The House of Mirth

ook II, Chapter 9

When Lily woke on the morning after her translation to the Emporium
Hotel, her first feeling was one of purely physical satisfaction.
The force of contrast gave an added keenness to the luxury of lying
once more in a soft-pillowed bed, and looking across a spacious
sunlit room at a breakfast-table set invitingly near the fire.
Analysis and introspection might come later; but for the moment
she was not even troubled by the excesses of the upholstery or
the restless convolutions of the furniture. The sense of being
once more lapped and folded in ease, as in some dense mild medium
impenetrable to discomfort, effectually stilled the faintest note
of criticism.

When, the afternoon before, she had presented herself to the lady
to whom Carry Fisher had directed her, she had been conscious of
entering a new world. Carry’s vague presentment of Mrs. Norma
Hatch (whose reversion to her Christian name was explained as the
result of her latest divorce), left her under the implication
of coming “from the West,” with the not unusual extenuation of
having brought a great deal of money with her. She was, in short,
rich, helpless, unplaced: the very subject for Lily’s hand. Mrs.
Fisher had not specified the line her friend was to take; she
owned herself unacquainted with Mrs. Hatch, whom she “knew about”
through Melville Stancy, a lawyer in his leisure moments, and the
Falstaff of a certain section of festive club life. Socially, Mr.
Stancy might have been said to form a connecting link between the
Gormer world and the more dimly-lit region on which Miss Bart
now found herself entering. It was, however, only figuratively
that the illumination of Mrs. Hatch’s world could be described as
dim: in actual fact, Lily found her seated in a blaze of electric
light, impartially projected from various ornamental excrescences
on a vast concavity of pink damask and gilding, from which she
rose like Venus from her shell. The analogy was justified by the
appearance of the lady, whose large-eyed prettiness had the fixity
of something impaled and shown under glass. This did not preclude
the immediate discovery that she was some years younger than her
visitor, and that under her showiness, her ease, the aggression of
her dress and voice, there persisted that ineradicable innocence
which, in ladies of her nationality, so curiously coexists with
startling extremes of experience.

The environment in which Lily found herself was as strange to her
as its inhabitants. She was unacquainted with the world of the
fashionable New York hotel—a world over-heated, over-upholstered,
and over-fitted with mechanical appliances for the gratification
of fantastic requirements, while the comforts of a civilized life
were as unattainable as in a desert. Through this atmosphere of
torrid splendour moved wan beings as richly upholstered as the
furniture, beings without definite pursuits or permanent relations,
who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity from restaurant to
concert-hall, from palm-garden to music-room, from “art exhibit” to
dress-maker’s opening. High-stepping horses or elaborately equipped
motors waited to carry these ladies into vague metropolitan
distances, whence they returned, still more wan from the weight of
their sables, to be sucked back into the stifling inertia of the
hotel routine. Somewhere behind them, in the background of their
lives, there was doubtless a real past, peopled by real human
activities: they themselves were probably the product of strong
ambitions, persistent energies, diversified contacts with the
wholesome roughness of life; yet they had no more real existence
than the poet’s shades in limbo.

Lily had not been long in this pallid world without discovering
that Mrs. Hatch was its most substantial figure. That lady, though
still floating in the void, showed faint symptoms of developing
an outline; and in this endeavour she was actively seconded by
Mr. Melville Stancy. It was Mr. Stancy, a man of large resounding
presence, suggestive of convivial occasions and of a chivalry
finding expression in “first-night” boxes and thousand dollar
bonbonnieres, who had transplanted Mrs. Hatch from the scene of
her first development to the higher stage of hotel life in the
metropolis. It was he who had selected the horses with which she
had taken the blue ribbon at the Show, had introduced her to the
photographer whose portraits of her formed the recurring ornament
of “Sunday Supplements,” and had got together the group which
constituted her social world. It was a small group still, with
heterogeneous figures suspended in large unpeopled spaces; but Lily
did not take long to learn that its regulation was no longer in Mr.
Stancy’s hands. As often happens, the pupil had outstripped the
teacher, and Mrs. Hatch was already aware of heights of elegance
as well as depths of luxury beyond the world of the Emporium. This
discovery at once produced in her a craving for higher guidance,
for the adroit feminine hand which should give the right turn
to her correspondence, the right “look” to her hats, the right
succession to the items of her MENUS. It was, in short, as the
regulator of a germinating social life that Miss Bart’s guidance
was required; her ostensible duties as secretary being restricted
by the fact that Mrs. Hatch, as yet, knew hardly any one to write
to.

The daily details of Mrs. Hatch’s existence were as strange to
Lily as its general tenor. The lady’s habits were marked by an
Oriental indolence and disorder peculiarly trying to her companion.
Mrs. Hatch and her friends seemed to float together outside the
bounds of time and space. No definite hours were kept; no fixed
obligations existed: night and day flowed into one another in a
blur of confused and retarded engagements, so that one had the
impression of lunching at the tea-hour, while dinner was often
merged in the noisy after-theatre supper which prolonged Mrs.
Hatch’s vigil till daylight.

Through this jumble of futile activities came and went a strange
throng of hangers-on—manicures, beauty-doctors, hair-dressers,
teachers of bridge, of French, of “physical development”: figures
sometimes indistinguishable, by their appearance, or by Mrs.
Hatch’s relation to them, from the visitors constituting her
recognized society. But strangest of all to Lily was the encounter,
in this latter group, of several of her acquaintances. She had
supposed, and not without relief, that she was passing, for the
moment, completely out of her own circle; but she found that Mr.
Stancy, one side of whose sprawling existence overlapped the
edge of Mrs. Fisher’s world, had drawn several of its brightest
ornaments into the circle of the Emporium. To find Ned Silverton
among the habitual frequenters of Mrs. Hatch’s drawing-room
was one of Lily’s first astonishments; but she soon discovered
that he was not Mr. Stancy’s most important recruit. It was on
little Freddy Van Osburgh, the small slim heir of the Van Osburgh
millions, that the attention of Mrs. Hatch’s group was centred.
Freddy, barely out of college, had risen above the horizon since
Lily’s eclipse, and she now saw with surprise what an effulgence he
shed on the outer twilight of Mrs. Hatch’s existence. This, then,
was one of the things that young men “went in” for when released
from the official social routine; this was the kind of “previous
engagement” that so frequently caused them to disappoint the hopes
of anxious hostesses. Lily had an odd sense of being behind the
social tapestry, on the side where the threads were knotted and
the loose ends hung. For a moment she found a certain amusement in
the show, and in her own share of it: the situation had an ease
and unconventionality distinctly refreshing after her experience
of the irony of conventions. But these flashes of amusement were
but brief reactions from the long disgust of her days. Compared
with the vast gilded void of Mrs. Hatch’s existence, the life of
Lily’s former friends seemed packed with ordered activities. Even
the most irresponsible pretty woman of her acquaintance had her
inherited obligations, her conventional benevolences, her share in
the working of the great civic machine; and all hung together in
the solidarity of these traditional functions. The performance of
specific duties would have simplified Miss Bart’s position; but the
vague attendance on Mrs. Hatch was not without its perplexities.

It was not her employer who created these perplexities. Mrs.
Hatch showed from the first an almost touching desire for Lily’s
approval. Far from asserting the superiority of wealth, her
beautiful eyes seemed to urge the plea of inexperience: she wanted
to do what was “nice,” to be taught how to be “lovely.” The
difficulty was to find any point of contact between her ideals and
Lily’s.

Mrs. Hatch swam in a haze of indeterminate enthusiasms, of
aspirations culled from the stage, the newspapers, the fashion
journals, and a gaudy world of sport still more completely beyond
her companion’s ken. To separate from these confused conceptions
those most likely to advance the lady on her way, was Lily’s
obvious duty; but its performance was hampered by rapidly-growing
doubts. Lily was in fact becoming more and more aware of a certain
ambiguity in her situation. It was not that she had, in the
conventional sense, any doubt of Mrs. Hatch’s irreproachableness.
The lady’s offences were always against taste rather than conduct;
her divorce record seemed due to geographical rather than ethical
conditions; and her worst laxities were likely to proceed from
a wandering and extravagant good-nature. But if Lily did not
mind her detaining her manicure for luncheon, or offering the
“Beauty-Doctor” a seat in Freddy Van Osburgh’s box at the play,
she was not equally at ease in regard to some less apparent lapses
from convention. Ned Silverton’s relation to Stancy seemed, for
instance, closer and less clear than any natural affinities would
warrant; and both appeared united in the effort to cultivate Freddy
Van Osburgh’s growing taste for Mrs. Hatch. There was as yet
nothing definable in the situation, which might well resolve itself
into a huge joke on the part of the other two; but Lily had a vague
sense that the subject of their experiment was too young, too rich
and too credulous. Her embarrassment was increased by the fact that
Freddy seemed to regard her as cooperating with himself in the
social development of Mrs. Hatch: a view that suggested, on his
part, a permanent interest in the lady’s future. There were moments
when Lily found an ironic amusement in this aspect of the case. The
thought of launching such a missile as Mrs. Hatch at the perfidious
bosom of society was not without its charm: Miss Bart had even
beguiled her leisure with visions of the fair Norma introduced for
the first time to a family banquet at the Van Osburghs’. But the
thought of being personally connected with the transaction was less
agreeable; and her momentary flashes of amusement were followed by
increasing periods of doubt.

The sense of these doubts was uppermost when, late one afternoon,
she was surprised by a visit from Lawrence Selden. He found her
alone in the wilderness of pink damask, for in Mrs. Hatch’s world
the tea-hour was not dedicated to social rites, and the lady was in
the hands of her masseuse.

Selden’s entrance had caused Lily an inward start of embarrassment;
but his air of constraint had the effect of restoring her
self-possession, and she took at once the tone of surprise and
pleasure, wondering frankly that he should have traced her to so
unlikely a place, and asking what had inspired him to make the
search.

Selden met this with an unusual seriousness: she had never seen him
so little master of the situation, so plainly at the mercy of any
obstructions she might put in his way. “I wanted to see you,” he
said; and she could not resist observing in reply that he had kept
his wishes under remarkable control. She had in truth felt his long
absence as one of the chief bitternesses of the last months: his
desertion had wounded sensibilities far below the surface of her
pride.

Selden met the challenge with directness. “Why should I have come,
unless I thought I could be of use to you? It is my only excuse for
imagining you could want me.”

This struck her as a clumsy evasion, and the thought gave a flash
of keenness to her answer. “Then you have come now because you
think you can be of use to me?”

He hesitated again. “Yes: in the modest capacity of a person to
talk things over with.”

For a clever man it was certainly a stupid beginning; and the
idea that his awkwardness was due to the fear of her attaching a
personal significance to his visit, chilled her pleasure in seeing
him. Even under the most adverse conditions, that pleasure always
made itself felt: she might hate him, but she had never been able
to wish him out of the room. She was very near hating him now;
yet the sound of his voice, the way the light fell on his thin
dark hair, the way he sat and moved and wore his clothes—she was
conscious that even these trivial things were inwoven with her
deepest life. In his presence a sudden stillness came upon her, and
the turmoil of her spirit ceased; but an impulse of resistance to
this stealing influence now prompted her to say: “It’s very good of
you to present yourself in that capacity; but what makes you think
I have anything particular to talk about?”

Though she kept the even tone of light intercourse, the question
was framed in a way to remind him that his good offices were
unsought; and for a moment Selden was checked by it. The situation
between them was one which could have been cleared up only by a
sudden explosion of feeling; and their whole training and habit
of mind were against the chances of such an explosion. Selden’s
calmness seemed rather to harden into resistance, and Miss Bart’s
into a surface of glittering irony, as they faced each other from
the opposite corners of one of Mrs. Hatch’s elephantine sofas. The
sofa in question, and the apartment peopled by its monstrous mates,
served at length to suggest the turn of Selden’s reply.

“Gerty told me that you were acting as Mrs. Hatch’s secretary; and
I knew she was anxious to hear how you were getting on.”

Miss Bart received this explanation without perceptible softening.
“Why didn’t she look me up herself, then?” she asked.

“Because, as you didn’t send her your address, she was afraid of
being importunate.” Selden continued with a smile: “You see no such
scruples restrained me; but then I haven’t as much to risk if I
incur your displeasure.”

Lily answered his smile. “You haven’t incurred it as yet; but I
have an idea that you are going to.”

“That rests with you, doesn’t it? You see my initiative doesn’t go
beyond putting myself at your disposal.”

“But in what capacity? What am I to do with you?” she asked in the
same light tone.

Selden again glanced about Mrs. Hatch’s drawing-room; then he said,
with a decision which he seemed to have gathered from this final
inspection: “You are to let me take you away from here.”

Lily flushed at the suddenness of the attack; then she stiffened
under it and said coldly: “And may I ask where you mean me to go?”

“Back to Gerty in the first place, if you will; the essential thing
is that it should be away from here.”

The unusual harshness of his tone might have shown her how much the
words cost him; but she was in no state to measure his feelings
while her own were in a flame of revolt. To neglect her, perhaps
even to avoid her, at a time when she had most need of her friends,
and then suddenly and unwarrantably to break into her life with
this strange assumption of authority, was to rouse in her every
instinct of pride and self-defence.

“I am very much obliged to you,” she said, “for taking such an
interest in my plans; but I am quite contented where I am, and have
no intention of leaving.”

Selden had risen, and was standing before her in an attitude of
uncontrollable expectancy.

“That simply means that you don’t know where you are!” he exclaimed.

Lily rose also, with a quick flash of anger. “If you have come here
to say disagreeable things about Mrs. Hatch——”

“It is only with your relation to Mrs. Hatch that I am concerned.”

“My relation to Mrs. Hatch is one I have no reason to be ashamed
of. She has helped me to earn a living when my old friends were
quite resigned to seeing me starve.”

“Nonsense! Starvation is not the only alternative. You know you can
always find a home with Gerty till you are independent again.”

“You show such an intimate acquaintance with my affairs that I
suppose you mean—till my aunt’s legacy is paid?”

“I do mean that; Gerty told me of it,” Selden acknowledged without
embarrassment. He was too much in earnest now to feel any false
constraint in speaking his mind.

“But Gerty does not happen to know,” Miss Bart rejoined, “that I
owe every penny of that legacy.”

“Good God!” Selden exclaimed, startled out of his composure by the
abruptness of the statement.

“Every penny of it, and more too,” Lily repeated; “and you now
perhaps see why I prefer to remain with Mrs. Hatch rather than take
advantage of Gerty’s kindness. I have no money left, except my
small income, and I must earn something more to keep myself alive.”

Selden hesitated a moment; then he rejoined in a quieter tone:
“But with your income and Gerty’s—since you allow me to go so
far into the details of the situation—you and she could surely
contrive a life together which would put you beyond the need of
having to support yourself. Gerty, I know, is eager to make such an
arrangement, and would be quite happy in it——”

“But I should not,” Miss Bart interposed. “There are many reasons
why it would be neither kind to Gerty nor wise for myself.” She
paused a moment, and as he seemed to await a farther explanation,
added with a quick lift of her head: “You will perhaps excuse me
from giving you these reasons.”

“I have no claim to know them,” Selden answered, ignoring her tone;
“no claim to offer any comment or suggestion beyond the one I have
already made. And my right to make that is simply the universal
right of a man to enlighten a woman when he sees her unconsciously
placed in a false position.”

Lily smiled. “I suppose,” she rejoined, “that by a false position
you mean one outside of what we call society; but you must remember
that I had been excluded from those sacred precincts long before
I met Mrs. Hatch. As far as I can see, there is very little real
difference in being inside or out, and I remember your once telling
me that it was only those inside who took the difference seriously.”

She had not been without intention in making this allusion to their
memorable talk at Bellomont, and she waited with an odd tremor of
the nerves to see what response it would bring; but the result of
the experiment was disappointing. Selden did not allow the allusion
to deflect him from his point; he merely said with completer
fulness of emphasis: “The question of being inside or out is, as
you say, a small one, and it happens to have nothing to do with the
case, except in so far as Mrs. Hatch’s desire to be inside may put
you in the position I call false.”

In spite of the moderation of his tone, each word he spoke had the
effect of confirming Lily’s resistance. The very apprehensions he
aroused hardened her against him: she had been on the alert for the
note of personal sympathy, for any sign of recovered power over
him; and his attitude of sober impartiality, the absence of all
response to her appeal, turned her hurt pride to blind resentment
of his interference. The conviction that he had been sent by Gerty,
and that, whatever straits he conceived her to be in, he would
never voluntarily have come to her aid, strengthened her resolve
not to admit him a hair’s breadth farther into her confidence.
However doubtful she might feel her situation to be, she would
rather persist in darkness than owe her enlightenment to Selden.

“I don’t know,” she said, when he had ceased to speak, “why you
imagine me to be situated as you describe; but as you have always
told me that the sole object of a bringing-up like mine was to
teach a girl to get what she wants, why not assume that that is
precisely what I am doing?”

The smile with which she summed up her case was like a clear
barrier raised against farther confidences: its brightness held
him at such a distance that he had a sense of being almost out of
hearing as he rejoined: “I am not sure that I have ever called you
a successful example of that kind of bringing-up.”

Her colour rose a little at the implication, but she steeled
herself with a light laugh. “Ah, wait a little longer—give me a
little more time before you decide!” And as he wavered before her,
still watching for a break in the impenetrable front she presented:
“Don’t give me up; I may still do credit to my training!” she
affirmed.