第 二十四 章 · 第24章

When Lily woke on the morning after her translation to the Emporium

Hotel, her first feeling was one of purely physical satisfaction.

The force of contrast gave an added keenness to the luxury of lying

once more in a soft-pillowed bed, and looking across a spacious

sunlit room at a breakfast-table set invitingly near the fire.

Analysis and introspection might come later; but for the moment

she was not even troubled by the excesses of the upholstery or

the restless convolutions of the furniture. The sense of being

once more lapped and folded in ease, as in some dense mild medium

impenetrable to discomfort, effectually stilled the faintest note

of criticism.

When, the afternoon before, she had presented herself to the lady

to whom Carry Fisher had directed her, she had been conscious of

entering a new world. Carry’s vague presentment of Mrs. Norma

Hatch (whose reversion to her Christian name was explained as the

result of her latest divorce), left her under the implication

of coming “from the West,” with the not unusual extenuation of

having brought a great deal of money with her. She was, in short,

rich, helpless, unplaced: the very subject for Lily’s hand. Mrs.

Fisher had not specified the line her friend was to take; she

owned herself unacquainted with Mrs. Hatch, whom she “knew about”

through Melville Stancy, a lawyer in his leisure moments, and the

Falstaff of a certain section of festive club life. Socially, Mr.

Stancy might have been said to form a connecting link between the

Gormer world and the more dimly-lit region on which Miss Bart

now found herself entering. It was, however, only figuratively

that the illumination of Mrs. Hatch’s world could be described as

dim: in actual fact, Lily found her seated in a blaze of electric

light, impartially projected from various ornamental excrescences

on a vast concavity of pink damask and gilding, from which she

rose like Venus from her shell. The analogy was justified by the

appearance of the lady, whose large-eyed prettiness had the fixity

of something impaled and shown under glass. This did not preclude

the immediate discovery that she was some years younger than her

visitor, and that under her showiness, her ease, the aggression of

her dress and voice, there persisted that ineradicable innocence

which, in ladies of her nationality, so curiously coexists with

startling extremes of experience.

The environment in which Lily found herself was as strange to her

as its inhabitants. She was unacquainted with the world of the

fashionable New York hotel—a world over-heated, over-upholstered,

and over-fitted with mechanical appliances for the gratification

of fantastic requirements, while the comforts of a civilized life

were as unattainable as in a desert. Through this atmosphere of

torrid splendour moved wan beings as richly upholstered as the

furniture, beings without definite pursuits or permanent relations,

who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity from restaurant to

concert-hall, from palm-garden to music-room, from “art exhibit” to

dress-maker’s opening. High-stepping horses or elaborately equipped

motors waited to carry these ladies into vague metropolitan

distances, whence they returned, still more wan from the weight of

their sables, to be sucked back into the stifling inertia of the

hotel routine. Somewhere behind them, in the background of their

lives, there was doubtless a real past, peopled by real human

activities: they themselves were probably the product of strong

ambitions, persistent energies, diversified contacts with the

wholesome roughness of life; yet they had no more real existence

than the poet’s shades in limbo.

Lily had not been long in this pallid world without discovering

that Mrs. Hatch was its most substantial figure. That lady, though

still floating in the void, showed faint symptoms of developing

an outline; and in this endeavour she was actively seconded by

Mr. Melville Stancy. It was Mr. Stancy, a man of large resounding

presence, suggestive of convivial occasions and of a chivalry

finding expression in “first-night” boxes and thousand dollar

bonbonnieres, who had transplanted Mrs. Hatch from the scene of

her first development to the higher stage of hotel life in the

metropolis. It was he who had selected the horses with which she

had taken the blue ribbon at the Show, had introduced her to the

photographer whose portraits of her formed the recurring ornament

of “Sunday Supplements,” and had got together the group which

constituted her social world. It was a small group still, with

heterogeneous figures suspended in large unpeopled spaces; but Lily

did not take long to learn that its regulation was no longer in Mr.

Stancy’s hands. As often happens, the pupil had outstripped the

teacher, and Mrs. Hatch was already aware of heights of elegance

as well as depths of luxury beyond the world of the Emporium. This

discovery at once produced in her a craving for higher guidance,

for the adroit feminine hand which should give the right turn

to her correspondence, the right “look” to her hats, the right

succession to the items of her MENUS. It was, in short, as the

regulator of a germinating social life that Miss Bart’s guidance

was required; her ostensible duties as secretary being restricted

by the fact that Mrs. Hatch, as yet, knew hardly any one to write

to.

The daily details of Mrs. Hatch’s existence were as strange to

Lily as its general tenor. The lady’s habits were marked by an

Oriental indolence and disorder peculiarly trying to her companion.

Mrs. Hatch and her friends seemed to float together outside the

bounds of time and space. No definite hours were kept; no fixed

obligations existed: night and day flowed into one another in a

blur of confused and retarded engagements, so that one had the

impression of lunching at the tea-hour, while dinner was often

merged in the noisy after-theatre supper which prolonged Mrs.

Hatch’s vigil till daylight.

Through this jumble of futile activities came and went a strange

throng of hangers-on—manicures, beauty-doctors, hair-dressers,

teachers of bridge, of French, of “physical development”: figures

sometimes indistinguishable, by their appearance, or by Mrs.

Hatch’s relation to them, from the visitors constituting her

recognized society. But strangest of all to Lily was the encounter,

in this latter group, of several of her acquaintances. She had

supposed, and not without relief, that she was passing, for the

moment, completely out of her own circle; but she found that Mr.

Stancy, one side of whose sprawling existence overlapped the

edge of Mrs. Fisher’s world, had drawn several of its brightest

ornaments into the circle of the Emporium. To find Ned Silverton

among the habitual frequenters of Mrs. Hatch’s drawing-room

was one of Lily’s first astonishments; but she soon discovered

that he was not Mr. Stancy’s most important recruit. It was on

little Freddy Van Osburgh, the small slim heir of the Van Osburgh

millions, that the attention of Mrs. Hatch’s group was centred.

Freddy, barely out of college, had risen above the horizon since

Lily’s eclipse, and she now saw with surprise what an effulgence he

shed on the outer twilight of Mrs. Hatch’s existence. This, then,

was one of the things that young men “went in” for when released

from the official social routine; this was the kind of “previous

engagement” that so frequently caused them to disappoint the hopes

of anxious hostesses. Lily had an odd sense of being behind the

social tapestry, on the side where the threads were knotted and

the loose ends hung. For a moment she found a certain amusement in

the show, and in her own share of it: the situation had an ease

and unconventionality distinctly refreshing after her experience

of the irony of conventions. But these flashes of amusement were

but brief reactions from the long disgust of her days. Compared

with the vast gilded void of Mrs. Hatch’s existence, the life of

Lily’s former friends seemed packed with ordered activities. Even

the most irresponsible pretty woman of her acquaintance had her

inherited obligations, her conventional benevolences, her share in

the working of the great civic machine; and all hung together in

the solidarity of these traditional functions. The performance of

specific duties would have simplified Miss Bart’s position; but the

vague attendance on Mrs. Hatch was not without its perplexities.

It was not her employer who created these perplexities. Mrs.

Hatch showed from the first an almost touching desire for Lily’s

approval. Far from asserting the superiority of wealth, her

beautiful eyes seemed to urge the plea of inexperience: she wanted

to do what was “nice,” to be taught how to be “lovely.” The

difficulty was to find any point of contact between her ideals and

Lily’s.

Mrs. Hatch swam in a haze of indeterminate enthusiasms, of

aspirations culled from the stage, the newspapers, the fashion

journals, and a gaudy world of sport still more completely beyond

her companion’s ken. To separate from these confused conceptions

those most likely to advance the lady on her way, was Lily’s

obvious duty; but its performance was hampered by rapidly-growing

doubts. Lily was in fact becoming more and more aware of a certain

ambiguity in her situation. It was not that she had, in the

conventional sense, any doubt of Mrs. Hatch’s irreproachableness.

The lady’s offences were always against taste rather than conduct;

her divorce record seemed due to geographical rather than ethical

conditions; and her worst laxities were likely to proceed from

a wandering and extravagant good-nature. But if Lily did not

mind her detaining her manicure for luncheon, or offering the

“Beauty-Doctor” a seat in Freddy Van Osburgh’s box at the play,

she was not equally at ease in regard to some less apparent lapses

from convention. Ned Silverton’s relation to Stancy seemed, for

instance, closer and less clear than any natural affinities would

warrant; and both appeared united in the effort to cultivate Freddy

Van Osburgh’s growing taste for Mrs. Hatch. There was as yet

nothing definable in the situation, which might well resolve itself

into a huge joke on the part of the other two; but Lily had a vague

sense that the subject of their experiment was too young, too rich

and too credulous. Her embarrassment was increased by the fact that

Freddy seemed to regard her as cooperating with himself in the

social development of Mrs. Hatch: a view that suggested, on his

part, a permanent interest in the lady’s future. There were moments

when Lily found an ironic amusement in this aspect of the case. The

thought of launching such a missile as Mrs. Hatch at the perfidious

bosom of society was not without its charm: Miss Bart had even

beguiled her leisure with visions of the fair Norma introduced for

the first time to a family banquet at the Van Osburghs’. But the

thought of being personally connected with the transaction was less

agreeable; and her momentary flashes of amusement were followed by

increasing periods of doubt.

The sense of these doubts was uppermost when, late one afternoon,

she was surprised by a visit from Lawrence Selden. He found her

alone in the wilderness of pink damask, for in Mrs. Hatch’s world

the tea-hour was not dedicated to social rites, and the lady was in

the hands of her masseuse.

Selden’s entrance had caused Lily an inward start of embarrassment;

but his air of constraint had the effect of restoring her

self-possession, and she took at once the tone of surprise and

pleasure, wondering frankly that he should have traced her to so

unlikely a place, and asking what had inspired him to make the

search.

Selden met this with an unusual seriousness: she had never seen him

so little master of the situation, so plainly at the mercy of any

obstructions she might put in his way. “I wanted to see you,” he

said; and she could not resist observing in reply that he had kept

his wishes under remarkable control. She had in truth felt his long

absence as one of the chief bitternesses of the last months: his

desertion had wounded sensibilities far below the surface of her

pride.

Selden met the challenge with directness. “Why should I have come,

unless I thought I could be of use to you? It is my only excuse for

imagining you could want me.”

This struck her as a clumsy evasion, and the thought gave a flash

of keenness to her answer. “Then you have come now because you

think you can be of use to me?”

He hesitated again. “Yes: in the modest capacity of a person to

talk things over with.”

For a clever man it was certainly a stupid beginning; and the

idea that his awkwardness was due to the fear of her attaching a

personal significance to his visit, chilled her pleasure in seeing

him. Even under the most adverse conditions, that pleasure always

made itself felt: she might hate him, but she had never been able

to wish him out of the room. She was very near hating him now;

yet the sound of his voice, the way the light fell on his thin

dark hair, the way he sat and moved and wore his clothes—she was

conscious that even these trivial things were inwoven with her

deepest life. In his presence a sudden stillness came upon her, and

the turmoil of her spirit ceased; but an impulse of resistance to

this stealing influence now prompted her to say: “It’s very good of

you to present yourself in that capacity; but what makes you think

I have anything particular to talk about?”

Though she kept the even tone of light intercourse, the question

was framed in a way to remind him that his good offices were

unsought; and for a moment Selden was checked by it. The situation

between them was one which could have been cleared up only by a

sudden explosion of feeling; and their whole training and habit

of mind were against the chances of such an explosion. Selden’s

calmness seemed rather to harden into resistance, and Miss Bart’s

into a surface of glittering irony, as they faced each other from

the opposite corners of one of Mrs. Hatch’s elephantine sofas. The

sofa in question, and the apartment peopled by its monstrous mates,

served at length to suggest the turn of Selden’s reply.

“Gerty told me that you were acting as Mrs. Hatch’s secretary; and

I knew she was anxious to hear how you were getting on.”

Miss Bart received this explanation without perceptible softening.

“Why didn’t she look me up herself, then?” she asked.

“Because, as you didn’t send her your address, she was afraid of

being importunate.” Selden continued with a smile: “You see no such

scruples restrained me; but then I haven’t as much to risk if I

incur your displeasure.”

Lily answered his smile. “You haven’t incurred it as yet; but I

have an idea that you are going to.”

“That rests with you, doesn’t it? You see my initiative doesn’t go

beyond putting myself at your disposal.”

“But in what capacity? What am I to do with you?” she asked in the

same light tone.

Selden again glanced about Mrs. Hatch’s drawing-room; then he said,

with a decision which he seemed to have gathered from this final

inspection: “You are to let me take you away from here.”

Lily flushed at the suddenness of the attack; then she stiffened

under it and said coldly: “And may I ask where you mean me to go?”

“Back to Gerty in the first place, if you will; the essential thing

is that it should be away from here.”

The unusual harshness of his tone might have shown her how much the

words cost him; but she was in no state to measure his feelings

while her own were in a flame of revolt. To neglect her, perhaps

even to avoid her, at a time when she had most need of her friends,

and then suddenly and unwarrantably to break into her life with

this strange assumption of authority, was to rouse in her every

instinct of pride and self-defence.

“I am very much obliged to you,” she said, “for taking such an

interest in my plans; but I am quite contented where I am, and have

no intention of leaving.”

Selden had risen, and was standing before her in an attitude of

uncontrollable expectancy.

“That simply means that you don’t know where you are!” he exclaimed.

Lily rose also, with a quick flash of anger. “If you have come here

to say disagreeable things about Mrs. Hatch——”

“It is only with your relation to Mrs. Hatch that I am concerned.”

“My relation to Mrs. Hatch is one I have no reason to be ashamed

of. She has helped me to earn a living when my old friends were

quite resigned to seeing me starve.”

“Nonsense! Starvation is not the only alternative. You know you can

always find a home with Gerty till you are independent again.”

“You show such an intimate acquaintance with my affairs that I

suppose you mean—till my aunt’s legacy is paid?”

“I do mean that; Gerty told me of it,” Selden acknowledged without

embarrassment. He was too much in earnest now to feel any false

constraint in speaking his mind.

“But Gerty does not happen to know,” Miss Bart rejoined, “that I

owe every penny of that legacy.”

“Good God!” Selden exclaimed, startled out of his composure by the

abruptness of the statement.

“Every penny of it, and more too,” Lily repeated; “and you now

perhaps see why I prefer to remain with Mrs. Hatch rather than take

advantage of Gerty’s kindness. I have no money left, except my

small income, and I must earn something more to keep myself alive.”

Selden hesitated a moment; then he rejoined in a quieter tone:

“But with your income and Gerty’s—since you allow me to go so

far into the details of the situation—you and she could surely

contrive a life together which would put you beyond the need of

having to support yourself. Gerty, I know, is eager to make such an

arrangement, and would be quite happy in it——”

“But I should not,” Miss Bart interposed. “There are many reasons

why it would be neither kind to Gerty nor wise for myself.” She

paused a moment, and as he seemed to await a farther explanation,

added with a quick lift of her head: “You will perhaps excuse me

from giving you these reasons.”

“I have no claim to know them,” Selden answered, ignoring her tone;

“no claim to offer any comment or suggestion beyond the one I have

already made. And my right to make that is simply the universal

right of a man to enlighten a woman when he sees her unconsciously

placed in a false position.”

Lily smiled. “I suppose,” she rejoined, “that by a false position

you mean one outside of what we call society; but you must remember

that I had been excluded from those sacred precincts long before

I met Mrs. Hatch. As far as I can see, there is very little real

difference in being inside or out, and I remember your once telling

me that it was only those inside who took the difference seriously.”

She had not been without intention in making this allusion to their

memorable talk at Bellomont, and she waited with an odd tremor of

the nerves to see what response it would bring; but the result of

the experiment was disappointing. Selden did not allow the allusion

to deflect him from his point; he merely said with completer

fulness of emphasis: “The question of being inside or out is, as

you say, a small one, and it happens to have nothing to do with the

case, except in so far as Mrs. Hatch’s desire to be inside may put

you in the position I call false.”

In spite of the moderation of his tone, each word he spoke had the

effect of confirming Lily’s resistance. The very apprehensions he

aroused hardened her against him: she had been on the alert for the

note of personal sympathy, for any sign of recovered power over

him; and his attitude of sober impartiality, the absence of all

response to her appeal, turned her hurt pride to blind resentment

of his interference. The conviction that he had been sent by Gerty,

and that, whatever straits he conceived her to be in, he would

never voluntarily have come to her aid, strengthened her resolve

not to admit him a hair’s breadth farther into her confidence.

However doubtful she might feel her situation to be, she would

rather persist in darkness than owe her enlightenment to Selden.

“I don’t know,” she said, when he had ceased to speak, “why you

imagine me to be situated as you describe; but as you have always

told me that the sole object of a bringing-up like mine was to

teach a girl to get what she wants, why not assume that that is

precisely what I am doing?”

The smile with which she summed up her case was like a clear

barrier raised against farther confidences: its brightness held

him at such a distance that he had a sense of being almost out of

hearing as he rejoined: “I am not sure that I have ever called you

a successful example of that kind of bringing-up.”

Her colour rose a little at the implication, but she steeled

herself with a light laugh. “Ah, wait a little longer—give me a

little more time before you decide!” And as he wavered before her,

still watching for a break in the impenetrable front she presented:

“Don’t give me up; I may still do credit to my training!” she

affirmed.