"Well, it's mean work for anybody with a headache." Miss Kilroy
paused irresolutely. "You ought to go right home and lay down.
Ever try orangeine?"
"Thank you." Lily held out her hand. "It's very kind of you--I
mean to go home."
She looked gratefully at Miss Kilroy, but neither knew what more
to say. Lily was aware that the other was on the point of
offering to go home with her, but she wanted to be alone and
silent--even kindness, the sort of kindness that Miss Kilroy
could give, would have jarred on her just then.
"Thank you," she repeated as she turned away.
She struck westward through the dreary March twilight, toward the
street where her boarding-house stood. She had resolutely refused
Gerty's offer of hospitality. Something of her mother's fierce
shrinking from observation and sympathy was beginning to develop
in her, and the promiscuity of small quarters and close intimacy
seemed, on the whole, less endurable than the solitude of a hall
bedroom in a house where she could come and go unremarked among
other workers. For a while she had been sustained by this desire
for privacy and independence; but now, perhaps from increasing
physical weariness, the lassitude brought about by hours of
unwonted confinement, she was beginning to feel acutely the
ugliness and discomfort of her surroundings. The day's task done,
she dreaded to return to her narrow room, with its
blotched wallpaper and shabby paint; and she hated every step of
the walk thither, through the degradation of a New York street in
the last stages of decline from fashion to commerce.
But what she dreaded most of all was having to pass the chemist's
at the corner of Sixth Avenue. She had meant to take another
street: she had usually done so of late. But today her steps were
irresistibly drawn toward the flaring plate-glass comer; she
tried to take the lower crossing, but a laden dray crowded her
back, and she struck across the street obliquely, reaching the
sidewalk just opposite the chemist's door.
Over the counter she caught the eye of the clerk who had waited
on her before, and slipped the prescription into his hand. There
could be no question about the prescription: it was a copy of one
of Mrs. Hatch's, obligingly furnished by that lady's chemist.
Lily was confident that the clerk would fill it without
hesitation; yet the nervous dread of a refusal, or even of an
expression of doubt, communicated itself to her restless hands as
she affected to examine the bottles of perfume stacked on the
glass case before her.
The clerk had read the prescription without comment; but in the
act of handing out the bottle he paused.
"You don't want to increase the dose, you know," he remarked.
Lily's heart contracted.
What did he mean by looking at her in that way?
"Of course not," she murmured, holding out her hand.
"That's all right: it's a queer-acting drug. A drop or two more,
and off you go--the doctors don't know why."
The dread lest he should question her, or keep the bottle back,
choked the murmur of acquiescence in her throat; and when at
length she emerged safely from the shop she was almost dizzy with
the intensity of her relief. The mere touch of the packet
thrilled her tired nerves with the delicious promise of a night
of sleep, and in the reaction from her momentary fear she felt as
if the first fumes of drowsiness were already stealing over her.
In her confusion she stumbled against a man who was hurrying down
the last steps of the elevated station. He drew back, and she
heard her name uttered with surprise. It was Rosedale,
fur-coated, glossy and prosperous--but why did she seem to see
him so far off, and as if through a mist of splintered crystals?
Before she could account for the phenomenon she found herself
shaking hands with him. They had parted with scorn on her side
and anger upon his; but all trace of these emotions seemed to
vanish as their hands met, and she was only aware of a confused
wish that she might continue to hold fast to him.
"Why, what's the matter, Miss Lily? You're not well!" he
exclaimed; and she forced her lips into a pallid smile of
reassurance.
"I'm a little tired--it's nothing. Stay with me a moment,
please," she faltered. That she should be asking this service of
Rosedale!
He glanced at the dirty and unpropitious comer on which they
stood, with the shriek of the "elevated" and the tumult of trams
and waggons contending hideously in their ears.
"We can't stay here; but let me take you somewhere for a cup of
tea. The LONGWORTH is only a few yards off, and there'll be no
one there at this hour."
A cup of tea in quiet, somewhere out of the noise and ugliness,
seemed for the moment the one solace she could bear. A few steps
brought them to the ladies' door of the hotel he had named, and a
moment later he was seated opposite to her, and the waiter had
placed the tea-tray between them.
"Not a drop of brandy or whiskey first? You look regularly done
up, Miss Lily. Well, take your tea strong, then; and, waiter, get
a cushion for the lady's back."
Lily smiled faintly at the injunction to take her tea strong. It
was the temptation she was always struggling to resist. Her
craving for the keen stimulant was forever conflicting with that
other craving for sleep--the midnight craving which only the
little phial in her hand could still. But today, at any rate, the
tea could hardly be too strong: she counted on it to pour warmth
and resolution into her empty veins.
As she leaned back before him, her lids drooping in utter
lassitude, though the first warm draught already tinged her face
with returning life, Rosedale was seized afresh by the poignant
surprise of her beauty. The dark pencilling of fatigue under her
eyes, the morbid blue-veined pallour of the temples,
brought out the brightness of her hair and lips, as though all
her ebbing vitality were centred there. Against the dull
chocolate-coloured background of the restaurant, the purity of
her head stood out as it had never done in the most brightly-lit
ball-room. He looked at her with a startled uncomfortable
feeling, as though her beauty were a forgotten enemy that had
lain in ambush and now sprang out on him unawares.
To clear the air he tried to take an easy tone with her. "Why,
Miss Lily, I haven't seen you for an age. I didn't know what had
become of you."
As he spoke, he was checked by an embarrassing sense of the
complications to which this might lead. Though he had not seen
her he had heard of her; he knew of her connection with Mrs.
Hatch, and of the talk resulting from it. Mrs. Hatch's MILIEU was
one which he had once assiduously frequented, and now as devoutly
shunned.
Lily, to whom the tea had restored her usual clearness of mind,
saw what was in his thoughts and said with a slight smile: "You
would not be likely to know about me. I have joined the working
classes."
He stared in genuine wonder. "You don't mean ? Why, what on earth
are you doing?"
"Learning to be a milliner--at least TRYING to learn," she
hastily qualified the statement.
Rosedale suppressed a low whistle of surprise. "Come off--you
ain't serious, are you?"
"Perfectly serious. I'm obliged to work for my living."
"But I understood--I thought you were with Norma Hatch."
"You heard I had gone to her as her secretary?"
"Something of the kind, I believe." He leaned forward to refill
her cup.
Lily guessed the possibilities of embarrassment which the topic
held for him, and raising her eyes to his, she said suddenly: "I
left her two months ago."
Rosedale continued to fumble awkwardly with the tea-pot, and she
felt sure that he had heard what had been said of her. But what
was there that Rosedale did not hear?
"Wasn't it a soft berth?" he enquired, with an attempt at
lightness.
"Too soft--one might have sunk in too deep." Lily rested one arm
on the edge of the table, and sat looking at him more intently
than she had ever looked before. An uncontrollable impulse was
urging her to put her case to this man, from whose curiosity she
had always so fiercely defended herself.
"You know Mrs. Hatch, I think? Well, perhaps you can understand
that she might make things too easy for one."
Rosedale looked faintly puzzled, and she remembered that
allusiveness was lost on him.
"It was no place for you, anyhow," he agreed, so suffused and
immersed in the light of her full gaze that he found himself
being drawn into strange depths of intimacy. He who had had to
subsist on mere fugitive glances, looks winged in flight and
swiftly lost under covert, now found her eyes settling on him
with a brooding intensity that fairly dazzled him.
"I left," Lily continued, "lest people should say I was helping
Mrs. Hatch to marry Freddy Van Osburgh--who is not in the least
too good for her--and as they still continue to say it, I see
that I might as well have stayed where I was."
"Oh, Freddy---" Rosedale brushed aside the topic with an air of
its unimportance which gave a sense of the immense perspective he
had acquired. "Freddy don't count--but I knew YOU weren't mixed
up in that. It ain't your style."
Lily coloured slightly: she could not conceal from herself that
the words gave her pleasure. She would have liked to sit there,
drinking more tea, and continuing to talk of herself to Rosedale.
But the old habit of observing the conventions reminded her that
it was time to bring their colloquy to an end, and she made a
faint motion to push back her chair.
Rosedale stopped her with a protesting gesture. "Wait a
minute--don't go yet; sit quiet and rest a little longer. You
look thoroughly played out. And you haven't told me---" He broke
off, conscious of going farther than he had meant. She saw the
struggle and understood it; understood also the nature of the
spell to which he yielded as, with his eyes on her face, he began
again abruptly: "What on earth did you mean by saying just now
that you were learning to be a milliner?"
"Just what I said. I am an apprentice at Regina's."
"Good Lord--YOU? But what for? I knew your aunt had
turned you down: Mrs. Fisher told me about it. But I understood
you got a legacy from her---"
"I got ten thousand dollars; but the legacy is not to be paid
till next summer."
"Well, but--look here: you could BORROW on it any time you
wanted."
She shook her head gravely. "No; for I owe it already."
"Owe it? The whole ten thousand?"
"Every penny." She paused, and then continued abruptly, with her
eyes on his face: "I think Gus Trenor spoke to you once about
having made some money for me in stocks."
She waited, and Rosedale, congested with embarrassment, muttered
that he remembered something of the kind.
"He made about nine thousand dollars," Lily pursued, in the same
tone of eager communicativeness. "At the time, I understood that
he was speculating with my own money: it was incredibly stupid of
me, but I knew nothing of business. Afterward I found out that he
had NOT used my money--that what he said he had made for me he
had really given me. It was meant in kindness, of course; but it
was not the sort of obligation one could remain under.
Unfortunately I had spent the money before I discovered my
mistake; and so my legacy will have to go to pay it back. That is
the reason why I am trying to learn a trade."
She made the statement clearly, deliberately, with pauses between
the sentences, so that each should have time to sink deeply into
her hearer's mind. She had a passionate desire that some one
should know the truth about this transaction, and also that the
rumour of her intention to repay the money should reach Judy
Trenor's ears. And it had suddenly occurred to her that Rosedale,
who had surprised Trenor's confidence, was the fitting person to
receive and transmit her version of the facts. She had even felt
a momentary exhilaration at the thought of thus relieving herself
of her detested secret; but the sensation gradually faded in the
telling, and as she ended her pallour was suffused with a deep
blush of misery.
Rosedale continued to stare at her in wonder; but the wonder took
the turn she had least expected.
"But see here--if that's the case, it cleans you out altogether?"
He put it to her as if she had not grasped the consequences of
her act; as if her incorrigible ignorance of business were about
to precipitate her into a fresh act of folly.
"Altogether--yes," she calmly agreed.
He sat silent, his thick hands clasped on the table, his little
puzzled eyes exploring the recesses of the deserted restaurant.
"See here--that's fine," he exclaimed abruptly.
Lily rose from her seat with a deprecating laugh. "Oh, no--it's
merely a bore," she asserted, gathering together the ends of her
feather scarf.
Rosedale remained seated, too intent on his thoughts to notice
her movement. "Miss Lily, if you want any backing--I like pluck--
-" broke from him disconnectedly.
"Thank you." She held out her hand. "Your tea has given me a
tremendous backing. I feel equal to anything now."
Her gesture seemed to show a definite intention of dismissal, but
her companion had tossed a bill to the waiter, and was slipping
his short arms into his expensive overcoat.
"Wait a minute--you've got to let me walk home with you," he
said.
Lily uttered no protest, and when he had paused to make sure of
his change they emerged from the hotel and crossed Sixth Avenue
again. As she led the way westward past a long line of areas
which, through the distortion of their paintless rails, revealed
with increasing candour the DISJECTA MEMBRA of bygone dinners,
Lily felt that Rosedale was taking contemptuous note of the
neighbourhood; and before the doorstep at which she finally
paused he looked up with an air of incredulous disgust.
"This isn't the place? Some one told me you were living with Miss
Farish."
"No: I am boarding here. I have lived too long on my friends."
He continued to scan the blistered brown stone front, the windows
draped with discoloured lace, and the Pompeian decoration of the
muddy vestibule; then he looked back at her face and said with a
visible effort: "You'll let me come and see you some day?"
She smiled, recognizing the heroism of the offer to the point of
being frankly touched by it. "Thank you--I shall be very
glad," she made answer, in the first sincere words she had ever
spoken to him.
That evening in her own room Miss Bart--who had fled early from
the heavy fumes of the basement dinner-table--sat musing upon the
impulse which had led her to unbosom herself to Rosedale. Beneath
it she discovered an increasing sense of loneliness--a dread of
returning to the solitude of her room, while she could be
anywhere else, or in any company but her own. Circumstances, of
late, had combined to cut her off more and more from her few
remaining friends. On Carry Fisher's part the withdrawal was
perhaps not quite involuntary. Having made her final effort on
Lily's behalf, and landed her safely in Mme. Regina's work-room,
Mrs. Fisher seemed disposed to rest from her labours; and Lily,
understanding the reason, could not condemn her. Carry had in
fact come dangerously near to being involved in the episode of
Mrs. Norma Hatch, and it had taken some verbal ingenuity to
extricate herself. She frankly owned to having brought Lily and
Mrs. Hatch together, but then she did not know Mrs. Hatch--she
had expressly warned Lily that she did not know Mrs. Hatch--and
besides, she was not Lily's keeper, and really the girl was old
enough to take care of herself. Carry did not put her own case so
brutally, but she allowed it to be thus put for her by her latest
bosom friend, Mrs. Jack Stepney: Mrs. Stepney, trembling over the
narrowness of her only brother's escape, but eager to vindicate
Mrs. Fisher, at whose house she could count on the "jolly
parties" which had become a necessity to her since marriage had
emancipated her from the Van Osburgh point of view.
Lily understood the situation and could make allowances for it.
Carry had been a good friend to her in difficult days, and
perhaps only a friendship like Gerty's could be proof against
such an increasing strain. Gerty's friendship did indeed hold
fast; yet Lily was beginning to avoid her also. For she could not
go to Gerty's without risk of meeting Selden; and to meet him now
would be pure pain. It was pain enough even to think of him,
whether she considered him in the distinctness of her waking
thoughts, or felt the obsession of his presence through the blur
of her tormented nights. That was one of the reasons why
she had turned again to Mrs. Hatch's prescription. In the uneasy
snatches of her natural dreams he came to her sometimes in the
old guise of fellowship and tenderness; and she would rise from
the sweet delusion mocked and emptied of her courage. But in the
sleep which the phial procured she sank far below such
half-waking visitations, sank into depths of dreamless
annihilation from which she woke each morning with an obliterated
past.
