The House of Mirth

ook I, Chapter 4

The next morning, on her breakfast tray, Miss Bart found a note
from her hostess.

“Dearest Lily,” it ran, “if it is not too much of a bore to be
down by ten, will you come to my sitting-room to help me with some
tiresome things?”

Lily tossed aside the note and subsided on her pillows with a sigh.
It WAS a bore to be down by ten—an hour regarded at Bellomont as
vaguely synchronous with sunrise—and she knew too well the nature
of the tiresome things in question. Miss Pragg, the secretary,
had been called away, and there would be notes and dinner-cards
to write, lost addresses to hunt up, and other social drudgery to
perform. It was understood that Miss Bart should fill the gap in
such emergencies, and she usually recognized the obligation without
a murmur.

Today, however, it renewed the sense of servitude which the
previous night’s review of her cheque-book had produced. Everything
in her surroundings ministered to feelings of ease and amenity.
The windows stood open to the sparkling freshness of the September
morning, and between the yellow boughs she caught a perspective of
hedges and parterres leading by degrees of lessening formality to
the free undulations of the park. Her maid had kindled a little
fire on the hearth, and it contended cheerfully with the sunlight
which slanted across the moss-green carpet and caressed the curved
sides of an old marquetry desk. Near the bed stood a table holding
her breakfast tray, with its harmonious porcelain and silver,
a handful of violets in a slender glass, and the morning paper
folded beneath her letters. There was nothing new to Lily in these
tokens of a studied luxury; but, though they formed a part of her
atmosphere, she never lost her sensitiveness to their charm. Mere
display left her with a sense of superior distinction; but she felt
an affinity to all the subtler manifestations of wealth.

Mrs. Trenor’s summons, however, suddenly recalled her state of
dependence, and she rose and dressed in a mood of irritability that
she was usually too prudent to indulge. She knew that such emotions
leave lines on the face as well as in the character, and she had
meant to take warning by the little creases which her midnight
survey had revealed.

The matter of course tone of Mrs. Trenor’s greeting deepened her
irritation. If one did drag one’s self out of bed at such an hour,
and come down fresh and radiant to the monotony of note-writing,
some special recognition of the sacrifice seemed fitting. But Mrs.
Trenor’s tone showed no consciousness of the fact.

“Oh, Lily, that’s nice of you,” she merely sighed across the
chaos of letters, bills and other domestic documents which gave
an incongruously commercial touch to the slender elegance of her
writing-table.

“There are such lots of horrors this morning,” she added, clearing
a space in the centre of the confusion and rising to yield her seat
to Miss Bart.

Mrs. Trenor was a tall fair woman, whose height just saved her
from redundancy. Her rosy blondness had survived some forty years
of futile activity without showing much trace of ill-usage except
in a diminished play of feature. It was difficult to define her
beyond saying that she seemed to exist only as a hostess, not so
much from any exaggerated instinct of hospitality as because she
could not sustain life except in a crowd. The collective nature
of her interests exempted her from the ordinary rivalries of her
sex, and she knew no more personal emotion than that of hatred for
the woman who presumed to give bigger dinners or have more amusing
house-parties than herself. As her social talents, backed by Mr.
Trenor’s bank-account, almost always assured her ultimate triumph
in such competitions, success had developed in her an unscrupulous
good nature toward the rest of her sex, and in Miss Bart’s
utilitarian classification of her friends, Mrs. Trenor ranked as
the woman who was least likely to “go back” on her.

“It was simply inhuman of Pragg to go off now,” Mrs. Trenor
declared, as her friend seated herself at the desk. “She says her
sister is going to have a baby—as if that were anything to having
a house-party! I’m sure I shall get most horribly mixed up and
there will be some awful rows. When I was down at Tuxedo I asked a
lot of people for next week, and I’ve mislaid the list and can’t
remember who is coming. And this week is going to be a horrid
failure too—and Gwen Van Osburgh will go back and tell her mother
how bored people were. I did mean to ask the Wetheralls—that was a
blunder of Gus’s. They disapprove of Carry Fisher, you know. As if
one could help having Carry Fisher! It WAS foolish of her to get
that second divorce—Carry always overdoes things—but she said the
only way to get a penny out of Fisher was to divorce him and make
him pay alimony. And poor Carry has to consider every dollar. It’s
really absurd of Alice Wetherall to make such a fuss about meeting
her, when one thinks of what society is coming to. Some one said
the other day that there was a divorce and a case of appendicitis
in every family one knows. Besides, Carry is the only person who
can keep Gus in a good humour when we have bores in the house. Have
you noticed that ALL the husbands like her? All, I mean, except her
own. It’s rather clever of her to have made a specialty of devoting
herself to dull people—the field is such a large one, and she has
it practically to herself. She finds compensations, no doubt—I know
she borrows money of Gus—but then I’d PAY her to keep him in a good
humour, so I can’t complain, after all.”

Mrs. Trenor paused to enjoy the spectacle of Miss Bart’s efforts to
unravel her tangled correspondence.

“But it is only the Wetheralls and Carry,” she resumed, with a
fresh note of lament. “The truth is, I’m awfully disappointed in
Lady Cressida Raith.”

“Disappointed? Had you known her before?”

“Mercy, no—never saw her till yesterday. Lady Skiddaw sent her
over with letters to the Van Osburghs, and I heard that Maria Van
Osburgh was asking a big party to meet her this week, so I thought
it would be fun to get her away, and Jack Stepney, who knew her
in India, managed it for me. Maria was furious, and actually had
the impudence to make Gwen invite herself here, so that they
shouldn’t be QUITE out of it—if I’d known what Lady Cressida was
like, they could have had her and welcome! But I thought any
friend of the Skiddaws’ was sure to be amusing. You remember what
fun Lady Skiddaw was? There were times when I simply had to send
the girls out of the room. Besides, Lady Cressida is the Duchess
of Beltshire’s sister, and I naturally supposed she was the same
sort; but you never can tell in those English families. They are
so big that there’s room for all kinds, and it turns out that Lady
Cressida is the moral one—married a clergyman and does missionary
work in the East End. Think of my taking such a lot of trouble
about a clergyman’s wife, who wears Indian jewelry and botanizes!
She made Gus take her all through the glass-houses yesterday, and
bothered him to death by asking him the names of the plants. Fancy
treating Gus as if he were the gardener!”

Mrs. Trenor brought this out in a CRESCENDO of indignation.

“Oh, well, perhaps Lady Cressida will reconcile the Wetheralls to
meeting Carry Fisher,” said Miss Bart pacifically.

“I’m sure I hope so! But she is boring all the men horribly, and
if she takes to distributing tracts, as I hear she does, it will
be too depressing. The worst of it is that she would have been so
useful at the right time. You know we have to have the Bishop once
a year, and she would have given just the right tone to things.
I always have horrid luck about the Bishop’s visits,” added Mrs.
Trenor, whose present misery was being fed by a rapidly rising tide
of reminiscence; “last year, when he came, Gus forgot all about his
being here, and brought home the Ned Wintons and the Farleys—five
divorces and six sets of children between them!”

“When is Lady Cressida going?” Lily enquired.

Mrs. Trenor cast up her eyes in despair. “My dear, if one only
knew! I was in such a hurry to get her away from Maria that I
actually forgot to name a date, and Gus says she told some one she
meant to stop here all winter.”

“To stop here? In this house?”

“Don’t be silly—in America. But if no one else asks her—you know
they NEVER go to hotels.”

“Perhaps Gus only said it to frighten you.”

“No—I heard her tell Bertha Dorset that she had six months to put
in while her husband was taking the cure in the Engadine. You
should have seen Bertha look vacant! But it’s no joke, you know—if
she stays here all the autumn she’ll spoil everything, and Maria
Van Osburgh will simply exult.”

At this affecting vision Mrs. Trenor’s voice trembled with
self-pity.

“Oh, Judy—as if any one were ever bored at Bellomont!” Miss Bart
tactfully protested. “You know perfectly well that, if Mrs. Van
Osburgh were to get all the right people and leave you with all the
wrong ones, you’d manage to make things go off, and she wouldn’t.”

Such an assurance would usually have restored Mrs. Trenor’s
complacency; but on this occasion it did not chase the cloud from
her brow.

“It isn’t only Lady Cressida,” she lamented. “Everything has gone
wrong this week. I can see that Bertha Dorset is furious with me.”

“Furious with you? Why?”

“Because I told her that Lawrence Selden was coming; but he
wouldn’t, after all, and she’s quite unreasonable enough to think
it’s my fault.”

Miss Bart put down her pen and sat absently gazing at the note she
had begun.

“I thought that was all over,” she said.

“So it is, on his side. And of course Bertha has been idle since.
But I fancy she’s out of a job just at present—and some one gave me
a hint that I had better ask Lawrence. Well, I DID ask him—but I
couldn’t make him come; and now I suppose she’ll take it out of me
by being perfectly nasty to every one else.”

“Oh, she may take it out of HIM by being perfectly charming—to some
one else.”

Mrs. Trenor shook her head dolefully. “She knows he wouldn’t mind.
And who else is there? Alice Wetherall won’t let Lucius out of her
sight. Ned Silverton can’t take his eyes off Carry Fisher—poor boy!
Gus is bored by Bertha, Jack Stepney knows her too well—and—well,
to be sure, there’s Percy Gryce!”

She sat up smiling at the thought.

Miss Bart’s countenance did not reflect the smile.

“Oh, she and Mr. Gryce would not be likely to hit it off.”

“You mean that she’d shock him and he’d bore her? Well, that’s not
such a bad beginning, you know. But I hope she won’t take it into
her head to be nice to him, for I asked him here on purpose for
you.”

Lily laughed. “MERCI DU COMPLIMENT! I should certainly have no show
against Bertha.”

“Do you think I am uncomplimentary? I’m not really, you know. Every
one knows you’re a thousand times handsomer and cleverer than
Bertha; but then you’re not nasty. And for always getting what she
wants in the long run, commend me to a nasty woman.”

Miss Bart stared in affected reproval. “I thought you were so fond
of Bertha.”

“Oh, I am—it’s much safer to be fond of dangerous people. But she
IS dangerous—and if I ever saw her up to mischief it’s now. I can
tell by poor George’s manner. That man is a perfect barometer—he
always knows when Bertha is going to——”

“To fall?” Miss Bart suggested.

“Don’t be shocking! You know he believes in her still. And of
course I don’t say there’s any real harm in Bertha. Only she
delights in making people miserable, and especially poor George.”

“Well, he seems cut out for the part—I don’t wonder she likes more
cheerful companionship.”

“Oh, George is not as dismal as you think. If Bertha did worry him
he would be quite different. Or if she’d leave him alone, and let
him arrange his life as he pleases. But she doesn’t dare lose her
hold of him on account of the money, and so when HE isn’t jealous
she pretends to be.”

Miss Bart went on writing in silence, and her hostess sat following
her train of thought with frowning intensity.

“Do you know,” she exclaimed after a long pause, “I believe I’ll
call up Lawrence on the telephone and tell him he simply MUST come?”

“Oh, don’t,” said Lily, with a quick suffusion of colour. The blush
surprised her almost as much as it did her hostess, who, though
not commonly observant of facial changes, sat staring at her with
puzzled eyes.

“Good gracious, Lily, how handsome you are! Why? Do you dislike him
so much?”

“Not at all; I like him. But if you are actuated by the benevolent
intention of protecting me from Bertha—I don’t think I need your
protection.”

Mrs. Trenor sat up with an exclamation. “Lily!——PERCY? Do you mean
to say you’ve actually done it?”

Miss Bart smiled. “I only mean to say that Mr. Gryce and I are
getting to be very good friends.”

“H’m—I see.” Mrs. Trenor fixed a rapt eye upon her. “You know they
say he has eight hundred thousand a year—and spends nothing, except
on some rubbishy old books. And his mother has heart-disease and
will leave him a lot more. OH, LILY, DO GO SLOWLY,” her friend
adjured her.

Miss Bart continued to smile without annoyance. “I shouldn’t, for
instance,” she remarked, “be in any haste to tell him that he had a
lot of rubbishy old books.”

“No, of course not; I know you’re wonderful about getting up
people’s subjects. But he’s horribly shy, and easily shocked,
and—and——”

“Why don’t you say it, Judy? I have the reputation of being on the
hunt for a rich husband?”

“Oh, I don’t mean that; he wouldn’t believe it of you—at first,”
said Mrs. Trenor, with candid shrewdness. “But you know things are
rather lively here at times—I must give Jack and Gus a hint—and
if he thought you were what his mother would call fast—oh, well,
you know what I mean. Don’t wear your scarlet CREPE-DE-CHINE for
dinner, and don’t smoke if you can help it, Lily dear!”

Lily pushed aside her finished work with a dry smile. “You’re very
kind, Judy: I’ll lock up my cigarettes and wear that last year’s
dress you sent me this morning. And if you are really interested
in my career, perhaps you’ll be kind enough not to ask me to play
bridge again this evening.”

“Bridge? Does he mind bridge, too? Oh, Lily, what an awful life
you’ll lead! But of course I won’t—why didn’t you give me a hint
last night? There’s nothing I wouldn’t do, you poor duck, to see
you happy!”

And Mrs. Trenor, glowing with her sex’s eagerness to smooth the
course of true love, enveloped Lily in a long embrace.

“You’re quite sure,” she added solicitously, as the latter
extricated herself, “that you wouldn’t like me to telephone for
Lawrence Selden?”

“Quite sure,” said Lily.

* * * * *

The next three days demonstrated to her own complete satisfaction
Miss Bart’s ability to manage her affairs without extraneous aid.

As she sat, on the Saturday afternoon, on the terrace at Bellomont,
she smiled at Mrs. Trenor’s fear that she might go too fast. If
such a warning had ever been needful, the years had taught her a
salutary lesson, and she flattered herself that she now knew how to
adapt her pace to the object of pursuit. In the case of Mr. Gryce
she had found it well to flutter ahead, losing herself elusively
and luring him on from depth to depth of unconscious intimacy. The
surrounding atmosphere was propitious to this scheme of courtship.
Mrs. Trenor, true to her word, had shown no signs of expecting Lily
at the bridge-table, and had even hinted to the other card-players
that they were to betray no surprise at her unwonted defection. In
consequence of this hint, Lily found herself the centre of that
feminine solicitude which envelops a young woman in the mating
season. A solitude was tacitly created for her in the crowded
existence of Bellomont, and her friends could not have shown a
greater readiness for self-effacement had her wooing been adorned
with all the attributes of romance. In Lily’s set this conduct
implied a sympathetic comprehension of her motives, and Mr. Gryce
rose in her esteem as she saw the consideration he inspired.

The terrace at Bellomont on a September afternoon was a spot
propitious to sentimental musings, and as Miss Bart stood leaning
against the balustrade above the sunken garden, at a little
distance from the animated group about the tea-table, she might
have been lost in the mazes of an inarticulate happiness. In
reality, her thoughts were finding definite utterance in the
tranquil recapitulation of the blessings in store for her. From
where she stood she could see them embodied in the form of Mr.
Gryce, who, in a light overcoat and muffler, sat somewhat nervously
on the edge of his chair, while Carry Fisher, with all the energy
of eye and gesture with which nature and art had combined to
endow her, pressed on him the duty of taking part in the task of
municipal reform.

Mrs. Fisher’s latest hobby was municipal reform. It had been
preceded by an equal zeal for socialism, which had in turn replaced
an energetic advocacy of Christian Science. Mrs. Fisher was
small, fiery and dramatic; and her hands and eyes were admirable
instruments in the service of whatever causes she happened to
espouse. She had, however, the fault common to enthusiasts of
ignoring any slackness of response on the part of her hearers, and
Lily was amused by her unconsciousness of the resistance displayed
in every angle of Mr. Gryce’s attitude. Lily herself knew that
his mind was divided between the dread of catching cold if he
remained out of doors too long at that hour, and the fear that, if
he retreated to the house, Mrs. Fisher might follow him up with a
paper to be signed. Mr. Gryce had a constitutional dislike to what
he called “committing himself,” and tenderly as he cherished his
health, he evidently concluded that it was safer to stay out of
reach of pen and ink till chance released him from Mrs. Fisher’s
toils. Meanwhile he cast agonized glances in the direction of Miss
Bart, whose only response was to sink into an attitude of more
graceful abstraction. She had learned the value of contrast in
throwing her charms into relief, and was fully aware of the extent
to which Mrs. Fisher’s volubility was enhancing her own repose.

She was roused from her musings by the approach of her cousin Jack
Stepney who, at Gwen Van Osburgh’s side, was returning across the
garden from the tennis court.

The couple in question were engaged in the same kind of romance
in which Lily figured, and the latter felt a certain annoyance in
contemplating what seemed to her a caricature of her own situation.
Miss Van Osburgh was a large girl with flat surfaces and no high
lights: Jack Stepney had once said of her that she was as reliable
as roast mutton. His own taste was in the line of less solid and
more highly-seasoned diet; but hunger makes any fare palatable, and
there had been times when Mr. Stepney had been reduced to a crust.

Lily considered with interest the expression of their faces: the
girl’s turned toward her companion’s like an empty plate held up to
be filled, while the man lounging at her side already betrayed the
encroaching boredom which would presently crack the thin veneer of
his smile.

“How impatient men are!” Lily reflected. “All Jack has to do to get
everything he wants is to keep quiet and let that girl marry him;
whereas I have to calculate and contrive, and retreat and advance,
as if I were going through an intricate dance, where one misstep
would throw me hopelessly out of time.”

As they drew nearer she was whimsically struck by a kind of family
likeness between Miss Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. There was no
resemblance of feature. Gryce was handsome in a didactic way—he
looked like a clever pupil’s drawing from a plaster-cast—while
Gwen’s countenance had no more modelling than a face painted on
a toy balloon. But the deeper affinity was unmistakable: the two
had the same prejudices and ideals, and the same quality of making
other standards non-existent by ignoring them. This attribute was
common to most of Lily’s set: they had a force of negation which
eliminated everything beyond their own range of perception. Gryce
and Miss Van Osburgh were, in short, made for each other by every
law of moral and physical correspondence——“Yet they wouldn’t look
at each other,” Lily mused, “they never do. Each of them wants a
creature of a different race, of Jack’s race and mine, with all
sorts of intuitions, sensations and perceptions that they don’t
even guess the existence of. And they always get what they want.”

She stood talking with her cousin and Miss Van Osburgh, till a
slight cloud on the latter’s brow advised her that even cousinly
amenities were subject to suspicion, and Miss Bart, mindful of the
necessity of not exciting enmities at this crucial point of her
career, dropped aside while the happy couple proceeded toward the
tea-table.

Seating herself on the upper step of the terrace, Lily leaned
her head against the honeysuckles wreathing the balustrade. The
fragrance of the late blossoms seemed an emanation of the tranquil
scene, a landscape tutored to the last degree of rural elegance.
In the foreground glowed the warm tints of the gardens. Beyond the
lawn, with its pyramidal pale-gold maples and velvety firs, sloped
pastures dotted with cattle; and through a long glade the river
widened like a lake under the silver light of September. Lily did
not want to join the circle about the tea-table. They represented
the future she had chosen, and she was content with it, but in no
haste to anticipate its joys. The certainty that she could marry
Percy Gryce when she pleased had lifted a heavy load from her
mind, and her money troubles were too recent for their removal not
to leave a sense of relief which a less discerning intelligence
might have taken for happiness. Her vulgar cares were at an end.
She would be able to arrange her life as she pleased, to soar
into that empyrean of security where creditors cannot penetrate.
She would have smarter gowns than Judy Trenor, and far, far more
jewels than Bertha Dorset. She would be free forever from the
shifts, the expedients, the humiliations of the relatively poor.
Instead of having to flatter, she would be flattered; instead of
being grateful, she would receive thanks. There were old scores
she could pay off as well as old benefits she could return. And
she had no doubts as to the extent of her power. She knew that Mr.
Gryce was of the small chary type most inaccessible to impulses
and emotions. He had the kind of character in which prudence is
a vice, and good advice the most dangerous nourishment. But Lily
had known the species before: she was aware that such a guarded
nature must find one huge outlet of egoism, and she determined to
be to him what his Americana had hitherto been: the one possession
in which he took sufficient pride to spend money on it. She knew
that this generosity to self is one of the forms of meanness, and
she resolved so to identify herself with her husband’s vanity that
to gratify her wishes would be to him the most exquisite form of
self-indulgence. The system might at first necessitate a resort
to some of the very shifts and expedients from which she intended
it should free her; but she felt sure that in a short time she
would be able to play the game in her own way. How should she have
distrusted her powers? Her beauty itself was not the mere ephemeral
possession it might have been in the hands of inexperience: her
skill in enhancing it, the care she took of it, the use she made
of it, seemed to give it a kind of permanence. She felt she could
trust it to carry her through to the end.

And the end, on the whole, was worthwhile. Life was not the mockery
she had thought it three days ago. There was room for her, after
all, in this crowded selfish world of pleasure whence, so short a
time since, her poverty had seemed to exclude her. These people
whom she had ridiculed and yet envied were glad to make a place for
her in the charmed circle about which all her desires revolved.
They were not as brutal and self-engrossed as she had fancied—or
rather, since it would no longer be necessary to flatter and humour
them, that side of their nature became less conspicuous. Society is
a revolving body which is apt to be judged according to its place
in each man’s heaven; and at present it was turning its illuminated
face to Lily.

In the rosy glow it diffused her companions seemed full of amiable
qualities. She liked their elegance, their lightness, their lack
of emphasis: even the self-assurance which at times was so like
obtuseness now seemed the natural sign of social ascendency. They
were lords of the only world she cared for, and they were ready to
admit her to their ranks and let her lord it with them. Already
she felt within her a stealing allegiance to their standards, an
acceptance of their limitations, a disbelief in the things they did
not believe in, a contemptuous pity for the people who were not
able to live as they lived.

The early sunset was slanting across the park. Through the boughs
of the long avenue beyond the gardens she caught the flash of
wheels, and divined that more visitors were approaching. There
was a movement behind her, a scattering of steps and voices:
it was evident that the party about the tea-table was breaking
up. Presently she heard a tread behind her on the terrace. She
supposed that Mr. Gryce had at last found means to escape from his
predicament, and she smiled at the significance of his coming to
join her instead of beating an instant retreat to the fireside.

She turned to give him the welcome which such gallantry deserved;
but her greeting wavered into a blush of wonder, for the man who
had approached her was Lawrence Selden.

“You see I came after all,” he said; but before she had time
to answer, Mrs. Dorset, breaking away from a lifeless colloquy
with her host, had stepped between them with a little gesture of
appropriation.