________________________________________________
_ In her inmost heart Lily knew it was not by appealing to the
fraternal instinct that she was likely to move Gus Trenor; but
this way of explaining the situation helped to drape its crudity,
and she was always scrupulous about keeping up appearances to
herself. Her personal fastidiousness had a moral equivalent, and
when she made a tour of inspection in her own mind there were
certain closed doors she did not open.
As they reached the gates of Bellomont she turned to Trenor with
a smile. "The afternoon is so perfect--don't you want to drive me
a little farther? I've been rather out of spirits all day,
and it's so restful to be away from people, with some one who
won't mind if I'm a little dull."
She looked so plaintively lovely as she proffered the request, so
trustfully sure of his sympathy and understanding, that Trenor
felt himself wishing that his wife could see how other women
treated him--not battered wire-pullers like Mrs. Fisher, but a
girl that most men would have given their boots to get such a
look from.
"Out of spirits? Why on earth should you ever be out of spirits?
Is your last box of Doucet dresses a failure, or did Judy rook
you out of everything at bridge last night?"
Lily shook her head with a sigh. "I have had to give up Doucet;
and bridge too--I can't afford it. In fact I can't afford any of
the things my friends do, and I am afraid Judy often thinks me a
bore because I don't play cards any longer, and because I am not
as smartly dressed as the other women. But you will think me a
bore too if I talk to you about my worries, and I only mention
them because I want you to do me a favour--the very greatest of
favours."
Her eyes sought his once more, and she smiled inwardly at the
tinge of apprehension that she read in them.
"Why, of course--if it's anything I can manage---" He broke off,
and she guessed that his enjoyment was disturbed by the
remembrance of Mrs. Fisher's methods.
"The greatest of favours," she rejoined gently. "The fact is,
Judy is angry with me, and I want you to make my peace."
"Angry with you? Oh, come, nonsense---" his relief broke through
in a laugh. "Why, you know she's devoted to you."
"She is the best friend I have, and that is why I mind having to
vex her. But I daresay you know what she has wanted me to do. She
has set her heart--poor dear--on my marrying--marrying a great
deal of money."
She paused with a slight falter of embarrassment, and Trenor,
turning abruptly, fixed on her a look of growing intelligence.
"A great deal of money? Oh, by Jove--you don't mean Gryce?
What--you do? Oh, no, of course I won't mention it--you can trust
me to keep my mouth shut--but Gryce--
good Lord, GRYCE! Did
Judy really think you could bring yourself to marry that
portentous little ass? But you couldn't, eh? And so you gave him
the sack, and that's the reason why he lit out by the first train
this morning?" He leaned back, spreading himself farther across
the seat, as if dilated by the joyful sense of his own
discernment. "How on earth could Judy think you would do such a
thing? I could have told her you'd never put up with such a
little milksop!"
Lily sighed more deeply. "I sometimes think," she murmured, "that
men understand a woman's motives better than other women do."
"Some men--I'm certain of it! I could have TOLD Judy," he
repeated, exulting in the implied superiority over his wife.
"I thought you would understand; that's why I wanted to speak to
you," Miss Bart rejoined. "I can't make that kind of marriage;
it's impossible. But neither can I go on living as all the women
in my set do. I am almost entirely dependent on my aunt, and
though she is very kind to me she makes me no regular allowance,
and lately I've lost money at cards, and I don't dare tell her
about it. I have paid my card debts, of course, but there is
hardly anything left for my other expenses, and if I go on with
my present life I shall be in horrible difficulties. I have a
tiny income of my own, but I'm afraid it's badly invested, for it
seems to bring in less every year, and I am so ignorant of money
matters that I don't know if my aunt's agent, who looks after it,
is a good adviser." She paused a moment, and added in a lighter
tone: "I didn't mean to bore you with all this, but I want your
help in making Judy understand that I can't, at present, go on
living as one must live among you all. I am going away tomorrow
to join my aunt at Richfield, and I shall stay there for the rest
of the autumn, and dismiss my maid and learn how to mend my own
clothes."
At this picture of loveliness in distress, the pathos of which
was heightened by the light touch with which it was drawn, a
murmur of indignant sympathy broke from Trenor. Twenty-four hours
earlier, if his wife had consulted him on the subject of Miss
Bart's future, he would have said that a girl with extravagant
tastes and no money had better marry the first rich man she could
get; but with the subject of dis
cussion at his side,
turning to him for sympathy, making him feel that he understood
her better than her dearest friends, and confirming the assurance
by the appeal of her exquisite nearness, he was ready to swear
that such a marriage was a desecration, and that, as a man of
honour, he was bound to do all he could to protect her from the
results of her disinterestedness. This impulse was reinforced by
the reflection that if she had married Gryce she would have been
surrounded by flattery and approval, whereas, having refused to
sacrifice herself to expediency, she was left to bear the whole
cost of her resistance. Hang it, if he could find a way out of
such difficulties for a professional sponge like Carry Fisher,
who was simply a mental habit corresponding to the physical
titillations of the cigarette or the cock-tail, he could surely
do as much for a girl who appealed to his highest sympathies, and
who brought her troubles to him with the trustfulness of a child.
Trenor and Miss Bart prolonged their drive till long after
sunset; and before it was over he had tried, with some show of
success, to prove to her that, if she would only trust him, he
could make a handsome sum of money for her without endangering
the small amount she possessed. She was too genuinely ignorant of
the manipulations of the stock-market to understand his technical
explanations, or even perhaps to perceive that certain points in
them were slurred; the haziness enveloping the transaction served
as a veil for her embarrassment, and through the general blur her
hopes dilated like lamps in a fog. She understood only that her
modest investments were to be mysteriously multiplied without
risk to herself; and the assurance that this miracle would take
place within a short time, that there would be no tedious
interval for suspense and reaction, relieved her of her lingering
scruples.
Again she felt the lightening of her load, and with it the
release of repressed activities. Her immediate worries conjured,
it was easy to resolve that she would never again find herself in
such straits, and as the need of economy and self-denial receded
from her foreground she felt herself ready to meet any other
demand which life might make. Even the immediate one of letting
Trenor, as they drove homeward, lean a little nearer and
rest his hand reassuringly on hers, cost her only a momentary
shiver of reluctance. It was part of the game to make him feel
that her appeal had been an uncalculated impulse, provoked by the
liking he inspired; and the renewed sense of power in handling
men, while it consoled her wounded vanity, helped also to obscure
the thought of the claim at which his manner hinted. He was a
coarse dull man who, under all his show of authority, was a mere
supernumerary in the costly show for which his money paid:
surely, to a clever girl, it would be easy to hold him by his
vanity, and so keep the obligation on his side.
The first thousand dollar cheque which Lily received with a
blotted scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence
in the exact degree to which it effaced her debts.
The transaction had justified itself by its results: she saw now
how absurd it would have been to let any primitive scruple
deprive her of this easy means of appeasing her creditors. Lily
felt really virtuous as she dispensed the sum in sops to her
tradesmen, and the fact that a fresh order accompanied each
payment did not lessen her sense of disinterestedness. How many
women, in her place, would have given the orders without making
the payment!
She had found it reassuringly easy to keep Trenor in a good
humour. To listen to his stories, to receive his confidences and
laugh at his jokes, seemed for the moment all that was required
of her, and the complacency with which her hostess regarded these
attentions freed them of the least hint of ambiguity. Mrs. Trenor
evidently assumed that Lily's growing intimacy with her husband
was simply an indirect way of returning her own kindness.
"I'm so glad you and Gus have become such good friends," she said
approvingly. "It's too delightful of you to be so nice to him,
and put up with all his tiresome stories. I know what they are,
because I had to listen to them when we were engaged--I'm sure he
is telling the same ones still. And now I shan't always have to
be asking Carry Fisher here to keep him in a good-humour. She's a
perfect vulture, you know; and she hasn't the least moral sense.
She is always getting Gus to speculate for her, and I'm sure she
never pays when she loses."
Miss Bart could shudder at this state of things without the
embarrassment of a personal application. Her own position was
surely quite different. There could be no question of her not
paying when she lost, since Trenor had assured her that she was
certain not to lose. In sending her the cheque he had explained
that he had made five thousand for her out of Rosedale's "tip,"
and had put four thousand back in the same venture, as
there was the promise of another "big rise"; she understood
therefore that he was now speculating with her own money, and
that she consequently owed him no more than the gratitude which
such a trifling service demanded. She vaguely supposed that, to
raise the first sum, he had borrowed on her securities; but this
was a point over which her curiosity did not linger. It was
concentrated, for the moment, on the probable date of the next
"big rise."
The news of this event was received by her some weeks later, on
the occasion of Jack Stepney's marriage to Miss Van Osburgh. As a
cousin of the bridegroom, Miss Bart had been asked to act as
bridesmaid; but she had declined on the plea that, since she was
much taller than the other attendant virgins, her presence might
mar the symmetry of the group. The truth was, she had attended
too many brides to the altar: when next seen there she meant to
be the chief figure in the ceremony. She knew the pleasantries
made at the expense of young girls who have been too long before
the public, and she was resolved to avoid such assumptions of
youthfulness as might lead people to think her older than she
really was.
The Van Osburgh marriage was celebrated in the village church
near the paternal estate on the Hudson. It was the "simple
country wedding" to which guests are convoyed in special trains,
and from which the hordes of the uninvited have to be fended off
by the intervention of the police. While these sylvan rites were
taking place, in a church packed with fashion and festooned with
orchids, the representatives of the press were threading their
way, note-book in hand, through the labyrinth of wedding
presents, and the agent of a cinematograph syndicate was setting
up his apparatus at the church door. It was the kind of scene in
which Lily had often pictured herself as taking the principal
part, and on this occasion the fact that she was once more merely
a casual spectator, instead of the mystically veiled figure
occupying the centre of attention, strengthened her resolve to
assume the latter part before the year was over. The fact that
her immediate anxieties were relieved did not blind her to a
possibility of their recurrence; it merely gave her enough
buoyancy to rise once more above her doubts and feel a renewed
faith in her beauty, her power, and her general fitness to
attract a brilliant destiny. It could not be that one
conscious of such aptitudes for mastery and enjoyment was doomed
to a perpetuity of failure; and her mistakes looked easily
reparable in the light of her restored self-confidence. _
Read next: BOOK I: WEB PAGE 18
Read previous: BOOK I: WEB PAGE 16
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
