________________________________________________
_ Lily seldom saw her father by daylight. All day he was "down
town"; and in winter it was long after nightfall when she heard
his fagged step on the stairs and his hand on the school-room
door. He would kiss her in silence, and ask one or two questions
of the nurse or the governess; then Mrs. Bart's maid would
come to remind him that he was dining out, and he would hurry
away with a nod to Lily. In summer, when he joined them for a
Sunday at Newport or Southampton, he was even more effaced and
silent than in winter. It seemed to tire him to rest, and he
would sit for hours staring at the sea-line from a quiet corner
of the verandah, while the clatter of his wife's existence went
on unheeded a few feet off. Generally, however, Mrs. Bart and
Lily went to Europe for the summer, and before the steamer was
half way over Mr. Bart had dipped below the horizon. Sometimes
his daughter heard him denounced for having neglected to forward
Mrs. Bart's remittances; but for the most part he was never
mentioned or thought of till his patient stooping figure
presented itself on the New York dock as a buffer between the
magnitude of his wife's luggage and the restrictions of the
American custom-house.
In this desultory yet agitated fashion life went on through
Lily's teens: a zig-zag broken course down which the family craft
glided on a rapid current of amusement, tugged at by the
underflow of a perpetual need--the need of more money. Lily could
not recall the time when there had been money enough, and in some
vague way her father seemed always to blame for the deficiency.
It could certainly not be the fault of Mrs. Bart, who was spoken
of by her friends as a "wonderful manager." Mrs. Bart was famous
for the unlimited effect she produced on limited means; and to
the lady and her acquaintances there was something heroic in
living as though one were much richer than one's bank-book
denoted.
Lily was naturally proud of her mother's aptitude in this line:
she had been brought up in the faith that, whatever it cost, one
must have a good cook, and be what Mrs. Bart called "decently
dressed." Mrs. Bart's worst reproach to her husband was to ask
him if he expected her to "live like a pig"; and his replying in
the negative was always regarded as a justification for cabling
to Paris for an extra dress or two, and telephoning to the
jeweller that he might, after all, send home the turquoise
bracelet which Mrs. Bart had looked at that morning.
Lily knew people who "lived like pigs," and their appearance and
surroundings justified her mother's repugnance to that
form of existence. They were mostly cousins, who inhabited dingy
houses with engravings from Cole's Voyage of Life on the
drawing-room walls, and slatternly parlour-maids who said "I'll
go and see" to visitors calling at an hour when all right-minded
persons are conventionally if not actually out. The disgusting
part of it was that many of these cousins were rich, so that Lily
imbibed the idea that if people lived like pigs it was from
choice, and through the lack of any proper standard of conduct.
This gave her a sense of reflected superiority, and she did not
need Mrs. Bart's comments on the family frumps and misers to
foster her naturally lively taste for splendour.
Lily was nineteen when circumstances caused her to revise her
view of the universe.
The previous year she had made a dazzling debut fringed by a
heavy thunder-cloud of bills. The light of the debut still
lingered on the horizon, but the cloud had thickened; and
suddenly it broke. The suddenness added to the horror; and there
were still times when Lily relived with painful vividness every
detail of the day on which the blow fell. She and her mother had
been seated at the luncheon-table, over the CHAUFROIX and cold
salmon of the previous night's dinner: it was one of Mrs. Bart's
few economies to consume in private the expensive remnants of her
hospitality. Lily was feeling the pleasant languor which is
youth's penalty for dancing till dawn; but her mother, in spite
of a few lines about the mouth, and under the yellow waves on her
temples, was as alert, determined and high in colour as if she
had risen from an untroubled sleep.
In the centre of the table, between the melting MARRONS GLACES
and candied cherries, a pyramid of American Beauties lifted their
vigorous stems; they held their heads as high as Mrs. Bart, but
their rose-colour had turned to a dissipated purple, and Lily's
sense of fitness was disturbed by their reappearance on the
luncheon-table.
"I really think, mother," she said reproachfully, "we might
afford a few fresh flowers for luncheon. Just some jonquils or
lilies-of-the-valley---"
Mrs. Bart stared. Her own fastidiousness had its eye fixed on the
world, and she did not care how the luncheon-table looked
when there was no one present at it but the family. But she
smiled at her daughter's innocence.
"Lilies-of-the-valley," she said calmly, "cost two dollars a
dozen at this season."
Lily was not impressed. She knew very little of the value of
money.
"It would not take more than six dozen to fill that bowl," she
argued.
"Six dozen what?" asked her father's voice in the doorway.
The two women looked up in surprise; though it was a Saturday,
the sight of Mr. Bart at luncheon was an unwonted one. But
neither his wife nor his daughter was sufficiently interested to
ask an explanation.
Mr. Bart dropped into a chair, and sat gazing absently at the
fragment of jellied salmon which the butler had placed before
him.
"I was only saying," Lily began, "that I hate to see faded
flowers at luncheon; and mother says a bunch of lilies-of-the-
valley would not cost more than twelve dollars. Mayn't I tell the
florist to send a few every day?"
She leaned confidently toward her father: he seldom refused her
anything, and Mrs. Bart had taught her to plead with him when her
own entreaties failed.
Mr. Bart sat motionless, his gaze still fixed on the salmon, and
his lower jaw dropped; he looked even paler than usual, and his
thin hair lay in untidy streaks on his forehead. Suddenly he
looked at his daughter and laughed. The laugh was so strange that
Lily coloured under it: she disliked being ridiculed, and her
father seemed to see something ridiculous in the request. Perhaps
he thought it foolish that she should trouble him about such a
trifle.
"Twelve dollars--twelve dollars a day for flowers? Oh, certainly,
my dear--give him an order for twelve hundred." He continued to
laugh.
Mrs. Bart gave him a quick glance.
"You needn't wait, Poleworth--I will ring for you," she said to
the butler.
The butler withdrew with an air of silent disapproval, leaving
the remains of the CHAUFROIX on the sideboard.
"What is the matter, Hudson? Are you ill?" said Mrs. Bart
severely.
She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making,
and it was odious to her that her husband should make a show of
himself before the servants.
"Are you ill?" she repeated.
"Ill?---No, I'm ruined," he said.
Lily made a frightened sound, and Mrs. Bart rose to her
feet.
"Ruined---?" she cried; but controlling herself instantly, she
turned a calm face to Lily.
"Shut the pantry door," she said.
Lily obeyed, and when she turned back into the room her father
was sitting with both elbows on the table, the plate of salmon
between them, and his head bowed on his hands.
Mrs. Bart stood over him with a white face which made her hair
unnaturally yellow. She looked at Lily as the latter approached:
her look was terrible, but her voice was modulated to a ghastly
cheerfulness.
"Your father is not well--he doesn't know what he is saying. It
is nothing--but you had better go upstairs; and don't talk to the
servants," she added. _
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