The House of Mirth

ook I, Chapter 9

In Mrs. Peniston’s youth, fashion had returned to town in October;
therefore on the tenth day of the month the blinds of her Fifth
Avenue residence were drawn up, and the eyes of the Dying Gladiator
in bronze who occupied the drawing-room window resumed their survey
of that deserted thoroughfare.

The first two weeks after her return represented to Mrs. Peniston
the domestic equivalent of a religious retreat. She “went through”
the linen and blankets in the precise spirit of the penitent
exploring the inner folds of conscience; she sought for moths
as the stricken soul seeks for lurking infirmities. The topmost
shelf of every closet was made to yield up its secret, cellar and
coal-bin were probed to their darkest depths and, as a final stage
in the lustral rites, the entire house was swathed in penitential
white and deluged with expiatory soapsuds.

It was on this phase of the proceedings that Miss Bart entered
on the afternoon of her return from the Van Osburgh wedding. The
journey back to town had not been calculated to soothe her nerves.
Though Evie Van Osburgh’s engagement was still officially a secret,
it was one of which the innumerable intimate friends of the family
were already possessed; and the trainful of returning guests buzzed
with allusions and anticipations. Lily was acutely aware of her
own part in this drama of innuendo: she knew the exact quality
of the amusement the situation evoked. The crude forms in which
her friends took their pleasure included a loud enjoyment of such
complications: the zest of surprising destiny in the act of playing
a practical joke. Lily knew well enough how to bear herself in
difficult situations. She had, to a shade, the exact manner between
victory and defeat: every insinuation was shed without an effort
by the bright indifference of her manner. But she was beginning to
feel the strain of the attitude; the reaction was more rapid, and
she lapsed to a deeper self-disgust.

As was always the case with her, this moral repulsion found a
physical outlet in a quickened distaste for her surroundings. She
revolted from the complacent ugliness of Mrs. Peniston’s black
walnut, from the slippery gloss of the vestibule tiles, and the
mingled odour of sapolio and furniture-polish that met her at the
door.

The stairs were still carpetless, and on the way up to her room she
was arrested on the landing by an encroaching tide of soapsuds.
Gathering up her skirts, she drew aside with an impatient gesture;
and as she did so she had the odd sensation of having already found
herself in the same situation but in different surroundings. It
seemed to her that she was again descending the staircase from
Selden’s rooms; and looking down to remonstrate with the dispenser
of the soapy flood, she found herself met by a lifted stare which
had once before confronted her under similar circumstances. It was
the char-woman of the Benedick who, resting on crimson elbows,
examined her with the same unflinching curiosity, the same apparent
reluctance to let her pass. On this occasion, however, Miss Bart
was on her own ground.

“Don’t you see that I wish to go by? Please move your pail,” she
said sharply.

The woman at first seemed not to hear; then, without a word of
excuse, she pushed back her pail and dragged a wet floor-cloth
across the landing, keeping her eyes fixed on Lily while the latter
swept by. It was insufferable that Mrs. Peniston should have such
creatures about the house; and Lily entered her room resolved that
the woman should be dismissed that evening.

Mrs. Peniston, however, was at the moment inaccessible to
remonstrance: since early morning she had been shut up with her
maid, going over her furs, a process which formed the culminating
episode in the drama of household renovation. In the evening also
Lily found herself alone, for her aunt, who rarely dined out, had
responded to the summons of a Van Alstyne cousin who was passing
through town. The house, in its state of unnatural immaculateness
and order, was as dreary as a tomb, and as Lily, turning from
her brief repast between shrouded sideboards, wandered into the
newly-uncovered glare of the drawing-room she felt as though
she were buried alive in the stifling limits of Mrs. Peniston’s
existence.

She usually contrived to avoid being at home during the season
of domestic renewal. On the present occasion, however, a variety
of reasons had combined to bring her to town; and foremost among
them was the fact that she had fewer invitations than usual for
the autumn. She had so long been accustomed to pass from one
country-house to another, till the close of the holidays brought
her friends to town, that the unfilled gaps of time confronting
her produced a sharp sense of waning popularity. It was as she
had said to Selden—people were tired of her. They would welcome
her in a new character, but as Miss Bart they knew her by heart.
She knew herself by heart too, and was sick of the old story.
There were moments when she longed blindly for anything different,
anything strange, remote and untried; but the utmost reach of
her imagination did not go beyond picturing her usual life in a
new setting. She could not figure herself as anywhere but in a
drawing-room, diffusing elegance as a flower sheds perfume.

Meanwhile, as October advanced she had to face the alternative
of returning to the Trenors or joining her aunt in town. Even
the desolating dulness of New York in October, and the soapy
discomforts of Mrs. Peniston’s interior, seemed preferable to what
might await her at Bellomont; and with an air of heroic devotion
she announced her intention of remaining with her aunt till the
holidays.

Sacrifices of this nature are sometimes received with feelings as
mixed as those which actuate them; and Mrs. Peniston remarked to
her confidential maid that, if any of the family were to be with
her at such a crisis (though for forty years she had been thought
competent to see to the hanging of her own curtains), she would
certainly have preferred Miss Grace to Miss Lily. Grace Stepney was
an obscure cousin, of adaptable manners and vicarious interests,
who “ran in” to sit with Mrs. Peniston when Lily dined out too
continuously; who played bezique, picked up dropped stitches, read
out the deaths from the Times, and sincerely admired the purple
satin drawing-room curtains, the Dying Gladiator in the window, and
the seven-by-five painting of Niagara which represented the one
artistic excess of Mr. Peniston’s temperate career.

Mrs. Peniston, under ordinary circumstances, was as much bored by
her excellent cousin as the recipient of such services usually
is by the person who performs them. She greatly preferred the
brilliant and unreliable Lily, who did not know one end of a
crochet-needle from the other, and had frequently wounded her
susceptibilities by suggesting that the drawing-room should be
“done over.” But when it came to hunting for missing napkins, or
helping to decide whether the backstairs needed re-carpeting,
Grace’s judgment was certainly sounder than Lily’s: not to mention
the fact that the latter resented the smell of beeswax and brown
soap, and behaved as though she thought a house ought to keep clean
of itself, without extraneous assistance.

Seated under the cheerless blaze of the drawing-room
chandelier—Mrs. Peniston never lit the lamps unless there was
“company”—Lily seemed to watch her own figure retreating down
vistas of neutral-tinted dulness to a middle-age like Grace
Stepney’s. When she ceased to amuse Judy Trenor and her friends she
would have to fall back on amusing Mrs. Peniston; whichever way she
looked she saw only a future of servitude to the whims of others,
never the possibility of asserting her own eager individuality.

A ring at the door-bell, sounding emphatically through the empty
house, roused her suddenly to the extent of her boredom. It was
as though all the weariness of the past months had culminated in
the vacuity of that interminable evening. If only the ring meant a
summons from the outer world—a token that she was still remembered
and wanted!

After some delay a parlour-maid presented herself with the
announcement that there was a person outside who was asking to see
Miss Bart; and on Lily’s pressing for a more specific description,
she added:

“It’s Mrs. Haffen, Miss; she won’t say what she wants.”

Lily, to whom the name conveyed nothing, opened the door upon a
woman in a battered bonnet, who stood firmly planted under the
hall-light. The glare of the unshaded gas shone familiarly on her
pock-marked face and the reddish baldness visible through thin
strands of straw-coloured hair. Lily looked at the char-woman in
surprise.

“Do you wish to see me?” she asked.

“I should like to say a word to you, Miss.” The tone was neither
aggressive nor conciliatory: it revealed nothing of the speaker’s
errand. Nevertheless, some precautionary instinct warned Lily to
withdraw beyond ear-shot of the hovering parlour-maid.

She signed to Mrs. Haffen to follow her into the drawing-room, and
closed the door when they had entered.

“What is it that you wish?” she enquired.

The char-woman, after the manner of her kind, stood with her arms
folded in her shawl. Unwinding the latter, she produced a small
parcel wrapped in dirty newspaper.

“I have something here that you might like to see, Miss Bart.”
She spoke the name with an unpleasant emphasis, as though her
knowing it made a part of her reason for being there. To Lily the
intonation sounded like a threat.

“You have found something belonging to me?” she asked, extending
her hand.

Mrs. Haffen drew back. “Well, if it comes to that, I guess it’s
mine as much as anybody’s,” she returned.

Lily looked at her perplexedly. She was sure, now, that her
visitor’s manner conveyed a threat; but, expert as she was in
certain directions, there was nothing in her experience to prepare
her for the exact significance of the present scene. She felt,
however, that it must be ended as promptly as possible.

“I don’t understand; if this parcel is not mine, why have you asked
for me?”

The woman was unabashed by the question. She was evidently prepared
to answer it, but like all her class she had to go a long way
back to make a beginning, and it was only after a pause that she
replied: “My husband was janitor to the Benedick till the first of
the month; since then he can’t get nothing to do.”

Lily remained silent and she continued: “It wasn’t no fault of our
own, neither: the agent had another man he wanted the place for,
and we was put out, bag and baggage, just to suit his fancy. I had
a long sickness last winter, and an operation that ate up all we’d
put by; and it’s hard for me and the children, Haffen being so long
out of a job.”

After all, then, she had come only to ask Miss Bart to find a
place for her husband; or, more probably, to seek the young lady’s
intervention with Mrs. Peniston. Lily had such an air of always
getting what she wanted that she was used to being appealed to as
an intermediary, and, relieved of her vague apprehension, she took
refuge in the conventional formula.

“I am sorry you have been in trouble,” she said.

“Oh, that we have, Miss, and it’s on’y just beginning. If on’y we’d
’a got another situation—but the agent, he’s dead against us. It
ain’t no fault of ours, neither, but——”

At this point Lily’s impatience overcame her. “If you have anything
to say to me——” she interposed.

The woman’s resentment of the rebuff seemed to spur her lagging
ideas.

“Yes, Miss; I’m coming to that,” she said. She paused again,
with her eyes on Lily, and then continued, in a tone of diffuse
narrative: “When we was at the Benedick I had charge of some of the
gentlemen’s rooms; leastways, I swep’ ’em out on Saturdays. Some
of the gentlemen got the greatest sight of letters: I never saw
the like of it. Their waste-paper baskets ’d be fairly brimming,
and papers falling over on the floor. Maybe havin’ so many is how
they get so careless. Some of ’em is worse than others. Mr. Selden,
Mr. Lawrence Selden, he was always one of the carefullest: burnt
his letters in winter, and tore ’em in little bits in summer. But
sometimes he’d have so many he’d just bunch ’em together, the way
the others did, and tear the lot through once—like this.”

While she spoke she had loosened the string from the parcel in her
hand, and now she drew forth a letter which she laid on the table
between Miss Bart and herself. As she had said, the letter was torn
in two; but with a rapid gesture she laid the torn edges together
and smoothed out the page.

A wave of indignation swept over Lily. She felt herself in the
presence of something vile, as yet but dimly conjectured—the kind
of vileness of which people whispered, but which she had never
thought of as touching her own life. She drew back with a motion
of disgust, but her withdrawal was checked by a sudden discovery:
under the glare of Mrs. Peniston’s chandelier she had recognized
the hand-writing of the letter. It was a large disjointed hand,
with a flourish of masculinity which but slightly disguised
its rambling weakness, and the words, scrawled in heavy ink on
pale-tinted notepaper, smote on Lily’s ear as though she had heard
them spoken.

At first she did not grasp the full import of the situation. She
understood only that before her lay a letter written by Bertha
Dorset, and addressed, presumably, to Lawrence Selden. There was
no date, but the blackness of the ink proved the writing to be
comparatively recent. The packet in Mrs. Haffen’s hand doubtless
contained more letters of the same kind—a dozen, Lily conjectured
from its thickness. The letter before her was short, but its few
words, which had leapt into her brain before she was conscious
of reading them, told a long history—a history over which, for
the last four years, the friends of the writer had smiled and
shrugged, viewing it merely as one among the countless “good
situations” of the mundane comedy. Now the other side presented
itself to Lily, the volcanic nether side of the surface over which
conjecture and innuendo glide so lightly till the first fissure
turns their whisper to a shriek. Lily knew that there is nothing
society resents so much as having given its protection to those who
have not known how to profit by it: it is for having betrayed its
connivance that the body social punishes the offender who is found
out. And in this case there was no doubt of the issue. The code
of Lily’s world decreed that a woman’s husband should be the only
judge of her conduct: she was technically above suspicion while
she had the shelter of his approval, or even of his indifference.
But with a man of George Dorset’s temper there could be no thought
of condonation—the possessor of his wife’s letters could overthrow
with a touch the whole structure of her existence. And into what
hands Bertha Dorset’s secret had been delivered! For a moment the
irony of the coincidence tinged Lily’s disgust with a confused
sense of triumph. But the disgust prevailed—all her instinctive
resistances, of taste, of training, of blind inherited scruples,
rose against the other feeling. Her strongest sense was one of
personal contamination.

She moved away, as though to put as much distance as possible
between herself and her visitor. “I know nothing of these letters,”
she said; “I have no idea why you have brought them here.”

Mrs. Haffen faced her steadily. “I’ll tell you why, Miss. I brought
’em to you to sell, because I ain’t got no other way of raising
money, and if we don’t pay our rent by tomorrow night we’ll be put
out. I never done anythin’ of the kind before, and if you’d speak
to Mr. Selden or to Mr. Rosedale about getting Haffen taken on
again at the Benedick—I seen you talking to Mr. Rosedale on the
steps that day you come out of Mr. Selden’s rooms——”

The blood rushed to Lily’s forehead. She understood now—Mrs. Haffen
supposed her to be the writer of the letters. In the first leap
of her anger she was about to ring and order the woman out; but
an obscure impulse restrained her. The mention of Selden’s name
had started a new train of thought. Bertha Dorset’s letters were
nothing to her—they might go where the current of chance carried
them! But Selden was inextricably involved in their fate. Men
do not, at worst, suffer much from such exposure; and in this
instance the flash of divination which had carried the meaning
of the letters to Lily’s brain had revealed also that they were
appeals—repeated and therefore probably unanswered—for the renewal
of a tie which time had evidently relaxed. Nevertheless, the fact
that the correspondence had been allowed to fall into strange hands
would convict Selden of negligence in a matter where the world
holds it least pardonable; and there were graver risks to consider
where a man of Dorset’s ticklish balance was concerned.

If she weighed all these things it was unconsciously: she was
aware only of feeling that Selden would wish the letters rescued,
and that therefore she must obtain possession of them. Beyond
that her mind did not travel. She had, indeed, a quick vision of
returning the packet to Bertha Dorset, and of the opportunities the
restitution offered; but this thought lit up abysses from which she
shrank back ashamed.

Meanwhile Mrs. Haffen, prompt to perceive her hesitation, had
already opened the packet and ranged its contents on the table. All
the letters had been pieced together with strips of thin paper.
Some were in small fragments, the others merely torn in half.
Though there were not many, thus spread out they nearly covered the
table. Lily’s glance fell on a word here and there—then she said in
a low voice: “What do you wish me to pay you?”

Mrs. Haffen’s face reddened with satisfaction. It was clear that
the young lady was badly frightened, and Mrs. Haffen was the woman
to make the most of such fears. Anticipating an easier victory than
she had foreseen, she named an exorbitant sum.

But Miss Bart showed herself a less ready prey than might have been
expected from her imprudent opening. She refused to pay the price
named, and after a moment’s hesitation, met it by a counter-offer
of half the amount.

Mrs. Haffen immediately stiffened. Her hand travelled toward the
outspread letters, and folding them slowly, she made as though to
restore them to their wrapping.

“I guess they’re worth more to you than to me, Miss, but the poor
has got to live as well as the rich,” she observed sententiously.

Lily was throbbing with fear, but the insinuation fortified her
resistance.

“You are mistaken,” she said indifferently. “I have offered all I
am willing to give for the letters; but there may be other ways of
getting them.”

Mrs. Haffen raised a suspicious glance: she was too experienced not
to know that the traffic she was engaged in had perils as great as
its rewards, and she had a vision of the elaborate machinery of
revenge which a word of this commanding young lady’s might set in
motion.

She applied the corner of her shawl to her eyes, and murmured
through it that no good came of bearing too hard on the poor, but
that for her part she had never been mixed up in such a business
before, and that on her honour as a Christian all she and Haffen
had thought of was that the letters mustn’t go any farther.

Lily stood motionless, keeping between herself and the char-woman
the greatest distance compatible with the need of speaking in low
tones. The idea of bargaining for the letters was intolerable to
her, but she knew that, if she appeared to weaken, Mrs. Haffen
would at once increase her original demand.

She could never afterward recall how long the duel lasted, or
what was the decisive stroke which finally, after a lapse of time
recorded in minutes by the clock, in hours by the precipitate beat
of her pulses, put her in possession of the letters; she knew only
that the door had finally closed, and that she stood alone with the
packet in her hand.

She had no idea of reading the letters; even to unfold Mrs.
Haffen’s dirty newspaper would have seemed degrading. But what did
she intend to do with its contents? The recipient of the letters
had meant to destroy them, and it was her duty to carry out his
intention. She had no right to keep them—to do so was to lessen
whatever merit lay in having secured their possession. But how
destroy them so effectually that there should be no second risk of
their falling in such hands? Mrs. Peniston’s icy drawing-room grate
shone with a forbidding lustre: the fire, like the lamps, was never
lit except when there was company.

Miss Bart was turning to carry the letters upstairs when she
heard the opening of the outer door, and her aunt entered the
drawing-room. Mrs. Peniston was a small plump woman, with a
colourless skin lined with trivial wrinkles. Her grey hair was
arranged with precision, and her clothes looked excessively new
and yet slightly old-fashioned. They were always black and tightly
fitting, with an expensive glitter: she was the kind of woman who
wore jet at breakfast. Lily had never seen her when she was not
cuirassed in shining black, with small tight boots, and an air of
being packed and ready to start; yet she never started.

She looked about the drawing-room with an expression of minute
scrutiny. “I saw a streak of light under one of the blinds as I
drove up: it’s extraordinary that I can never teach that woman to
draw them down evenly.”

Having corrected the irregularity, she seated herself on one of
the glossy purple arm-chairs; Mrs. Peniston always sat on a chair,
never in it.

Then she turned her glance to Miss Bart. “My dear, you look tired;
I suppose it’s the excitement of the wedding. Cornelia Van Alstyne
was full of it: Molly was there, and Gerty Farish ran in for a
minute to tell us about it. I think it was odd, their serving
melons before the CONSOMME: a wedding breakfast should always begin
with CONSOMME. Molly didn’t care for the bridesmaids’ dresses. She
had it straight from Julia Melson that they cost three hundred
dollars apiece at Celeste’s, but she says they didn’t look it. I’m
glad you decided not to be a bridesmaid; that shade of salmon-pink
wouldn’t have suited you.” Mrs. Peniston delighted in discussing
the minutest details of festivities in which she had not taken
part. Nothing would have induced her to undergo the exertion and
fatigue of attending the Van Osburgh wedding, but so great was her
interest in the event that, having heard two versions of it, she
now prepared to extract a third from her niece. Lily, however,
had been deplorably careless in noting the particulars of the
entertainment. She had failed to observe the colour of Mrs. Van
Osburgh’s gown, and could not even say whether the old Van Osburgh
Sevres had been used at the bride’s table: Mrs. Peniston, in short,
found that she was of more service as a listener than as a narrator.

“Really, Lily, I don’t see why you took the trouble to go to the
wedding, if you don’t remember what happened or whom you saw there.
When I was a girl I used to keep the MENU of every dinner I went
to, and write the names of the people on the back; and I never
threw away my cotillion favours till after your uncle’s death,
when it seemed unsuitable to have so many coloured things about
the house. I had a whole closet-full, I remember; and I can tell
to this day what balls I got them at. Molly Van Alstyne reminds me
of what I was at that age; it’s wonderful how she notices. She was
able to tell her mother exactly how the wedding-dress was cut, and
we knew at once, from the fold in the back, that it must have come
from Paquin.”

Mrs. Peniston rose abruptly, and, advancing to the ormolu
clock surmounted by a helmeted Minerva, which throned on the
chimney-piece between two malachite vases, passed her lace
handkerchief between the helmet and its visor.

“I knew it—the parlour-maid never dusts there!” she exclaimed,
triumphantly displaying a minute spot on the handkerchief; then,
reseating herself, she went on: “Molly thought Mrs. Dorset the
best-dressed woman at the wedding. I’ve no doubt her dress DID
cost more than any one else’s, but I can’t quite like the idea—a
combination of sable and POINT DE MILAN. It seems she goes to a new
man in Paris, who won’t take an order till his client has spent a
day with him at his villa at Neuilly. He says he must study his
subject’s home life—a most peculiar arrangement, I should say!
But Mrs. Dorset told Molly about it herself: she said the villa
was full of the most exquisite things and she was really sorry to
leave. Molly said she never saw her looking better; she was in
tremendous spirits, and said she had made a match between Evie
Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. She really seems to have a very good
influence on young men. I hear she is interesting herself now in
that silly Silverton boy, who has had his head turned by Carry
Fisher, and has been gambling so dreadfully. Well, as I was saying,
Evie is really engaged: Mrs. Dorset had her to stay with Percy
Gryce, and managed it all, and Grace Van Osburgh is in the seventh
heaven—she had almost despaired of marrying Evie.”

Mrs. Peniston again paused, but this time her scrutiny addressed
itself, not to the furniture, but to her niece.

“Cornelia Van Alstyne was so surprised: she had heard that you
were to marry young Gryce. She saw the Wetheralls just after they
had stopped with you at Bellomont, and Alice Wetherall was quite
sure there was an engagement. She said that when Mr. Gryce left
unexpectedly one morning, they all thought he had rushed to town
for the ring.”

Lily rose and moved toward the door.

“I believe I AM tired: I think I will go to bed,” she said; and
Mrs. Peniston, suddenly distracted by the discovery that the easel
sustaining the late Mr. Peniston’s crayon-portrait was not exactly
in line with the sofa in front of it, presented an absent-minded
brow to her kiss.

In her own room Lily turned up the gas-jet and glanced toward the
grate. It was as brilliantly polished as the one below, but here at
least she could burn a few papers with less risk of incurring her
aunt’s disapproval. She made no immediate motion to do so, however,
but dropping into a chair looked wearily about her. Her room was
large and comfortably-furnished—it was the envy and admiration of
poor Grace Stepney, who boarded; but, contrasted with the light
tints and luxurious appointments of the guest-rooms where so many
weeks of Lily’s existence were spent, it seemed as dreary as a
prison. The monumental wardrobe and bedstead of black walnut had
migrated from Mr. Peniston’s bedroom, and the magenta “flock”
wall-paper, of a pattern dear to the early ’sixties, was hung with
large steel engravings of an anecdotic character. Lily had tried to
mitigate this charmless background by a few frivolous touches, in
the shape of a lace-decked toilet table and a little painted desk
surmounted by photographs; but the futility of the attempt struck
her as she looked about the room. What a contrast to the subtle
elegance of the setting she had pictured for herself—an apartment
which should surpass the complicated luxury of her friends’
surroundings by the whole extent of that artistic sensibility
which made her feel herself their superior; in which every tint
and line should combine to enhance her beauty and give distinction
to her leisure! Once more the haunting sense of physical ugliness
was intensified by her mental depression, so that each piece of
the offending furniture seemed to thrust forth its most aggressive
angle.

Her aunt’s words had told her nothing new; but they had revived the
vision of Bertha Dorset, smiling, flattered, victorious, holding
her up to ridicule by insinuations intelligible to every member of
their little group. The thought of the ridicule struck deeper than
any other sensation: Lily knew every turn of the allusive jargon
which could flay its victims without the shedding of blood. Her
cheek burned at the recollection, and she rose and caught up the
letters. She no longer meant to destroy them: that intention had
been effaced by the quick corrosion of Mrs. Peniston’s words.

Instead, she approached her desk, and lighting a taper, tied
and sealed the packet; then she opened the wardrobe, drew out a
despatch-box, and deposited the letters within it. As she did so,
it struck her with a flash of irony that she was indebted to Gus
Trenor for the means of buying them.