________________________________________________
_ The words roused Selden from the musing fit into which he had
fallen. He himself did not know why he had led their talk along
such lines; it was the last use he would have imagined himself
making of an afternoon's solitude with Miss Bart. But it was one
of those moments when neither seemed to speak deliberately, when
an indwelling voice in each called to the other across unsounded
depths of feeling.
"No, I have nothing to give you instead," he said, sitting up and
turning so that he faced her. "If I had, it should be yours, you
know."
She received this abrupt declaration in a way even stranger than
the manner of its making: she dropped her face on her hands and
he saw that for a moment she wept.
It was for a moment only, however; for when he leaned nearer and
drew down her hands with a gesture less passionate than grave,
she turned on him a face softened but not disfigured by emotion,
and he said to himself, somewhat cruelly, that even her weeping
was an art.
The reflection steadied his voice as he asked, between pity and
irony: "Isn't it natural that I should try to belittle all the
things I can't offer you?"
Her face brightened at this, but she drew her hand away, not with
a gesture of coquetry, but as though renouncing something to
which she had no claim.
"But you belittle ME, don't you," she returned gently, "in being
so sure they are the only things I care for?"
Selden felt an inner start; but it was only the last quiver of
his egoism. Almost at once he answered quite simply: "But you do
care for them, don't you? And no wishing of mine can alter that."
He had so completely ceased to consider how far this might carry
him, that he had a distinct sense of disappointment when she
turned on him a face sparkling with derision.
"Ah," she cried, "for all your fine phrases you're really as
great a coward as I am, for you wouldn't have made one of them if
you hadn't been so sure of my answer."
The shock of this retort had the effect of crystallizing Selden's
wavering intentions.
"I am not so sure of your answer," he said quietly. "And I do you
the justice to believe that you are not either."
It was her turn to look at him with surprise; and after a
moment--"Do you want to marry me?" she asked.
He broke into a laugh. "No, I don't want to--but perhaps I should
if you did!"
"That's what I told you--you're so sure of me that you can amuse
yourself with experiments." She drew back the hand he had
regained, and sat looking down on him sadly.
"I am not making experiments," he returned. "Or if I am, it is
not on you but on myself. I don't know what effect they are going
to have on me--but if marrying you is one of them, I will take
the risk."
She smiled faintly. "It would be a great risk, certainly--I have
never concealed from you how great."
"Ah, it's you who are the coward!" he exclaimed.
She had risen, and he stood facing her with his eyes on hers. The
soft isolation of the falling day enveloped them: they seemed
lifted into a finer air. All the exquisite influences of the hour
trembled in their veins, and drew them to each other as the
loosened leaves were drawn to the earth.
"It's you who are the coward," he repeated, catching her hands in
his.
She leaned on him for a moment, as if with a drop of tired wings:
he felt as though her heart were beating rather with the stress
of a long flight than the thrill of new distances. Then, drawing
back with a little smile of warning--"I shall look hideous in
dowdy clothes; but I can trim my own hats," she declared.
They stood silent for a while after this, smiling at each other
like adventurous children who have climbed to a forbidden height
from which they discover a new world. The actual world at their
feet was veiling itself in dimness, and across the valley a clear
moon rose in the denser blue.
Suddenly they heard a remote sound, like the hum of a giant
insect, and following the high-road, which wound whiter through
the surrounding twilight, a black object rushed across their
vision.
Lily started from her attitude of absorption; her smile faded and
she began to move toward the lane.
"I had no idea it was so late! We shall not be back till after
dark," she said, almost impatiently.
Selden was looking at her with surprise: it took him a moment to
regain his usual view of her; then he said, with an
uncontrollable note of dryness: "That was not one of our party;
the motor was going the other way."
"I know--I know---" She paused, and he saw her redden through the
twilight. "But I told them I was not well--that I should not go
out. Let us go down!" she murmured.
Selden continued to look at her; then he drew his cigarette-case
from his pocket and slowly lit a cigarette. It seemed to him
necessary, at that moment, to proclaim, by some habitual gesture
of this sort, his recovered hold on the actual: he had an almost
puerile wish to let his companion see that, their flight over, he
had landed on his feet.
She waited while the spark flickered under his curved palm; then
he held out the cigarettes to her.
She took one with an unsteady hand, and putting it to her lips,
leaned forward to draw her light from his. In the indistinctness
the little red gleam lit up the lower part of her face, and he
saw her mouth tremble into a smile.
"Were you serious?" she asked, with an odd thrill of gaiety which
she might have caught up, in haste, from a heap of stock
inflections, without having time to select the just note.
Selden's voice was under better control. "Why not?" he returned.
"You see I took no risks in being so." And as she continued to
stand before him, a little pale under the retort, he added
quickly: "Let us go down."
It spoke much for the depth of Mrs. Trenor's friendship that her
voice, in admonishing Miss Bart, took the same note of personal
despair as if she had been lamenting the collapse of a
house-party.
"All I can say is, Lily, that I can't make you out!" She leaned
back, sighing, in the morning abandon of lace and muslin, turning
an indifferent shoulder to the heaped-up importunities of her
desk, while she considered, with the eye of a physician who has
given up the case, the erect exterior of the patient confronting
her.
"If you hadn't told me you were going in for him seriously--but
I'm sure you made that plain enough from the beginning! Why else
did you ask me to let you off bridge, and to keep away Carry and
Kate Corby? I don't suppose you did it because he amused you; we
could none of us imagine your putting up with him for a moment
unless you meant to marry him. And I'm sure everybody played
fair! They all wanted to help it along. Even Bertha kept her
hands off--I will say that--till Lawrence came down and you
dragged him away from her. After that she had a right to
retaliate--why on earth did you interfere with her? You've known
Lawrence Selden for years--why did you behave as if you had just
discovered him? If you had a grudge against Bertha it was a
stupid time to show it--you could have paid her back just as well
after you were married! I told you Bertha was dangerous. She was
in an odious mood when she came here, but Lawrence's turning up
put her in a good humour, and if you'd only let her think he came
for HER it would have never occurred to her to play you this
trick. Oh, Lily, you'll never do anything if you're not serious!"
Miss Bart accepted this exhortation in a spirit of the purest
impartiality. Why should she have been angry? It was the voice of
her own conscience which spoke to her through Mrs. Trenor's
reproachful accents. But even to her own conscience she must
trump up a semblance of defence. "I only took a day off--I
thought he meant to stay on all this week, and I knew Mr. Selden
was leaving this morning."
Mrs. Trenor brushed aside the plea with a gesture which laid bare
its weakness.
"He did mean to stay--that's the worst of it. It shows that he's
run away from you; that Bertha's done her work and poisoned him
thoroughly."
Lily gave a slight laugh. "Oh, if he's running I'll overtake
him!"
Her friend threw out an arresting hand. "Whatever you do, Lily,
do nothing!"
Miss Bart received the warning with a smile. "I don't mean,
literally, to take the next train. There are ways---" But she did
not go on to specify them.
Mrs. Trenor sharply corrected the tense. "There WERE ways--plenty
of them! I didn't suppose you needed to have them pointed out.
But don't deceive yourself--he's thoroughly frightened. He has
run straight home to his mother, and she'll protect him!"
"Oh, to the death," Lily agreed, dimpling at the vision.
"How you can LAUGH---" her friend rebuked her; and she dropped
back to a soberer perception of things with the question: "What
was it Bertha really told him?"
"Don't ask me--horrors! She seemed to have raked up everything.
Oh, you know what I mean--of course there isn't anything, REALLY;
but I suppose she brought in Prince Varigliano--and Lord
Hubert--and there was some story of your having borrowed money of
old Ned Van Alstyne: did you ever?"
"He is my father's cousin," Miss Bart interposed.
"Well, of course she left THAT out. It seems Ned told Carry
Fisher; and she told Bertha, naturally. They're all alike, you
know: they hold their tongues for years, and you think you're
safe, but when their opportunity comes they remember everything."
Lily had grown pale: her voice had a harsh note in it. "It was
some money I lost at bridge at the Van Osburghs'. I repaid it, of
course."
"Ah, well, they wouldn't remember that; besides, it was the idea
of the gambling debt that frightened Percy. Oh, Bertha knew her
man--she knew just what to tell him!" _
Read next: BOOK I: WEB PAGE 16
Read previous: BOOK I: WEB PAGE 14
Table of content of House of Mirth
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
