Gradually, to be sure, the stress of the old thoughts would
return; but at least they did not importune her waking hour. The
drug gave her a momentary illusion of complete renewal, from
which she drew strength to take up her daily work. The strength
was more and more needed as the perplexities of her future
increased. She knew that to Gerty and Mrs. Fisher she was only
passing through a temporary period of probation, since they
believed that the apprenticeship she was serving at Mme. Regina's
would enable her, when Mrs. Peniston's legacy was paid, to
realize the vision of the green-and-white shop with the fuller
competence acquired by her preliminary training. But to Lily
herself, aware that the legacy could not be put to such a use,
the preliminary training seemed a wasted effort. She understood
clearly enough that, even if she could ever learn to compete with
hands formed from childhood for their special work, the small pay
she received would not be a sufficient addition to her income to
compensate her for such drudgery. And the realization of this
fact brought her recurringly face to face with the temptation to
use the legacy in establishing her business. Once installed, and
in command of her own work-women, she believed she had sufficient
tact and ability to attract a fashionable CLIENTELE; and if the
business succeeded she could gradually lay aside money enough to
discharge her debt to Trenor. But the task might take years to
accomplish, even if she continued to stint herself to the utmost;
and meanwhile her pride would be crushed under the weight of an
intolerable obligation.
These were her superficial considerations; but under them lurked
the secret dread that the obligation might not always remain
intolerable. She knew she could not count on her continuity of
purpose, and what really frightened her was the thought that she
might gradually accommodate herself to remaining
indefinitely in Trenor's debt, as she had accommodated herself to
the part allotted her on the Sabrina, and as she had so nearly
drifted into acquiescing with Stancy's scheme for the advancement
of Mrs. Hatch. Her danger lay, as she knew, in her old incurable
dread of discomfort and poverty; in the fear of that mounting
tide of dinginess against which her mother had so passionately
warned her. And now a new vista of peril opened before her. She
understood that Rosedale was ready to lend her money; and the
longing to take advantage of his offer began to haunt her
insidiously. It was of course impossible to accept a loan from
Rosedale; but proximate possibilities hovered temptingly before
her. She was quite sure that he would come and see her again, and
almost sure that, if he did, she could bring him to the point of
offering to marry her on the terms she had previously rejected.
Would she still reject them if they were offered? More and more,
with every fresh mischance befalling her, did the pursuing furies
seem to take the shape of Bertha Dorset; and close at hand,
safely locked among her papers, lay the means of ending their
pursuit. The temptation, which her scorn of Rosedale had once
enabled her to reject, now insistently returned upon her; and how
much strength was left her to oppose it?
What little there was must at any rate be husbanded to the
utmost; she could not trust herself again to the perils of a
sleepless night. Through the long hours of silence the dark
spirit of fatigue and loneliness crouched upon her breast,
leaving her so drained of bodily strength that her morning
thoughts swam in a haze of weakness. The only hope of renewal lay
in the little bottle at her bed-side; and how much longer that
hope would last she dared not conjecture.
Lily, lingering for a moment on the corner, looked out on the
afternoon spectacle of Fifth Avenue. It was a day in late April,
and the sweetness of spring was in the air. It mitigated the
ugliness of the long crowded thoroughfare, blurred the gaunt
roof-lines, threw a mauve veil over the discouraging perspective
of the side streets, and gave a touch of poetry to the delicate
haze of green that marked the entrance to the Park.
As Lily stood there, she recognized several familiar faces in the
passing carriages. The season was over, and its ruling forces had
disbanded; but a few still lingered, delaying their departure for
Europe, or passing through town on their return from the South.
Among them was Mrs. Van Osburgh, swaying majestically in her
C-spring barouche, with Mrs. Percy Gryce at her side, and the new
heir to the Gryce millions enthroned before them on his nurse's
knees. They were succeeded by Mrs. Hatch's electric victoria, in
which that lady reclined in the lonely splendour of a spring
toilet obviously designed for company; and a moment or two later
came Judy Trenor, accompanied by Lady Skiddaw, who had come over
for her annual tarpon fishing and a dip into "the street."
This fleeting glimpse of her past served to emphasize the sense
of aimlessness with which Lily at length turned toward home. She
had nothing to do for the rest of the day, nor for the days to
come; for the season was over in millinery as well as in society,
and a week earlier Mme. Regina had notified her that her services
were no longer required. Mme. Regina always reduced her staff on
the first of May, and Miss Bart's attendance had of late been so
irregular--she had so often been unwell, and had done so little
work when she came--that it was only as a favour that her
dismissal had hitherto been deferred.
Lily did not question the justice of the decision. She was
conscious of having been forgetful, awkward and slow to learn. It
was bitter to acknowledge her inferiority even to herself, but
the fact had been brought home to her that as a
bread-winner she could never compete with professional ability.
Since she had been brought up to be ornamental, she could hardly
blame herself for failing to serve any practical purpose; but the
discovery put an end to her consoling sense of universal
efficiency.
As she turned homeward her thoughts shrank in anticipation from
the fact that there would be nothing to get up for the next
morning. The luxury of lying late in bed was a pleasure belonging
to the life of ease; it had no part in the utilitarian existence
of the boarding-house. She liked to leave her room early, and to
return to it as late as possible; and she was walking slowly now
in order to postpone the detested approach to her doorstep.
But the doorstep, as she drew near it, acquired a sudden interest
from the fact that it was occupied--and indeed filled--by the
conspicuous figure of Mr. Rosedale, whose presence seemed to take
on an added amplitude from the meanness of his surroundings.
The sight stirred Lily with an irresistible sense of triumph.
Rosedale, a day or two after their chance meeting, had called to
enquire if she had recovered from her indisposition; but since
then she had not seen or heard from him, and his absence seemed
to betoken a struggle to keep away, to let her pass once more out
of his life. If this were the case, his return showed that the
struggle had been unsuccessful, for Lily knew he was not the man
to waste his time in an ineffectual sentimental dalliance. He was
too busy, too practical, and above all too much preoccupied with
his own advancement, to indulge in such unprofitable asides.
In the peacock-blue parlour, with its bunches of dried pampas
grass, and discoloured steel engravings of sentimental episodes,
he looked about him with unconcealed disgust, laying his hat
distrustfully on the dusty console adorned with a Rogers
statuette.
Lily sat down on one of the plush and rosewood sofas, and he
deposited himself in a rocking-chair draped with a starched
antimacassar which scraped unpleasantly against the pink fold of
skin above his collar.
"My goodness--you can't go on living here!" he exclaimed.
Lily smiled at his tone. "I am not sure that I can; but I have
gone over my expenses very carefully, and I rather think I shall
be able to manage it."
"Be able to manage it? That's not what I mean--it's no place for
you!"
"It's what I mean; for I have been out of work for the last
week."
"Out of work--out of work! What a way for you to talk! The idea
of your having to work--it's preposterous." He brought out his
sentences in short violent jerks, as though they were forced up
from a deep inner crater of indignation. "It's a farce--a crazy
farce," he repeated, his eyes fixed on the long vista of the room
reflected in the blotched glass between the windows.
Lily continued to meet his expostulations with a smile. "I don't
know why I should regard myself as an exception---" she began.
"Because you ARE; that's why; and your being in a place like this
is a damnable outrage. I can't talk of it calmly."
She had in truth never seen him so shaken out of his usual
glibness; and there was something almost moving to her in his
inarticulate struggle with his emotions.
He rose with a start which left the rocking-chair quivering on
its beam ends, and placed himself squarely before her.
"Look here, Miss Lily, I'm going to Europe next week: going over
to Paris and London for a couple of months--and I can't leave you
like this. I can't do it. I know it's none of my business--you've
let me understand that often enough; but things are worse with
you now than they have been before, and you must see that you've
got to accept help from somebody. You spoke to me the other day
about some debt to Trenor. I know what you mean--and I respect
you for feeling as you do about it."
A blush of surprise rose to Lily's pale face, but before she
could interrupt him he had continued eagerly: "Well, I'll lend
you the money to pay Trenor; and I won't--I--see here, don't take
me up till I've finished. What I mean is, it'll be a plain
business arrangement, such as one man would make with another.
Now, what have you got to say against that?"
Lily's blush deepened to a glow in which humiliation and
gratitude were mingled; and both sentiments revealed themselves
in the unexpected gentleness of her reply.
"Only this: that it is exactly what Gus Trenor proposed; and that
I can never again be sure of understanding the plainest business
arrangement." Then, realizing that this answer contained a germ
of injustice, she added, even more kindly: "Not that I don't
appreciate your kindness--that I'm not grateful for it. But a
business arrangement between us would in any case be impossible,
because I shall have no security to give when my debt to Gus
Trenor has been paid."
Rosedale received this statement in silence: he seemed to fed the
note of finality in her voice, yet to be unable to accept it as
closing the question between them.
In the silence Lily had a clear perception of what was passing
through his mind. Whatever perplexity he felt as to the
inexorableness of her course--however little he penetrated its
motive--she saw that it unmistakably tended to strengthen her
hold over him. It was as though the sense in her of unexplained
scruples and resistances had the same attraction as the delicacy
of feature, the fastidiousness of manner, which gave her an
external rarity, an air of being impossible to match. As he
advanced in social experience this uniqueness had acquired a
greater value for him, as though he were a collector who had
learned to distinguish minor differences of design and quality in
some long-coveted object.
Lily, perceiving all this, understood that he would marry her at
once, on the sole condition of a reconciliation with Mrs. Dorset;
and the temptation was the less easy to put aside because, little
by little, circumstances were breaking down her dislike for
Rosedale. The dislike, indeed, still subsisted; but it was
penetrated here and there by the perception of mitigating
qualities in him: of a certain gross kindliness, a rather
helpless fidelity of sentiment, which seemed to be struggling
through the hard surface of his material ambitions.
Reading his dismissal in her eyes, he held out his hand with a
gesture which conveyed something of this inarticulate conflict.
"If you'd only let me, I'd set you up over them all--I'd put you
where you could wipe your feet on 'em!" he declared; and
it touched her oddly to see that his new passion had not altered
his old standard of values.
Lily took no sleeping-drops that night. She lay awake viewing her
situation in the crude light which Rosedale's visit had shed on
it. In fending off the offer he was so plainly ready to renew,
had she not sacrificed to one of those abstract notions of honour
that might be called the conventionalities of the moral life?
What debt did she owe to a social order which had condemned and
banished her without trial? She had never been heard in her own
defence; she was innocent of the charge on which she had been
found guilty; and the irregularity of her conviction might seem
to justify the use of methods as irregular in recovering her lost
rights. Bertha Dorset, to save herself, had not scrupled to ruin
her by an open falsehood; why should she hesitate to make private
use of the facts that chance had put in her way? After all, half
the opprobrium of such an act lies in the name attached to it.
Call it blackmail and it becomes unthinkable; but explain that it
injures no one, and that the rights regained by it were unjustly
forfeited, and he must be a formalist indeed who can find no plea
in its defence.
The arguments pleading for it with Lily were the old unanswerable
ones of the personal situation: the sense of injury, the sense of
failure, the passionate craving for a fair chance against the
selfish despotism of society. She had learned by experience that
she had neither the aptitude nor the moral constancy to remake
her life on new lines; to become a worker among workers, and let
the world of luxury and pleasure sweep by her unregarded. She
could not hold herself much to blame for this ineffectiveness,
and she was perhaps less to blame than she believed. Inherited
tendencies had combined with early training to make her the
highly specialized product she was: an organism as helpless out
of its narrow range as the sea-anemone torn from the rock. She
had been fashioned to adorn and delight; to what other end does
nature round the rose-leaf and paint the humming-bird's breast?
And was it her fault that the purely decorative mission is less
easily and harmoniously fulfilled among social beings
than in the world of nature? That it is apt to be hampered by
material necessities or complicated by moral scruples?
These last were the two antagonistic forces which fought out
their battle in her breast during the long watches of the night;
and when she rose the next morning she hardly knew where the
victory lay. She was exhausted by the reaction of a night without
sleep, coming after many nights of rest artificially obtained;
and in the distorting light of fatigue the future stretched out
before her grey, interminable and desolate.
She lay late in bed, refusing the coffee and fried eggs which the
friendly Irish servant thrust through her door, and hating the
intimate domestic noises of the house and the cries and rumblings
of the street. Her week of idleness had brought home to her with
exaggerated force these small aggravations of the boarding-house
world, and she yearned for that other luxurious world, whose
machinery is so carefully concealed that one scene flows into
another without perceptible agency.
At length she rose and dressed. Since she had left Mme. Regina's
she had spent her days in the streets, partly to escape from the
uncongenial promiscuities of the boarding-house, and partly in
the hope that physical fatigue would help her to sleep. But once
out of the house, she could not decide where to go; for she had
avoided Gerty since her dismissal from the milliner's, and she
was not sure of a welcome anywhere else.
The morning was in harsh contrast to the previous day. A cold
grey sky threatened rain, and a high wind drove the dust in wild
spirals up and down the streets. Lily walked up Fifth Avenue
toward the Park, hoping to find a sheltered nook where she might
sit; but the wind chilled her, and after an hour's wandering
under the tossing boughs she yielded to her increasing weariness,
and took refuge in a little restaurant in Fifty-ninth Street. She
was not hungry, and had meant to go without luncheon; but she was
too tired to return home, and the long perspective of white
tables showed alluringly through the windows.
The room was full of women and girls, all too much engaged in the
rapid absorption of tea and pie to remark her entrance. A hum of
shrill voices reverberated against the low ceiling, leaving Lily
shut out in a little circle of silence. She felt a sudden pang of
profound loneliness. She had lost the sense of time, and
it seemed to her as though she had not spoken to any one for
days. Her eyes sought the faces about her, craving a responsive
glance, some sign of an intuition of her trouble. But the sallow
preoccupied women, with their bags and note-books and rolls of
music, were all engrossed in their own affairs, and even those
who sat by themselves were busy running over proof-sheets or
devouring magazines between their hurried gulps of tea. Lily
alone was stranded in a great waste of disoccupation.
She drank several cups of the tea which was served with her
portion of stewed oysters, and her brain felt clearer and
livelier when she emerged once more into the street. She realized
now that, as she sat in the restaurant, she had unconsciously
arrived at a final decision. The discovery gave her an immediate
illusion of activity: it was exhilarating to think that she had
actually a reason for hurrying home. To prolong her enjoyment of
the sensation she decided to walk; but the distance was so great
that she found herself glancing nervously at the clocks on the
way. One of the surprises of her unoccupied state was the
discovery that time, when it is left to itself and no definite
demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any
recognized pace. Usually it loiters; but just when one has come
to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly break into a wild
irrational gallop.
She found, however, on reaching home, that the hour was still
early enough for her to sit down and rest a few minutes before
putting her plan into execution. The delay did not perceptibly
weaken her resolve. She was frightened and yet stimulated by the
reserved force of resolution which she felt within herself: she
saw it was going to be easier, a great deal easier, than she had
imagined.
At five o'clock she rose, unlocked her trunk, and took out a
sealed packet which she slipped into the bosom of her dress. Even
the contact with the packet did not shake her nerves as she had
half-expected it would. She seemed encased in a strong armour of
indifference, as though the vigorous exertion of her will had
finally benumbed her finer sensibilities.
She dressed herself once more for the street, locked her door and
went out. When she emerged on the pavement, the day was still
high, but a threat of rain darkened the sky and cold
gusts shook the signs projecting from the basement shops along
the street. She reached Fifth Avenue and began to walk slowly
northward. She was sufficiently familiar with Mrs. Dorset's
habits to know that she could always be found at home after five.
She might not, indeed, be accessible to visitors, especially to a
visitor so unwelcome, and against whom it was quite possible that
she had guarded herself by special orders; but Lily had written a
note which she meant to send up with her name, and which she
thought would secure her admission.
She had allowed herself time to walk to Mrs. Dorset's, thinking
that the quick movement through the cold evening air would help
to steady her nerves; but she really felt no need of being
tranquillized. Her survey of the situation remained calm and
unwavering.
