The House of Mirth

ook II, Chapter 12

The library looked as she had pictured it. The green-shaded lamps
made tranquil circles of light in the gathering dusk, a little fire
flickered on the hearth, and Selden’s easy-chair, which stood near
it, had been pushed aside when he rose to admit her.

He had checked his first movement of surprise, and stood silent,
waiting for her to speak, while she paused a moment on the
threshold, assailed by a rush of memories.

The scene was unchanged. She recognized the row of shelves from
which he had taken down his La Bruyere, and the worn arm of the
chair he had leaned against while she examined the precious volume.
But then the wide September light had filled the room, making it
seem a part of the outer world: now the shaded lamps and the warm
hearth, detaching it from the gathering darkness of the street,
gave it a sweeter touch of intimacy.

Becoming gradually aware of the surprise under Selden’s silence,
Lily turned to him and said simply: “I came to tell you that I was
sorry for the way we parted—for what I said to you that day at Mrs.
Hatch’s.”

The words rose to her lips spontaneously. Even on her way up
the stairs, she had not thought of preparing a pretext for her
visit, but she now felt an intense longing to dispel the cloud of
misunderstanding that hung between them.

Selden returned her look with a smile. “I was sorry too that we
should have parted in that way; but I am not sure I didn’t bring it
on myself. Luckily I had foreseen the risk I was taking——”

“So that you really didn’t care——?” broke from her with a flash of
her old irony.

“So that I was prepared for the consequences,” he corrected
good-humouredly. “But we’ll talk of all this later. Do come and sit
by the fire. I can recommend that arm-chair, if you’ll let me put a
cushion behind you.”

While he spoke she had moved slowly to the middle of the room, and
paused near his writing-table, where the lamp, striking upward,
cast exaggerated shadows on the pallor of her delicately-hollowed
face.

“You look tired—do sit down,” he repeated gently.

She did not seem to hear the request. “I wanted you to know that I
left Mrs. Hatch immediately after I saw you,” she said, as though
continuing her confession.

“Yes—yes; I know,” he assented, with a rising tinge of
embarrassment.

“And that I did so because you told me to. Before you came I had
already begun to see that it would be impossible to remain with
her—for the reasons you gave me; but I wouldn’t admit it—I wouldn’t
let you see that I understood what you meant.”

“Ah, I might have trusted you to find your own way out—don’t
overwhelm me with the sense of my officiousness!”

His light tone, in which, had her nerves been steadier, she would
have recognized the mere effort to bridge over an awkward moment,
jarred on her passionate desire to be understood. In her strange
state of extra-lucidity, which gave her the sense of being already
at the heart of the situation, it seemed incredible that any one
should think it necessary to linger in the conventional outskirts
of word-play and evasion.

“It was not that—I was not ungrateful,” she insisted. But the power
of expression failed her suddenly; she felt a tremor in her throat,
and two tears gathered and fell slowly from her eyes.

Selden moved forward and took her hand. “You are very tired. Why
won’t you sit down and let me make you comfortable?”

He drew her to the arm-chair near the fire, and placed a cushion
behind her shoulders.

“And now you must let me make you some tea: you know I always have
that amount of hospitality at my command.”

She shook her head, and two more tears ran over. But she did not
weep easily, and the long habit of self-control reasserted itself,
though she was still too tremulous to speak.

“You know I can coax the water to boil in five minutes,” Selden
continued, speaking as though she were a troubled child.

His words recalled the vision of that other afternoon when they
had sat together over his tea-table and talked jestingly of her
future. There were moments when that day seemed more remote than
any other event in her life; and yet she could always relive it in
its minutest detail.

She made a gesture of refusal. “No: I drink too much tea. I would
rather sit quiet—I must go in a moment,” she added confusedly.

Selden continued to stand near her, leaning against the
mantelpiece. The tinge of constraint was beginning to be more
distinctly perceptible under the friendly ease of his manner. Her
self-absorption had not allowed her to perceive it at first; but
now that her consciousness was once more putting forth its eager
feelers, she saw that her presence was becoming an embarrassment
to him. Such a situation can be saved only by an immediate outrush
of feeling; and on Selden’s side the determining impulse was still
lacking.

The discovery did not disturb Lily as it might once have done.
She had passed beyond the phase of well-bred reciprocity, in
which every demonstration must be scrupulously proportioned to
the emotion it elicits, and generosity of feeling is the only
ostentation condemned. But the sense of loneliness returned with
redoubled force as she saw herself forever shut out from Selden’s
inmost self. She had come to him with no definite purpose; the mere
longing to see him had directed her; but the secret hope she had
carried with her suddenly revealed itself in its death-pang.

“I must go,” she repeated, making a motion to rise from her chair.
“But I may not see you again for a long time, and I wanted to
tell you that I have never forgotten the things you said to me at
Bellomont, and that sometimes—sometimes when I seemed farthest from
remembering them—they have helped me, and kept me from mistakes;
kept me from really becoming what many people have thought me.”

Strive as she would to put some order in her thoughts, the words
would not come more clearly; yet she felt that she could not leave
him without trying to make him understand that she had saved
herself whole from the seeming ruin of her life.

A change had come over Selden’s face as she spoke. Its guarded look
had yielded to an expression still untinged by personal emotion,
but full of a gentle understanding.

“I am glad to have you tell me that; but nothing I have said has
really made the difference. The difference is in yourself—it will
always be there. And since it IS there, it can’t really matter
to you what people think: you are so sure that your friends will
always understand you.”

“Ah, don’t say that—don’t say that what you have told me has made
no difference. It seems to shut me out—to leave me all alone
with the other people.” She had risen and stood before him, once
more completely mastered by the inner urgency of the moment. The
consciousness of his half-divined reluctance had vanished. Whether
he wished it or not, he must see her wholly for once before they
parted.

Her voice had gathered strength, and she looked him gravely in the
eyes as she continued. “Once—twice—you gave me the chance to escape
from my life, and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward.
Afterward I saw my mistake—I saw I could never be happy with what
had contented me before. But it was too late: you had judged me—I
understood. It was too late for happiness—but not too late to be
helped by the thought of what I had missed. That is all I have
lived on—don’t take it from me now! Even in my worst moments it has
been like a little light in the darkness. Some women are strong
enough to be good by themselves, but I needed the help of your
belief in me. Perhaps I might have resisted a great temptation, but
the little ones would have pulled me down. And then I remembered—I
remembered your saying that such a life could never satisfy me;
and I was ashamed to admit to myself that it could. That is what
you did for me—that is what I wanted to thank you for. I wanted to
tell you that I have always remembered; and that I have tried—tried
hard....”

She broke off suddenly. Her tears had risen again, and in drawing
out her handkerchief her fingers touched the packet in the folds
of her dress. A wave of colour suffused her, and the words died on
her lips. Then she lifted her eyes to his and went on in an altered
voice.

“I have tried hard—but life is difficult, and I am a very useless
person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I
was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and
when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else.
What can one do when one finds that one only fits into one hole?
One must get back to it or be thrown out into the rubbish heap—and
you don’t know what it’s like in the rubbish heap!”

Her lips wavered into a smile—she had been distracted by the
whimsical remembrance of the confidences she had made to him, two
years earlier, in that very room. Then she had been planning to
marry Percy Gryce—what was it she was planning now?

The blood had risen strongly under Selden’s dark skin, but his
emotion showed itself only in an added seriousness of manner.

“You have something to tell me—do you mean to marry?” he said
abruptly.

Lily’s eyes did not falter, but a look of wonder, of puzzled
self-interrogation, formed itself slowly in their depths. In
the light of his question, she had paused to ask herself if her
decision had really been taken when she entered the room.

“You always told me I should have to come to it sooner or later!”
she said with a faint smile.

“And you have come to it now?”

“I shall have to come to it—presently. But there is something else
I must come to first.” She paused again, trying to transmit to her
voice the steadiness of her recovered smile. “There is some one
I must say goodbye to. Oh, not YOU—we are sure to see each other
again—but the Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this
time, but now we are going to part, and I have brought her back
to you—I am going to leave her here. When I go out presently she
will not go with me. I shall like to think that she has stayed with
you—and she’ll be no trouble, she’ll take up no room.”

She went toward him, and put out her hand, still smiling. “Will you
let her stay with you?” she asked.

He caught her hand, and she felt in his the vibration of feeling
that had not yet risen to his lips. “Lily—can’t I help you?” he
exclaimed.

She looked at him gently. “Do you remember what you said to me
once? That you could help me only by loving me? Well—you did love
me for a moment; and it helped me. It has always helped me. But the
moment is gone—it was I who let it go. And one must go on living.
Goodbye.”

She laid her other hand on his, and they looked at each other with
a kind of solemnity, as though they stood in the presence of death.
Something in truth lay dead between them—the love she had killed in
him and could no longer call to life. But something lived between
them also, and leaped up in her like an imperishable flame: it was
the love his love had kindled, the passion of her soul for his.

In its light everything else dwindled and fell away from her. She
understood now that she could not go forth and leave her old self
with him: that self must indeed live on in his presence, but it
must still continue to be hers.

Selden had retained her hand, and continued to scrutinize her with
a strange sense of foreboding. The external aspect of the situation
had vanished for him as completely as for her: he felt it only as
one of those rare moments which lift the veil from their faces as
they pass.

“Lily,” he said in a low voice, “you mustn’t speak in this way. I
can’t let you go without knowing what you mean to do. Things may
change—but they don’t pass. You can never go out of my life.”

She met his eyes with an illumined look. “No,” she said. “I see
that now. Let us always be friends. Then I shall feel safe,
whatever happens.”

“Whatever happens? What do you mean? What is going to happen?”

She turned away quietly and walked toward the hearth.

“Nothing at present—except that I am very cold, and that before I
go you must make up the fire for me.”

She knelt on the hearth-rug, stretching her hands to the embers.
Puzzled by the sudden change in her tone, he mechanically gathered
a handful of wood from the basket and tossed it on the fire. As he
did so, he noticed how thin her hands looked against the rising
light of the flames. He saw too, under the loose lines of her
dress, how the curves of her figure had shrunk to angularity; he
remembered long afterward how the red play of the flame sharpened
the depression of her nostrils, and intensified the blackness of
the shadows which struck up from her cheekbones to her eyes. She
knelt there for a few moments in silence; a silence which he dared
not break. When she rose he fancied that he saw her draw something
from her dress and drop it into the fire; but he hardly noticed
the gesture at the time. His faculties seemed tranced, and he was
still groping for the word to break the spell. She went up to him
and laid her hands on his shoulders. “Goodbye,” she said, and as he
bent over her she touched his forehead with her lips.