegram.

Lily tore it open with shaking hands, and read Bertha Dorset’s name
below the message: “Sailing unexpectedly tomorrow. Will you join us
on a cruise in Mediterranean?”