The House of Mirth (21 page)

Miss Stepney, when her first fright had subsided, began to feel the superiority that greater breadth of mind confers. It was really pitiable to be as ignorant of the world as Mrs. Peniston!

She smiled at the latter's question. “People always say unpleasant things—and certainly they're a great deal together. A friend of mine met them the other afternoon in the park, quite late, after the lamps were lit. It's a pity Lily makes herself so conspicuous.”

“Conspicuous!”
gasped Mrs. Peniston. She bent forward, lowering her voice to mitigate the horror. “What sort of things do they say? That he means to get a divorce and marry her?”

Grace Stepney laughed outright. “Dear me, no! He would hardly do that. It—it's a flirtation—nothing more.”

“A flirtation? Between my niece and a married man? Do you mean to tell me that with Lily's looks and advantages she could find no better use for her time than to waste it on a fat stupid man almost old enough to be her father?” This argument had such a convincing ring that it gave Mrs. Peniston sufficient reassurance to pick up her work while she waited for Grace Stepney to rally her scattered forces.

But Miss Stepney was on the spot in an instant. “That's the worst of it; people say she isn't wasting her time! Every one knows, as you say, that Lily is too handsome and—and charming—to devote herself to a man like Gus Trenor unless—”

“Unless?” echoed Mrs. Peniston.

Her visitor drew breath nervously. It was agreeable to shock Mrs. Peniston, but not to shock her to the verge of anger. Miss Stepney was not sufficiently familiar with the classic drama to have recalled in advance how bearers of bad tidings are proverbially received, but she now had a rapid vision of forfeited dinners and a reduced wardrobe as the possible consequence of her disinterestedness. To the honour of her sex, however, hatred of Lily prevailed over more personal considerations. Mrs. Peniston had chosen the wrong moment to boast of her niece's charms.

“Unless,” said Grace, leaning forward to speak with low-toned emphasis, “unless there are material advantages to be gained by making herself agreeable to him.”

She felt that the moment was tremendous and remembered suddenly that Mrs. Peniston's black brocade, with the cut jet fringe, would have been hers at the end of the season.

Mrs. Peniston put down her work again. Another aspect of the same idea had presented itself to her, and she felt that it was beneath her dignity to have her nerves racked by a dependent relative who wore her old clothes.

“If you take pleasure in annoying me by mysterious insinuations,” she said coldly, “you might at least have chosen a more suitable time than just as I am recovering from the strain of giving a large dinner.”

The mention of the dinner dispelled Miss Stepney's last scruples. “I don't know why I should be accused of taking pleasure in telling you about Lily. I was sure I shouldn't get any thanks for it,” she returned with a flare of temper. “But I have some family feeling left, and as you are the only person who has any authority over Lily, I thought you ought to know what is being said of her.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Peniston, “what I complain of is that you haven't told me yet what
is
being said.”

“I didn't suppose I should have to put it so plainly. People say that Gus Trenor pays her bills.”

“Pays her bills—her bills?” Mrs. Peniston broke into a laugh. “I can't imagine where you can have picked up such rubbish. Lily has her own income, and I provide for her very handsomely——”

“Oh, we all know that,” interposed Miss Stepney drily. “But Lily wears a great many smart gowns—”

“I like her to be well-dressed;—it's only suitable!”

“Certainly; but then there are her gambling debts besides.”

Miss Stepney, in the beginning, had not meant to bring up this point; but Mrs. Peniston had only her own incredulity to blame. She was like the stiff-necked unbelievers of Scripture who must be annihilated to be convinced.

“Gambling debts? Lily?” Mrs. Peniston's voice shook with anger and bewilderment. She wondered whether Grace Stepney had gone out of her mind. “What do you mean by her gambling debts?”

“Simply that if one plays bridge for money in Lily's set, one is liable to lose a great deal—and I don't suppose Lily always wins.”

“Who told you that my niece played cards for money?”

“Mercy, cousin Julia, don't look at me as if I were trying to turn you against Lily! Everybody knows she is crazy about bridge. Mrs. Gryce told me herself that it was her gambling that frightened Percy Gryce; it seems he was really taken with her at first. But, of course, among Lily's friends it's quite the custom for girls to play for money. In fact, people are inclined to excuse her on that account—”

“To excuse her for what?”

“For being hard up—and accepting attentions from men like Gus Trenor—and George Dorset—”

Mrs. Peniston gave another cry. “George Dorset? Is there any one else? I should like to know the worst, if you please.”

“Don't put it in that way, cousin Julia. Lately Lily has been a good deal with the Dorsets, and he seems to admire her; but of course that's only natural. And I'm sure there is no truth in the horrid things people say; but she
has
been spending a great deal of money this winter. Evie Van Osburgh was at Céleste's ordering her trousseau the other day—yes, the marriage takes place next month—and she told me that Céleste showed her the most exquisite things she was just sending home to Lily. And people say that Judy Trenor has quarrelled with her on account of Gus; but I'm sure I'm sorry I spoke, though I only meant it as a kindness.”

Mrs. Peniston's genuine incredulity enabled her to dismiss Miss Stepney with a disdain which boded ill for that lady's prospect of succeeding to the black brocade; but minds impenetrable to reason have generally some crack through which suspicion filters, and her visitor's insinuations did not glide off as easily as she had expected. Mrs.

Peniston disliked scenes, and her determination to avoid them had always led her to hold herself aloof from the details of Lily's life. In her youth, girls had not been supposed to require close supervision. They were generally assumed to be taken up with the legitimate business of courtship and marriage, and interference in such affairs on the part of their natural guardians was considered as unwarrantable as a spectator's suddenly joining in a game. There had of course been “fast” girls even in Mrs. Peniston's early experience, but their fastness, at worst, was understood to be a mere excess of animal spirits, against which there could be no graver charge than that of being “unladylike.” The modern fastness appeared synonymous with immorality, and the mere idea of immorality was as offensive to Mrs. Peniston as a smell of cooking in the drawing-room; it was one of the conceptions her mind refused to admit.

She had no immediate intention of repeating to Lily what she had heard or even of trying to ascertain its truth by means of discreet interrogation. To do so might be to provoke a scene; and a scene, in the shaken state of Mrs. Peniston's nerves, with the effects of her dinner not worn off and her mind still tremulous with new impressions, was a risk she deemed it her duty to avoid. But there remained in her thoughts a settled deposit of resentment against her niece, all the denser because it was not to be cleared by explanation or discussion. It was horrible of a young girl to let herself be talked about; however unfounded the charges against her, she must be to blame for their having been made. Mrs. Peniston felt as if there had been a contagious illness in the house, and she was doomed to sit shivering among her contaminated furniture.

M
iss Bart had in fact been treading a devious way, and none of her critics could have been more alive to the fact than herself; but she had a fatalistic sense of being drawn from one wrong turning to another without ever perceiving the right road till it was too late to take it.

Lily, who considered herself above narrow prejudices, had not imagined that the fact of letting Gus Trenor make a little money for her would ever disturb her self-complacency. And the fact in itself still seemed harmless enough; only it was a fertile source of harmful complications. As she exhausted the amusement of spending the money, these complications became more pressing, and Lily, whose mind could be severely logical in tracing the causes of her ill luck to others, justified herself by the thought that she owed all her troubles to the enmity of Bertha Dorset. This enmity, however, had apparently expired in a renewal of friendliness between the two women. Lily's visit to the Dorsets had resulted, for both, in the discovery that they could be of use to each other; and the civilized instinct finds a subtler pleasure in making use of its antagonist than in confounding him. Mrs. Dorset was, in fact, engaged in a new sentimental experiment, of which Mrs. Fisher's late property, Ned Silverton, was the rosy victim; and at such moments, as Judy Trenor had once remarked, she felt a peculiar need of distracting her husband's attention. Dorset was as difficult to amuse as a savage; but even his self-engrossment was not proof against Lily's arts, or rather these were especially adapted to soothe an uneasy egoism. Her experience with Percy Gryce stood her in good stead in ministering to Dorset's humours, and if the incentive to please was less urgent, the difficulties of her situation were teaching her to make much of minor opportunities.

Intimacy with the Dorsets was not likely to lessen such difficulties on the material side. Mrs. Dorset had none of Judy Trenor's lavish impulses, and Dorset's admiration was not likely to express itself in financial “tips,” even had Lily cared to renew her experiences in that line. What she required, for the moment, of the Dorsets' friendship was simply its social sanction. She knew that people were beginning to talk of her; but this fact did not alarm her as it had alarmed Mrs. Peniston. In her set such gossip was not unusual, and a handsome girl who flirted with a married man was merely assumed to be pressing to the limit of her opportunities. It was Trenor himself who frightened her. Their walk in the park had not been a success. Trenor had married young, and since his marriage his intercourse with women had not taken the form of the sentimental small talk which doubles upon itself like the paths in a maze. He was first puzzled and then irritated to find himself always led back to the same starting-point, and Lily felt that she was gradually losing control of the situation. Trenor was in truth in an unmanageable mood. In spite of his understanding with Rosedale, he had been somewhat heavily “touched” by the fall in stocks; his household expenses weighed on him, and he seemed to be meeting on all sides a sullen opposition to his wishes instead of the easy good luck he had hitherto encountered.

Mrs. Trenor was still at Bellomont, keeping the town-house open and descending on it now and then for a taste of the world, but preferring the recurrent excitement of week-end parties to the restrictions of a dull season. Since the holidays she had not urged Lily to return to Bellomont, and the first time they met in town Lily fancied there was a shade of coldness in her manner. Was it merely the expression of her displeasure at Miss Bart's neglect, or had disquieting rumours reached her? The latter contingency seemed improbable, yet Lily was not without a sense of uneasiness. If her roaming sympathies had struck root anywhere, it was in her friendship with Judy Trenor. She believed in the sincerity of her friend's affection, though it sometimes showed itself in self-interested ways, and she shrank with peculiar reluctance from any risk of estranging it. But, aside from this, she was keenly conscious of the way in which such an estrangement would react on herself. The fact that Gus Trenor was Judy's husband was at times Lily's strongest reason for disliking him and for resenting the obligation under which he had placed her.

To set her doubts at rest, Miss Bart, soon after the New Year, “proposed” herself for a week-end at Bellomont. She had learned in advance that the presence of a large party would protect her from too great assiduity on Trenor's part, and his wife's telegraphic “come by all means” seemed to assure her of her usual welcome.

Judy received her amicably. The cares of a large party always prevailed over personal feelings, and Lily saw no change in her hostess' manner. Nevertheless, she was soon aware that the experiment of coming to Bellomont was destined not to be successful. The party was made up of what Mrs. Trenor called “poky people”—her generic name for persons who did not play bridge—and it being her habit to group all such obstructionists in one class, she usually invited them together, regardless of their other characteristics. The result was apt to be an irreducible combination of persons having no other quality in common than their abstinence from bridge, and the antagonisms developed in a group lacking the one taste which might have amalgamated them were in this case aggravated by bad weather and by the ill-concealed boredom of their host and hostess. In such emergencies, Judy would usually have turned to Lily to fuse the discordant elements; and Miss Bart, assuming that such a service was expected of her, threw herself into it with her accustomed zeal. But at the outset she perceived a subtle resistance to her efforts. If Mrs. Trenor's manner toward her was unchanged, there was certainly a faint coldness in that of the other ladies. An occasional caustic allusion to “your friends the Wellington Brys,” or to “the little Jew who has bought the Greiner house—some one told us you knew him, Miss Bart”—showed Lily that she was in disfavour with that portion of society which, while contributing least to its amusement, has assumed the right to decide what forms that amusement shall take. The indication was a slight one, and a year ago Lily would have smiled at it, trusting to the charm of her personality to dispel any prejudice against her. But now she had grown more sensitive to criticism and less confident in her power of disarming it. She knew, moreover, that if the ladies at Bellomont permitted themselves to criticize her friends openly, it was a proof that they were not afraid of subjecting her to the same treatment behind her back. The nervous dread lest anything in Trenor's manner should seem to justify their disapproval made her seek every pretext for avoiding him, and she left Bellomont conscious of having failed in every purpose which had taken her there.