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_ In this strain Mrs. Trenor continued for nearly an hour to
admonish her friend. Miss Bart listened with admirable
equanimity. Her naturally good temper had been disciplined by
years of enforced compliance, since she had almost always had to
attain her ends by the circuitous path of other people's; and,
being naturally inclined to face unpleasant facts as soon as they
presented themselves, she was not sorry to hear an impartial
statement of what her folly was likely to cost, the more so as
her own thoughts were still insisting on the other side of the
case. Presented in the light of Mrs. Trenor's vigorous comments,
the reckoning was certainly a formidable one, and Lily, as she
listened, found herself gradually reverting to her friend's view
of the situation. Mrs. Trenor's words were moreover emphasized
for her hearer by anxieties which she herself could scarcely
guess. Affluence, unless stimulated by a keen imagination, forms
but the vaguest notion of the practical strain of poverty. Judy
knew it must be "horrid" for poor Lily to have to stop to
consider whether she could afford real lace on her petticoats,
and not to have a motor-car and a steam-yacht at her orders; but
the daily friction of unpaid bills, the daily nibble of small
temptations to expenditure, were trials as far out of her
experience as the domestic problems of the char-woman. Mrs.
Trenor's unconsciousness of the real stress of the situation had
the effect of making it more galling to Lily. While her friend
reproached her for missing the opportunity to eclipse her rivals,
she was once more battling in imagination with the mounting tide
of indebtedness from which she had so nearly escaped. What wind
of folly had driven her out again on those dark seas?
If anything was needed to put the last touch to her
self-abasement it was the sense of the way her old life was
opening its ruts again to receive her. Yesterday her fancy had
fluttered free pinions above a choice of occupations; now she had
to drop to the level of the familiar routine, in which moments of
seeming brilliancy and freedom alternated with long hours of
subjection.
She laid a deprecating hand on her friend's. "Dear Judy! I'm
sorry to have been such a bore, and you are very good to me. But
you must have some letters for me to answer--let me at least be
useful."
She settled herself at the desk, and Mrs. Trenor accepted her
resumption of the morning's task with a sigh which implied that,
after all, she had proved herself unfit for higher uses.
The luncheon table showed a depleted circle. ALI the men but Jack
Stepney and Dorset had returned to town (it seemed to Lily a last
touch of irony that Selden and Percy Gryce should have gone in
the same train), and Lady Cressida and the attendant Wetheralls
had been despatched by motor to lunch at a distant country-house.
At such moments of diminished interest it was usual for Mrs.
Dorset to keep her room till the afternoon; but on this occasion
she drifted in when luncheon was half over, hollowed-eyed and
drooping, but with an edge of malice under her indifference.
She raised her eyebrows as she looked about the table. "How few
of us are left! I do so enjoy the quiet--don't you, Lily? I wish
the men would always stop away--it's really much nicer without
them. Oh, you don't count, George: one doesn't have to talk to
one's husband. But I thought Mr. Gryce was to stay for the rest
of the week?" she added enquiringly. "Didn't he intend to, Judy?
He's such a nice boy--I wonder what drove him away? He is rather
shy, and I'm afraid we may have shocked him: he has been brought
up in such an old-fashioned way. Do you know, Lily, he told me he
had never seen a girl play cards for money till he saw you doing
it the other night? And he lives on the interest of his income,
and always has a lot left over to invest!"
Mrs. Fisher leaned forward eagerly. "I do believe it is some
one's duty to educate that young man. It is shocking that he has
never been made to realize his duties as a citizen. Every wealthy
man should be compelled to study the laws of his country."
Mrs. Dorset glanced at her quietly. "I think he HAS studied the
divorce laws. He told me he had promised the Bishop to sign some
kind of a petition against divorce."
Mrs. Fisher reddened under her powder, and Stepney said with a
laughing glance at Miss Bart: "I suppose he is thinking of
marriage, and wants to tinker up the old ship before he goes
aboard."
His betrothed looked shocked at the metaphor, and George Dorset
exclaimed with a sardonic growl: "Poor devil! It isn't the ship
that will do for him, it's the crew."
"Or the stowaways," said Miss Corby brightly. "If I contemplated
a voyage with him I should try to start with a friend in the
hold."
Miss Van Osburgh's vague feeling of pique was struggling for
appropriate expression. "I'm sure I don't see why you laugh at
him; I think he's very nice," she exclaimed; "and, at any rate, a
girl who married him would always have enough to be comfortable."
She looked puzzled at the redoubled laughter which hailed her
words, but it might have consoled her to know how deeply they had
sunk into the breast of one of her hearers.
Comfortable! At that moment the word was more eloquent to Lily
Bart than any other in the language. She could not even pause to
smile over the heiress's view of a colossal fortune as a mere
shelter against want: her mind was filled with the vision of what
that shelter might have been to her. Mrs. Dorset's pin-pricks did
not smart, for her own irony cut deeper: no one could hurt her as
much as she was hurting herself, for no one else--not even Judy
Trenor--knew the full magnitude of her folly.
She was roused from these unprofitable considerations by a
whispered request from her hostess, who drew her apart as they
left the luncheon-table.
"Lily, dear, if you've nothing special to do, may I tell Carry
Fisher that you intend to drive to the station and fetch Gus? He
will be back at four, and I know she has it in her mind to meet
him. Of course I'm very glad to have him amused, but I happen to
know that she has bled him rather severely since she's been here,
and she is so keen about going to fetch him that I fancy she must
have got a lot more bills this morning. It seems to me," Mrs.
Trenor feelingly concluded, "that most of her alimony is paid by
other women's husbands!"
Miss Bart, on her way to the station, had leisure to muse over
her friend's words, and their peculiar application to herself.
Why should she have to suffer for having once, for a few hours,
borrowed money of an elderly cousin, when a woman like Carry
Fisher could make a living unrebuked from the good-nature of her
men friends and the tolerance of their wives? It all turned on
the tiresome distinction between what a married woman
might, and a girl might not, do. Of course it was shocking for a
married woman to borrow money--and Lily was expertly aware of the
implication involved--but still, it was the mere MALUM PROHIBITUM
which the world decries but condones, and which, though it may be
punished by private vengeance, does not provoke the collective
disapprobation of society. To Miss Bart, in short, no such
opportunities were possible. She could of course borrow from her
women friends--a hundred here or there, at the utmost--but they
were more ready to give a gown or a trinket, and looked a little
askance when she hinted her preference for a cheque. Women are
not generous lenders, and those among whom her lot was cast were
either in the same case as herself, or else too far removed from
it to understand its necessities. The result of her meditations
was the decision to join her aunt at Richfield. She could not
remain at Bellomont without playing bridge, and being involved in
other expenses; and to continue her usual series of autumn visits
would merely prolong the same difficulties. She had reached a
point where abrupt retrenchment was necessary, and the only cheap
life was a dull life. She would start the next morning for
Richfield.
At the station she thought Gus Trenor seemed surprised, and not
wholly unrelieved, to see her. She yielded up the reins of the
light runabout in which she had driven over, and as he climbed
heavily to her side, crushing her into a scant third of the seat,
he said: "Halloo! It isn't often you honour me. You must have
been uncommonly hard up for something to do."
The afternoon was warm, and propinquity made her more than
usually conscious that he was red and massive, and that beads of
moisture had caused the dust of the train to adhere unpleasantly
to the broad expanse of cheek and neck which he turned to her;
but she was aware also, from the look in his small dull eyes,
that the contact with her freshness and slenderness was as
agreeable to him as the sight of a cooling beverage.
The perception of this fact helped her to answer gaily: "It's not
often I have the chance. There are too many ladies to dispute the
privilege with me."
"The privilege of driving me home? Well, I'm glad you won
the race, anyhow. But I know what really happened--my wife sent
you. Now didn't she?"
He had the dull man's unexpected flashes of astuteness, and Lily
could not help joining in the laugh with which he had pounced on
the truth.
"You see, Judy thinks I'm the safest person for you to be with;
and she's quite right," she rejoined.
"Oh, is she, though? If she is, it's because you wouldn't waste
your time on an old hulk like me. We married men have to put up
with what we can get: all the prizes are for the clever chaps
who've kept a free foot. Let me light a cigar, will you? I've had
a beastly day of it."
He drew up in the shade of the village street, and passed the
reins to her while he held a match to his cigar. The little flame
under his hand cast a deeper crimson on his puffing face, and
Lily averted her eyes with a momentary feeling of repugnance. And
yet some women thought him handsome!
As she handed back the reins, she said sympathetically: "Did you
have such a lot of tiresome things to do?"
"I should say so--rather!" Trenor, who was seldom listened to,
either by his wife or her friends, settled down into the rare
enjoyment of a confidential talk. "You don't know how a fellow
has to hustle to keep this kind of thing going." He waved his
whip in the direction of the Bellomont acres, which lay outspread
before them in opulent undulations. "Judy has no idea of what she
spends--not that there isn't plenty to keep the thing going," he
interrupted himself, "but a man has got to keep his eyes open and
pick up all the tips he can. My father and mother used to live
like fighting-cocks on their income, and put by a good bit of it
too--luckily for me--but at the pace we go now, I don't know
where I should be if it weren't for taking a flyer now and then.
The women all think--I mean Judy thinks--I've nothing to do but
to go down town once a month and cut off coupons, but the truth
is it takes a devilish lot of hard work to keep the machinery
running. Not that I ought to complain to-day, though," he went on
after a moment, "for I did a very neat stroke of business, thanks
to Stepney's friend Rosedale: by the way, Miss Lily, I wish you'd
try to persuade Judy to be decently civil to that chap. He's
going to be rich enough to buy us all out one of these
days, and if she'd only ask him to dine now and then I could get
almost anything out of him. The man is mad to know the people who
don't want to know him, and when a fellow's in that state there
is nothing he won't do for the first woman who takes him up."
Lily hesitated a moment. The first part of her companion's
discourse had started an interesting train of thought, which was
rudely interrupted by the mention of Mr. Rosedale's name. She
uttered a faint protest.
"But you know Jack did try to take him about, and he was
impossible."
"Oh, hang it--because he's fat and shiny, and has a sloppy
manner! Well, all I can say is that the people who are clever
enough to be civil to him now will make a mighty good thing of
it. A few years from now he'll be in it whether we want him or
not, and then he won't be giving away a half-a-million tip for a
dinner."
Lily's mind had reverted from the intrusive personality of Mr.
Rosedale to the train of thought set in motion by Trenor's first
words. This vast mysterious Wall Street world of "tips" and
"deals"--might she not find in it the means of escape from her
dreary predicament? She had often heard of women making money in
this way through their friends: she had no more notion than most
of her sex of the exact nature of the transaction, and its
vagueness seemed to diminish its indelicacy. She could not,
indeed, imagine herself, in any extremity, stooping to extract a
"tip" from Mr. Rosedale; but at her side was a man in possession
of that precious commodity, and who, as the husband of her
dearest friend, stood to her in a relation of almost fraternal
intimacy. _
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