She let her eyes shine into his with a look that made up for the
hand-clasp he would have claimed if they had been alone--and how
glad she was that they were not! The news filled her with the
glow produced by a sudden cessation of physical pain. The world
was not so stupid and blundering after all: now and then a stroke
of luck came to the unluckiest. At the thought her spirits began
to rise: it was characteristic of her that one trifling piece of
good fortune should give wings to all her hopes. Instantly came
the reflection that Percy Gryce was not irretrievably
lost; and she smiled to think of the excitement of recapturing
him from Evie Van Osburgh. What chance could such a simpleton
have against her if she chose to exert herself? She glanced
about, hoping to catch a glimpse of Gryce; but her eyes lit
instead on the glossy countenance of Mr. Rosedale, who was
slipping through the crowd with an air half obsequious, half
obtrusive, as though, the moment his presence was recognized, it
would swell to the dimensions of the room.
Not wishing to be the means of effecting this enlargement, Lily
quickly transferred her glance to Trenor, to whom the expression
of her gratitude seemed not to have brought the complete
gratification she had meant it to give.
"Hang thanking me--I don't want to be thanked, but I SHOULD like
the chance to say two words to you now and then," he grumbled. "I
thought you were going to spend the whole autumn with us, and
I've hardly laid eyes on you for the last month. Why can't you
come back to Bellomont this evening? We're all alone, and Judy is
as cross as two sticks. Do come and cheer a fellow up. If you say
yes I'll run you over in the motor, and you can telephone your
maid to bring your traps from town by the next train."
Lily shook her head with a charming semblance of regret. "I wish
I could--but it's quite impossible. My aunt has come back to
town, and I must be with her for the next few days."
"Well, I've seen a good deal less of you since we've got to be
such pals than I used to when you were Judy's friend," he
continued with unconscious penetration.
"When I was Judy's friend? Am I not her friend still? Really, you
say the most absurd things! If I were always at Bellomont you
would tire of me much sooner than Judy--but come and see me at my
aunt's the next afternoon you are in town; then we can have a
nice quiet talk, and you can tell me how I had better invest my
fortune."
It was true that, during the last three or four weeks, she had
absented herself from Bellomont on the pretext of having other
visits to pay; but she now began to feel that the reckoning she
had thus contrived to evade had rolled up interest in the
interval.
The prospect of the nice quiet talk did not appear as all-
97>sufficing to Trenor as she had hoped, and his brows continued
to lower as he said: "Oh, I don't know that I can promise you a
fresh tip every day. But there's one thing you might do for me;
and that is, just to be a little civil to Rosedale. Judy has
promised to ask him to dine when we get to town, but I can't
induce her to have him at Bellomont, and if you would let me
bring him up now it would make a lot of difference. I don't
believe two women have spoken to him this afternoon, and I can
tell you he's a chap it pays to be decent to."
Miss Bart made an impatient movement, but suppressed the words
which seemed about to accompany it. After all, this was an
unexpectedly easy way of acquitting her debt; and had she not
reasons of her own for wishing to be civil to Mr. Rosedale?
"Oh, bring him by all means," she said smiling; "perhaps I can
get a tip out of him on my own account."
Trenor paused abruptly, and his eyes fixed themselves on hers
with a look which made her change colour.
"I say, you know--you'll please remember he's a blooming
bounder," he said; and with a slight laugh she turned toward the
open window near which they had been standing.
The throng in the room had increased, and she felt a desire for
space and fresh air. Both of these she found on the terrace,
where only a few men were lingering over cigarettes and liqueur,
while scattered couples strolled across the lawn to the
autumn-tinted borders of the flower-garden.
As she emerged, a man moved toward her from the knot of smokers,
and she found herself face to face with Selden. The stir of the
pulses which his nearness always caused was increased by a slight
sense of constraint. They had not met since their Sunday
afternoon walk at Bellomont, and that episode was still so vivid
to her that she could hardly believe him to be less conscious of
it. But his greeting expressed no more than the satisfaction
which every pretty woman expects to see reflected in masculine
eyes; and the discovery, if distasteful to her vanity, was
reassuring to her nerves. Between the relief of her escape from
Trenor, and the vague apprehension of her meeting with Rosedale,
it was pleasant to rest a moment on the sense of complete
understanding which Lawrence Selden's manner always conveyed.
"This is luck," he said smiling. "I was wondering if I should be
able to have a word with you before the special snatches us away.
I came with Gerty Farish, and promised not to let her miss the
train, but I am sure she is still extracting sentimental solace
from the wedding presents. She appears to regard their number and
value as evidence of the disinterested affection of the
contracting parties."
There was not the least trace of embarrassment in his voice, and
as he spoke, leaning slightly against the jamb of the window, and
letting his eyes rest on her in the frank enjoyment of her grace,
she felt with a faint chill of regret that he had gone back
without an effort to the footing on which they had stood before
their last talk together. Her vanity was stung by the sight of
his unscathed smile. She longed to be to him something more than
a piece of sentient prettiness, a passing diversion to his eye
and brain; and the longing betrayed itself in her reply.
"Ah," she said, "I envy Gerty that power she has of dressing up
with romance all our ugly and prosaic arrangements! I have never
recovered my self-respect since you showed me how poor and
unimportant my ambitions were."
The words were hardly spoken when she realized their infelicity.
It seemed to be her fate to appear at her worst to Selden.
"I thought, on the contrary," he returned lightly, "that I had
been the means of proving they were more important to you than
anything else."
It was as if the eager current of her being had been checked by a
sudden obstacle which drove it back upon itself. She looked at
him helplessly, like a hurt or frightened child: this real self
of hers, which he had the faculty of drawing out of the depths,
was so little accustomed to go alone!
The appeal of her helplessness touched in him, as it always did,
a latent chord of inclination. It would have meant nothing to him
to discover that his nearness made her more brilliant, but this
glimpse of a twilight mood to which he alone had the clue seemed
once more to set him in a world apart with her.
"At least you can't think worse things of me than you say!" she
exclaimed with a trembling laugh; but before he could
answer, the flow of comprehension between them was abruptly
stayed by the reappearance of Gus Trenor, who advanced with Mr.
Rosedale in his wake.
"Hang it, Lily, I thought you'd given me the slip: Rosedale and I
have been hunting all over for you!"
His voice had a note of conjugal familiarity: Miss Bart fancied
she detected in Rosedale's eye a twinkling perception of the
fact, and the idea turned her dislike of him to repugnance.
She returned his profound bow with a slight nod, made more
disdainful by the sense of Selden's surprise that she should
number Rosedale among her acquaintances. Trenor had turned away,
and his companion continued to stand before Miss Bart, alert and
expectant, his lips parted in a smile at whatever she might be
about to say, and his very back conscious of the privilege of
being seen with her.
It was the moment for tact; for the quick bridging over of gaps;
but Selden still leaned against the window, a detached observer
of the scene, and under the spell of his observation Lily felt
herself powerless to exert her usual arts. The dread of Selden's
suspecting that there was any need for her to propitiate such a
man as Rosedale checked the trivial phrases of politeness.
Rosedale still stood before her in an expectant attitude, and she
continued to face him in silence, her glance just level with his
polished baldness. The look put the finishing touch to what her
silence implied.
He reddened slowly, shifting from one foot to the other, fingered
the plump black pearl in his tie, and gave a nervous twist to his
moustache; then, running his eye over her, he drew back, and
said, with a side-glance at Selden: "Upon my soul, I never saw a
more ripping get-up. Is that the last creation of the dress-maker
you go to see at the Benedick? If so, I wonder all the other
women don't go to her too!"
The words were projected sharply against Lily's silence, and she
saw in a flash that her own act had given them their emphasis. In
ordinary talk they might have passed unheeded; but following on
her prolonged pause they acquired a special meaning. She felt,
without looking, that Selden had immediately seized it, and would
inevitably connect the allusion with her visit to himself. The
consciousness increased her irritation against Rosedale, but also
her feeling that now, if ever, was the moment to
propitiate him, hateful as it was to do so in Selden's presence.
"How do you know the other women don't go to my dress-maker?" she
returned. "You see I'm not afraid to give her address to my
friends!"
Her glance and accent so plainly included Rosedale in this
privileged circle that his small eyes puckered with
gratification, and a knowing smile drew up his moustache.
"By Jove, you needn't be!" he declared. "You could give 'em the
whole outfit and win at a canter!"
"Ah, that's nice of you; and it would be nicer still if you would
carry me off to a quiet corner, and get me a glass of lemonade or
some innocent drink before we all have to rush for the train."
She turned away as she spoke, letting him strut at her side
through the gathering groups on the terrace, while every nerve in
her throbbed with the consciousness of what Selden must have
thought of the scene.
But under her angry sense of the perverseness of things, and the
light surface of her talk with Rosedale, a third idea persisted:
she did not mean to leave without an attempt to discover the
truth about Percy Gryce. Chance, or perhaps his own resolve, had
kept them apart since his hasty withdrawal from Bellomont; but
Miss Bart was an expert in making the most of the unexpected, and
the distasteful incidents of the last few minutes--the revelation
to Selden of precisely that part of her life which she most
wished him to ignore--increased her longing for shelter, for
escape from such humiliating contingencies. Any definite
situation would be more tolerable than this buffeting of chances,
which kept her in an attitude of uneasy alertness toward every
possibility of life.
Indoors there was a general sense of dispersal in the air, as of
an audience gathering itself up for departure after the principal
actors had left the stage; but among the remaining groups, Lily
could discover neither Gryce nor the youngest Miss Van Osburgh.
That both should be missing struck her with foreboding; and she
charmed Mr. Rosedale by proposing that they should make their way
to the conservatories at the farther end of the house. There were
just enough people left in the long suite of rooms to make their
progress con
spicuous, and Lily was aware of being followed
by looks of amusement and interrogation, which glanced off as
harmlessly from her indifference as from her companion's
self-satisfaction. She cared very little at that moment about
being seen with Rosedale: all her thoughts were centred on the
object of her search. The latter, however, was not discoverable
in the conservatories, and Lily, oppressed by a sudden conviction
of failure, was casting about for a way to rid herself of her now
superfluous companion, when they came upon Mrs. Van Osburgh,
flushed and exhausted, but beaming with the consciousness of duty
performed.
She glanced at them a moment with the benign but vacant eye of
the tired hostess, to whom her guests have become mere whirling
spots in a kaleidoscope of fatigue; then her attention became
suddenly fixed, and she seized on Miss Bart with a confidential
gesture. "My dear Lily, I haven't had time for a word with you,
and now I suppose you are just off. Have you seen Evie? She's
been looking everywhere for you: she wanted to tell you her
little secret; but I daresay you have guessed it already. The
engagement is not to be announced till next week--but you are
such a friend of Mr. Gryce's that they both wished you to be the
first to know of their happiness."
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.
