The House of Mirth (42 page)

     "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.
     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.