Bab Bab 26 · 第26章

Lily, lingering for a moment on the corner, looked out on the

afternoon spectacle of Fifth Avenue. It was a day in late April,

and the sweetness of spring was in the air. It mitigated the

ugliness of the long crowded thoroughfare, blurred the gaunt

roof-lines, threw a mauve veil over the discouraging perspective of

the side streets, and gave a touch of poetry to the delicate haze

of green that marked the entrance to the Park.

As Lily stood there, she recognized several familiar faces in the

passing carriages. The season was over, and its ruling forces had

disbanded; but a few still lingered, delaying their departure for

Europe, or passing through town on their return from the South.

Among them was Mrs. Van Osburgh, swaying majestically in her

C-spring barouche, with Mrs. Percy Gryce at her side, and the new

heir to the Gryce millions enthroned before them on his nurse’s

knees. They were succeeded by Mrs. Hatch’s electric victoria, in

which that lady reclined in the lonely splendour of a spring toilet

obviously designed for company; and a moment or two later came Judy

Trenor, accompanied by Lady Skiddaw, who had come over for her

annual tarpon fishing and a dip into “the street.”

This fleeting glimpse of her past served to emphasize the sense

of aimlessness with which Lily at length turned toward home. She

had nothing to do for the rest of the day, nor for the days to

come; for the season was over in millinery as well as in society,

and a week earlier Mme. Regina had notified her that her services

were no longer required. Mme. Regina always reduced her staff on

the first of May, and Miss Bart’s attendance had of late been so

irregular—she had so often been unwell, and had done so little work

when she came—that it was only as a favour that her dismissal had

hitherto been deferred.

Lily did not question the justice of the decision. She was

conscious of having been forgetful, awkward and slow to learn. It

was bitter to acknowledge her inferiority even to herself, but the

fact had been brought home to her that as a bread-winner she could

never compete with professional ability. Since she had been brought

up to be ornamental, she could hardly blame herself for failing to

serve any practical purpose; but the discovery put an end to her

consoling sense of universal efficiency.

As she turned homeward her thoughts shrank in anticipation from the

fact that there would be nothing to get up for the next morning.

The luxury of lying late in bed was a pleasure belonging to the

life of ease; it had no part in the utilitarian existence of the

boarding-house. She liked to leave her room early, and to return to

it as late as possible; and she was walking slowly now in order to

postpone the detested approach to her doorstep.

But the doorstep, as she drew near it, acquired a sudden interest

from the fact that it was occupied—and indeed filled—by the

conspicuous figure of Mr. Rosedale, whose presence seemed to take

on an added amplitude from the meanness of his surroundings.

The sight stirred Lily with an irresistible sense of triumph.

Rosedale, a day or two after their chance meeting, had called to

enquire if she had recovered from her indisposition; but since

then she had not seen or heard from him, and his absence seemed

to betoken a struggle to keep away, to let her pass once more out

of his life. If this were the case, his return showed that the

struggle had been unsuccessful, for Lily knew he was not the man to

waste his time in an ineffectual sentimental dalliance. He was too

busy, too practical, and above all too much preoccupied with his

own advancement, to indulge in such unprofitable asides.

In the peacock-blue parlour, with its bunches of dried pampas

grass, and discoloured steel engravings of sentimental episodes,

he looked about him with unconcealed disgust, laying his hat

distrustfully on the dusty console adorned with a Rogers statuette.

Lily sat down on one of the plush and rosewood sofas, and he

deposited himself in a rocking-chair draped with a starched

antimacassar which scraped unpleasantly against the pink fold of

skin above his collar.

“My goodness—you can’t go on living here!” he exclaimed.

Lily smiled at his tone. “I am not sure that I can; but I have gone

over my expenses very carefully, and I rather think I shall be able

to manage it.”

“Be able to manage it? That’s not what I mean—it’s no place for

you!”

“It’s what I mean; for I have been out of work for the last week.”

“Out of work—out of work! What a way for you to talk! The idea

of your having to work—it’s preposterous.” He brought out his

sentences in short violent jerks, as though they were forced up

from a deep inner crater of indignation. “It’s a farce—a crazy

farce,” he repeated, his eyes fixed on the long vista of the room

reflected in the blotched glass between the windows.

Lily continued to meet his expostulations with a smile. “I don’t

know why I should regard myself as an exception——” she began.

“Because you ARE; that’s why; and your being in a place like this

is a damnable outrage. I can’t talk of it calmly.”

She had in truth never seen him so shaken out of his usual

glibness; and there was something almost moving to her in his

inarticulate struggle with his emotions.

He rose with a start which left the rocking-chair quivering on its

beam ends, and placed himself squarely before her.

“Look here, Miss Lily, I’m going to Europe next week: going over

to Paris and London for a couple of months—and I can’t leave you

like this. I can’t do it. I know it’s none of my business—you’ve

let me understand that often enough; but things are worse with you

now than they have been before, and you must see that you’ve got to

accept help from somebody. You spoke to me the other day about some

debt to Trenor. I know what you mean—and I respect you for feeling

as you do about it.”

A blush of surprise rose to Lily’s pale face, but before she could

interrupt him he had continued eagerly: “Well, I’ll lend you the

money to pay Trenor; and I won’t—I—see here, don’t take me up

till I’ve finished. What I mean is, it’ll be a plain business

arrangement, such as one man would make with another. Now, what

have you got to say against that?”

Lily’s blush deepened to a glow in which humiliation and gratitude

were mingled; and both sentiments revealed themselves in the

unexpected gentleness of her reply.

“Only this: that it is exactly what Gus Trenor proposed; and that

I can never again be sure of understanding the plainest business

arrangement.” Then, realizing that this answer contained a germ

of injustice, she added, even more kindly: “Not that I don’t

appreciate your kindness—that I’m not grateful for it. But a

business arrangement between us would in any case be impossible,

because I shall have no security to give when my debt to Gus Trenor

has been paid.”

Rosedale received this statement in silence: he seemed to feel the

note of finality in her voice, yet to be unable to accept it as

closing the question between them.

In the silence Lily had a clear perception of what was passing

through his mind. Whatever perplexity he felt as to the

inexorableness of her course—however little he penetrated its

motive—she saw that it unmistakably tended to strengthen her hold

over him. It was as though the sense in her of unexplained scruples

and resistances had the same attraction as the delicacy of feature,

the fastidiousness of manner, which gave her an external rarity,

an air of being impossible to match. As he advanced in social

experience this uniqueness had acquired a greater value for him,

as though he were a collector who had learned to distinguish minor

differences of design and quality in some long-coveted object.

Lily, perceiving all this, understood that he would marry her

at once, on the sole condition of a reconciliation with Mrs.

Dorset; and the temptation was the less easy to put aside because,

little by little, circumstances were breaking down her dislike

for Rosedale. The dislike, indeed, still subsisted; but it was

penetrated here and there by the perception of mitigating qualities

in him: of a certain gross kindliness, a rather helpless fidelity

of sentiment, which seemed to be struggling through the hard

surface of his material ambitions.

Reading his dismissal in her eyes, he held out his hand with a

gesture which conveyed something of this inarticulate conflict.

“If you’d only let me, I’d set you up over them all—I’d put you

where you could wipe your feet on ’em!” he declared; and it touched

her oddly to see that his new passion had not altered his old

standard of values.

* * * * *

Lily took no sleeping-drops that night. She lay awake viewing her

situation in the crude light which Rosedale’s visit had shed on

it. In fending off the offer he was so plainly ready to renew, had

she not sacrificed to one of those abstract notions of honour that

might be called the conventionalities of the moral life? What debt

did she owe to a social order which had condemned and banished her

without trial? She had never been heard in her own defence; she was

innocent of the charge on which she had been found guilty; and the

irregularity of her conviction might seem to justify the use of

methods as irregular in recovering her lost rights. Bertha Dorset,

to save herself, had not scrupled to ruin her by an open falsehood;

why should she hesitate to make private use of the facts that

chance had put in her way? After all, half the opprobrium of such

an act lies in the name attached to it. Call it blackmail and it

becomes unthinkable; but explain that it injures no one, and that

the rights regained by it were unjustly forfeited, and he must be a

formalist indeed who can find no plea in its defence.

The arguments pleading for it with Lily were the old unanswerable

ones of the personal situation: the sense of injury, the sense

of failure, the passionate craving for a fair chance against the

selfish despotism of society. She had learned by experience that

she had neither the aptitude nor the moral constancy to remake her

life on new lines; to become a worker among workers, and let the

world of luxury and pleasure sweep by her unregarded. She could not

hold herself much to blame for this ineffectiveness, and she was

perhaps less to blame than she believed. Inherited tendencies had

combined with early training to make her the highly specialized

product she was: an organism as helpless out of its narrow range as

the sea-anemone torn from the rock. She had been fashioned to adorn

and delight; to what other end does nature round the rose-leaf and

paint the humming-bird’s breast? And was it her fault that the

purely decorative mission is less easily and harmoniously fulfilled

among social beings than in the world of nature? That it is apt

to be hampered by material necessities or complicated by moral

scruples?

These last were the two antagonistic forces which fought out their

battle in her breast during the long watches of the night; and

when she rose the next morning she hardly knew where the victory

lay. She was exhausted by the reaction of a night without sleep,

coming after many nights of rest artificially obtained; and in the

distorting light of fatigue the future stretched out before her

grey, interminable and desolate.

She lay late in bed, refusing the coffee and fried eggs which the

friendly Irish servant thrust through her door, and hating the

intimate domestic noises of the house and the cries and rumblings

of the street. Her week of idleness had brought home to her with

exaggerated force these small aggravations of the boarding-house

world, and she yearned for that other luxurious world, whose

machinery is so carefully concealed that one scene flows into

another without perceptible agency.

At length she rose and dressed. Since she had left Mme. Regina’s

she had spent her days in the streets, partly to escape from the

uncongenial promiscuities of the boarding-house, and partly in the

hope that physical fatigue would help her to sleep. But once out of

the house, she could not decide where to go; for she had avoided

Gerty since her dismissal from the milliner’s, and she was not sure

of a welcome anywhere else.

The morning was in harsh contrast to the previous day. A cold grey

sky threatened rain, and a high wind drove the dust in wild spirals

up and down the streets. Lily walked up Fifth Avenue toward the

Park, hoping to find a sheltered nook where she might sit; but the

wind chilled her, and after an hour’s wandering under the tossing

boughs she yielded to her increasing weariness, and took refuge in

a little restaurant in Fifty-ninth Street. She was not hungry, and

had meant to go without luncheon; but she was too tired to return

home, and the long perspective of white tables showed alluringly

through the windows.

The room was full of women and girls, all too much engaged in the

rapid absorption of tea and pie to remark her entrance. A hum

of shrill voices reverberated against the low ceiling, leaving

Lily shut out in a little circle of silence. She felt a sudden

pang of profound loneliness. She had lost the sense of time, and

it seemed to her as though she had not spoken to any one for

days. Her eyes sought the faces about her, craving a responsive

glance, some sign of an intuition of her trouble. But the sallow

preoccupied women, with their bags and note-books and rolls of

music, were all engrossed in their own affairs, and even those who

sat by themselves were busy running over proof-sheets or devouring

magazines between their hurried gulps of tea. Lily alone was

stranded in a great waste of disoccupation.

She drank several cups of the tea which was served with her portion

of stewed oysters, and her brain felt clearer and livelier when

she emerged once more into the street. She realized now that, as

she sat in the restaurant, she had unconsciously arrived at a

final decision. The discovery gave her an immediate illusion of

activity: it was exhilarating to think that she had actually a

reason for hurrying home. To prolong her enjoyment of the sensation

she decided to walk; but the distance was so great that she found

herself glancing nervously at the clocks on the way. One of the

surprises of her unoccupied state was the discovery that time, when

it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot

be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters; but

just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly

break into a wild irrational gallop.

She found, however, on reaching home, that the hour was still early

enough for her to sit down and rest a few minutes before putting

her plan into execution. The delay did not perceptibly weaken her

resolve. She was frightened and yet stimulated by the reserved

force of resolution which she felt within herself: she saw it was

going to be easier, a great deal easier, than she had imagined.

At five o’clock she rose, unlocked her trunk, and took out a

sealed packet which she slipped into the bosom of her dress. Even

the contact with the packet did not shake her nerves as she had

half-expected it would. She seemed encased in a strong armour of

indifference, as though the vigorous exertion of her will had

finally benumbed her finer sensibilities.

She dressed herself once more for the street, locked her door and

went out. When she emerged on the pavement, the day was still

high, but a threat of rain darkened the sky and cold gusts shook

the signs projecting from the basement shops along the street. She

reached Fifth Avenue and began to walk slowly northward. She was

sufficiently familiar with Mrs. Dorset’s habits to know that she

could always be found at home after five. She might not, indeed, be

accessible to visitors, especially to a visitor so unwelcome, and

against whom it was quite possible that she had guarded herself by

special orders; but Lily had written a note which she meant to send

up with her name, and which she thought would secure her admission.

She had allowed herself time to walk to Mrs. Dorset’s, thinking

that the quick movement through the cold evening air would help

to steady her nerves; but she really felt no need of being

tranquillized. Her survey of the situation remained calm and

unwavering.

As she reached Fiftieth Street the clouds broke abruptly, and

a rush of cold rain slanted into her face. She had no umbrella

and the moisture quickly penetrated her thin spring dress. She

was still half a mile from her destination, and she decided to

walk across to Madison Avenue and take the electric car. As she

turned into the side street, a vague memory stirred in her. The

row of budding trees, the new brick and limestone house-fronts,

the Georgian flat-house with flower-boxes on its balconies, were

merged together into the setting of a familiar scene. It was

down this street that she had walked with Selden, that September

day two years ago; a few yards ahead was the doorway they had

entered together. The recollection loosened a throng of benumbed

sensations—longings, regrets, imaginings, the throbbing brood of

the only spring her heart had ever known. It was strange to find

herself passing his house on such an errand. She seemed suddenly

to see her action as he would see it—and the fact of his own

connection with it, the fact that, to attain her end, she must

trade on his name, and profit by a secret of his past, chilled her

blood with shame. What a long way she had travelled since the day

of their first talk together! Even then her feet had been set in

the path she was now following—even then she had resisted the hand

he had held out.

All her resentment of his fancied coldness was swept away in this

overwhelming rush of recollection. Twice he had been ready to

help her—to help her by loving her, as he had said—and if, the

third time, he had seemed to fail her, whom but herself could she

accuse?... Well, that part of her life was over; she did not know

why her thoughts still clung to it. But the sudden longing to see

him remained; it grew to hunger as she paused on the pavement

opposite his door. The street was dark and empty, swept by the

rain. She had a vision of his quiet room, of the bookshelves,

and the fire on the hearth. She looked up and saw a light in his

window; then she crossed the street and entered the house.