________________________________________________
_ To Gerty Farish, keeping watch over her with a tenderer if less
discerning eye than Mrs. Fisher's, the results of the struggle
were already distinctly visible. She did not, indeed, know what
hostages Lily had already given to expediency; but she saw her
passionately and irretrievably pledged to the ruinous policy of
"keeping up." Gerty could smile now at her own early dream of her
friend's renovation through adversity: she understood clearly
enough that Lily was not of those to whom privation teaches the
unimportance of what they have lost. But this very fact, to
Gerty, made her friend the more piteously in want of aid, the
more exposed to the claims of a tenderness she was so little
conscious of needing.
Lily, since her return to town, had not often climbed Miss
Farish's stairs. There was something irritating to her in the
mute interrogation of Gerty's sympathy: she felt the real
difficulties of her situation to be incommunicable to any one
whose theory of values was so different from her own, and the
restrictions of Gerty's life, which had once had the charm of
contrast, now reminded her too painfully of the limits to which
her own existence was shrinking. When at length, one afternoon,
she put into execution the belated resolve to visit her friend,
this sense of shrunken opportunities possessed her with unusual
intensity. The walk up Fifth Avenue, unfolding before her, in the
brilliance of the hard winter sunlight, an interminable
procession of fastidiously-equipped carriages--giving her,
through the little squares of brougham-windows, peeps of familiar
profiles bent above visiting-lists, of hurried hands dispensing
notes and cards to attendant footmen--this glimpse of the
ever-revolving wheels of the great social machine made Lily more
than ever conscious of the steepness and narrowness of Gerty's
stairs, and of the cramped blind alley of life to which they led.
Dull stairs destined to be mounted by dull people: how many
thousands of insignificant figures were going up and down such
stairs all over the world at that very moment--figures as shabby
and uninteresting as that of the middle-aged lady in limp
black who descended Gerty's flight as Lily climbed to it!
"That was poor Miss Jane Silverton--she came to talk things over
with me: she and her sister want to do something to support
themselves," Gerty explained, as Lily followed her into the
sitting-room.
"To support themselves? Are they so hard up?" Miss Bart asked
with a touch of irritation: she had not come to listen to the
woes of other people.
"I'm afraid they have nothing left: Ned's debts have swallowed up
everything. They had such hopes, you know, when he broke away
from Carry Fisher; they thought Bertha Dorset would be such a
good influence, because she doesn't care for cards, and--well,
she talked quite beautifully to poor Miss Jane about feeling as
if Ned were her younger brother, and wanting to carry him off on
the yacht, so that he might have a chance to drop cards and
racing, and take up his literary work again."
Miss Farish paused with a sigh which reflected the perplexity of
her departing visitor. "But that isn't all; it isn't even the
worst. It seems that Ned has quarrelled with the Dorsets; or at
least Bertha won't allow him to see her, and he is so unhappy
about it that he has taken to gambling again, and going about
with all sorts of queer people. And cousin Grace Van Osburgh
accuses him of having had a very bad influence on Freddy, who
left Harvard last spring, and has been a great deal with Ned ever
since. She sent for Miss Jane, and made a dreadful scene; and
Jack Stepney and Herbert Melson, who were there too, told Miss
Jane that Freddy was threatening to marry some dreadful woman to
whom Ned had introduced him, and that they could do nothing with
him because now he's of age he has his own money. You can fancy
how poor Miss Jane felt--she came to me at once, and seemed to
think that if I could get her something to do she could earn
enough to pay Ned's debts and send him away--I'm afraid she has
no idea how long it would take her to pay for one of his evenings
at bridge. And he was horribly in debt when he came back from the
cruise--I can't see why he should have spent so much more money
under Bertha's influence than Carry's: can you?"
Lily met this query with an impatient gesture. "My dear Gerty, I
always understand how people can spend much more money--never how
they can spend any less!"
She loosened her furs and settled herself in Gerty's easy-chair,
while her friend busied herself with the tea-cups.
"But what can they do--the Miss Silvertons? How do they mean to
support themselves?" she asked, conscious that the note of
irritation still persisted in her voice. It was the very last
topic she had meant to discuss--it really did not interest her in
the least--but she was seized by a sudden perverse curiosity to
know how the two colourless shrinking victims of young
Silverton's sentimental experiments meant to cope with the grim
necessity which lurked so close to her own threshold.
"I don't know--I am trying to find something for them. Miss Jane
reads aloud very nicely--but it's so hard to find any one who is
willing to be read to. And Miss Annie paints a little---"
"Oh, I know--apple-blossoms on blotting-paper; just the kind of
thing I shall be doing myself before long!" exclaimed Lily,
starting up with a vehemence of movement that threatened
destruction to Miss Farish's fragile tea-table.
Lily bent over to steady the cups; then she sank back into her
seat. "I'd forgotten there was no room to dash about in--how
beautifully one does have to behave in a small flat! Oh, Gerty, I
wasn't meant to be good," she sighed out incoherently.
Gerty lifted an apprehensive look to her pale face, in which the
eyes shone with a peculiar sleepless lustre.
"You look horribly tired, Lily; take your tea, and let me give
you this cushion to lean against."
Miss Bart accepted the cup of tea, but put back the cushion with
an impatient hand.
"Don't give me that! I don't want to lean back--I shall go to
sleep if I do."
"Well, why not, dear? I'll be as quiet as a mouse," Gerty urged
affectionately.
"No--no; don't be quiet; talk to me--keep me awake! I don't sleep
at night, and in the afternoon a dreadful drowsiness creeps over
me."
"You don't sleep at night? Since when?"
"I don't know--I can't remember." She rose and put the empty cup
on the tea-tray. "Another, and stronger, please; if I don't keep
awake now I shall see horrors tonight--perfect horrors!"
"But they'll be worse if you drink too much tea."
"No, no--give it to me; and don't preach, please," Lily returned
imperiously. Her voice had a dangerous edge, and Gerty noticed
that her hand shook as she held it out to receive the second cup.
"But you look so tired: I'm sure you must be ill---"
Miss Bart set down her cup with a start. "Do I look ill? Does my
face show it?" She rose and walked quickly toward the little
mirror above the writing-table. "What a horrid
looking-glass--it's all blotched and discoloured. Any one would
look ghastly in it!" She turned back, fixing her plaintive eyes
on Gerty. "You stupid dear, why do you say such odious things to
me? It's enough to make one ill to be told one looks so! And
looking ill means looking ugly." She caught Gerty's wrists, and
drew her close to the window. "After all, I'd rather know the
truth. Look me straight in the face, Gerty, and tell me: am I
perfectly frightful?"
"You're perfectly beautiful now, Lily: your eyes are shining, and
your cheeks have grown so pink all of a sudden---"
"Ah, they WERE pale, then--ghastly pale, when I came in? Why
don't you tell me frankly that I'm a wreck? My eyes are bright
now because I'm so nervous--but in the mornings they look like
lead. And I can see the lines coming in my face--the lines of
worry and disappointment and failure! Every sleepless night
leaves a new one--and how can I sleep, when I have such dreadful
things to think about?"
"Dreadful things--what things?" asked Gerty, gently detaching her
wrists from her friend's feverish fingers.
"What things? Well, poverty, for one--and I don't know any that's
more dreadful." Lily turned away and sank with sudden weariness
into the easy-chair near the tea-table. "You asked me just now if
I could understand why Ned Silverton spent so much money. Of
course I understand--he spends it on living with the rich. You
think we live ON the rich, rather than with them: and so we do,
in a sense--but it's a privi
lege we have to pay for! We
eat their dinners, and drink their wine, and smoke their
cigarettes, and use their carriages and their opera-boxes and
their private cars--yes, but there's a tax to pay on every one of
those luxuries. The man pays it by big tips to the servants, by
playing cards beyond his means, by flowers and
presents--and--and--lots of other things that cost; the girl pays
it by tips and cards too--oh, yes, I've had to take up bridge
again--and by going to the best dress-makers, and having just the
right dress for every occasion, and always keeping herself fresh
and exquisite and amusing!"
She leaned back for a moment, closing her eyes, and as she sat
there, her pale lips slightly parted, and the lids dropped above
her fagged brilliant gaze, Gerty had a startled perception of the
change in her face--of the way in which an ashen daylight seemed
suddenly to extinguish its artificial brightness. She looked up,
and the vision vanished.
"It doesn't sound very amusing, does it? And it isn't--I'm sick
to death of it! And yet the thought of giving it all up nearly
kills me--it's what keeps me awake at night, and makes me so
crazy for your strong tea. For I can't go on in this way much
longer, you know--I'm nearly at the end of my tether. And then
what can I do--how on earth am I to keep myself alive? I see
myself reduced to the fate of that poor Silverton woman--slinking
about to employment agencies, and trying to sell painted
blotting-pads to Women's Exchanges! And there are thousands and
thousands of women trying to do the same thing already, and not
one of the number who has less idea how to earn a dollar than I
have!"
She rose again with a hurried glance at the clock. "It's late,
and I must be off--I have an appointment with Carry Fisher. Don't
look so worried, you dear thing--don't think too much about the
nonsense I've been talking." She was before the mirror again,
adjusting her hair with a light hand, drawing down her veil, and
giving a dexterous touch to her furs. "Of course, you know, it
hasn't come to the employment agencies and the painted
blotting-pads yet; but I'm rather hard-up just for the moment,
and if I could find something to do--notes to write and
visiting-lists to make up, or that kind of thing--it would tide
me over till the legacy is paid.
And Carry has promised to find somebody who wants a kind of
social secretary--you know she makes a specialty of the helpless
rich." _
Read next: BOOK II: WEB PAGE 17
Read previous: BOOK II: WEB PAGE 15
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
