الفصل الفصل 21 · 第21章

As became persons of their rising consequence, the Gormers were

engaged in building a country-house on Long Island; and it was a

part of Miss Bart’s duty to attend her hostess on frequent visits

of inspection to the new estate. There, while Mrs. Gormer plunged

into problems of lighting and sanitation, Lily had leisure to

wander, in the bright autumn air, along the tree-fringed bay to

which the land declined. Little as she was addicted to solitude,

there had come to be moments when it seemed a welcome escape

from the empty noises of her life. She was weary of being swept

passively along a current of pleasure and business in which she

had no share; weary of seeing other people pursue amusement and

squander money, while she felt herself of no more account among

them than an expensive toy in the hands of a spoiled child.

It was in this frame of mind that, striking back from the shore

one morning into the windings of an unfamiliar lane, she came

suddenly upon the figure of George Dorset. The Dorset place was in

the immediate neighbourhood of the Gormers’ newly-acquired estate,

and in her motor-flights thither with Mrs. Gormer, Lily had caught

one or two passing glimpses of the couple; but they moved in so

different an orbit that she had not considered the possibility of a

direct encounter.

Dorset, swinging along with bent head, in moody abstraction, did

not see Miss Bart till he was close upon her; but the sight,

instead of bringing him to a halt, as she had half-expected, sent

him toward her with an eagerness which found expression in his

opening words.

“Miss Bart!—You’ll shake hands, won’t you? I’ve been hoping to meet

you—I should have written to you if I’d dared.” His face, with its

tossed red hair and straggling moustache, had a driven uneasy look,

as though life had become an unceasing race between himself and the

thoughts at his heels.

The look drew a word of compassionate greeting from Lily, and he

pressed on, as if encouraged by her tone: “I wanted to apologize—to

ask you to forgive me for the miserable part I played——”

She checked him with a quick gesture. “Don’t let us speak of it: I

was very sorry for you,” she said, with a tinge of disdain which,

as she instantly perceived, was not lost on him.

He flushed to his haggard eyes, flushed so cruelly that she

repented the thrust. “You might well be; you don’t know—you must

let me explain. I was deceived: abominably deceived——”

“I am still more sorry for you, then,” she interposed, without

irony; “but you must see that I am not exactly the person with whom

the subject can be discussed.”

He met this with a look of genuine wonder. “Why not? Isn’t it to

you, of all people, that I owe an explanation——”

“No explanation is necessary: the situation was perfectly clear to

me.”

“Ah——” he murmured, his head drooping again, and his irresolute

hand switching at the underbrush along the lane. But as Lily made a

movement to pass on, he broke out with fresh vehemence: “Miss Bart,

for God’s sake don’t turn from me! We used to be good friends—you

were always kind to me—and you don’t know how I need a friend now.”

The lamentable weakness of the words roused a motion of pity in

Lily’s breast. She too needed friends—she had tasted the pang of

loneliness; and her resentment of Bertha Dorset’s cruelty softened

her heart to the poor wretch who was after all the chief of

Bertha’s victims.

“I still wish to be kind; I feel no ill-will toward you,” she said.

“But you must understand that after what has happened we can’t be

friends again—we can’t see each other.”

“Ah, you ARE kind—you’re merciful—you always were!” He fixed his

miserable gaze on her. “But why can’t we be friends—why not, when

I’ve repented in dust and ashes? Isn’t it hard that you should

condemn me to suffer for the falseness, the treachery of others? I

was punished enough at the time—is there to be no respite for me?”

“I should have thought you had found complete respite in the

reconciliation which was effected at my expense,” Lily began, with

renewed impatience; but he broke in imploringly: “Don’t put it in

that way—when that’s been the worst of my punishment. My God! what

could I do—wasn’t I powerless? You were singled out as a sacrifice:

any word I might have said would have been turned against you——”

“I have told you I don’t blame you; all I ask you to understand is

that, after the use Bertha chose to make of me—after all that her

behaviour has since implied—it’s impossible that you and I should

meet.”

He continued to stand before her, in his dogged weakness. “Is

it—need it be? Mightn’t there be circumstances——?” he checked

himself, slashing at the wayside weeds in a wider radius. Then he

began again: “Miss Bart, listen—give me a minute. If we’re not to

meet again, at least let me have a hearing now. You say we can’t be

friends after—after what has happened. But can’t I at least appeal

to your pity? Can’t I move you if I ask you to think of me as a

prisoner—a prisoner you alone can set free?”

Lily’s inward start betrayed itself in a quick blush: was it

possible that this was really the sense of Carry Fisher’s

adumbrations?

“I can’t see how I can possibly be of any help to you,” she

murmured, drawing back a little from the mounting excitement of his

look.

Her tone seemed to sober him, as it had so often done in his

stormiest moments. The stubborn lines of his face relaxed, and he

said, with an abrupt drop to docility: “You WOULD see, if you’d be

as merciful as you used to be: and heaven knows I’ve never needed

it more!”

She paused a moment, moved in spite of herself by this reminder of

her influence over him. Her fibres had been softened by suffering,

and the sudden glimpse into his mocked and broken life disarmed her

contempt for his weakness.

“I am very sorry for you—I would help you willingly; but you must

have other friends, other advisers.”

“I never had a friend like you,” he answered simply. “And

besides—can’t you see?—you’re the only person”—his voice dropped to

a whisper—“the only person who knows.”

Again she felt her colour change; again her heart rose in

precipitate throbs to meet what she felt was coming. He lifted his

eyes to her entreatingly. “You do see, don’t you? You understand?

I’m desperate—I’m at the end of my tether. I want to be free, and

you can free me. I know you can. You don’t want to keep me bound

fast in hell, do you? You can’t want to take such a vengeance as

that. You were always kind—your eyes are kind now. You say you’re

sorry for me. Well, it rests with you to show it; and heaven knows

there’s nothing to keep you back. You understand, of course—there

wouldn’t be a hint of publicity—not a sound or a syllable to

connect you with the thing. It would never come to that, you know:

all I need is to be able to say definitely: ‘I know this—and

this—and this’—and the fight would drop, and the way be cleared,

and the whole abominable business swept out of sight in a second.”

He spoke pantingly, like a tired runner, with breaks of exhaustion

between his words; and through the breaks she caught, as through

the shifting rents of a fog, great golden vistas of peace and

safety. For there was no mistaking the definite intention behind

his vague appeal; she could have filled up the blanks without the

help of Mrs. Fisher’s insinuations. Here was a man who turned to

her in the extremity of his loneliness and his humiliation: if she

came to him at such a moment he would be hers with all the force of

his deluded faith. And the power to make him so lay in her hand—lay

there in a completeness he could not even remotely conjecture.

Revenge and rehabilitation might be hers at a stroke—there was

something dazzling in the completeness of the opportunity.

She stood silent, gazing away from him down the autumnal stretch

of the deserted lane. And suddenly fear possessed her—fear of

herself, and of the terrible force of the temptation. All her past

weaknesses were like so many eager accomplices drawing her toward

the path their feet had already smoothed. She turned quickly, and

held out her hand to Dorset.

“Goodbye—I’m sorry; there’s nothing in the world that I can do.”

“Nothing? Ah, don’t say that,” he cried; “say what’s true: that you

abandon me like the others. You, the only creature who could have

saved me!”

“Goodbye—goodbye,” she repeated hurriedly; and as she moved away

she heard him cry out on a last note of entreaty: “At least you’ll

let me see you once more?”

* * * * *

Lily, on regaining the Gormer grounds, struck rapidly across the

lawn toward the unfinished house, where she fancied that her

hostess might be speculating, not too resignedly, on the cause of

her delay; for, like many unpunctual persons, Mrs. Gormer disliked

to be kept waiting.

As Miss Bart reached the avenue, however, she saw a smart phaeton

with a high-stepping pair disappear behind the shrubbery in the

direction of the gate; and on the doorstep stood Mrs. Gormer, with

a glow of retrospective pleasure on her open countenance. At sight

of Lily the glow deepened to an embarrassed red, and she said

with a slight laugh: “Did you see my visitor? Oh, I thought you

came back by the avenue. It was Mrs. George Dorset—she said she’d

dropped in to make a neighbourly call.”

Lily met the announcement with her usual composure, though her

experience of Bertha’s idiosyncrasies would not have led her to

include the neighbourly instinct among them; and Mrs. Gormer,

relieved to see that she gave no sign of surprise, went on with

a deprecating laugh: “Of course what really brought her was

curiosity—she made me take her all over the house. But no one could

have been nicer—no airs, you know, and so good-natured: I can quite

see why people think her so fascinating.”

This surprising event, coinciding too completely with her

meeting with Dorset to be regarded as contingent upon it, had

yet immediately struck Lily with a vague sense of foreboding.

It was not in Bertha’s habits to be neighbourly, much less to

make advances to any one outside the immediate circle of her

affinities. She had always consistently ignored the world of outer

aspirants, or had recognized its individual members only when

prompted by motives of self-interest; and the very capriciousness

of her condescensions had, as Lily was aware, given them special

value in the eyes of the persons she distinguished. Lily saw

this now in Mrs. Gormer’s unconcealable complacency, and in the

happy irrelevance with which, for the next day or two, she quoted

Bertha’s opinions and speculated on the origin of her gown. All

the secret ambitions which Mrs. Gormer’s native indolence, and the

attitude of her companions, kept in habitual abeyance, were now

germinating afresh in the glow of Bertha’s advances; and whatever

the cause of the latter, Lily saw that, if they were followed up,

they were likely to have a disturbing effect upon her own future.

She had arranged to break the length of her stay with her new

friends by one or two visits to other acquaintances as recent;

and on her return from this somewhat depressing excursion she was

immediately conscious that Mrs. Dorset’s influence was still in

the air. There had been another exchange of visits, a tea at a

country-club, an encounter at a hunt ball; there was even a rumour

of an approaching dinner, which Mattie Gormer, with an unnatural

effort at discretion, tried to smuggle out of the conversation

whenever Miss Bart took part in it.

The latter had already planned to return to town after a farewell

Sunday with her friends; and, with Gerty Farish’s aid, had

discovered a small private hotel where she might establish herself

for the winter. The hotel being on the edge of a fashionable

neighbourhood, the price of the few square feet she was to

occupy was considerably in excess of her means; but she found a

justification for her dislike of poorer quarters in the argument

that, at this particular juncture, it was of the utmost importance

to keep up a show of prosperity. In reality, it was impossible for

her, while she had the means to pay her way for a week ahead, to

lapse into a form of existence like Gerty Farish’s. She had never

been so near the brink of insolvency; but she could at least manage

to meet her weekly hotel bill, and having settled the heaviest of

her previous debts out of the money she had received from Trenor,

she had a still fair margin of credit to go upon. The situation,

however, was not agreeable enough to lull her to complete

unconsciousness of its insecurity. Her rooms, with their cramped

outlook down a sallow vista of brick walls and fire-escapes, her

lonely meals in the dark restaurant with its surcharged ceiling and

haunting smell of coffee—all these material discomforts, which were

yet to be accounted as so many privileges soon to be withdrawn,

kept constantly before her the disadvantages of her state; and her

mind reverted the more insistently to Mrs. Fisher’s counsels. Beat

about the question as she would, she knew the outcome of it was

that she must try to marry Rosedale; and in this conviction she was

fortified by an unexpected visit from George Dorset.

She found him, on the first Sunday after her return to town,

pacing her narrow sitting-room to the imminent peril of the few

knick-knacks with which she had tried to disguise its plush

exuberances; but the sight of her seemed to quiet him, and he said

meekly that he hadn’t come to bother her—that he asked only to be

allowed to sit for half an hour and talk of anything she liked.

In reality, as she knew, he had but one subject: himself and his

wretchedness; and it was the need of her sympathy that had drawn

him back. But he began with a pretence of questioning her about

herself, and as she replied, she saw that, for the first time,

a faint realization of her plight penetrated the dense surface

of his self-absorption. Was it possible that her old beast of an

aunt had actually cut her off? That she was living alone like this

because there was no one else for her to go to, and that she really

hadn’t more than enough to keep alive on till the wretched little

legacy was paid? The fibres of sympathy were nearly atrophied in

him, but he was suffering so intensely that he had a faint glimpse

of what other sufferings might mean—and, as she perceived, an

almost simultaneous perception of the way in which her particular

misfortunes might serve him.

When at length she dismissed him, on the pretext that she must

dress for dinner, he lingered entreatingly on the threshold to

blurt out: “It’s been such a comfort—do say you’ll let me see you

again—” But to this direct appeal it was impossible to give an

assent; and she said with friendly decisiveness: “I’m sorry—but you

know why I can’t.”

He coloured to the eyes, pushed the door shut, and stood before her

embarrassed but insistent. “I know how you might, if you would—if

things were different—and it lies with you to make them so. It’s

just a word to say, and you put me out of my misery!”

Their eyes met, and for a second she trembled again with the

nearness of the temptation. “You’re mistaken; I know nothing; I saw

nothing,” she exclaimed, striving, by sheer force of reiteration,

to build a barrier between herself and her peril; and as he turned

away, groaning out “You sacrifice us both,” she continued to

repeat, as if it were a charm: “I know nothing—absolutely nothing.”

* * * * *

Lily had seen little of Rosedale since her illuminating talk with

Mrs. Fisher, but on the two or three occasions when they had met

she was conscious of having distinctly advanced in his favour.

There could be no doubt that he admired her as much as ever, and

she believed it rested with herself to raise his admiration to

the point where it should bear down the lingering counsels of

expediency. The task was not an easy one; but neither was it easy,

in her long sleepless nights, to face the thought of what George

Dorset was so clearly ready to offer. Baseness for baseness, she

hated the other least: there were even moments when a marriage with

Rosedale seemed the only honourable solution of her difficulties.

She did not indeed let her imagination range beyond the day of

plighting: after that everything faded into a haze of material

well-being, in which the personality of her benefactor remained

mercifully vague. She had learned, in her long vigils, that there

were certain things not good to think of, certain midnight images

that must at any cost be exorcised—and one of these was the image

of herself as Rosedale’s wife.

Carry Fisher, on the strength, as she frankly owned, of the

Brys’ Newport success, had taken for the autumn months a small

house at Tuxedo; and thither Lily was bound on the Sunday after

Dorset’s visit. Though it was nearly dinner-time when she arrived,

her hostess was still out, and the firelit quiet of the small

silent house descended on her spirit with a sense of peace and

familiarity. It may be doubted if such an emotion had ever before

been evoked by Carry Fisher’s surroundings; but, contrasted to

the world in which Lily had lately lived, there was an air of

repose and stability in the very placing of the furniture, and in

the quiet competence of the parlour-maid who led her up to her

room. Mrs. Fisher’s unconventionality was, after all, a merely

superficial divergence from an inherited social creed, while the

manners of the Gormer circle represented their first attempt to

formulate such a creed for themselves.

It was the first time since her return from Europe that Lily had

found herself in a congenial atmosphere, and the stirring of

familiar associations had almost prepared her, as she descended

the stairs before dinner, to enter upon a group of her old

acquaintances. But this expectation was instantly checked by the

reflection that the friends who remained loyal were precisely those

who would be least willing to expose her to such encounters; and

it was hardly with surprise that she found, instead, Mr. Rosedale

kneeling domestically on the drawing-room hearth before his

hostess’s little girl.

Rosedale in the paternal role was hardly a figure to soften Lily;

yet she could not but notice a quality of homely goodness in his

advances to the child. They were not, at any rate, the premeditated

and perfunctory endearments of the guest under his hostess’s

eye, for he and the little girl had the room to themselves; and

something in his attitude made him seem a simple and kindly being

compared to the small critical creature who endured his homage.

Yes, he would be kind—Lily, from the threshold, had time to

feel—kind in his gross, unscrupulous, rapacious way, the way of the

predatory creature with his mate. She had but a moment in which

to consider whether this glimpse of the fireside man mitigated

her repugnance, or gave it, rather, a more concrete and intimate

form; for at sight of her he was immediately on his feet again, the

florid and dominant Rosedale of Mattie Gormer’s drawing-room.

It was no surprise to Lily to find that he had been selected as her

only fellow-guest. Though she and her hostess had not met since

the latter’s tentative discussion of her future, Lily knew that

the acuteness which enabled Mrs. Fisher to lay a safe and pleasant

course through a world of antagonistic forces was not infrequently

exercised for the benefit of her friends. It was, in fact,

characteristic of Carry that, while she actively gleaned her own

stores from the fields of affluence, her real sympathies were on

the other side—with the unlucky, the unpopular, the unsuccessful,

with all her hungry fellow-toilers in the shorn stubble of success.

Mrs. Fisher’s experience guarded her against the mistake of

exposing Lily, for the first evening, to the unmitigated impression

of Rosedale’s personality. Kate Corby and two or three men dropped

in to dinner, and Lily, alive to every detail of her friend’s

method, saw that such opportunities as had been contrived for her

were to be deferred till she had, as it were, gained courage to

make effectual use of them. She had a sense of acquiescing in this

plan with the passiveness of a sufferer resigned to the surgeon’s

touch; and this feeling of almost lethargic helplessness continued

when, after the departure of the guests, Mrs. Fisher followed her

upstairs.

“May I come in and smoke a cigarette over your fire? If we talk in

my room we shall disturb the child.” Mrs. Fisher looked about her

with the eye of the solicitous hostess. “I hope you’ve managed to

make yourself comfortable, dear? Isn’t it a jolly little house?

It’s such a blessing to have a few quiet weeks with the baby.”

Carry, in her rare moments of prosperity, became so expansively

maternal that Miss Bart sometimes wondered whether, if she could

ever get time and money enough, she would not end by devoting them

both to her daughter.

“It’s a well-earned rest: I’ll say that for myself,” she continued,

sinking down with a sigh of content on the pillowed lounge near

the fire. “Louisa Bry is a stern task-master: I often used to

wish myself back with the Gormers. Talk of love making people

jealous and suspicious—it’s nothing to social ambition! Louisa

used to lie awake at night wondering whether the women who called

on us called on ME because I was with her, or on HER because she

was with me; and she was always laying traps to find out what

I thought. Of course I had to disown my oldest friends, rather

than let her suspect she owed me the chance of making a single

acquaintance—when, all the while, that was what she had me there

for, and what she wrote me a handsome cheque for when the season

was over!”

Mrs. Fisher was not a woman who talked of herself without cause,

and the practice of direct speech, far from precluding in her an

occasional resort to circuitous methods, served rather, at crucial

moments, the purpose of the juggler’s chatter while he shifts the

contents of his sleeves. Through the haze of her cigarette-smoke

she continued to gaze meditatively at Miss Bart, who, having

dismissed her maid, sat before the toilet table shaking out over

her shoulders the loosened undulations of her hair.

“Your hair’s wonderful, Lily. Thinner—? What does that matter,

when it’s so light and alive? So many women’s worries seem to go

straight to their hair—but yours looks as if there had never been

an anxious thought under it. I never saw you look better than you

did this evening. Mattie Gormer told me that Morpeth wanted to

paint you—why don’t you let him?”

Miss Bart’s immediate answer was to address a critical glance

to the reflection of the countenance under discussion. Then she

said, with a slight touch of irritation: “I don’t care to accept a

portrait from Paul Morpeth.”

Mrs. Fisher mused. “N—no. And just now, especially—well, he can do

you after you’re married.” She waited a moment, and then went on:

“By the way, I had a visit from Mattie the other day. She turned

up here last Sunday—and with Bertha Dorset, of all people in the

world!”

She paused again to measure the effect of this announcement on her

hearer, but the brush in Miss Bart’s lifted hand maintained its

unwavering stroke from brow to nape.

“I never was more astonished,” Mrs. Fisher pursued. “I don’t know

two women less predestined to intimacy—from Bertha’s standpoint,

that is; for of course poor Mattie thinks it natural enough that

she should be singled out—I’ve no doubt the rabbit always thinks

it is fascinating the anaconda. Well, you know I’ve always told

you that Mattie secretly longed to bore herself with the really

fashionable; and now that the chance has come, I see that she’s

capable of sacrificing all her old friends to it.”

Lily laid aside her brush and turned a penetrating glance upon her

friend. “Including ME?” she suggested.

“Ah, my dear,” murmured Mrs. Fisher, rising to push back a log from

the hearth.

“That’s what Bertha means, isn’t it?” Miss Bart went on steadily.

“For of course she always means something; and before I left Long

Island I saw that she was beginning to lay her toils for Mattie.”

Mrs. Fisher sighed evasively. “She has her fast now, at any rate.

To think of that loud independence of Mattie’s being only a

subtler form of snobbishness! Bertha can already make her believe

anything she pleases—and I’m afraid she’s begun, my poor child, by

insinuating horrors about you.”

Lily flushed under the shadow of her drooping hair. “The world

is too vile,” she murmured, averting herself from Mrs. Fisher’s

anxious scrutiny.

“It’s not a pretty place; and the only way to keep a footing in it

is to fight it on its own terms—and above all, my dear, not alone!”

Mrs. Fisher gathered up her floating implications in a resolute

grasp. “You’ve told me so little that I can only guess what has

been happening; but in the rush we all live in there’s no time to

keep on hating any one without a cause, and if Bertha is still

nasty enough to want to injure you with other people it must be

because she’s still afraid of you. From her standpoint there’s only

one reason for being afraid of you; and my own idea is that, if you

want to punish her, you hold the means in your hand. I believe you

can marry George Dorset tomorrow; but if you don’t care for that

particular form of retaliation, the only thing to save you from

Bertha is to marry somebody else.”