Again she felt her colour change; again her heart rose in
precipitate throbs to meet what she felt was coming. He lifted
his eyes to her entreatingly. "You do see, don't you? You
understand? I'm desperate--I'm at the end of my tether. I
want to be free, and you can free me. I know you can. You don't
want to keep me bound fast in hell, do you? You can't want to
take such a vengeance as that. You were always kind--your eyes
are kind now. You say you're sorry for me. Well, it rests with
you to show it; and heaven knows there's nothing to keep you
back. You understand, of course--there wouldn't be a hint of
publicity--not a sound or a syllable to connect you with the
thing. It would never come to that, you know: all I need is to be
able to say definitely:'I know this--and this--and this'--and the
fight would drop, and the way be cleared, and the whole
abominable business swept out of sight in a second."
He spoke pantingly, like a tired runner, with breaks of
exhaustion between his words; and through the breaks she caught,
as through the shifting rents of a fog, great golden vistas of
peace and safety. For there was no mistaking the definite
intention behind his vague appeal; she could have filled up the
blanks without the help of Mrs. Fisher's insinuations. Here was a
man who turned to her in the extremity of his loneliness and his
humiliation: if she came to him at such a moment he would be hers
with all the force of his deluded faith. And the power to make
him so lay in her hand--lay there in a completeness he could not
even remotely conjecture. Revenge and rehabilitation might be
hers at a stroke--there was something dazzling in the
completeness of the opportunity.
She stood silent, gazing away from him down the autumnal stretch
of the deserted lane. And suddenly fear possessed her--fear of
herself, and of the terrible force of the temptation. All her
past weaknesses were like so many eager accomplices drawing her
toward the path their feet had already smoothed. She turned
quickly, and held out her hand to Dorset.
"Goodbye--I'm sorry; there's nothing in the world that I can do."
"Nothing? Ah, don't say that," he cried; "say what's true: that
you abandon me like the others. You, the only creature who could
have saved me!"
"Goodbye--goodbye," she repeated hurriedly; and as she
moved away she heard him cry out on a last note of entreaty: "At
least you'll let me see you once more?"
Lily, on regaining the Gormer grounds, struck rapidly across the
lawn toward the unfinished house, where she fancied that her
hostess might be speculating, not too resignedly, on the cause of
her delay; for, like many unpunctual persons, Mrs. Gormer
disliked to be kept waiting.
As Miss Bart reached the avenue, however, she saw a smart phaeton
with a high-stepping pair disappear behind the shrubbery in the
direction of the gate; and on the doorstep stood Mrs. Gormer,
with a glow of retrospective pleasure on her open countenance. At
sight of Lily the glow deepened to an embarrassed red, and she
said with a slight laugh: "Did you see my visitor? Oh, I thought
you came back by the avenue. It was Mrs. George Dorset--she said
she'd dropped in to make a neighbourly call."
Lily met the announcement with her usual composure, though her
experience of Bertha's idiosyncrasies would not have led her to
include the neighbourly instinct among them; and Mrs. Gormer,
relieved to see that she gave no sign of surprise, went on with a
deprecating laugh: "Of course what really brought her was
curiosity--she made me take her all over the house. But no one
could have been nicer--no airs, you know, and so good-natured: I
can quite see why people think her so fascinating."
This surprising event, coinciding too completely with her meeting
with Dorset to be regarded as contingent upon it, had yet
immediately struck Lily with a vague sense of foreboding. It was
not in Bertha's habits to be neighbourly, much less to make
advances to any one outside the immediate circle of her
affinities. She had always consistently ignored the world of
outer aspirants, or had recognized its individual members only
when prompted by motives of self-interest; and the very
capriciousness of her condescensions had, as Lily was aware,
given them special value in the eyes of the persons she
distinguished. Lily saw this now in Mrs. Gormer's unconcealable
complacency, and in the happy irrelevance with which, for the
next day or two, she quoted Bertha's opinions and
speculated on the origin of her gown. All the secret ambitions
which Mrs. Gormer's native indolence, and the attitude of her
companions, kept in habitual abeyance, were now germinating
afresh in the glow of Bertha's advances; and whatever the cause
of the latter, Lily saw that, if they were followed up, they were
likely to have a disturbing effect upon her own future.
She had arranged to break the length of her stay with her new
friends by one or two visits to other acquaintances as recent;
and on her return from this somewhat depressing excursion she was
immediately conscious that Mrs. Dorset's influence was still in
the air. There had been another exchange of visits, a tea at a
country-club, an encounter at a hunt ball; there was even a
rumour of an approaching dinner, which Mattie Gormer, with an
unnatural effort at discretion, tried to smuggle out of the
conversation whenever Miss Bart took part in it.
The latter had already planned to return to town after a farewell
Sunday with her friends; and, with Gerty Farish's aid, had
discovered a small private hotel where she might establish
herself for the winter. The hotel being on the edge of a
fashionable neighbourhood, the price of the few square feet she
was to occupy was considerably in excess of her means; but she
found a justification for her dislike of poorer quarters in the
argument that, at this particular juncture, it was of the utmost
importance to keep up a show of prosperity. In reality, it was
impossible for her, while she had the means to pay her way for a
week ahead, to lapse into a form of existence like Gerty
Farish's. She had never been so near the brink of insolvency; but
she could at least manage to meet her weekly hotel bill, and
having settled the heaviest of her previous debts out of the
money she had received from Trenor, she had a still fair margin
of credit to go upon. The situation, however, was not agreeable
enough to lull her to complete unconsciousness of its insecurity.
Her rooms, with their cramped outlook down a sallow vista of
brick walls and fire-escapes, her lonely meals in the dark
restaurant with its surcharged ceiling and haunting smell of
coffee--all these material discomforts, which were yet to be
accounted as so many privileges soon to be withdrawn, kept
constantly before her the disadvantages of her state; and
her mind reverted the more insistently to Mrs. Fisher's counsels.
Beat about the question as she would, she knew the outcome of it
was that she must try to marry Rosedale; and in this conviction
she was fortified by an unexpected visit from George Dorset.
She found him, on the first Sunday after her return to town,
pacing her narrow sitting-room to the imminent peril of the few
knick-knacks with which she had tried to disguise its plush
exuberances; but the sight of her seemed to quiet him, and he
said meekly that he hadn't come to bother her--that he asked
only to be allowed to sit for half an hour and talk of anything
she liked. In reality, as she knew, he had but one subject:
himself and his wretchedness; and it was the need of her sympathy
that had drawn him back. But he began with a pretence of
questioning her about herself, and as she replied, she saw that,
for the first time, a faint realization of her plight penetrated
the dense surface of his self-absorption. Was it possible that
her old beast of an aunt had actually cut her off? That she was
living alone like this because there was no one else for her to
go to, and that she really hadn't more than enough to keep alive
on till the wretched little legacy was paid? The fibres of
sympathy were nearly atrophied in him, but he was suffering so
intensely that he had a faint glimpse of what other sufferings
might mean--and, as she perceived, an almost simultaneous
perception of the way in which her particular misfortunes might
serve him.
When at length she dismissed him, on the pretext that she must
dress for dinner, he lingered entreatingly on the threshold to
blurt out: "It's been such a comfort--do say you'll let me see
you again--" But to this direct appeal it was impossible to give
an assent; and she said with friendly decisiveness: "I'm
sorry--but you know why I can't."
He coloured to the eyes, pushed the door shut, and stood before
her embarrassed but insistent. "I know how you might, if you
would--if things were different--and it lies with you to make
them so. It's just a word to say, and you put me out of my
misery!"
Their eyes met, and for a second she trembled again with the
nearness of the temptation. "You're mistaken; I know nothing; I
saw nothing," she exclaimed, striving, by sheer force of
reiteration, to build a barrier between herself and her peril;
and as he turned away, groaning out "You sacrifice us both," she
continued to repeat, as if it were a charm: "I know
nothing--absolutely nothing."
Lily had seen little of Rosedale since her illuminating talk with
Mrs. Fisher, but on the two or three occasions when they had met
she was conscious of having distinctly advanced in his favour.
There could be no doubt that he admired her as much as ever, and
she believed it rested with herself to raise his admiration to
the point where it should bear down the lingering counsels of
expediency. The task was not an easy one; but neither was it
easy, in her long sleepless nights, to face the thought of what
George Dorset was so clearly ready to offer. Baseness for
baseness, she hated the other least: there were even moments when
a marriage with Rosedale seemed the only honourable solution of
her difficulties. She did not indeed let her imagination range
beyond the day of plighting: after that everything faded into a
haze of material well-being, in which the personality of her
benefactor remained mercifully vague. She had learned, in her
long vigils, that there were certain things not good to think of,
certain midnight images that must at any cost be exorcised--and
one of these was the image of herself as Rosedale's wife.
Carry Fisher, on the strength, as she frankly owned, of the Brys'
Newport success, had taken for the autumn months a small house at
Tuxedo; and thither Lily was bound on the Sunday after Dorset's
visit. Though it was nearly dinner-time when she arrived, her
hostess was still out, and the firelit quiet of the small silent
house descended on her spirit with a sense of peace and
familiarity. It may be doubted if such an emotion had ever before
been evoked by Carry Fisher's surroundings; but, contrasted to
the world in which Lily had lately lived, there was an air of
repose and stability in the very placing of the furniture, and in
the quiet competence of the parlour-maid who led her up to her
room. Mrs. Fisher's unconventionality was, after all, a merely
superficial divergence from an inherited social creed, while the
manners of the Gormer circle represented their first attempt to
formulate such a creed for themselves.
It was the first time since her return from Europe that Lily had
found herself in a congenial atmosphere, and the stirring of
familiar associations had almost prepared her, as she descended
the stairs before dinner, to enter upon a group of her old
acquaintances. But this expectation was instantly checked by the
reflection that the friends who remained loyal were precisely
those who would be least willing to expose her to such
encounters; and it was hardly with surprise that she found,
instead, Mr. Rosedale kneeling domestically on the drawing-room
hearth before his hostess's little girl.
Rosedale in the paternal role was hardly a figure to soften Lily;
yet she could not but notice a quality of homely goodness in his
advances to the child. They were not, at any rate, the
premeditated and perfunctory endearments of the guest under his
hostess's eye, for he and the little girl had the room to
themselves; and something in his attitude made him seem a simple
and kindly being compared to the small critical creature who
endured his homage. Yes, he would be kind--Lily, from the
threshold, had time to feel--kind in his gross, unscrupulous,
rapacious way, the way of the predatory creature with his mate.
She had but a moment in which to consider whether this glimpse of
the fireside man mitigated her repugnance, or gave it, rather, a
more concrete and intimate form; for at sight of her he was
immediately on his feet again, the florid and dominant Rosedale
of Mattie Gormer's drawing-room.
It was no surprise to Lily to find that he had been selected as
her only fellow-guest. Though she and her hostess had not met
since the latter's tentative discussion of her future, Lily knew
that the acuteness which enabled Mrs. Fisher to lay a safe and
pleasant course through a world of antagonistic forces was not
infrequently exercised for the benefit of her friends. It was, in
fact, characteristic of Carry that, while she actively gleaned
her own stores from the fields of affluence, her real sympathies
were on the other side--with the unlucky, the unpopular, the
unsuccessful, with all her hungry fellow-toilers in the shorn
stubble of success.
Mrs. Fisher's experience guarded her against the mistake of
exposing Lily, for the first evening, to the unmitigated
impression of Rosedale's personality. Kate Corby and two
or three men dropped in to dinner, and Lily, alive to every
detail of her friend's method, saw that such opportunities as had
been contrived for her were to be deferred till she had, as it
were, gained courage to make effectual use of them. She had a
sense of acquiescing in this plan with the passiveness of a
sufferer resigned to the surgeon's touch; and this feeling of
almost lethargic helplessness continued when, after the departure
of the guests, Mrs. Fisher followed her upstairs.
"May I come in and smoke a cigarette over your fire? If we talk
in my room we shall disturb the child." Mrs. Fisher looked about
her with the eye of the solicitous hostess. "I hope you've
managed to make yourself comfortable, dear? Isn't it a jolly
little house? It's such a blessing to have a few quiet weeks with
the baby."
Carry, in her rare moments of prosperity, became so expansively
maternal that Miss Bart sometimes wondered whether, if she could
ever get time and money enough, she would not end by devoting
them both to her daughter.
It's a well-earned rest: I'll say that for myself," she
continued, sinking down with a sigh of content on the pillowed
lounge near the fire. "Louisa Bry is a stern task-master: I often
used to wish myself back with the Gormers. Talk of love making
people jealous and suspicious--it's nothing to social ambition!
Louisa used to lie awake at night wondering whether the women who
called on us called on ME because I was with her, or on HER
because she was with me; and she was always laying traps to find
out what I thought. Of course I had to disown my oldest friends,
rather than let her suspect she owed me the chance of making a
single acquaintance--when, all the while, that was what she had
me there for, and what she wrote me a handsome cheque for when
the season was over!"
Mrs. Fisher was not a woman who talked of herself without cause,
and the practice of direct speech, far from precluding in her an
occasional resort to circuitous methods, served rather, at
crucial moments, the purpose of the juggler's chatter while he
shifts the contents of his sleeves. Through the haze of her
cigarette smoke she continued to gaze meditatively at Miss Bart,
who, having dismissed her maid, sat before the
toilet-table shaking out over her shoulders the loosened
undulations of her hair.
"Your hair's wonderful, Lily. Thinner--? What does that matter,
when it's so light and alive? So many women's worries seem to go
straight to their hair--but yours looks as if there had never
been an anxious thought under it. I never saw you look better
than you did this evening. Mattie Gormer told me that Morpeth
wanted to paint you--why don't you let him?"
Miss Bart's immediate answer was to address a critical glance to
the reflection of the countenance under discussion. Then she
said, with a slight touch of irritation: "I don't care to accept
a portrait from Paul Morpeth."
Mrs. Fisher mused. "N--no. And just now, especially--well, he
can do you after you're married." She waited a moment, and then
went on: "By the way, I had a visit from Mattie the other day.
She turned up here last Sunday--and with Bertha Dorset, of all
people in the world!"
She paused again to measure the effect of this announcement on
her hearer, but the brush in Miss Bart's lifted hand maintained
its unwavering stroke from brow to nape.
"I never was more astonished," Mrs. Fisher pursued. "I don't know
two women less predestined to intimacy--from Bertha's standpoint,
that is; for of course poor Mattie thinks it natural enough that
she should be singled out--I've no doubt the rabbit always thinks
it is fascinating the anaconda. Well, you know I've always told
you that Mattie secretly longed to bore herself with the really
fashionable; and now that the chance has come, I see that she's
capable of sacrificing all her old friends to it."
Lily laid aside her brush and turned a penetrating glance upon
her friend. "Including ME?" she suggested.
"Ah, my dear," murmured Mrs. Fisher, rising to push back a log
from the hearth.
"That's what Bertha means, isn't it?" Miss Bart went on steadily.
"For of course she always means something; and before I left Long
Island I saw that she was beginning to lay her toils for Mattie."
Mrs. Fisher sighed evasively. "She has her fast now, at any rate.
To think of that loud independence of Mattie's being only
a subtler form of snobbishness! Bertha can already make her
believe anything she pleases--and I'm afraid she's begun, my poor
child, by insinuating horrors about you."
Lily flushed under the shadow of her drooping hair. "The world is
too vile," she murmured, averting herself from Mrs. Fisher's
anxious scrutiny.
"It's not a pretty place; and the only way to keep a footing in
it is to fight it on its own terms--and above all, my dear, not
alone!" Mrs. Fisher gathered up her floating implications in a
resolute grasp. "You've told me so little that I can only guess
what has been happening; but in the rush we all live in there's
no time to keep on hating any one without a cause, and if Bertha
is still nasty enough to want to injure you with other people it
must be because she's still afraid of you. From her standpoint
there's only one reason for being afraid of you; and my own idea
is that, if you want to punish her, you hold the means in your
hand. I believe you can marry George Dorset tomorrow; but if you
don't care for that particular form of retaliation, the only
thing to save you from Bertha is to marry somebody else."
