The House of Mirth (11 page)

     Lily sat gazing absently through the blue rings of her cigarette-smoke.
     "It seems to me," she said at length, "that you spend a good deal of your time in the element you disapprove of."
     Selden received this thrust without discomposure. "Yes; but I have tried to remain amphibious: it's all right as long as one's lungs can work in another air. The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else; and that's the secret that most of your friends have lost."
     Lily mused. "Don't you think," she rejoined after a moment, "that the people who find fault with society are too apt to regard it as an end and not a means, just as the people who despise money speak as if its only use were to be kept in bags and gloated over? Isn't it fairer to look at them both as opportunities, which may be used either stupidly or intelligently, according to the capacity of the user?"
     "That is certainly the sane view; but the queer thing about society is that the people who regard it as an end are those who are in it, and not the critics on the fence. It's just the other way with most shows–the audience may be under the illusion, but the actors know that real life is on the other side of the footlights. The people who take society as an escape from work are putting it to its proper use; but when it becomes the thing worked for it distorts all the relations of life." Selden raised himself on his elbow. "Good heavens!" he went on, "I don't underrate the decorative side of life. It seems to me the sense of splendour has justified itself by what it has produced. The worst of it is that so much human nature is used up in the process. If we're all the raw stuff of the cosmic effects, one would rather be the fire that tempers a sword than the fish that dyes a purple cloak. And a society like ours wastes such good material in producing its little patch of purple! Look at a boy like Ned Silverton–he's really too good to be used to refurbish anybody's social shabbiness. There's a lad just setting out to discover the universe: isn't it a pity he should end by finding it in Mrs. Fisher's drawing-room?"
     "Ned is a dear boy, and I hope he will keep his illusions long enough to write some nice poetry about them; but do you think it is only in society that he is likely to lose them?"
     Selden answered her with a shrug. "Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths? Isn't it a sufficient condemnation of society to find one's self accepting such phraseology? I very nearly acquired the jargon at Silverton's age, and I know how names can alter the colour of beliefs."
     She had never heard him speak with such energy of affirmation. His habitual touch was that of the eclectic, who lightly turns over and compares; and she was moved by this sudden glimpse into the laboratory where his faiths were formed.
     "Ah, you are as bad as the other sectarians," she exclaimed; "why do you call your republic a republic? It is a closed corporation, and you create arbitrary objections in order to keep people out."
     "It is not
my
republic; if it were, I should have a
coup d'etat
and seat you on the throne."
     "Whereas, in reality, you think I can never even get my foot across the threshold? Oh, I understand what you mean. You despise my ambitions–you think them unworthy of me!"
     Selden smiled, but not ironically. "Well, isn't that a tribute? I think them quite worthy of most of the people who live by them."
     She had turned to gaze on him gravely. "But isn't it possible that, if I had the opportunities of these people, I might make a better use of them? Money stands for all kinds of things–its purchasing quality isn't limited to diamonds and motor-cars."
    
     "Not in the least: you might expiate your enjoyment of them by founding a hospital."
     "But if you think they are what I should really enjoy, you must think my ambitions are good enough for me."
     Selden met this appeal with a laugh. "Ah, my dear Miss Bart, I am not divine Providence, to guarantee your enjoying the things you are trying to get!"
     "Then the best you can say for me is, that after struggling to get them I probably shan't like them?" She drew a deep breath. "What a miserable future you foresee for me!"
     "Well–have you never foreseen it for yourself?" The slow colour rose to her cheek, not a blush of excitement but drawn from the deep wells of feeling; it was as if the effort of her spirit had produced it.
     "Often and often," she said. "But it looks so much darker when you show it to me!"
     He made no answer to this exclamation, and for a while they sat silent, while something throbbed between them in the wide quiet of the air.
     But suddenly she turned on him with a kind of vehemence. "Why do you do this to me?" she cried. "Why do you make the things I have chosen seem hateful to me, if you have nothing to give me instead?"
     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!"