________________________________________________
_ At Mrs. Fisher's, through the cigar-smoke of the studio, a dozen
voices greeted Selden. A song was pending as he entered, and he
dropped into a seat near his hostess, his eyes roaming in search
of Miss Bart. But she was not there, and the discovery gave him a
pang out of all proportion to its seriousness; since the note in
his breast-pocket assured him that at four the next day they
would meet. To his impatience it seemed immeasurably long to
wait, and half-ashamed of the impulse, he leaned to Mrs. Fisher
to ask, as the music ceased, if Miss Bart had not dined with her.
"Lily? She's just gone. She had to run off, I forget where.
Wasn't she wonderful last night?"
"Who's that? Lily?" asked Jack Stepney, from the depths of a
neighbouring arm-chair. "Really, you know, I'm no prude, but when
it comes to a girl standing there as if she was up at auction--I
thought seriously of speaking to cousin Julia."
"You didn't know Jack had become our social censor?" Mrs. Fisher
said to Selden with a laugh; and Stepney spluttered, amid the
general derision: "But she's a cousin, hang it, and when a man's
married--TOWN TALK was full of her this morning."
"Yes: lively reading that was," said Mr. Ned Van Alstyne,
stroking his moustache to hide the smile behind it. "Buy the
dirty sheet? No, of course not; some fellow showed it to me--but
I'd heard the stories before. When a girl's as good-looking as
that she'd better marry; then no questions are asked. In our
imperfectly organized society there is no provision as yet for
the young woman who claims the privileges of marriage without
assuming its obligations."
"Well, I understand Lily is about to assume them in the shape of
Mr. Rosedale," Mrs. Fisher said with a laugh.
"Rosedale--good heavens!" exclaimed Van Alstyne, dropping his
eye-glass. "Stepney, that's your fault for foisting the brute on
us."
"Oh, confound it, you know, we don't MARRY Rosedale in our
family," Stepney languidly protested; but his wife, who
sat in oppressive bridal finery at the other side of the room,
quelled him with the judicial reflection: "In Lily's
circumstances it's a mistake to have too high a standard."
"I hear even Rosedale has been scared by the talk lately," Mrs.
Fisher rejoined; "but the sight of her last night sent him off
his head. What do you think he said to me after her TABLEAU?
'My God, Mrs. Fisher, if I could get Paul Morpeth to paint her
like that, the picture'd appreciate a hundred per cent in ten
years.'"
"By Jove,--but isn't she about somewhere?" exclaimed Van Alstyne,
restoring his glass with an uneasy glance.
"No; she ran off while you were all mixing the punch down stairs.
Where was she going, by the way? What's on tonight? I hadn't
heard of anything."
"Oh, not a party, I think," said an inexperienced young Farish
who had arrived late. "I put her in her cab as I was coming in,
and she gave the driver the Trenors' address."
"The Trenors'?" exclaimed Mrs. Jack Stepney. "Why, the house is
closed--Judy telephoned me from Bellomont this evening."
"Did she? That's queer. I'm sure I'm not mistaken. Well, come
now, Trenor's there, anyhow--I--oh, well--the fact is, I've no
head for numbers," he broke off, admonished by the nudge of an
adjoining foot, and the smile that circled the room.
In its unpleasant light Selden had risen and was shaking hands
with his hostess. The air of the place stifled him, and he
wondered why he had stayed in it so long.
On the doorstep he stood still, remembering a phrase of Lily's:
"It seems to me you spend a good deal of time in the element you
disapprove of."
Well--what had brought him there but the quest of her? It was her
element, not his. But he would lift her out of it, take her
beyond! That BEYOND! on her letter was like a cry for rescue. He
knew that Perseus's task is not done when he has loosed
Andromeda's chains, for her limbs are numb with bondage, and she
cannot rise and walk, but clings to him with dragging arms as he
beats back to land with his burden. Well, he had strength for
both--it was her weakness which had put the strength in him. It
was not, alas, a clean rush of waves they had to win
through, but a clogging morass of old associations and habits,
and for the moment its vapours were in his throat. But he would
see clearer, breathe freer in her presence: she was at once the
dead weight at his breast and the spar which should float them to
safety. He smiled at the whirl of metaphor with which he was
trying to build up a defence against the influences of the last
hour. It was pitiable that he, who knew the mixed motives on
which social judgments depend, should still feel himself so
swayed by them. How could he lift Lily to a freer vision of life,
if his own view of her was to be coloured by any mind in which he
saw her reflected?
The moral oppression had produced a physical craving for air, and
he strode on, opening his lungs to the reverberating coldness of
the night. At the corner of Fifth Avenue Van Alstyne hailed him
with an offer of company.
"Walking? A good thing to blow the smoke out of one's head. Now
that women have taken to tobacco we live in a bath of nicotine.
It would be a curious thing to study the effect of cigarettes on
the relation of the sexes. Smoke is almost as great a solvent as
divorce: both tend to obscure the moral issue."
Nothing could have been less consonant with Selden's mood than
Van Alstyne's after-dinner aphorisms, but as long as the latter
confined himself to generalities his listener's nerves were in
control. Happily Van Alstyne prided himself on his summing up of
social aspects, and with Selden for audience was eager to show
the sureness of his touch. Mrs. Fisher lived in an East side
street near the Park, and as the two men walked down Fifth Avenue
the new architectural developments of that versatile thoroughfare
invited Van Alstyne's comment.
"That Greiner house, now--a typical rung in the social ladder!
The man who built it came from a MILIEU where all the dishes are
put on the table at once. His facade is a complete architectural
meal; if he had omitted a style his friends might have thought
the money had given out. Not a bad purchase for Rosedale, though:
attracts attention, and awes the Western sight-seer. By and bye
he'll get out of that phase, and want something that the crowd
will pass and the few pause before. Especially if he marries my
clever cousin---"
Selden dashed in with the query: "And the Wellington Brys'?
Rather clever of its kind, don't you think?"
They were just beneath the wide white facade, with its rich
restraint of line, which suggested the clever corseting of a
redundant figure.
"That's the next stage: the desire to imply that one has been to
Europe, and has a standard. I'm sure Mrs. Bry thinks her house a
copy of the TRIANON; in America every marble house with gilt
furniture is thought to be a copy of the TRIANON. What a clever
chap that architect is, though--how he takes his client's
measure! He has put the whole of Mrs. Bry in his use of the
composite order. Now for the Trenors, you remember, he chose the
Corinthian: exuberant, but based on the best precedent. The
Trenor house is one of his best things--doesn't look like a
banqueting-hall turned inside out. I hear Mrs. Trenor wants to
build out a new ball-room, and that divergence from Gus on that
point keeps her at Bellomont. The dimensions of the Brys'
ball-room must rankle: you may be sure she knows 'em as well as
if she'd been there last night with a yard-measure. Who said she
was in town, by the way? That Farish boy? She isn't, I know; Mrs.
Stepney was right; the house is dark, you see: I suppose Gus
lives in the back."
He had halted opposite the Trenors' comer, and Selden perforce
stayed his steps also. The house loomed obscure and uninhabited;
only an oblong gleam above the door spoke of provisional
occupancy.
"They've bought the house at the back: it gives them a hundred
and fifty feet in the side street. There's where the ball-room's
to be, with a gallery connecting it: billiard-room and so on
above. I suggested changing the entrance, and carrying the
drawing-room across the whole Fifth Avenue front; you see the
front door corresponds with the windows---"
The walking-stick which Van Alstyne swung in demonstration
dropped to a startled "Hallo!" as the door opened and two figures
were seen silhouetted against the hall-light. At the same moment
a hansom halted at the curb-stone, and one of the figures floated
down to it in a haze of evening draperies; while the other, black
and bulky, remained persistently projected against the light.
For an immeasurable second the two spectators of the incident
were silent; then the house-door closed, the hansom rolled off,
and the whole scene slipped by as if with the turn of a
stereopticon.
Van Alstyne dropped his eye-glass with a low whistle.
"A--hem--nothing of this, eh, Selden? As one of the family, I
know I may count on you--appearances are deceptive--and Fifth
Avenue is so imperfectly lighted---"
"Goodnight," said Selden, turning sharply down the side street
without seeing the other's extended hand. _
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