الفصل الفصل 9 · 第9章

In Mrs. Peniston’s youth, fashion had returned to town in October;

therefore on the tenth day of the month the blinds of her Fifth

Avenue residence were drawn up, and the eyes of the Dying Gladiator

in bronze who occupied the drawing-room window resumed their survey

of that deserted thoroughfare.

The first two weeks after her return represented to Mrs. Peniston

the domestic equivalent of a religious retreat. She “went through”

the linen and blankets in the precise spirit of the penitent

exploring the inner folds of conscience; she sought for moths

as the stricken soul seeks for lurking infirmities. The topmost

shelf of every closet was made to yield up its secret, cellar and

coal-bin were probed to their darkest depths and, as a final stage

in the lustral rites, the entire house was swathed in penitential

white and deluged with expiatory soapsuds.

It was on this phase of the proceedings that Miss Bart entered

on the afternoon of her return from the Van Osburgh wedding. The

journey back to town had not been calculated to soothe her nerves.

Though Evie Van Osburgh’s engagement was still officially a secret,

it was one of which the innumerable intimate friends of the family

were already possessed; and the trainful of returning guests buzzed

with allusions and anticipations. Lily was acutely aware of her

own part in this drama of innuendo: she knew the exact quality

of the amusement the situation evoked. The crude forms in which

her friends took their pleasure included a loud enjoyment of such

complications: the zest of surprising destiny in the act of playing

a practical joke. Lily knew well enough how to bear herself in

difficult situations. She had, to a shade, the exact manner between

victory and defeat: every insinuation was shed without an effort

by the bright indifference of her manner. But she was beginning to

feel the strain of the attitude; the reaction was more rapid, and

she lapsed to a deeper self-disgust.

As was always the case with her, this moral repulsion found a

physical outlet in a quickened distaste for her surroundings. She

revolted from the complacent ugliness of Mrs. Peniston’s black

walnut, from the slippery gloss of the vestibule tiles, and the

mingled odour of sapolio and furniture-polish that met her at the

door.

The stairs were still carpetless, and on the way up to her room she

was arrested on the landing by an encroaching tide of soapsuds.

Gathering up her skirts, she drew aside with an impatient gesture;

and as she did so she had the odd sensation of having already found

herself in the same situation but in different surroundings. It

seemed to her that she was again descending the staircase from

Selden’s rooms; and looking down to remonstrate with the dispenser

of the soapy flood, she found herself met by a lifted stare which

had once before confronted her under similar circumstances. It was

the char-woman of the Benedick who, resting on crimson elbows,

examined her with the same unflinching curiosity, the same apparent

reluctance to let her pass. On this occasion, however, Miss Bart

was on her own ground.

“Don’t you see that I wish to go by? Please move your pail,” she

said sharply.

The woman at first seemed not to hear; then, without a word of

excuse, she pushed back her pail and dragged a wet floor-cloth

across the landing, keeping her eyes fixed on Lily while the latter

swept by. It was insufferable that Mrs. Peniston should have such

creatures about the house; and Lily entered her room resolved that

the woman should be dismissed that evening.

Mrs. Peniston, however, was at the moment inaccessible to

remonstrance: since early morning she had been shut up with her

maid, going over her furs, a process which formed the culminating

episode in the drama of household renovation. In the evening also

Lily found herself alone, for her aunt, who rarely dined out, had

responded to the summons of a Van Alstyne cousin who was passing

through town. The house, in its state of unnatural immaculateness

and order, was as dreary as a tomb, and as Lily, turning from

her brief repast between shrouded sideboards, wandered into the

newly-uncovered glare of the drawing-room she felt as though

she were buried alive in the stifling limits of Mrs. Peniston’s

existence.

She usually contrived to avoid being at home during the season

of domestic renewal. On the present occasion, however, a variety

of reasons had combined to bring her to town; and foremost among

them was the fact that she had fewer invitations than usual for

the autumn. She had so long been accustomed to pass from one

country-house to another, till the close of the holidays brought

her friends to town, that the unfilled gaps of time confronting

her produced a sharp sense of waning popularity. It was as she

had said to Selden—people were tired of her. They would welcome

her in a new character, but as Miss Bart they knew her by heart.

She knew herself by heart too, and was sick of the old story.

There were moments when she longed blindly for anything different,

anything strange, remote and untried; but the utmost reach of

her imagination did not go beyond picturing her usual life in a

new setting. She could not figure herself as anywhere but in a

drawing-room, diffusing elegance as a flower sheds perfume.

Meanwhile, as October advanced she had to face the alternative

of returning to the Trenors or joining her aunt in town. Even

the desolating dulness of New York in October, and the soapy

discomforts of Mrs. Peniston’s interior, seemed preferable to what

might await her at Bellomont; and with an air of heroic devotion

she announced her intention of remaining with her aunt till the

holidays.

Sacrifices of this nature are sometimes received with feelings as

mixed as those which actuate them; and Mrs. Peniston remarked to

her confidential maid that, if any of the family were to be with

her at such a crisis (though for forty years she had been thought

competent to see to the hanging of her own curtains), she would

certainly have preferred Miss Grace to Miss Lily. Grace Stepney was

an obscure cousin, of adaptable manners and vicarious interests,

who “ran in” to sit with Mrs. Peniston when Lily dined out too

continuously; who played bezique, picked up dropped stitches, read

out the deaths from the Times, and sincerely admired the purple

satin drawing-room curtains, the Dying Gladiator in the window, and

the seven-by-five painting of Niagara which represented the one

artistic excess of Mr. Peniston’s temperate career.

Mrs. Peniston, under ordinary circumstances, was as much bored by

her excellent cousin as the recipient of such services usually

is by the person who performs them. She greatly preferred the

brilliant and unreliable Lily, who did not know one end of a

crochet-needle from the other, and had frequently wounded her

susceptibilities by suggesting that the drawing-room should be

“done over.” But when it came to hunting for missing napkins, or

helping to decide whether the backstairs needed re-carpeting,

Grace’s judgment was certainly sounder than Lily’s: not to mention

the fact that the latter resented the smell of beeswax and brown

soap, and behaved as though she thought a house ought to keep clean

of itself, without extraneous assistance.

Seated under the cheerless blaze of the drawing-room

chandelier—Mrs. Peniston never lit the lamps unless there was

“company”—Lily seemed to watch her own figure retreating down

vistas of neutral-tinted dulness to a middle-age like Grace

Stepney’s. When she ceased to amuse Judy Trenor and her friends she

would have to fall back on amusing Mrs. Peniston; whichever way she

looked she saw only a future of servitude to the whims of others,

never the possibility of asserting her own eager individuality.

A ring at the door-bell, sounding emphatically through the empty

house, roused her suddenly to the extent of her boredom. It was

as though all the weariness of the past months had culminated in

the vacuity of that interminable evening. If only the ring meant a

summons from the outer world—a token that she was still remembered

and wanted!

After some delay a parlour-maid presented herself with the

announcement that there was a person outside who was asking to see

Miss Bart; and on Lily’s pressing for a more specific description,

she added:

“It’s Mrs. Haffen, Miss; she won’t say what she wants.”

Lily, to whom the name conveyed nothing, opened the door upon a

woman in a battered bonnet, who stood firmly planted under the

hall-light. The glare of the unshaded gas shone familiarly on her

pock-marked face and the reddish baldness visible through thin

strands of straw-coloured hair. Lily looked at the char-woman in

surprise.

“Do you wish to see me?” she asked.

“I should like to say a word to you, Miss.” The tone was neither

aggressive nor conciliatory: it revealed nothing of the speaker’s

errand. Nevertheless, some precautionary instinct warned Lily to

withdraw beyond ear-shot of the hovering parlour-maid.

She signed to Mrs. Haffen to follow her into the drawing-room, and

closed the door when they had entered.

“What is it that you wish?” she enquired.

The char-woman, after the manner of her kind, stood with her arms

folded in her shawl. Unwinding the latter, she produced a small

parcel wrapped in dirty newspaper.

“I have something here that you might like to see, Miss Bart.”

She spoke the name with an unpleasant emphasis, as though her

knowing it made a part of her reason for being there. To Lily the

intonation sounded like a threat.

“You have found something belonging to me?” she asked, extending

her hand.

Mrs. Haffen drew back. “Well, if it comes to that, I guess it’s

mine as much as anybody’s,” she returned.

Lily looked at her perplexedly. She was sure, now, that her

visitor’s manner conveyed a threat; but, expert as she was in

certain directions, there was nothing in her experience to prepare

her for the exact significance of the present scene. She felt,

however, that it must be ended as promptly as possible.

“I don’t understand; if this parcel is not mine, why have you asked

for me?”

The woman was unabashed by the question. She was evidently prepared

to answer it, but like all her class she had to go a long way

back to make a beginning, and it was only after a pause that she

replied: “My husband was janitor to the Benedick till the first of

the month; since then he can’t get nothing to do.”

Lily remained silent and she continued: “It wasn’t no fault of our

own, neither: the agent had another man he wanted the place for,

and we was put out, bag and baggage, just to suit his fancy. I had

a long sickness last winter, and an operation that ate up all we’d

put by; and it’s hard for me and the children, Haffen being so long

out of a job.”

After all, then, she had come only to ask Miss Bart to find a

place for her husband; or, more probably, to seek the young lady’s

intervention with Mrs. Peniston. Lily had such an air of always

getting what she wanted that she was used to being appealed to as

an intermediary, and, relieved of her vague apprehension, she took

refuge in the conventional formula.

“I am sorry you have been in trouble,” she said.

“Oh, that we have, Miss, and it’s on’y just beginning. If on’y we’d

’a got another situation—but the agent, he’s dead against us. It

ain’t no fault of ours, neither, but——”

At this point Lily’s impatience overcame her. “If you have anything

to say to me——” she interposed.

The woman’s resentment of the rebuff seemed to spur her lagging

ideas.

“Yes, Miss; I’m coming to that,” she said. She paused again,

with her eyes on Lily, and then continued, in a tone of diffuse

narrative: “When we was at the Benedick I had charge of some of the

gentlemen’s rooms; leastways, I swep’ ’em out on Saturdays. Some

of the gentlemen got the greatest sight of letters: I never saw

the like of it. Their waste-paper baskets ’d be fairly brimming,

and papers falling over on the floor. Maybe havin’ so many is how

they get so careless. Some of ’em is worse than others. Mr. Selden,

Mr. Lawrence Selden, he was always one of the carefullest: burnt

his letters in winter, and tore ’em in little bits in summer. But

sometimes he’d have so many he’d just bunch ’em together, the way

the others did, and tear the lot through once—like this.”

While she spoke she had loosened the string from the parcel in her

hand, and now she drew forth a letter which she laid on the table

between Miss Bart and herself. As she had said, the letter was torn

in two; but with a rapid gesture she laid the torn edges together

and smoothed out the page.

A wave of indignation swept over Lily. She felt herself in the

presence of something vile, as yet but dimly conjectured—the kind

of vileness of which people whispered, but which she had never

thought of as touching her own life. She drew back with a motion

of disgust, but her withdrawal was checked by a sudden discovery:

under the glare of Mrs. Peniston’s chandelier she had recognized

the hand-writing of the letter. It was a large disjointed hand,

with a flourish of masculinity which but slightly disguised

its rambling weakness, and the words, scrawled in heavy ink on

pale-tinted notepaper, smote on Lily’s ear as though she had heard

them spoken.

At first she did not grasp the full import of the situation. She

understood only that before her lay a letter written by Bertha

Dorset, and addressed, presumably, to Lawrence Selden. There was

no date, but the blackness of the ink proved the writing to be

comparatively recent. The packet in Mrs. Haffen’s hand doubtless

contained more letters of the same kind—a dozen, Lily conjectured

from its thickness. The letter before her was short, but its few

words, which had leapt into her brain before she was conscious

of reading them, told a long history—a history over which, for

the last four years, the friends of the writer had smiled and

shrugged, viewing it merely as one among the countless “good

situations” of the mundane comedy. Now the other side presented

itself to Lily, the volcanic nether side of the surface over which

conjecture and innuendo glide so lightly till the first fissure

turns their whisper to a shriek. Lily knew that there is nothing

society resents so much as having given its protection to those who

have not known how to profit by it: it is for having betrayed its

connivance that the body social punishes the offender who is found

out. And in this case there was no doubt of the issue. The code

of Lily’s world decreed that a woman’s husband should be the only

judge of her conduct: she was technically above suspicion while

she had the shelter of his approval, or even of his indifference.

But with a man of George Dorset’s temper there could be no thought

of condonation—the possessor of his wife’s letters could overthrow

with a touch the whole structure of her existence. And into what

hands Bertha Dorset’s secret had been delivered! For a moment the

irony of the coincidence tinged Lily’s disgust with a confused

sense of triumph. But the disgust prevailed—all her instinctive

resistances, of taste, of training, of blind inherited scruples,

rose against the other feeling. Her strongest sense was one of

personal contamination.

She moved away, as though to put as much distance as possible

between herself and her visitor. “I know nothing of these letters,”

she said; “I have no idea why you have brought them here.”

Mrs. Haffen faced her steadily. “I’ll tell you why, Miss. I brought

’em to you to sell, because I ain’t got no other way of raising

money, and if we don’t pay our rent by tomorrow night we’ll be put

out. I never done anythin’ of the kind before, and if you’d speak

to Mr. Selden or to Mr. Rosedale about getting Haffen taken on

again at the Benedick—I seen you talking to Mr. Rosedale on the

steps that day you come out of Mr. Selden’s rooms——”

The blood rushed to Lily’s forehead. She understood now—Mrs. Haffen

supposed her to be the writer of the letters. In the first leap

of her anger she was about to ring and order the woman out; but

an obscure impulse restrained her. The mention of Selden’s name

had started a new train of thought. Bertha Dorset’s letters were

nothing to her—they might go where the current of chance carried

them! But Selden was inextricably involved in their fate. Men

do not, at worst, suffer much from such exposure; and in this

instance the flash of divination which had carried the meaning

of the letters to Lily’s brain had revealed also that they were

appeals—repeated and therefore probably unanswered—for the renewal

of a tie which time had evidently relaxed. Nevertheless, the fact

that the correspondence had been allowed to fall into strange hands

would convict Selden of negligence in a matter where the world

holds it least pardonable; and there were graver risks to consider

where a man of Dorset’s ticklish balance was concerned.

If she weighed all these things it was unconsciously: she was

aware only of feeling that Selden would wish the letters rescued,

and that therefore she must obtain possession of them. Beyond

that her mind did not travel. She had, indeed, a quick vision of

returning the packet to Bertha Dorset, and of the opportunities the

restitution offered; but this thought lit up abysses from which she

shrank back ashamed.

Meanwhile Mrs. Haffen, prompt to perceive her hesitation, had

already opened the packet and ranged its contents on the table. All

the letters had been pieced together with strips of thin paper.

Some were in small fragments, the others merely torn in half.

Though there were not many, thus spread out they nearly covered the

table. Lily’s glance fell on a word here and there—then she said in

a low voice: “What do you wish me to pay you?”

Mrs. Haffen’s face reddened with satisfaction. It was clear that

the young lady was badly frightened, and Mrs. Haffen was the woman

to make the most of such fears. Anticipating an easier victory than

she had foreseen, she named an exorbitant sum.

But Miss Bart showed herself a less ready prey than might have been

expected from her imprudent opening. She refused to pay the price

named, and after a moment’s hesitation, met it by a counter-offer

of half the amount.

Mrs. Haffen immediately stiffened. Her hand travelled toward the

outspread letters, and folding them slowly, she made as though to

restore them to their wrapping.

“I guess they’re worth more to you than to me, Miss, but the poor

has got to live as well as the rich,” she observed sententiously.

Lily was throbbing with fear, but the insinuation fortified her

resistance.

“You are mistaken,” she said indifferently. “I have offered all I

am willing to give for the letters; but there may be other ways of

getting them.”

Mrs. Haffen raised a suspicious glance: she was too experienced not

to know that the traffic she was engaged in had perils as great as

its rewards, and she had a vision of the elaborate machinery of

revenge which a word of this commanding young lady’s might set in

motion.

She applied the corner of her shawl to her eyes, and murmured

through it that no good came of bearing too hard on the poor, but

that for her part she had never been mixed up in such a business

before, and that on her honour as a Christian all she and Haffen

had thought of was that the letters mustn’t go any farther.

Lily stood motionless, keeping between herself and the char-woman

the greatest distance compatible with the need of speaking in low

tones. The idea of bargaining for the letters was intolerable to

her, but she knew that, if she appeared to weaken, Mrs. Haffen

would at once increase her original demand.

She could never afterward recall how long the duel lasted, or

what was the decisive stroke which finally, after a lapse of time

recorded in minutes by the clock, in hours by the precipitate beat

of her pulses, put her in possession of the letters; she knew only

that the door had finally closed, and that she stood alone with the

packet in her hand.

She had no idea of reading the letters; even to unfold Mrs.

Haffen’s dirty newspaper would have seemed degrading. But what did

she intend to do with its contents? The recipient of the letters

had meant to destroy them, and it was her duty to carry out his

intention. She had no right to keep them—to do so was to lessen

whatever merit lay in having secured their possession. But how

destroy them so effectually that there should be no second risk of

their falling in such hands? Mrs. Peniston’s icy drawing-room grate

shone with a forbidding lustre: the fire, like the lamps, was never

lit except when there was company.

Miss Bart was turning to carry the letters upstairs when she

heard the opening of the outer door, and her aunt entered the

drawing-room. Mrs. Peniston was a small plump woman, with a

colourless skin lined with trivial wrinkles. Her grey hair was

arranged with precision, and her clothes looked excessively new

and yet slightly old-fashioned. They were always black and tightly

fitting, with an expensive glitter: she was the kind of woman who

wore jet at breakfast. Lily had never seen her when she was not

cuirassed in shining black, with small tight boots, and an air of

being packed and ready to start; yet she never started.

She looked about the drawing-room with an expression of minute

scrutiny. “I saw a streak of light under one of the blinds as I

drove up: it’s extraordinary that I can never teach that woman to

draw them down evenly.”

Having corrected the irregularity, she seated herself on one of

the glossy purple arm-chairs; Mrs. Peniston always sat on a chair,

never in it.

Then she turned her glance to Miss Bart. “My dear, you look tired;

I suppose it’s the excitement of the wedding. Cornelia Van Alstyne

was full of it: Molly was there, and Gerty Farish ran in for a

minute to tell us about it. I think it was odd, their serving

melons before the CONSOMME: a wedding breakfast should always begin

with CONSOMME. Molly didn’t care for the bridesmaids’ dresses. She

had it straight from Julia Melson that they cost three hundred

dollars apiece at Celeste’s, but she says they didn’t look it. I’m

glad you decided not to be a bridesmaid; that shade of salmon-pink

wouldn’t have suited you.” Mrs. Peniston delighted in discussing

the minutest details of festivities in which she had not taken

part. Nothing would have induced her to undergo the exertion and

fatigue of attending the Van Osburgh wedding, but so great was her

interest in the event that, having heard two versions of it, she

now prepared to extract a third from her niece. Lily, however,

had been deplorably careless in noting the particulars of the

entertainment. She had failed to observe the colour of Mrs. Van

Osburgh’s gown, and could not even say whether the old Van Osburgh

Sevres had been used at the bride’s table: Mrs. Peniston, in short,

found that she was of more service as a listener than as a narrator.

“Really, Lily, I don’t see why you took the trouble to go to the

wedding, if you don’t remember what happened or whom you saw there.

When I was a girl I used to keep the MENU of every dinner I went

to, and write the names of the people on the back; and I never

threw away my cotillion favours till after your uncle’s death,

when it seemed unsuitable to have so many coloured things about

the house. I had a whole closet-full, I remember; and I can tell

to this day what balls I got them at. Molly Van Alstyne reminds me

of what I was at that age; it’s wonderful how she notices. She was

able to tell her mother exactly how the wedding-dress was cut, and

we knew at once, from the fold in the back, that it must have come

from Paquin.”

Mrs. Peniston rose abruptly, and, advancing to the ormolu

clock surmounted by a helmeted Minerva, which throned on the

chimney-piece between two malachite vases, passed her lace

handkerchief between the helmet and its visor.

“I knew it—the parlour-maid never dusts there!” she exclaimed,

triumphantly displaying a minute spot on the handkerchief; then,

reseating herself, she went on: “Molly thought Mrs. Dorset the

best-dressed woman at the wedding. I’ve no doubt her dress DID

cost more than any one else’s, but I can’t quite like the idea—a

combination of sable and POINT DE MILAN. It seems she goes to a new

man in Paris, who won’t take an order till his client has spent a

day with him at his villa at Neuilly. He says he must study his

subject’s home life—a most peculiar arrangement, I should say!

But Mrs. Dorset told Molly about it herself: she said the villa

was full of the most exquisite things and she was really sorry to

leave. Molly said she never saw her looking better; she was in

tremendous spirits, and said she had made a match between Evie

Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. She really seems to have a very good

influence on young men. I hear she is interesting herself now in

that silly Silverton boy, who has had his head turned by Carry

Fisher, and has been gambling so dreadfully. Well, as I was saying,

Evie is really engaged: Mrs. Dorset had her to stay with Percy

Gryce, and managed it all, and Grace Van Osburgh is in the seventh

heaven—she had almost despaired of marrying Evie.”

Mrs. Peniston again paused, but this time her scrutiny addressed

itself, not to the furniture, but to her niece.

“Cornelia Van Alstyne was so surprised: she had heard that you

were to marry young Gryce. She saw the Wetheralls just after they

had stopped with you at Bellomont, and Alice Wetherall was quite

sure there was an engagement. She said that when Mr. Gryce left

unexpectedly one morning, they all thought he had rushed to town

for the ring.”

Lily rose and moved toward the door.

“I believe I AM tired: I think I will go to bed,” she said; and

Mrs. Peniston, suddenly distracted by the discovery that the easel

sustaining the late Mr. Peniston’s crayon-portrait was not exactly

in line with the sofa in front of it, presented an absent-minded

brow to her kiss.

In her own room Lily turned up the gas-jet and glanced toward the

grate. It was as brilliantly polished as the one below, but here at

least she could burn a few papers with less risk of incurring her

aunt’s disapproval. She made no immediate motion to do so, however,

but dropping into a chair looked wearily about her. Her room was

large and comfortably-furnished—it was the envy and admiration of

poor Grace Stepney, who boarded; but, contrasted with the light

tints and luxurious appointments of the guest-rooms where so many

weeks of Lily’s existence were spent, it seemed as dreary as a

prison. The monumental wardrobe and bedstead of black walnut had

migrated from Mr. Peniston’s bedroom, and the magenta “flock”

wall-paper, of a pattern dear to the early ’sixties, was hung with

large steel engravings of an anecdotic character. Lily had tried to

mitigate this charmless background by a few frivolous touches, in

the shape of a lace-decked toilet table and a little painted desk

surmounted by photographs; but the futility of the attempt struck

her as she looked about the room. What a contrast to the subtle

elegance of the setting she had pictured for herself—an apartment

which should surpass the complicated luxury of her friends’

surroundings by the whole extent of that artistic sensibility

which made her feel herself their superior; in which every tint

and line should combine to enhance her beauty and give distinction

to her leisure! Once more the haunting sense of physical ugliness

was intensified by her mental depression, so that each piece of

the offending furniture seemed to thrust forth its most aggressive

angle.

Her aunt’s words had told her nothing new; but they had revived the

vision of Bertha Dorset, smiling, flattered, victorious, holding

her up to ridicule by insinuations intelligible to every member of

their little group. The thought of the ridicule struck deeper than

any other sensation: Lily knew every turn of the allusive jargon

which could flay its victims without the shedding of blood. Her

cheek burned at the recollection, and she rose and caught up the

letters. She no longer meant to destroy them: that intention had

been effaced by the quick corrosion of Mrs. Peniston’s words.

Instead, she approached her desk, and lighting a taper, tied

and sealed the packet; then she opened the wardrobe, drew out a

despatch-box, and deposited the letters within it. As she did so,

it struck her with a flash of irony that she was indebted to Gus

Trenor for the means of buying them.