The House of Mirth

ook II, Chapter 11

Lily, lingering for a moment on the corner, looked out on the
afternoon spectacle of Fifth Avenue. It was a day in late April,
and the sweetness of spring was in the air. It mitigated the
ugliness of the long crowded thoroughfare, blurred the gaunt
roof-lines, threw a mauve veil over the discouraging perspective of
the side streets, and gave a touch of poetry to the delicate haze
of green that marked the entrance to the Park.

As Lily stood there, she recognized several familiar faces in the
passing carriages. The season was over, and its ruling forces had
disbanded; but a few still lingered, delaying their departure for
Europe, or passing through town on their return from the South.
Among them was Mrs. Van Osburgh, swaying majestically in her
C-spring barouche, with Mrs. Percy Gryce at her side, and the new
heir to the Gryce millions enthroned before them on his nurse’s
knees. They were succeeded by Mrs. Hatch’s electric victoria, in
which that lady reclined in the lonely splendour of a spring toilet
obviously designed for company; and a moment or two later came Judy
Trenor, accompanied by Lady Skiddaw, who had come over for her
annual tarpon fishing and a dip into “the street.”

This fleeting glimpse of her past served to emphasize the sense
of aimlessness with which Lily at length turned toward home. She
had nothing to do for the rest of the day, nor for the days to
come; for the season was over in millinery as well as in society,
and a week earlier Mme. Regina had notified her that her services
were no longer required. Mme. Regina always reduced her staff on
the first of May, and Miss Bart’s attendance had of late been so
irregular—she had so often been unwell, and had done so little work
when she came—that it was only as a favour that her dismissal had
hitherto been deferred.

Lily did not question the justice of the decision. She was
conscious of having been forgetful, awkward and slow to learn. It
was bitter to acknowledge her inferiority even to herself, but the
fact had been brought home to her that as a bread-winner she could
never compete with professional ability. Since she had been brought
up to be ornamental, she could hardly blame herself for failing to
serve any practical purpose; but the discovery put an end to her
consoling sense of universal efficiency.

As she turned homeward her thoughts shrank in anticipation from the
fact that there would be nothing to get up for the next morning.
The luxury of lying late in bed was a pleasure belonging to the
life of ease; it had no part in the utilitarian existence of the
boarding-house. She liked to leave her room early, and to return to
it as late as possible; and she was walking slowly now in order to
postpone the detested approach to her doorstep.

But the doorstep, as she drew near it, acquired a sudden interest
from the fact that it was occupied—and indeed filled—by the
conspicuous figure of Mr. Rosedale, whose presence seemed to take
on an added amplitude from the meanness of his surroundings.

The sight stirred Lily with an irresistible sense of triumph.
Rosedale, a day or two after their chance meeting, had called to
enquire if she had recovered from her indisposition; but since
then she had not seen or heard from him, and his absence seemed
to betoken a struggle to keep away, to let her pass once more out
of his life. If this were the case, his return showed that the
struggle had been unsuccessful, for Lily knew he was not the man to
waste his time in an ineffectual sentimental dalliance. He was too
busy, too practical, and above all too much preoccupied with his
own advancement, to indulge in such unprofitable asides.

In the peacock-blue parlour, with its bunches of dried pampas
grass, and discoloured steel engravings of sentimental episodes,
he looked about him with unconcealed disgust, laying his hat
distrustfully on the dusty console adorned with a Rogers statuette.

Lily sat down on one of the plush and rosewood sofas, and he
deposited himself in a rocking-chair draped with a starched
antimacassar which scraped unpleasantly against the pink fold of
skin above his collar.

“My goodness—you can’t go on living here!” he exclaimed.

Lily smiled at his tone. “I am not sure that I can; but I have gone
over my expenses very carefully, and I rather think I shall be able
to manage it.”

“Be able to manage it? That’s not what I mean—it’s no place for
you!”

“It’s what I mean; for I have been out of work for the last week.”

“Out of work—out of work! What a way for you to talk! The idea
of your having to work—it’s preposterous.” He brought out his
sentences in short violent jerks, as though they were forced up
from a deep inner crater of indignation. “It’s a farce—a crazy
farce,” he repeated, his eyes fixed on the long vista of the room
reflected in the blotched glass between the windows.

Lily continued to meet his expostulations with a smile. “I don’t
know why I should regard myself as an exception——” she began.

“Because you ARE; that’s why; and your being in a place like this
is a damnable outrage. I can’t talk of it calmly.”

She had in truth never seen him so shaken out of his usual
glibness; and there was something almost moving to her in his
inarticulate struggle with his emotions.

He rose with a start which left the rocking-chair quivering on its
beam ends, and placed himself squarely before her.

“Look here, Miss Lily, I’m going to Europe next week: going over
to Paris and London for a couple of months—and I can’t leave you
like this. I can’t do it. I know it’s none of my business—you’ve
let me understand that often enough; but things are worse with you
now than they have been before, and you must see that you’ve got to
accept help from somebody. You spoke to me the other day about some
debt to Trenor. I know what you mean—and I respect you for feeling
as you do about it.”

A blush of surprise rose to Lily’s pale face, but before she could
interrupt him he had continued eagerly: “Well, I’ll lend you the
money to pay Trenor; and I won’t—I—see here, don’t take me up
till I’ve finished. What I mean is, it’ll be a plain business
arrangement, such as one man would make with another. Now, what
have you got to say against that?”

Lily’s blush deepened to a glow in which humiliation and gratitude
were mingled; and both sentiments revealed themselves in the
unexpected gentleness of her reply.

“Only this: that it is exactly what Gus Trenor proposed; and that
I can never again be sure of understanding the plainest business
arrangement.” Then, realizing that this answer contained a germ
of injustice, she added, even more kindly: “Not that I don’t
appreciate your kindness—that I’m not grateful for it. But a
business arrangement between us would in any case be impossible,
because I shall have no security to give when my debt to Gus Trenor
has been paid.”

Rosedale received this statement in silence: he seemed to feel the
note of finality in her voice, yet to be unable to accept it as
closing the question between them.

In the silence Lily had a clear perception of what was passing
through his mind. Whatever perplexity he felt as to the
inexorableness of her course—however little he penetrated its
motive—she saw that it unmistakably tended to strengthen her hold
over him. It was as though the sense in her of unexplained scruples
and resistances had the same attraction as the delicacy of feature,
the fastidiousness of manner, which gave her an external rarity,
an air of being impossible to match. As he advanced in social
experience this uniqueness had acquired a greater value for him,
as though he were a collector who had learned to distinguish minor
differences of design and quality in some long-coveted object.

Lily, perceiving all this, understood that he would marry her
at once, on the sole condition of a reconciliation with Mrs.
Dorset; and the temptation was the less easy to put aside because,
little by little, circumstances were breaking down her dislike
for Rosedale. The dislike, indeed, still subsisted; but it was
penetrated here and there by the perception of mitigating qualities
in him: of a certain gross kindliness, a rather helpless fidelity
of sentiment, which seemed to be struggling through the hard
surface of his material ambitions.

Reading his dismissal in her eyes, he held out his hand with a
gesture which conveyed something of this inarticulate conflict.

“If you’d only let me, I’d set you up over them all—I’d put you
where you could wipe your feet on ’em!” he declared; and it touched
her oddly to see that his new passion had not altered his old
standard of values.

* * * * *

Lily took no sleeping-drops that night. She lay awake viewing her
situation in the crude light which Rosedale’s visit had shed on
it. In fending off the offer he was so plainly ready to renew, had
she not sacrificed to one of those abstract notions of honour that
might be called the conventionalities of the moral life? What debt
did she owe to a social order which had condemned and banished her
without trial? She had never been heard in her own defence; she was
innocent of the charge on which she had been found guilty; and the
irregularity of her conviction might seem to justify the use of
methods as irregular in recovering her lost rights. Bertha Dorset,
to save herself, had not scrupled to ruin her by an open falsehood;
why should she hesitate to make private use of the facts that
chance had put in her way? After all, half the opprobrium of such
an act lies in the name attached to it. Call it blackmail and it
becomes unthinkable; but explain that it injures no one, and that
the rights regained by it were unjustly forfeited, and he must be a
formalist indeed who can find no plea in its defence.

The arguments pleading for it with Lily were the old unanswerable
ones of the personal situation: the sense of injury, the sense
of failure, the passionate craving for a fair chance against the
selfish despotism of society. She had learned by experience that
she had neither the aptitude nor the moral constancy to remake her
life on new lines; to become a worker among workers, and let the
world of luxury and pleasure sweep by her unregarded. She could not
hold herself much to blame for this ineffectiveness, and she was
perhaps less to blame than she believed. Inherited tendencies had
combined with early training to make her the highly specialized
product she was: an organism as helpless out of its narrow range as
the sea-anemone torn from the rock. She had been fashioned to adorn
and delight; to what other end does nature round the rose-leaf and
paint the humming-bird’s breast? And was it her fault that the
purely decorative mission is less easily and harmoniously fulfilled
among social beings than in the world of nature? That it is apt
to be hampered by material necessities or complicated by moral
scruples?

These last were the two antagonistic forces which fought out their
battle in her breast during the long watches of the night; and
when she rose the next morning she hardly knew where the victory
lay. She was exhausted by the reaction of a night without sleep,
coming after many nights of rest artificially obtained; and in the
distorting light of fatigue the future stretched out before her
grey, interminable and desolate.

She lay late in bed, refusing the coffee and fried eggs which the
friendly Irish servant thrust through her door, and hating the
intimate domestic noises of the house and the cries and rumblings
of the street. Her week of idleness had brought home to her with
exaggerated force these small aggravations of the boarding-house
world, and she yearned for that other luxurious world, whose
machinery is so carefully concealed that one scene flows into
another without perceptible agency.

At length she rose and dressed. Since she had left Mme. Regina’s
she had spent her days in the streets, partly to escape from the
uncongenial promiscuities of the boarding-house, and partly in the
hope that physical fatigue would help her to sleep. But once out of
the house, she could not decide where to go; for she had avoided
Gerty since her dismissal from the milliner’s, and she was not sure
of a welcome anywhere else.

The morning was in harsh contrast to the previous day. A cold grey
sky threatened rain, and a high wind drove the dust in wild spirals
up and down the streets. Lily walked up Fifth Avenue toward the
Park, hoping to find a sheltered nook where she might sit; but the
wind chilled her, and after an hour’s wandering under the tossing
boughs she yielded to her increasing weariness, and took refuge in
a little restaurant in Fifty-ninth Street. She was not hungry, and
had meant to go without luncheon; but she was too tired to return
home, and the long perspective of white tables showed alluringly
through the windows.

The room was full of women and girls, all too much engaged in the
rapid absorption of tea and pie to remark her entrance. A hum
of shrill voices reverberated against the low ceiling, leaving
Lily shut out in a little circle of silence. She felt a sudden
pang of profound loneliness. She had lost the sense of time, and
it seemed to her as though she had not spoken to any one for
days. Her eyes sought the faces about her, craving a responsive
glance, some sign of an intuition of her trouble. But the sallow
preoccupied women, with their bags and note-books and rolls of
music, were all engrossed in their own affairs, and even those who
sat by themselves were busy running over proof-sheets or devouring
magazines between their hurried gulps of tea. Lily alone was
stranded in a great waste of disoccupation.

She drank several cups of the tea which was served with her portion
of stewed oysters, and her brain felt clearer and livelier when
she emerged once more into the street. She realized now that, as
she sat in the restaurant, she had unconsciously arrived at a
final decision. The discovery gave her an immediate illusion of
activity: it was exhilarating to think that she had actually a
reason for hurrying home. To prolong her enjoyment of the sensation
she decided to walk; but the distance was so great that she found
herself glancing nervously at the clocks on the way. One of the
surprises of her unoccupied state was the discovery that time, when
it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot
be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters; but
just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly
break into a wild irrational gallop.

She found, however, on reaching home, that the hour was still early
enough for her to sit down and rest a few minutes before putting
her plan into execution. The delay did not perceptibly weaken her
resolve. She was frightened and yet stimulated by the reserved
force of resolution which she felt within herself: she saw it was
going to be easier, a great deal easier, than she had imagined.

At five o’clock she rose, unlocked her trunk, and took out a
sealed packet which she slipped into the bosom of her dress. Even
the contact with the packet did not shake her nerves as she had
half-expected it would. She seemed encased in a strong armour of
indifference, as though the vigorous exertion of her will had
finally benumbed her finer sensibilities.

She dressed herself once more for the street, locked her door and
went out. When she emerged on the pavement, the day was still
high, but a threat of rain darkened the sky and cold gusts shook
the signs projecting from the basement shops along the street. She
reached Fifth Avenue and began to walk slowly northward. She was
sufficiently familiar with Mrs. Dorset’s habits to know that she
could always be found at home after five. She might not, indeed, be
accessible to visitors, especially to a visitor so unwelcome, and
against whom it was quite possible that she had guarded herself by
special orders; but Lily had written a note which she meant to send
up with her name, and which she thought would secure her admission.

She had allowed herself time to walk to Mrs. Dorset’s, thinking
that the quick movement through the cold evening air would help
to steady her nerves; but she really felt no need of being
tranquillized. Her survey of the situation remained calm and
unwavering.

As she reached Fiftieth Street the clouds broke abruptly, and
a rush of cold rain slanted into her face. She had no umbrella
and the moisture quickly penetrated her thin spring dress. She
was still half a mile from her destination, and she decided to
walk across to Madison Avenue and take the electric car. As she
turned into the side street, a vague memory stirred in her. The
row of budding trees, the new brick and limestone house-fronts,
the Georgian flat-house with flower-boxes on its balconies, were
merged together into the setting of a familiar scene. It was
down this street that she had walked with Selden, that September
day two years ago; a few yards ahead was the doorway they had
entered together. The recollection loosened a throng of benumbed
sensations—longings, regrets, imaginings, the throbbing brood of
the only spring her heart had ever known. It was strange to find
herself passing his house on such an errand. She seemed suddenly
to see her action as he would see it—and the fact of his own
connection with it, the fact that, to attain her end, she must
trade on his name, and profit by a secret of his past, chilled her
blood with shame. What a long way she had travelled since the day
of their first talk together! Even then her feet had been set in
the path she was now following—even then she had resisted the hand
he had held out.

All her resentment of his fancied coldness was swept away in this
overwhelming rush of recollection. Twice he had been ready to
help her—to help her by loving her, as he had said—and if, the
third time, he had seemed to fail her, whom but herself could she
accuse?... Well, that part of her life was over; she did not know
why her thoughts still clung to it. But the sudden longing to see
him remained; it grew to hunger as she paused on the pavement
opposite his door. The street was dark and empty, swept by the
rain. She had a vision of his quiet room, of the bookshelves,
and the fire on the hearth. She looked up and saw a light in his
window; then she crossed the street and entered the house.