She had rejected Rosedale's suggestion with a promptness of scorn
almost surprising to herself: she had not lost her capacity for
high flashes of indignation. But she could not breathe long on
the heights; there had been nothing in her training to develop
any continuity of moral strength: what she craved, and really
felt herself entitled to, was a situation in which the noblest
attitude should also be the easiest. Hitherto her intermittent
impulses of resistance had sufficed to maintain her self-respect.
If she slipped she recovered her footing, and it was only
afterward that she was aware of having recovered it each time on
a slightly lower level. She had rejected Rosedale's offer without
conscious effort; her whole being had risen against it;
and she did not yet perceive that, by the mere act of listening
to him, she had learned to live with ideas which would once have
been intolerable to her.
To Gerty Farish, keeping watch over her with a tenderer if less
discerning eye than Mrs. Fisher's, the results of the struggle
were already distinctly visible. She did not, indeed, know what
hostages Lily had already given to expediency; but she saw her
passionately and irretrievably pledged to the ruinous policy of
"keeping up." Gerty could smile now at her own early dream of her
friend's renovation through adversity: she understood clearly
enough that Lily was not of those to whom privation teaches the
unimportance of what they have lost. But this very fact, to
Gerty, made her friend the more piteously in want of aid, the
more exposed to the claims of a tenderness she was so little
conscious of needing.
Lily, since her return to town, had not often climbed Miss
Farish's stairs. There was something irritating to her in the
mute interrogation of Gerty's sympathy: she felt the real
difficulties of her situation to be incommunicable to any one
whose theory of values was so different from her own, and the
restrictions of Gerty's life, which had once had the charm of
contrast, now reminded her too painfully of the limits to which
her own existence was shrinking. When at length, one afternoon,
she put into execution the belated resolve to visit her friend,
this sense of shrunken opportunities possessed her with unusual
intensity. The walk up Fifth Avenue, unfolding before her, in the
brilliance of the hard winter sunlight, an interminable
procession of fastidiously-equipped carriages--giving her,
through the little squares of brougham-windows, peeps of familiar
profiles bent above visiting-lists, of hurried hands dispensing
notes and cards to attendant footmen--this glimpse of the
ever-revolving wheels of the great social machine made Lily more
than ever conscious of the steepness and narrowness of Gerty's
stairs, and of the cramped blind alley of life to which they led.
Dull stairs destined to be mounted by dull people: how many
thousands of insignificant figures were going up and down such
stairs all over the world at that very moment--figures as shabby
and uninteresting as that of the middle-aged lady in limp
black who descended Gerty's flight as Lily climbed to it!
"That was poor Miss Jane Silverton--she came to talk things over
with me: she and her sister want to do something to support
themselves," Gerty explained, as Lily followed her into the
sitting-room.
"To support themselves? Are they so hard up?" Miss Bart asked
with a touch of irritation: she had not come to listen to the
woes of other people.
"I'm afraid they have nothing left: Ned's debts have swallowed up
everything. They had such hopes, you know, when he broke away
from Carry Fisher; they thought Bertha Dorset would be such a
good influence, because she doesn't care for cards, and--well,
she talked quite beautifully to poor Miss Jane about feeling as
if Ned were her younger brother, and wanting to carry him off on
the yacht, so that he might have a chance to drop cards and
racing, and take up his literary work again."
Miss Farish paused with a sigh which reflected the perplexity of
her departing visitor. "But that isn't all; it isn't even the
worst. It seems that Ned has quarrelled with the Dorsets; or at
least Bertha won't allow him to see her, and he is so unhappy
about it that he has taken to gambling again, and going about
with all sorts of queer people. And cousin Grace Van Osburgh
accuses him of having had a very bad influence on Freddy, who
left Harvard last spring, and has been a great deal with Ned ever
since. She sent for Miss Jane, and made a dreadful scene; and
Jack Stepney and Herbert Melson, who were there too, told Miss
Jane that Freddy was threatening to marry some dreadful woman to
whom Ned had introduced him, and that they could do nothing with
him because now he's of age he has his own money. You can fancy
how poor Miss Jane felt--she came to me at once, and seemed to
think that if I could get her something to do she could earn
enough to pay Ned's debts and send him away--I'm afraid she has
no idea how long it would take her to pay for one of his evenings
at bridge. And he was horribly in debt when he came back from the
cruise--I can't see why he should have spent so much more money
under Bertha's influence than Carry's: can you?"
Lily met this query with an impatient gesture. "My dear Gerty, I
always understand how people can spend much more money--never how
they can spend any less!"
She loosened her furs and settled herself in Gerty's easy-chair,
while her friend busied herself with the tea-cups.
"But what can they do--the Miss Silvertons? How do they mean to
support themselves?" she asked, conscious that the note of
irritation still persisted in her voice. It was the very last
topic she had meant to discuss--it really did not interest her in
the least--but she was seized by a sudden perverse curiosity to
know how the two colourless shrinking victims of young
Silverton's sentimental experiments meant to cope with the grim
necessity which lurked so close to her own threshold.
"I don't know--I am trying to find something for them. Miss Jane
reads aloud very nicely--but it's so hard to find any one who is
willing to be read to. And Miss Annie paints a little---"
"Oh, I know--apple-blossoms on blotting-paper; just the kind of
thing I shall be doing myself before long!" exclaimed Lily,
starting up with a vehemence of movement that threatened
destruction to Miss Farish's fragile tea-table.
Lily bent over to steady the cups; then she sank back into her
seat. "I'd forgotten there was no room to dash about in--how
beautifully one does have to behave in a small flat! Oh, Gerty, I
wasn't meant to be good," she sighed out incoherently.
Gerty lifted an apprehensive look to her pale face, in which the
eyes shone with a peculiar sleepless lustre.
"You look horribly tired, Lily; take your tea, and let me give
you this cushion to lean against."
Miss Bart accepted the cup of tea, but put back the cushion with
an impatient hand.
"Don't give me that! I don't want to lean back--I shall go to
sleep if I do."
"Well, why not, dear? I'll be as quiet as a mouse," Gerty urged
affectionately.
"No--no; don't be quiet; talk to me--keep me awake! I don't sleep
at night, and in the afternoon a dreadful drowsiness creeps over
me."
"You don't sleep at night? Since when?"
"I don't know--I can't remember." She rose and put the empty cup
on the tea-tray. "Another, and stronger, please; if I don't keep
awake now I shall see horrors tonight--perfect horrors!"
"But they'll be worse if you drink too much tea."
"No, no--give it to me; and don't preach, please," Lily returned
imperiously. Her voice had a dangerous edge, and Gerty noticed
that her hand shook as she held it out to receive the second cup.
"But you look so tired: I'm sure you must be ill---"
Miss Bart set down her cup with a start. "Do I look ill? Does my
face show it?" She rose and walked quickly toward the little
mirror above the writing-table. "What a horrid
looking-glass--it's all blotched and discoloured. Any one would
look ghastly in it!" She turned back, fixing her plaintive eyes
on Gerty. "You stupid dear, why do you say such odious things to
me? It's enough to make one ill to be told one looks so! And
looking ill means looking ugly." She caught Gerty's wrists, and
drew her close to the window. "After all, I'd rather know the
truth. Look me straight in the face, Gerty, and tell me: am I
perfectly frightful?"
"You're perfectly beautiful now, Lily: your eyes are shining, and
your cheeks have grown so pink all of a sudden---"
"Ah, they WERE pale, then--ghastly pale, when I came in? Why
don't you tell me frankly that I'm a wreck? My eyes are bright
now because I'm so nervous--but in the mornings they look like
lead. And I can see the lines coming in my face--the lines of
worry and disappointment and failure! Every sleepless night
leaves a new one--and how can I sleep, when I have such dreadful
things to think about?"
"Dreadful things--what things?" asked Gerty, gently detaching her
wrists from her friend's feverish fingers.
"What things? Well, poverty, for one--and I don't know any that's
more dreadful." Lily turned away and sank with sudden weariness
into the easy-chair near the tea-table. "You asked me just now if
I could understand why Ned Silverton spent so much money. Of
course I understand--he spends it on living with the rich. You
think we live ON the rich, rather than with them: and so we do,
in a sense--but it's a privi
lege we have to pay for! We
eat their dinners, and drink their wine, and smoke their
cigarettes, and use their carriages and their opera-boxes and
their private cars--yes, but there's a tax to pay on every one of
those luxuries. The man pays it by big tips to the servants, by
playing cards beyond his means, by flowers and
presents--and--and--lots of other things that cost; the girl pays
it by tips and cards too--oh, yes, I've had to take up bridge
again--and by going to the best dress-makers, and having just the
right dress for every occasion, and always keeping herself fresh
and exquisite and amusing!"
She leaned back for a moment, closing her eyes, and as she sat
there, her pale lips slightly parted, and the lids dropped above
her fagged brilliant gaze, Gerty had a startled perception of the
change in her face--of the way in which an ashen daylight seemed
suddenly to extinguish its artificial brightness. She looked up,
and the vision vanished.
"It doesn't sound very amusing, does it? And it isn't--I'm sick
to death of it! And yet the thought of giving it all up nearly
kills me--it's what keeps me awake at night, and makes me so
crazy for your strong tea. For I can't go on in this way much
longer, you know--I'm nearly at the end of my tether. And then
what can I do--how on earth am I to keep myself alive? I see
myself reduced to the fate of that poor Silverton woman--slinking
about to employment agencies, and trying to sell painted
blotting-pads to Women's Exchanges! And there are thousands and
thousands of women trying to do the same thing already, and not
one of the number who has less idea how to earn a dollar than I
have!"
She rose again with a hurried glance at the clock. "It's late,
and I must be off--I have an appointment with Carry Fisher. Don't
look so worried, you dear thing--don't think too much about the
nonsense I've been talking." She was before the mirror again,
adjusting her hair with a light hand, drawing down her veil, and
giving a dexterous touch to her furs. "Of course, you know, it
hasn't come to the employment agencies and the painted
blotting-pads yet; but I'm rather hard-up just for the moment,
and if I could find something to do--notes to write and
visiting-lists to make up, or that kind of thing--it would tide
me over till the legacy is paid.
And Carry has promised to find somebody who wants a kind of
social secretary--you know she makes a specialty of the helpless
rich."
Miss Bart had not revealed to Gerty the full extent of her
anxiety. She was in fact in urgent and immediate need of money:
money to meet the vulgar weekly claims which could neither be
deferred nor evaded. To give up her apartment, and shrink to the
obscurity of a boarding-house, or the provisional hospitality of
a bed in Gerty Farish's sitting-room, was an expedient which
could only postpone the problem confronting her; and it seemed
wiser as well as more agreeable to remain where she was and find
some means of earning her living. The possibility of having to do
this was one which she had never before seriously considered, and
the discovery that, as a bread-winner, she was likely to prove as
helpless and ineffectual as poor Miss Silverton, was a severe
shock to her self-confidence.
Having been accustomed to take herself at the popular valuation,
as a person of energy and resource, naturally fitted to dominate
any situation in which she found herself, she vaguely imagined
that such gifts would be of value to seekers after social
guidance; but there was unfortunately no specific head under
which the art of saying and doing the right thing could be
offered in the market, and even Mrs. Fisher's resourcefulness
failed before the difficulty of discovering a workable vein in
the vague wealth of Lily's graces. Mrs. Fisher was full of
indirect expedients for enabling her friends to earn a living,
and could conscientiously assert that she had put several
opportunities of this kind before Lily; but more legitimate
methods of bread-winning were as much out of her line as they
were beyond the capacity of the sufferers she was generally
called upon to assist. Lily's failure to profit by the chances
already afforded her might, moreover, have justified the
abandonment of farther effort on her behalf; but Mrs. Fisher's
inexhaustible good-nature made her an adept at creating
artificial demands in response to an actual supply. In the
pursuance of this end she at once started on a voyage of
discovery in Miss Bart's behalf; and as the result of her
explora
tions she now summoned the latter with the
announcement that she had "found something."
Left to herself, Gerty mused distressfully upon her friend's
plight, and her own inability to relieve it. It was clear to her
that Lily, for the present, had no wish for the kind of help she
could give. Miss Farish could see no hope for her friend but in a
life completely reorganized and detached from its old
associations; whereas all Lily's energies were centred in the
determined effort to hold fast to those associations, to keep
herself visibly identified with them, as long as the illusion
could be maintained. Pitiable as such an attitude seemed to
Gerty, she could not judge it as harshly as Selden, for instance,
might have done. She had not forgotten the night of emotion when
she and Lily had lain in each other's arms, and she had seemed to
feel her very heart's blood passing into her friend. The
sacrifice she had made had seemed unavailing enough; no trace
remained in Lily of the subduing influences of that hour; but
Gerty's tenderness, disciplined by long years of contact with
obscure and inarticulate suffering, could wait on its object with
a silent forbearance which took no account of time. She could
not, however, deny herself the solace of taking anxious counsel
with Lawrence Selden, with whom, since his return from Europe,
she had renewed her old relation of cousinly confidence.
Selden himself had never been aware of any change in their
relation. He found Gerty as he had left her, simple, undemanding
and devoted, but with a quickened intelligence of the heart which
he recognized without seeking to explain it. To Gerty herself it
would once have seemed impossible that she should ever again talk
freely with him of Lily Bart; but what had passed in the secrecy
of her own breast seemed to resolve itself, when the mist of the
struggle cleared, into a breaking down of the bounds of self, a
deflecting of the wasted personal emotion into the general
current of human understanding.
It was not till some two weeks after her visit from Lily that
Gerty had the opportunity of communicating her fears to Selden.
The latter, having presented himself on a Sunday afternoon, had
lingered on through the dowdy animation of his cousin's
tea-hour, conscious of something in her voice and eye which
solicited a word apart; and as soon as the last visitor was gone
Gerty opened her case by asking how lately he had seen Miss Bart.
Selden's perceptible pause gave her time for a slight stir of
surprise.
"I haven't seen her at all--I've perpetually missed seeing her
since she came back."
This unexpected admission made Gerty pause too; and she was still
hesitating on the brink of her subject when he relieved her by
adding: "I've wanted to see her--but she seems to have been
absorbed by the Gormer set since her return from Europe."
"That's all the more reason: she's been very unhappy."
"Unhappy at being with the Gormers?"
"Oh, I don't defend her intimacy with the Gormers; but that too
is at an end now, I think. You know people have been very unkind
since Bertha Dorset quarrelled with her."
"Ah---" Selden exclaimed, rising abruptly to walk to the window,
where he remained with his eyes on the darkening street while his
cousin continued to explain: "Judy Trenor and her own family have
deserted her too--and all because Bertha Dorset has said such
horrible things. And she is very poor--you know Mrs. Peniston cut
her off with a small legacy, after giving her to understand that
she was to have everything."
"Yes--I know," Selden assented curtly, turning back into the
room, but only to stir about with restless steps in the
circumscribed space between door and window. "Yes--she's been
abominably treated; but it's unfortunately the precise thing that
a man who wants to show his sympathy can't say to her."
His words caused Gerty a slight chill of disappointment. "There
would be other ways of showing your sympathy," she suggested.
Selden, with a slight laugh, sat down beside her on the little
sofa which projected from the hearth. "What are you thinking of,
you incorrigible missionary?" he asked.
Gerty's colour rose, and her blush was for a moment her only
answer. Then she made it more explicit by saying: "I am
thinking of the fact that you and she used to be great
friends--that she used to care immensely for what you thought of
her--and that, if she takes your staying away as a sign of what
you think now, I can imagine its adding a great deal to her
unhappiness."
"My dear child, don't add to it still more--at least to your
conception of it--by attributing to her all sorts of
susceptibilities of your own." Selden, for his life, could not
keep a note of dryness out of his voice; but he met Gerty's look
of perplexity by saying more mildly: "But, though you immensely
exaggerate the importance of anything I could do for Miss Bart,
you can't exaggerate my readiness to do it--if you ask me to." He
laid his hand for a moment on hers, and there passed between
them, on the current of the rare contact, one of those exchanges
of meaning which fill the hidden reservoirs of affection. Gerty
had the feeling that he measured the cost of her request as
plainly as she read the significance of his reply; and the sense
of all that was suddenly clear between them made her next words
easier to find.
