"I thought you would understand; that's why I wanted to speak to
you," Miss Bart rejoined. "I can't make that kind of marriage;
it's impossible. But neither can I go on living as all the women
in my set do. I am almost entirely dependent on my aunt, and
though she is very kind to me she makes me no regular allowance,
and lately I've lost money at cards, and I don't dare tell her
about it. I have paid my card debts, of course, but there is
hardly anything left for my other expenses, and if I go on with
my present life I shall be in horrible difficulties. I have a
tiny income of my own, but I'm afraid it's badly invested, for it
seems to bring in less every year, and I am so ignorant of money
matters that I don't know if my aunt's agent, who looks after it,
is a good adviser." She paused a moment, and added in a lighter
tone: "I didn't mean to bore you with all this, but I want your
help in making Judy understand that I can't, at present, go on
living as one must live among you all. I am going away tomorrow
to join my aunt at Richfield, and I shall stay there for the rest
of the autumn, and dismiss my maid and learn how to mend my own
clothes."
At this picture of loveliness in distress, the pathos of which
was heightened by the light touch with which it was drawn, a
murmur of indignant sympathy broke from Trenor. Twenty-four hours
earlier, if his wife had consulted him on the subject of Miss
Bart's future, he would have said that a girl with extravagant
tastes and no money had better marry the first rich man she could
get; but with the subject of dis
cussion at his side,
turning to him for sympathy, making him feel that he understood
her better than her dearest friends, and confirming the assurance
by the appeal of her exquisite nearness, he was ready to swear
that such a marriage was a desecration, and that, as a man of
honour, he was bound to do all he could to protect her from the
results of her disinterestedness. This impulse was reinforced by
the reflection that if she had married Gryce she would have been
surrounded by flattery and approval, whereas, having refused to
sacrifice herself to expediency, she was left to bear the whole
cost of her resistance. Hang it, if he could find a way out of
such difficulties for a professional sponge like Carry Fisher,
who was simply a mental habit corresponding to the physical
titillations of the cigarette or the cock-tail, he could surely
do as much for a girl who appealed to his highest sympathies, and
who brought her troubles to him with the trustfulness of a child.
Trenor and Miss Bart prolonged their drive till long after
sunset; and before it was over he had tried, with some show of
success, to prove to her that, if she would only trust him, he
could make a handsome sum of money for her without endangering
the small amount she possessed. She was too genuinely ignorant of
the manipulations of the stock-market to understand his technical
explanations, or even perhaps to perceive that certain points in
them were slurred; the haziness enveloping the transaction served
as a veil for her embarrassment, and through the general blur her
hopes dilated like lamps in a fog. She understood only that her
modest investments were to be mysteriously multiplied without
risk to herself; and the assurance that this miracle would take
place within a short time, that there would be no tedious
interval for suspense and reaction, relieved her of her lingering
scruples.
Again she felt the lightening of her load, and with it the
release of repressed activities. Her immediate worries conjured,
it was easy to resolve that she would never again find herself in
such straits, and as the need of economy and self-denial receded
from her foreground she felt herself ready to meet any other
demand which life might make. Even the immediate one of letting
Trenor, as they drove homeward, lean a little nearer and
rest his hand reassuringly on hers, cost her only a momentary
shiver of reluctance. It was part of the game to make him feel
that her appeal had been an uncalculated impulse, provoked by the
liking he inspired; and the renewed sense of power in handling
men, while it consoled her wounded vanity, helped also to obscure
the thought of the claim at which his manner hinted. He was a
coarse dull man who, under all his show of authority, was a mere
supernumerary in the costly show for which his money paid:
surely, to a clever girl, it would be easy to hold him by his
vanity, and so keep the obligation on his side.
The first thousand dollar cheque which Lily received with a
blotted scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence
in the exact degree to which it effaced her debts.
The transaction had justified itself by its results: she saw now
how absurd it would have been to let any primitive scruple
deprive her of this easy means of appeasing her creditors. Lily
felt really virtuous as she dispensed the sum in sops to her
tradesmen, and the fact that a fresh order accompanied each
payment did not lessen her sense of disinterestedness. How many
women, in her place, would have given the orders without making
the payment!
She had found it reassuringly easy to keep Trenor in a good
humour. To listen to his stories, to receive his confidences and
laugh at his jokes, seemed for the moment all that was required
of her, and the complacency with which her hostess regarded these
attentions freed them of the least hint of ambiguity. Mrs. Trenor
evidently assumed that Lily's growing intimacy with her husband
was simply an indirect way of returning her own kindness.
"I'm so glad you and Gus have become such good friends," she said
approvingly. "It's too delightful of you to be so nice to him,
and put up with all his tiresome stories. I know what they are,
because I had to listen to them when we were engaged--I'm sure he
is telling the same ones still. And now I shan't always have to
be asking Carry Fisher here to keep him in a good-humour. She's a
perfect vulture, you know; and she hasn't the least moral sense.
She is always getting Gus to speculate for her, and I'm sure she
never pays when she loses."
Miss Bart could shudder at this state of things without the
embarrassment of a personal application. Her own position was
surely quite different. There could be no question of her not
paying when she lost, since Trenor had assured her that she was
certain not to lose. In sending her the cheque he had explained
that he had made five thousand for her out of Rosedale's "tip,"
and had put four thousand back in the same venture, as
there was the promise of another "big rise"; she understood
therefore that he was now speculating with her own money, and
that she consequently owed him no more than the gratitude which
such a trifling service demanded. She vaguely supposed that, to
raise the first sum, he had borrowed on her securities; but this
was a point over which her curiosity did not linger. It was
concentrated, for the moment, on the probable date of the next
"big rise."
The news of this event was received by her some weeks later, on
the occasion of Jack Stepney's marriage to Miss Van Osburgh. As a
cousin of the bridegroom, Miss Bart had been asked to act as
bridesmaid; but she had declined on the plea that, since she was
much taller than the other attendant virgins, her presence might
mar the symmetry of the group. The truth was, she had attended
too many brides to the altar: when next seen there she meant to
be the chief figure in the ceremony. She knew the pleasantries
made at the expense of young girls who have been too long before
the public, and she was resolved to avoid such assumptions of
youthfulness as might lead people to think her older than she
really was.
The Van Osburgh marriage was celebrated in the village church
near the paternal estate on the Hudson. It was the "simple
country wedding" to which guests are convoyed in special trains,
and from which the hordes of the uninvited have to be fended off
by the intervention of the police. While these sylvan rites were
taking place, in a church packed with fashion and festooned with
orchids, the representatives of the press were threading their
way, note-book in hand, through the labyrinth of wedding
presents, and the agent of a cinematograph syndicate was setting
up his apparatus at the church door. It was the kind of scene in
which Lily had often pictured herself as taking the principal
part, and on this occasion the fact that she was once more merely
a casual spectator, instead of the mystically veiled figure
occupying the centre of attention, strengthened her resolve to
assume the latter part before the year was over. The fact that
her immediate anxieties were relieved did not blind her to a
possibility of their recurrence; it merely gave her enough
buoyancy to rise once more above her doubts and feel a renewed
faith in her beauty, her power, and her general fitness to
attract a brilliant destiny. It could not be that one
conscious of such aptitudes for mastery and enjoyment was doomed
to a perpetuity of failure; and her mistakes looked easily
reparable in the light of her restored self-confidence.
A special appositeness was given to these reflections by the
discovery, in a neighbouring pew, of the serious profile and
neatly-trimmed beard of Mr. Percy Gryce. There was something
almost bridal in his own aspect: his large white gardenia had a
symbolic air that struck Lily as a good omen. After all, seen in
an assemblage of his kind he was not ridiculous-looking: a
friendly critic might have called his heaviness weighty, and he
was at his best in the attitude of vacant passivity which brings
out the oddities of the restless. She fancied he was the kind of
man whose sentimental associations would be stirred by the
conventional imagery of a wedding, and she pictured herself, in
the seclusion of the Van Osburgh conservatories, playing
skillfully upon sensibilities thus prepared for her touch. In
fact, when she looked at the other women about her, and recalled
the image she had brought away from her own glass, it did not
seem as though any special skill would be needed to repair her
blunder and bring him once more to her feet.
The sight of Selden's dark head, in a pew almost facing her,
disturbed for a moment the balance of her complacency. The rise
of her blood as their eyes met was succeeded by a contrary
motion, a wave of resistance and withdrawal. She did not wish to
see him again, not because she feared his influence, but because
his presence always had the effect of cheapening her aspirations,
of throwing her whole world out of focus. Besides, he was a
living reminder of the worst mistake in her career, and the fact
that he had been its cause did not soften her feelings toward
him. She could still imagine an ideal state of existence in
which, all else being superadded, intercourse with Selden might
be the last touch of luxury; but in the world as it was, such a
privilege was likely to cost more than it was worth.
"Lily, dear, I never saw you look so lovely! You look as if
something delightful had just happened to you!"
The young lady who thus formulated her admiration of her
brilliant friend did not, in her own person, suggest such
happy possibilities. Miss Gertrude Farish, in fact, typified the
mediocre and the ineffectual. If there were compensating
qualities in her wide frank glance and the freshness of her
smile, these were qualities which only the sympathetic observer
would perceive before noticing that her eyes were of a workaday
grey and her lips without haunting curves. Lily's own view of her
wavered between pity for her limitations and impatience at her
cheerful acceptance of them. To Miss Bart, as to her mother,
acquiescence in dinginess was evidence of stupidity; and there
were moments when, in the consciousness of her own power to look
and to be so exactly what the occasion required, she almost felt
that other girls were plain and inferior from choice. Certainly
no one need have confessed such acquiescence in her lot as was
revealed in the "useful" colour of Gerty Farish's gown and the
subdued lines of her hat: it is almost as stupid to let your
clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them
proclaim that you think you are beautiful.
Of course, being fatally poor and dingy, it was wise of Gerty to
have taken up philanthropy and symphony concerts; but there was
something irritating in her assumption that existence yielded no
higher pleasures, and that one might get as much interest and
excitement out of life in a cramped flat as in the splendours of
the Van Osburgh establishment. Today, however, her chirping
enthusiasms did not irritate Lily. They seemed only to throw her
own exceptionalness into becoming relief, and give a soaring
vastness to her scheme of life.
"Do let us go and take a peep at the presents before everyone
else leaves the dining-room!" suggested Miss Farish, linking her
arm in her friend's. It was characteristic of her to take a
sentimental and unenvious interest in all the details of a
wedding: she was the kind of person who always kept her
handkerchief out during the service, and departed clutching a box
of wedding-cake.
"Isn't everything beautifully done?" she pursued, as they entered
the distant drawing-room assigned to the display of Miss Van
Osburgh's bridal spoils. "I always say no one does things better
than cousin Grace! Did you ever taste anything more delicious
than that MOUSSE of lobster with champagne sauce? I made up my
mind weeks ago that I wouldn't miss this wedding, and just
fancy how delightfully it all came about. When Lawrence Selden
heard I was coming, he insisted on fetching me himself and
driving me to the station, and when we go back this evening I am
to dine with him at Sherry's. I really feel as excited as if I
were getting married myself!"
Lily smiled: she knew that Selden had always been kind to his
dull cousin, and she had sometimes wondered why he wasted so much
time in such an unremunerative manner; but now the thought gave
her a vague pleasure.
"Do you see him often?" she asked.
"Yes; he is very good about dropping in on Sundays. And now and
then we do a play together; but lately I haven't seen much of
him. He doesn't look well, and he seems nervous and unsettled.
The dear fellow! I do wish he would marry some nice girl. I told
him so today, but he said he didn't care for the really nice
ones, and the other kind didn't care for him--but that was just
his joke, of course. He could never marry a girl who WASN'T nice.
Oh, my dear, did you ever see such pearls?"
They had paused before the table on which the bride's jewels were
displayed, and Lily's heart gave an envious throb as she caught
the refraction of light from their surfaces--the milky gleam of
perfectly matched pearls, the flash of rubies relieved against
contrasting velvet, the intense blue rays of sapphires kindled
into light by surrounding diamonds: all these precious tints
enhanced and deepened by the varied art of their setting. The
glow of the stones warmed Lily's veins like wine. More completely
than any other expression of wealth they symbolized the life she
longed to lead, the life of fastidious aloofness and refinement
in which every detail should have the finish of a jewel, and the
whole form a harmonious setting to her own jewel-like rareness.
"Oh, Lily, do look at this diamond pendant--it's as big as a
dinner-plate! Who can have given it?" Miss Farish bent
short-sightedly over the accompanying card. "MR. SIMON ROSEDALE.
What, that horrid man? Oh, yes--I remember he's a friend of
Jack's, and I suppose cousin Grace had to ask him here today; but
she must rather hate having to let Gwen accept such a present
from him."
Lily smiled. She doubted Mrs. Van Osburgh's reluctance, but was
aware of Miss Farish's habit of ascribing her own delicacies of
feeling to the persons least likely to be encumbered by them.
"Well, if Gwen doesn't care to be seen wearing it she can always
exchange it for something else," she remarked.
"Ah, here is something so much prettier," Miss Farish continued.
"Do look at this exquisite white sapphire. I'm sure the person
who chose it must have taken particular pains. What is the name?
Percy Gryce? Ah, then I'm not surprised!" She smiled
significantly as she replaced the card. "Of course you've heard
that he's perfectly devoted to Evie Van Osburgh? Cousin Grace is
so pleased about it--it's quite a romance! He met her first at
the George Dorsets', only about six weeks ago, and it's just the
nicest possible marriage for dear Evie. Oh, I don't mean the
money--of course she has plenty of her own--but she's such a
quiet stay-at-home kind of girl, and it seems he has just the
same tastes; so they are exactly suited to each other."
Lily stood staring vacantly at the white sapphire on its velvet
bed. Evie Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce? The names rang derisively
through her brain. EVIE VAN OSBURGH? The youngest, dumpiest,
dullest of the four dull and dumpy daughters whom Mrs. Van
Osburgh, with unsurpassed astuteness, had "placed" one by one in
enviable niches of existence! Ah, lucky girls who grow up in the
shelter of a mother's love--a mother who knows how to contrive
opportunities without conceding favours, how to take advantage of
propinquity without allowing appetite to be dulled by habit! The
cleverest girl may miscalculate where her own interests are
concerned, may yield too much at one moment and withdraw too far
at the next: it takes a mother's unerring vigilance and foresight
to land her daughters safely in the arms of wealth and
suitability.
Lily's passing light-heartedness sank beneath a renewed sense of
failure. Life was too stupid, too blundering! Why should Percy
Gryce's millions be joined to another great fortune, why should
this clumsy girl be put in possession of powers she would never
know how to use?
She was roused from these speculations by a familiar touch
on her arm, and turning saw Gus Trenor beside her. She felt a
thrill of vexation: what right had he to touch her? Luckily Gerty
Farish had wandered off to the next table, and they were alone.
Trenor, looking stouter than ever in his tight frock-coat, and
unbecomingly flushed by the bridal libations, gazed at her with
undisguised approval.
"By Jove, Lily, you do look a stunner!" He had slipped insensibly
into the use of her Christian name, and she had never found the
right moment to correct him. Besides, in her set all the men and
women called each other by their Christian names; it was only on
Trenor's lips that the familiar address had an unpleasant
significance.
"Well," he continued, still jovially impervious to her annoyance,
"have you made up your mind which of these little trinkets you
mean to duplicate at Tiffany's tomorrow? I've got a cheque for
you in my pocket that will go a long way in that line!"
Lily gave him a startled look: his voice was louder than usual,
and the room was beginning to fill with people. But as her glance
assured her that they were still beyond ear-shot a sense of
pleasure replaced her apprehension.
"Another dividend?" she asked, smiling and drawing near him in
the desire not to be overheard.
"Well, not exactly: I sold out on the rise and I've pulled off
four thou' for you. Not so bad for a beginner, eh? I suppose
you'll begin to think you're a pretty knowing speculator. And
perhaps you won't think poor old Gus such an awful ass as some
people do."
"I think you the kindest of friends; but I can't thank you
properly now."
