Chapter Chapter 4 · 第4章

The next morning, on her breakfast tray, Miss Bart found a note

from her hostess.

“Dearest Lily,” it ran, “if it is not too much of a bore to be

down by ten, will you come to my sitting-room to help me with some

tiresome things?”

Lily tossed aside the note and subsided on her pillows with a sigh.

It WAS a bore to be down by ten—an hour regarded at Bellomont as

vaguely synchronous with sunrise—and she knew too well the nature

of the tiresome things in question. Miss Pragg, the secretary,

had been called away, and there would be notes and dinner-cards

to write, lost addresses to hunt up, and other social drudgery to

perform. It was understood that Miss Bart should fill the gap in

such emergencies, and she usually recognized the obligation without

a murmur.

Today, however, it renewed the sense of servitude which the

previous night’s review of her cheque-book had produced. Everything

in her surroundings ministered to feelings of ease and amenity.

The windows stood open to the sparkling freshness of the September

morning, and between the yellow boughs she caught a perspective of

hedges and parterres leading by degrees of lessening formality to

the free undulations of the park. Her maid had kindled a little

fire on the hearth, and it contended cheerfully with the sunlight

which slanted across the moss-green carpet and caressed the curved

sides of an old marquetry desk. Near the bed stood a table holding

her breakfast tray, with its harmonious porcelain and silver,

a handful of violets in a slender glass, and the morning paper

folded beneath her letters. There was nothing new to Lily in these

tokens of a studied luxury; but, though they formed a part of her

atmosphere, she never lost her sensitiveness to their charm. Mere

display left her with a sense of superior distinction; but she felt

an affinity to all the subtler manifestations of wealth.

Mrs. Trenor’s summons, however, suddenly recalled her state of

dependence, and she rose and dressed in a mood of irritability that

she was usually too prudent to indulge. She knew that such emotions

leave lines on the face as well as in the character, and she had

meant to take warning by the little creases which her midnight

survey had revealed.

The matter of course tone of Mrs. Trenor’s greeting deepened her

irritation. If one did drag one’s self out of bed at such an hour,

and come down fresh and radiant to the monotony of note-writing,

some special recognition of the sacrifice seemed fitting. But Mrs.

Trenor’s tone showed no consciousness of the fact.

“Oh, Lily, that’s nice of you,” she merely sighed across the

chaos of letters, bills and other domestic documents which gave

an incongruously commercial touch to the slender elegance of her

writing-table.

“There are such lots of horrors this morning,” she added, clearing

a space in the centre of the confusion and rising to yield her seat

to Miss Bart.

Mrs. Trenor was a tall fair woman, whose height just saved her

from redundancy. Her rosy blondness had survived some forty years

of futile activity without showing much trace of ill-usage except

in a diminished play of feature. It was difficult to define her

beyond saying that she seemed to exist only as a hostess, not so

much from any exaggerated instinct of hospitality as because she

could not sustain life except in a crowd. The collective nature

of her interests exempted her from the ordinary rivalries of her

sex, and she knew no more personal emotion than that of hatred for

the woman who presumed to give bigger dinners or have more amusing

house-parties than herself. As her social talents, backed by Mr.

Trenor’s bank-account, almost always assured her ultimate triumph

in such competitions, success had developed in her an unscrupulous

good nature toward the rest of her sex, and in Miss Bart’s

utilitarian classification of her friends, Mrs. Trenor ranked as

the woman who was least likely to “go back” on her.

“It was simply inhuman of Pragg to go off now,” Mrs. Trenor

declared, as her friend seated herself at the desk. “She says her

sister is going to have a baby—as if that were anything to having

a house-party! I’m sure I shall get most horribly mixed up and

there will be some awful rows. When I was down at Tuxedo I asked a

lot of people for next week, and I’ve mislaid the list and can’t

remember who is coming. And this week is going to be a horrid

failure too—and Gwen Van Osburgh will go back and tell her mother

how bored people were. I did mean to ask the Wetheralls—that was a

blunder of Gus’s. They disapprove of Carry Fisher, you know. As if

one could help having Carry Fisher! It WAS foolish of her to get

that second divorce—Carry always overdoes things—but she said the

only way to get a penny out of Fisher was to divorce him and make

him pay alimony. And poor Carry has to consider every dollar. It’s

really absurd of Alice Wetherall to make such a fuss about meeting

her, when one thinks of what society is coming to. Some one said

the other day that there was a divorce and a case of appendicitis

in every family one knows. Besides, Carry is the only person who

can keep Gus in a good humour when we have bores in the house. Have

you noticed that ALL the husbands like her? All, I mean, except her

own. It’s rather clever of her to have made a specialty of devoting

herself to dull people—the field is such a large one, and she has

it practically to herself. She finds compensations, no doubt—I know

she borrows money of Gus—but then I’d PAY her to keep him in a good

humour, so I can’t complain, after all.”

Mrs. Trenor paused to enjoy the spectacle of Miss Bart’s efforts to

unravel her tangled correspondence.

“But it is only the Wetheralls and Carry,” she resumed, with a

fresh note of lament. “The truth is, I’m awfully disappointed in

Lady Cressida Raith.”

“Disappointed? Had you known her before?”

“Mercy, no—never saw her till yesterday. Lady Skiddaw sent her

over with letters to the Van Osburghs, and I heard that Maria Van

Osburgh was asking a big party to meet her this week, so I thought

it would be fun to get her away, and Jack Stepney, who knew her

in India, managed it for me. Maria was furious, and actually had

the impudence to make Gwen invite herself here, so that they

shouldn’t be QUITE out of it—if I’d known what Lady Cressida was

like, they could have had her and welcome! But I thought any

friend of the Skiddaws’ was sure to be amusing. You remember what

fun Lady Skiddaw was? There were times when I simply had to send

the girls out of the room. Besides, Lady Cressida is the Duchess

of Beltshire’s sister, and I naturally supposed she was the same

sort; but you never can tell in those English families. They are

so big that there’s room for all kinds, and it turns out that Lady

Cressida is the moral one—married a clergyman and does missionary

work in the East End. Think of my taking such a lot of trouble

about a clergyman’s wife, who wears Indian jewelry and botanizes!

She made Gus take her all through the glass-houses yesterday, and

bothered him to death by asking him the names of the plants. Fancy

treating Gus as if he were the gardener!”

Mrs. Trenor brought this out in a CRESCENDO of indignation.

“Oh, well, perhaps Lady Cressida will reconcile the Wetheralls to

meeting Carry Fisher,” said Miss Bart pacifically.

“I’m sure I hope so! But she is boring all the men horribly, and

if she takes to distributing tracts, as I hear she does, it will

be too depressing. The worst of it is that she would have been so

useful at the right time. You know we have to have the Bishop once

a year, and she would have given just the right tone to things.

I always have horrid luck about the Bishop’s visits,” added Mrs.

Trenor, whose present misery was being fed by a rapidly rising tide

of reminiscence; “last year, when he came, Gus forgot all about his

being here, and brought home the Ned Wintons and the Farleys—five

divorces and six sets of children between them!”

“When is Lady Cressida going?” Lily enquired.

Mrs. Trenor cast up her eyes in despair. “My dear, if one only

knew! I was in such a hurry to get her away from Maria that I

actually forgot to name a date, and Gus says she told some one she

meant to stop here all winter.”

“To stop here? In this house?”

“Don’t be silly—in America. But if no one else asks her—you know

they NEVER go to hotels.”

“Perhaps Gus only said it to frighten you.”

“No—I heard her tell Bertha Dorset that she had six months to put

in while her husband was taking the cure in the Engadine. You

should have seen Bertha look vacant! But it’s no joke, you know—if

she stays here all the autumn she’ll spoil everything, and Maria

Van Osburgh will simply exult.”

At this affecting vision Mrs. Trenor’s voice trembled with

self-pity.

“Oh, Judy—as if any one were ever bored at Bellomont!” Miss Bart

tactfully protested. “You know perfectly well that, if Mrs. Van

Osburgh were to get all the right people and leave you with all the

wrong ones, you’d manage to make things go off, and she wouldn’t.”

Such an assurance would usually have restored Mrs. Trenor’s

complacency; but on this occasion it did not chase the cloud from

her brow.

“It isn’t only Lady Cressida,” she lamented. “Everything has gone

wrong this week. I can see that Bertha Dorset is furious with me.”

“Furious with you? Why?”

“Because I told her that Lawrence Selden was coming; but he

wouldn’t, after all, and she’s quite unreasonable enough to think

it’s my fault.”

Miss Bart put down her pen and sat absently gazing at the note she

had begun.

“I thought that was all over,” she said.

“So it is, on his side. And of course Bertha has been idle since.

But I fancy she’s out of a job just at present—and some one gave me

a hint that I had better ask Lawrence. Well, I DID ask him—but I

couldn’t make him come; and now I suppose she’ll take it out of me

by being perfectly nasty to every one else.”

“Oh, she may take it out of HIM by being perfectly charming—to some

one else.”

Mrs. Trenor shook her head dolefully. “She knows he wouldn’t mind.

And who else is there? Alice Wetherall won’t let Lucius out of her

sight. Ned Silverton can’t take his eyes off Carry Fisher—poor boy!

Gus is bored by Bertha, Jack Stepney knows her too well—and—well,

to be sure, there’s Percy Gryce!”

She sat up smiling at the thought.

Miss Bart’s countenance did not reflect the smile.

“Oh, she and Mr. Gryce would not be likely to hit it off.”

“You mean that she’d shock him and he’d bore her? Well, that’s not

such a bad beginning, you know. But I hope she won’t take it into

her head to be nice to him, for I asked him here on purpose for

you.”

Lily laughed. “MERCI DU COMPLIMENT! I should certainly have no show

against Bertha.”

“Do you think I am uncomplimentary? I’m not really, you know. Every

one knows you’re a thousand times handsomer and cleverer than

Bertha; but then you’re not nasty. And for always getting what she

wants in the long run, commend me to a nasty woman.”

Miss Bart stared in affected reproval. “I thought you were so fond

of Bertha.”

“Oh, I am—it’s much safer to be fond of dangerous people. But she

IS dangerous—and if I ever saw her up to mischief it’s now. I can

tell by poor George’s manner. That man is a perfect barometer—he

always knows when Bertha is going to——”

“To fall?” Miss Bart suggested.

“Don’t be shocking! You know he believes in her still. And of

course I don’t say there’s any real harm in Bertha. Only she

delights in making people miserable, and especially poor George.”

“Well, he seems cut out for the part—I don’t wonder she likes more

cheerful companionship.”

“Oh, George is not as dismal as you think. If Bertha did worry him

he would be quite different. Or if she’d leave him alone, and let

him arrange his life as he pleases. But she doesn’t dare lose her

hold of him on account of the money, and so when HE isn’t jealous

she pretends to be.”

Miss Bart went on writing in silence, and her hostess sat following

her train of thought with frowning intensity.

“Do you know,” she exclaimed after a long pause, “I believe I’ll

call up Lawrence on the telephone and tell him he simply MUST come?”

“Oh, don’t,” said Lily, with a quick suffusion of colour. The blush

surprised her almost as much as it did her hostess, who, though

not commonly observant of facial changes, sat staring at her with

puzzled eyes.

“Good gracious, Lily, how handsome you are! Why? Do you dislike him

so much?”

“Not at all; I like him. But if you are actuated by the benevolent

intention of protecting me from Bertha—I don’t think I need your

protection.”

Mrs. Trenor sat up with an exclamation. “Lily!——PERCY? Do you mean

to say you’ve actually done it?”

Miss Bart smiled. “I only mean to say that Mr. Gryce and I are

getting to be very good friends.”

“H’m—I see.” Mrs. Trenor fixed a rapt eye upon her. “You know they

say he has eight hundred thousand a year—and spends nothing, except

on some rubbishy old books. And his mother has heart-disease and

will leave him a lot more. OH, LILY, DO GO SLOWLY,” her friend

adjured her.

Miss Bart continued to smile without annoyance. “I shouldn’t, for

instance,” she remarked, “be in any haste to tell him that he had a

lot of rubbishy old books.”

“No, of course not; I know you’re wonderful about getting up

people’s subjects. But he’s horribly shy, and easily shocked,

and—and——”

“Why don’t you say it, Judy? I have the reputation of being on the

hunt for a rich husband?”

“Oh, I don’t mean that; he wouldn’t believe it of you—at first,”

said Mrs. Trenor, with candid shrewdness. “But you know things are

rather lively here at times—I must give Jack and Gus a hint—and

if he thought you were what his mother would call fast—oh, well,

you know what I mean. Don’t wear your scarlet CREPE-DE-CHINE for

dinner, and don’t smoke if you can help it, Lily dear!”

Lily pushed aside her finished work with a dry smile. “You’re very

kind, Judy: I’ll lock up my cigarettes and wear that last year’s

dress you sent me this morning. And if you are really interested

in my career, perhaps you’ll be kind enough not to ask me to play

bridge again this evening.”

“Bridge? Does he mind bridge, too? Oh, Lily, what an awful life

you’ll lead! But of course I won’t—why didn’t you give me a hint

last night? There’s nothing I wouldn’t do, you poor duck, to see

you happy!”

And Mrs. Trenor, glowing with her sex’s eagerness to smooth the

course of true love, enveloped Lily in a long embrace.

“You’re quite sure,” she added solicitously, as the latter

extricated herself, “that you wouldn’t like me to telephone for

Lawrence Selden?”

“Quite sure,” said Lily.

* * * * *

The next three days demonstrated to her own complete satisfaction

Miss Bart’s ability to manage her affairs without extraneous aid.

As she sat, on the Saturday afternoon, on the terrace at Bellomont,

she smiled at Mrs. Trenor’s fear that she might go too fast. If

such a warning had ever been needful, the years had taught her a

salutary lesson, and she flattered herself that she now knew how to

adapt her pace to the object of pursuit. In the case of Mr. Gryce

she had found it well to flutter ahead, losing herself elusively

and luring him on from depth to depth of unconscious intimacy. The

surrounding atmosphere was propitious to this scheme of courtship.

Mrs. Trenor, true to her word, had shown no signs of expecting Lily

at the bridge-table, and had even hinted to the other card-players

that they were to betray no surprise at her unwonted defection. In

consequence of this hint, Lily found herself the centre of that

feminine solicitude which envelops a young woman in the mating

season. A solitude was tacitly created for her in the crowded

existence of Bellomont, and her friends could not have shown a

greater readiness for self-effacement had her wooing been adorned

with all the attributes of romance. In Lily’s set this conduct

implied a sympathetic comprehension of her motives, and Mr. Gryce

rose in her esteem as she saw the consideration he inspired.

The terrace at Bellomont on a September afternoon was a spot

propitious to sentimental musings, and as Miss Bart stood leaning

against the balustrade above the sunken garden, at a little

distance from the animated group about the tea-table, she might

have been lost in the mazes of an inarticulate happiness. In

reality, her thoughts were finding definite utterance in the

tranquil recapitulation of the blessings in store for her. From

where she stood she could see them embodied in the form of Mr.

Gryce, who, in a light overcoat and muffler, sat somewhat nervously

on the edge of his chair, while Carry Fisher, with all the energy

of eye and gesture with which nature and art had combined to

endow her, pressed on him the duty of taking part in the task of

municipal reform.

Mrs. Fisher’s latest hobby was municipal reform. It had been

preceded by an equal zeal for socialism, which had in turn replaced

an energetic advocacy of Christian Science. Mrs. Fisher was

small, fiery and dramatic; and her hands and eyes were admirable

instruments in the service of whatever causes she happened to

espouse. She had, however, the fault common to enthusiasts of

ignoring any slackness of response on the part of her hearers, and

Lily was amused by her unconsciousness of the resistance displayed

in every angle of Mr. Gryce’s attitude. Lily herself knew that

his mind was divided between the dread of catching cold if he

remained out of doors too long at that hour, and the fear that, if

he retreated to the house, Mrs. Fisher might follow him up with a

paper to be signed. Mr. Gryce had a constitutional dislike to what

he called “committing himself,” and tenderly as he cherished his

health, he evidently concluded that it was safer to stay out of

reach of pen and ink till chance released him from Mrs. Fisher’s

toils. Meanwhile he cast agonized glances in the direction of Miss

Bart, whose only response was to sink into an attitude of more

graceful abstraction. She had learned the value of contrast in

throwing her charms into relief, and was fully aware of the extent

to which Mrs. Fisher’s volubility was enhancing her own repose.

She was roused from her musings by the approach of her cousin Jack

Stepney who, at Gwen Van Osburgh’s side, was returning across the

garden from the tennis court.

The couple in question were engaged in the same kind of romance

in which Lily figured, and the latter felt a certain annoyance in

contemplating what seemed to her a caricature of her own situation.

Miss Van Osburgh was a large girl with flat surfaces and no high

lights: Jack Stepney had once said of her that she was as reliable

as roast mutton. His own taste was in the line of less solid and

more highly-seasoned diet; but hunger makes any fare palatable, and

there had been times when Mr. Stepney had been reduced to a crust.

Lily considered with interest the expression of their faces: the

girl’s turned toward her companion’s like an empty plate held up to

be filled, while the man lounging at her side already betrayed the

encroaching boredom which would presently crack the thin veneer of

his smile.

“How impatient men are!” Lily reflected. “All Jack has to do to get

everything he wants is to keep quiet and let that girl marry him;

whereas I have to calculate and contrive, and retreat and advance,

as if I were going through an intricate dance, where one misstep

would throw me hopelessly out of time.”

As they drew nearer she was whimsically struck by a kind of family

likeness between Miss Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. There was no

resemblance of feature. Gryce was handsome in a didactic way—he

looked like a clever pupil’s drawing from a plaster-cast—while

Gwen’s countenance had no more modelling than a face painted on

a toy balloon. But the deeper affinity was unmistakable: the two

had the same prejudices and ideals, and the same quality of making

other standards non-existent by ignoring them. This attribute was

common to most of Lily’s set: they had a force of negation which

eliminated everything beyond their own range of perception. Gryce

and Miss Van Osburgh were, in short, made for each other by every

law of moral and physical correspondence——“Yet they wouldn’t look

at each other,” Lily mused, “they never do. Each of them wants a

creature of a different race, of Jack’s race and mine, with all

sorts of intuitions, sensations and perceptions that they don’t

even guess the existence of. And they always get what they want.”

She stood talking with her cousin and Miss Van Osburgh, till a

slight cloud on the latter’s brow advised her that even cousinly

amenities were subject to suspicion, and Miss Bart, mindful of the

necessity of not exciting enmities at this crucial point of her

career, dropped aside while the happy couple proceeded toward the

tea-table.

Seating herself on the upper step of the terrace, Lily leaned

her head against the honeysuckles wreathing the balustrade. The

fragrance of the late blossoms seemed an emanation of the tranquil

scene, a landscape tutored to the last degree of rural elegance.

In the foreground glowed the warm tints of the gardens. Beyond the

lawn, with its pyramidal pale-gold maples and velvety firs, sloped

pastures dotted with cattle; and through a long glade the river

widened like a lake under the silver light of September. Lily did

not want to join the circle about the tea-table. They represented

the future she had chosen, and she was content with it, but in no

haste to anticipate its joys. The certainty that she could marry

Percy Gryce when she pleased had lifted a heavy load from her

mind, and her money troubles were too recent for their removal not

to leave a sense of relief which a less discerning intelligence

might have taken for happiness. Her vulgar cares were at an end.

She would be able to arrange her life as she pleased, to soar

into that empyrean of security where creditors cannot penetrate.

She would have smarter gowns than Judy Trenor, and far, far more

jewels than Bertha Dorset. She would be free forever from the

shifts, the expedients, the humiliations of the relatively poor.

Instead of having to flatter, she would be flattered; instead of

being grateful, she would receive thanks. There were old scores

she could pay off as well as old benefits she could return. And

she had no doubts as to the extent of her power. She knew that Mr.

Gryce was of the small chary type most inaccessible to impulses

and emotions. He had the kind of character in which prudence is

a vice, and good advice the most dangerous nourishment. But Lily

had known the species before: she was aware that such a guarded

nature must find one huge outlet of egoism, and she determined to

be to him what his Americana had hitherto been: the one possession

in which he took sufficient pride to spend money on it. She knew

that this generosity to self is one of the forms of meanness, and

she resolved so to identify herself with her husband’s vanity that

to gratify her wishes would be to him the most exquisite form of

self-indulgence. The system might at first necessitate a resort

to some of the very shifts and expedients from which she intended

it should free her; but she felt sure that in a short time she

would be able to play the game in her own way. How should she have

distrusted her powers? Her beauty itself was not the mere ephemeral

possession it might have been in the hands of inexperience: her

skill in enhancing it, the care she took of it, the use she made

of it, seemed to give it a kind of permanence. She felt she could

trust it to carry her through to the end.

And the end, on the whole, was worthwhile. Life was not the mockery

she had thought it three days ago. There was room for her, after

all, in this crowded selfish world of pleasure whence, so short a

time since, her poverty had seemed to exclude her. These people

whom she had ridiculed and yet envied were glad to make a place for

her in the charmed circle about which all her desires revolved.

They were not as brutal and self-engrossed as she had fancied—or

rather, since it would no longer be necessary to flatter and humour

them, that side of their nature became less conspicuous. Society is

a revolving body which is apt to be judged according to its place

in each man’s heaven; and at present it was turning its illuminated

face to Lily.

In the rosy glow it diffused her companions seemed full of amiable

qualities. She liked their elegance, their lightness, their lack

of emphasis: even the self-assurance which at times was so like

obtuseness now seemed the natural sign of social ascendency. They

were lords of the only world she cared for, and they were ready to

admit her to their ranks and let her lord it with them. Already

she felt within her a stealing allegiance to their standards, an

acceptance of their limitations, a disbelief in the things they did

not believe in, a contemptuous pity for the people who were not

able to live as they lived.

The early sunset was slanting across the park. Through the boughs

of the long avenue beyond the gardens she caught the flash of

wheels, and divined that more visitors were approaching. There

was a movement behind her, a scattering of steps and voices:

it was evident that the party about the tea-table was breaking

up. Presently she heard a tread behind her on the terrace. She

supposed that Mr. Gryce had at last found means to escape from his

predicament, and she smiled at the significance of his coming to

join her instead of beating an instant retreat to the fireside.

She turned to give him the welcome which such gallantry deserved;

but her greeting wavered into a blush of wonder, for the man who

had approached her was Lawrence Selden.

“You see I came after all,” he said; but before she had time

to answer, Mrs. Dorset, breaking away from a lifeless colloquy

with her host, had stepped between them with a little gesture of

appropriation.