The House of Mirth

ook II, Chapter 5

It seemed to Lily, as Mrs. Peniston’s door closed on her, that she
was taking a final leave of her old life. The future stretched
before her dull and bare as the deserted length of Fifth Avenue,
and opportunities showed as meagrely as the few cabs trailing in
quest of fares that did not come. The completeness of the analogy
was, however, disturbed as she reached the sidewalk by the rapid
approach of a hansom which pulled up at sight of her.

From beneath its luggage-laden top, she caught the wave of a
signalling hand; and the next moment Mrs. Fisher, springing to the
street, had folded her in a demonstrative embrace.

“My dear, you don’t mean to say you’re still in town? When I saw
you the other day at Sherry’s I didn’t have time to ask——” She
broke off, and added with a burst of frankness: “The truth is I was
HORRID, Lily, and I’ve wanted to tell you so ever since.”

“Oh——” Miss Bart protested, drawing back from her penitent clasp;
but Mrs. Fisher went on with her usual directness: “Look here,
Lily, don’t let’s beat about the bush: half the trouble in life is
caused by pretending there isn’t any. That’s not my way, and I can
only say I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself for following the other
women’s lead. But we’ll talk of that by and bye—tell me now where
you’re staying and what your plans are. I don’t suppose you’re
keeping house in there with Grace Stepney, eh?—and it struck me you
might be rather at loose ends.”

In Lily’s present mood there was no resisting the honest
friendliness of this appeal, and she said with a smile: “I am at
loose ends for the moment, but Gerty Farish is still in town, and
she’s good enough to let me be with her whenever she can spare the
time.”

Mrs. Fisher made a slight grimace. “H’m—that’s a temperate joy. Oh,
I know—Gerty’s a trump, and worth all the rest of us put together;
but A LA LONGUE you’re used to a little higher seasoning, aren’t
you, dear? And besides, I suppose she’ll be off herself before
long—the first of August, you say? Well, look here, you can’t spend
your summer in town; we’ll talk of that later too. But meanwhile,
what do you say to putting a few things in a trunk and coming down
with me to the Sam Gormers’ tonight?”

And as Lily stared at the breathless suddenness of the suggestion,
she continued with her easy laugh: “You don’t know them and they
don’t know you; but that don’t make a rap of difference. They’ve
taken the Van Alstyne place at Roslyn, and I’ve got CARTE BLANCHE
to bring my friends down there—the more the merrier. They do
things awfully well, and there’s to be rather a jolly party there
this week——” she broke off, checked by an undefinable change in
Miss Bart’s expression. “Oh, I don’t mean YOUR particular set,
you know: rather a different crowd, but very good fun. The fact
is, the Gormers have struck out on a line of their own: what they
want is to have a good time, and to have it in their own way. They
gave the other thing a few months’ trial, under my distinguished
auspices, and they were really doing extremely well—getting on a
good deal faster than the Brys, just because they didn’t care as
much—but suddenly they decided that the whole business bored them,
and that what they wanted was a crowd they could really feel at
home with. Rather original of them, don’t you think so? Mattie
Gormer HAS got aspirations still; women always have; but she’s
awfully easy-going, and Sam won’t be bothered, and they both like
to be the most important people in sight, so they’ve started a sort
of continuous performance of their own, a kind of social Coney
Island, where everybody is welcome who can make noise enough and
doesn’t put on airs. I think it’s awfully good fun myself—some
of the artistic set, you know, any pretty actress that’s going,
and so on. This week, for instance, they have Audrey Anstell,
who made such a hit last spring in ‘The Winning of Winny’; and
Paul Morpeth—he’s painting Mattie Gormer—and the Dick Bellingers,
and Kate Corby—well, every one you can think of who’s jolly and
makes a row. Now don’t stand there with your nose in the air, my
dear—it will be a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town,
and you’ll find clever people as well as noisy ones—Morpeth, who
admires Mattie enormously, always brings one or two of his set.”

Mrs. Fisher drew Lily toward the hansom with friendly authority.
“Jump in now, there’s a dear, and we’ll drive round to your hotel
and have your things packed, and then we’ll have tea, and the two
maids can meet us at the train.”

* * * * *

It was a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town—of that
no doubt remained to Lily as, reclining in the shade of a leafy
verandah, she looked seaward across a stretch of greensward
picturesquely dotted with groups of ladies in lace raiment and men
in tennis flannels. The huge Van Alstyne house and its rambling
dependencies were packed to their fullest capacity with the
Gormers’ week-end guests, who now, in the radiance of the Sunday
forenoon, were dispersing themselves over the grounds in quest of
the various distractions the place afforded: distractions ranging
from tennis-courts to shooting-galleries, from bridge and whiskey
within doors to motors and steam-launches without. Lily had the
odd sense of having been caught up into the crowd as carelessly
as a passenger is gathered in by an express train. The blonde and
genial Mrs. Gormer might, indeed, have figured the conductor,
calmly assigning seats to the rush of travellers, while Carry
Fisher represented the porter pushing their bags into place, giving
them their numbers for the dining-car, and warning them when their
station was at hand. The train, meanwhile, had scarcely slackened
speed—life whizzed on with a deafening’ rattle and roar, in which
one traveller at least found a welcome refuge from the sound of
her own thoughts. The Gormer MILIEU represented a social out-skirt
which Lily had always fastidiously avoided; but it struck her, now
that she was in it, as only a flamboyant copy of her own world,
a caricature approximating the real thing as the “society play”
approaches the manners of the drawing-room. The people about her
were doing the same things as the Trenors, the Van Osburghs and
the Dorsets: the difference lay in a hundred shades of aspect and
manner, from the pattern of the men’s waistcoats to the inflexion
of the women’s voices. Everything was pitched in a higher key,
and there was more of each thing: more noise, more colour, more
champagne, more familiarity—but also greater good-nature, less
rivalry, and a fresher capacity for enjoyment.

Miss Bart’s arrival had been welcomed with an uncritical
friendliness that first irritated her pride and then brought her
to a sharp sense of her own situation—of the place in life which,
for the moment, she must accept and make the best of. These people
knew her story—of that her first long talk with Carry Fisher had
left no doubt: she was publicly branded as the heroine of a “queer”
episode—but instead of shrinking from her as her own friends had
done, they received her without question into the easy promiscuity
of their lives. They swallowed her past as easily as they did Miss
Anstell’s, and with no apparent sense of any difference in the size
of the mouthful: all they asked was that she should—in her own way,
for they recognized a diversity of gifts—contribute as much to the
general amusement as that graceful actress, whose talents, when
off the stage, were of the most varied order. Lily felt at once
that any tendency to be “stuck-up,” to mark a sense of differences
and distinctions, would be fatal to her continuance in the Gormer
set. To be taken in on such terms—and into such a world!—was hard
enough to the lingering pride in her; but she realized, with a
pang of self-contempt, that to be excluded from it would, after
all, be harder still. For, almost at once, she had felt the
insidious charm of slipping back into a life where every material
difficulty was smoothed away. The sudden escape from a stifling
hotel in a dusty deserted city to the space and luxury of a great
country-house fanned by sea breezes, had produced a state of moral
lassitude agreeable enough after the nervous tension and physical
discomfort of the past weeks. For the moment she must yield to the
refreshment her senses craved—after that she would reconsider her
situation, and take counsel with her dignity. Her enjoyment of her
surroundings was, indeed, tinged by the unpleasant consideration
that she was accepting the hospitality and courting the approval
of people she had disdained under other conditions. But she was
growing less sensitive on such points: a hard glaze of indifference
was fast forming over her delicacies and susceptibilities, and each
concession to expediency hardened the surface a little more.

On the Monday, when the party disbanded with uproarious adieux,
the return to town threw into stronger relief the charms of the
life she was leaving. The other guests were dispersing to take
up the same existence in a different setting: some at Newport,
some at Bar Harbour, some in the elaborate rusticity of an
Adirondack camp. Even Gerty Farish, who welcomed Lily’s return
with tender solicitude, would soon be preparing to join the aunt
with whom she spent her summers on Lake George: only Lily herself
remained without plan or purpose, stranded in a backwater of the
great current of pleasure. But Carry Fisher, who had insisted on
transporting her to her own house, where she herself was to perch
for a day or two on the way to the Brys’ camp, came to the rescue
with a new suggestion.

“Look here, Lily—I’ll tell you what it is: I want you to take my
place with Mattie Gormer this summer. They’re taking a party out
to Alaska next month in their private car, and Mattie, who is the
laziest woman alive, wants me to go with them, and relieve her
of the bother of arranging things; but the Brys want me too—oh,
yes, we’ve made it up: didn’t I tell you?—and, to put it frankly,
though I like the Gormers best, there’s more profit for me in
the Brys. The fact is, they want to try Newport this summer, and
if I can make it a success for them they—well, they’ll make it a
success for me.” Mrs. Fisher clasped her hands enthusiastically.
“Do you know, Lily, the more I think of my idea the better I like
it—quite as much for you as for myself. The Gormers have both taken
a tremendous fancy to you, and the trip to Alaska is—well—the very
thing I should want for you just at present.”

Miss Bart lifted her eyes with a keen glance. “To take me out of
my friends’ way, you mean?” she said quietly; and Mrs. Fisher
responded with a deprecating kiss: “To keep you out of their sight
till they realize how much they miss you.”

* * * * *

Miss Bart went with the Gormers to Alaska; and the expedition, if
it did not produce the effect anticipated by her friend, had at
least the negative advantage of removing her from the fiery centre
of criticism and discussion. Gerty Farish had opposed the plan with
all the energy of her somewhat inarticulate nature. She had even
offered to give up her visit to Lake George, and remain in town
with Miss Bart, if the latter would renounce her journey; but Lily
could disguise her real distaste for this plan under a sufficiently
valid reason.

“You dear innocent, don’t you see,” she protested, “that Carry is
quite right, and that I must take up my usual life, and go about
among people as much as possible? If my old friends choose to
believe lies about me I shall have to make new ones, that’s all;
and you know beggars mustn’t be choosers. Not that I don’t like
Mattie Gormer—I DO like her: she’s kind and honest and unaffected;
and don’t you suppose I feel grateful to her for making me welcome
at a time when, as you’ve yourself seen, my own family have
unanimously washed their hands of me?”

Gerty shook her head, mutely unconvinced. She felt not only that
Lily was cheapening herself by making use of an intimacy she would
never have cultivated from choice, but that, in drifting back now
to her former manner of life, she was forfeiting her last chance
of ever escaping from it. Gerty had but an obscure conception
of what Lily’s actual experience had been: but its consequences
had established a lasting hold on her pity since the memorable
night when she had offered up her own secret hope to her friend’s
extremity. To characters like Gerty’s such a sacrifice constitutes
a moral claim on the part of the person in whose behalf it has been
made. Having once helped Lily, she must continue to help her; and
helping her, must believe in her, because faith is the main-spring
of such natures. But even if Miss Bart, after her renewed taste
of the amenities of life, could have returned to the barrenness
of a New York August, mitigated only by poor Gerty’s presence,
her worldly wisdom would have counselled her against such an act
of abnegation. She knew that Carry Fisher was right: that an
opportune absence might be the first step toward rehabilitation,
and that, at any rate, to linger on in town out of season was a
fatal admission of defeat. From the Gormers’ tumultuous progress
across their native continent, she returned with an altered
view of her situation. The renewed habit of luxury—the daily
waking to an assured absence of care and presence of material
ease—gradually blunted her appreciation of these values, and left
her more conscious of the void they could not fill. Mattie Gormer’s
undiscriminating good-nature, and the slap-dash sociability of her
friends, who treated Lily precisely as they treated each other—all
these characteristic notes of difference began to wear upon her
endurance; and the more she saw to criticize in her companions, the
less justification she found for making use of them. The longing
to get back to her former surroundings hardened to a fixed idea;
but with the strengthening of her purpose came the inevitable
perception that, to attain it, she must exact fresh concessions
from her pride. These, for the moment, took the unpleasant form of
continuing to cling to her hosts after their return from Alaska.
Little as she was in the key of their MILIEU, her immense social
facility, her long habit of adapting herself to others without
suffering her own outline to be blurred, the skilled manipulation
of all the polished implements of her craft, had won for her an
important place in the Gormer group. If their resonant hilarity
could never be hers, she contributed a note of easy elegance more
valuable to Mattie Gormer than the louder passages of the band.
Sam Gormer and his special cronies stood indeed a little in awe of
her; but Mattie’s following, headed by Paul Morpeth, made her feel
that they prized her for the very qualities they most conspicuously
lacked. If Morpeth, whose social indolence was as great as his
artistic activity, had abandoned himself to the easy current of
the Gormer existence, where the minor exactions of politeness were
unknown or ignored, and a man could either break his engagements,
or keep them in a painting-jacket and slippers, he still preserved
his sense of differences, and his appreciation of graces he had no
time to cultivate. During the preparations for the Brys’ TABLEAUX
he had been immensely struck by Lily’s plastic possibilities—“not
the face: too self-controlled for expression; but the rest of
her—gad, what a model she’d make!”—and though his abhorrence of the
world in which he had seen her was too great for him to think of
seeking her there, he was fully alive to the privilege of having
her to look at and listen to while he lounged in Mattie Gormer’s
dishevelled drawing-room.

Lily had thus formed, in the tumult of her surroundings, a little
nucleus of friendly relations which mitigated the crudeness of
her course in lingering with the Gormers after their return. Nor
was she without pale glimpses of her own world, especially since
the breaking up of the Newport season had set the social current
once more toward Long Island. Kate Corby, whose tastes made her
as promiscuous as Carry Fisher was rendered by her necessities,
occasionally descended on the Gormers, where, after a first
stare of surprise, she took Lily’s presence almost too much as a
matter of course. Mrs. Fisher, too, appearing frequently in the
neighbourhood, drove over to impart her experiences and give Lily
what she called the latest report from the weather-bureau; and the
latter, who had never directly invited her confidence, could yet
talk with her more freely than with Gerty Farish, in whose presence
it was impossible even to admit the existence of much that Mrs.
Fisher conveniently took for granted.

Mrs. Fisher, moreover, had no embarrassing curiosity. She did not
wish to probe the inwardness of Lily’s situation, but simply to
view it from the outside, and draw her conclusions accordingly; and
these conclusions, at the end of a confidential talk, she summed up
to her friend in the succinct remark: “You must marry as soon as
you can.”

Lily uttered a faint laugh—for once Mrs. Fisher lacked originality.
“Do you mean, like Gerty Farish, to recommend the unfailing panacea
of ‘a good man’s love’?”

“No—I don’t think either of my candidates would answer to that
description,” said Mrs. Fisher after a pause of reflection.

“Either? Are there actually two?”

“Well, perhaps I ought to say one and a half—for the moment.”

Miss Bart received this with increasing amusement. “Other things
being equal, I think I should prefer a half-husband: who is he?”

“Don’t fly out at me till you hear my reasons—George Dorset.”

“Oh——” Lily murmured reproachfully; but Mrs. Fisher pressed on
unrebuffed. “Well, why not? They had a few weeks’ honeymoon when
they first got back from Europe, but now things are going badly
with them again. Bertha has been behaving more than ever like
a madwoman, and George’s powers of credulity are very nearly
exhausted. They’re at their place here, you know, and I spent last
Sunday with them. It was a ghastly party—no one else but poor Neddy
Silverton, who looks like a galley-slave (they used to talk of my
making that poor boy unhappy!)—and after luncheon George carried me
off on a long walk, and told me the end would have to come soon.”

Miss Bart made an incredulous gesture. “As far as that goes, the
end will never come—Bertha will always know how to get him back
when she wants him.”

Mrs. Fisher continued to observe her tentatively. “Not if he has
any one else to turn to! Yes—that’s just what it comes to: the poor
creature can’t stand alone. And I remember him such a good fellow,
full of life and enthusiasm.” She paused, and went on, dropping her
glance from Lily’s: “He wouldn’t stay with her ten minutes if he
KNEW——”

“Knew——?” Miss Bart repeated.

“What YOU must, for instance—with the opportunities you’ve had! If
he had positive proof, I mean——”

Lily interrupted her with a deep blush of displeasure. “Please let
us drop the subject, Carry: it’s too odious to me.” And to divert
her companion’s attention she added, with an attempt at lightness:
“And your second candidate? We must not forget him.”

Mrs. Fisher echoed her laugh. “I wonder if you’ll cry out just as
loud if I say—Sim Rosedale?”

Miss Bart did not cry out: she sat silent, gazing thoughtfully
at her friend. The suggestion, in truth, gave expression to a
possibility which, in the last weeks, had more than once recurred
to her; but after a moment she said carelessly: “Mr. Rosedale wants
a wife who can establish him in the bosom of the Van Osburghs and
Trenors.”

Mrs. Fisher caught her up eagerly. “And so YOU could—with his
money! Don’t you see how beautifully it would work out for you
both?”

“I don’t see any way of making him see it,” Lily returned, with a
laugh intended to dismiss the subject.

But in reality it lingered with her long after Mrs. Fisher had
taken leave. She had seen very little of Rosedale since her
annexation by the Gormers, for he was still steadily bent on
penetrating to the inner Paradise from which she was now excluded;
but once or twice, when nothing better offered, he had turned up
for a Sunday, and on these occasions he had left her in no doubt
as to his view of her situation. That he still admired her was,
more than ever, offensively evident; for in the Gormer circle,
where he expanded as in his native element, there were no puzzling
conventions to check the full expression of his approval. But it
was in the quality of his admiration that she read his shrewd
estimate of her case. He enjoyed letting the Gormers see that he
had known “Miss Lily”—she was “Miss Lily” to him now—before they
had had the faintest social existence: enjoyed more especially
impressing Paul Morpeth with the distance to which their intimacy
dated back. But he let it be felt that that intimacy was a
mere ripple on the surface of a rushing social current, the
kind of relaxation which a man of large interests and manifold
preoccupations permits himself in his hours of ease.

The necessity of accepting this view of their past relation, and
of meeting it in the key of pleasantry prevalent among her new
friends, was deeply humiliating to Lily. But she dared less than
ever to quarrel with Rosedale. She suspected that her rejection
rankled among the most unforgettable of his rebuffs, and the fact
that he knew something of her wretched transaction with Trenor,
and was sure to put the basest construction on it, seemed to place
her hopelessly in his power. Yet at Carry Fisher’s suggestion a
new hope had stirred in her. Much as she disliked Rosedale, she
no longer absolutely despised him. For he was gradually attaining
his object in life, and that, to Lily, was always less despicable
than to miss it. With the slow unalterable persistency which she
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?