The House of Mirth (27 page)

 

A ring at the door-bell caught her to her feet. She struck a light and stood startled, listening. For a moment her heart beat incoherently, then she felt the sobering touch of fact and remembered that such calls were not unknown in her charitable work. She flung on her dressing-gown to answer the summons, and unlocking her door, confronted the shining vision of Lily Bart.

Gerty's first movement was one of revulsion. She shrank back as though Lily's presence flashed too sudden a light upon her misery. Then she heard her name in a cry, had a glimpse of her friend's face, and felt herself caught and clung to.

“Lily—what is it?” she exclaimed.

Miss Bart released her, and stood breathing brokenly, like one who has gained shelter after a long flight.

“I was so cold—I couldn't go home. Have you a fire?”

Gerty's compassionate instincts, responding to the swift call of habit, swept aside all her reluctances. Lily was simply some one who needed help—for what reason, there was no time to pause and conjecture; disciplined sympathy checked the wonder on Gerty's lips and made her draw her friend silently into the sitting-room and seat her by the darkened hearth.

“There is kindling wood here; the fire will burn in a minute.”

She knelt down, and the flame leapt under her rapid hands. It flashed strangely through the tears which still blurred her eyes, and smote on the white ruin of Lily's face. The girls looked at each other in silence; then Lily repeated: “I couldn't go home.”

“No—no—you came here, dear! You're cold and tired—sit quiet, and I'll make you some tea.”

Gerty had unconsciously adopted the soothing note of her trade; all personal feeling was merged in the sense of ministry, and experience had taught her that the bleeding must be stayed before the wound is probed.

Lily sat quiet, leaning to the fire; the clatter of cups behind her soothed her as familiar noises hush a child whom silence has kept wakeful. But when Gerty stood at her side with the tea she pushed it away and turned an estranged eye on the familiar room.

“I came here because I couldn't bear to be alone,” she said.

Gerty set down the cup and knelt beside her.

“Lily! Something has happened—can't you tell me?”

“I couldn't bear to lie awake in my room till morning. I hate my room at Aunt Julia's—so I came here—”

She stirred suddenly, broke from her apathy, and clung to Gerty in a fresh burst of fear.

“Oh, Gerty, the Furies—you know the noise of their wings—alone, at night, in the dark? But you don't know—there is nothing to make the dark dreadful to you—”

The words, flashing back on Gerty's last hours, struck from her a faint derisive murmur; but Lily, in the blaze of her own misery, was blinded to everything outside it.

“You'll let me stay? I shan't mind when daylight comes. Is it late? Is the night nearly over? It must be awful to be sleepless—everything stands by the bed and stares—”

Miss Farish caught her straying hands. “Lily, look at me! Something has happened—an accident? You have been frightened—what has frightened you? Tell me if you can—a word or two—so that I can help you.”

Lily shook her head.

“I am not frightened; that's not the word. Can you imagine looking into your glass some morning and seeing a disfigurement—some hideous change that has come to you while you slept? Well, I seem to myself like that—I can't bear to see myself in my own thoughts—I hate ugliness, you know—I've always turned from it—but I can't explain to you—you wouldn't understand.”

She lifted her head and her eyes fell on the clock.

“How long the night is! And I know I shan't sleep tomorrow. Some one told me my father used to lie sleepless and think of horrors. And he was not wicked, only unfortunate—and I see now how he must have suffered, lying alone with his thoughts! But I am bad—a bad girl—all my thoughts are bad—I have always had bad people about me. Is that any excuse? I thought I could manage my own life—I was proud—proud! But now I'm on their level—”

Sobs shook her, and she bowed to them like a tree in a dry storm.

Gerty knelt beside her, waiting, with the patience born of experience, till this gust of misery should loosen fresh speech. She had first imagined some physical shock, some peril of the crowded streets, since Lily was presumably on her way home from Carry Fisher's; but she now saw that other nerve-centres were smitten, and her mind trembled back from conjecture.

Lily's sobs ceased, and she lifted her head.

“There are bad girls in your slums. Tell me—do they ever pick themselves up? Ever forget, and feel as they did before?”

“Lily! You mustn't speak so—you're dreaming.”

“Don't they always go from bad to worse? There's no turning back—your old self rejects you, and shuts you out.”

She rose, stretching her arms as if in utter physical weariness. “Go to bed, dear! You work hard and get up early. I'll watch here by the fire, and you'll leave the light, and your door open. All I want is to feel that you are near me.” She laid both hands on Gerty's shoulders, with a smile that was like sunrise on a sea strewn with wreckage.

“I can't leave you, Lily. Come and lie on my bed. Your hands are frozen—you must undress and be made warm.” Gerty paused with sudden compunction. “But Mrs. Peniston—it's past midnight! What will she think?”

“She goes to bed. I have a latch-key. It doesn't matter—I can't go back there.”

“There's no need to; you shall stay here. But you must tell me where you have been. Listen, Lily—it will help you to speak!” She regained Miss Bart's hands and pressed them against her. “Try to tell me—it will clear your poor head. Listen—you were dining at Carry Fisher's.” Gerty paused and added with a flash of heroism: “Lawrence Selden went from here to find you.”

At the word, Lily's face melted from locked anguish to the open misery of a child. Her lips trembled and her gaze widened with tears.

“He went to find me? And I missed him! Oh, Gerty, he tried to help me. He told me—he warned me long ago—he foresaw that I should grow hateful to myself!”

The name, as Gerty saw with a clutch at the heart, had loosened the springs of self-pity in her friend's dry breast, and tear by tear Lily poured out the measure of her anguish. She had dropped sideways in Gerty's big arm-chair, her head buried where lately Selden's had leaned, in a beauty of abandonment that drove home to Gerty's aching senses the inevitableness of her own defeat. Ah, it needed no deliberate purpose on Lily's part to rob her of her dream! To look on that prone loveliness was to see in it a natural force, to recognize that love and power belong to such as Lily, as renunciation and service are the lot of those they despoil. But if Selden's infatuation seemed a fatal necessity, the effect that his name produced shook Gerty's steadfastness with a last pang. Men pass through such superhuman loves and outlive them; they are the probation subduing the heart to human joys. How gladly Gerty would have welcomed the ministry of healing, how willingly have soothed the sufferer back to tolerance of life! But Lily's self-betrayal took this last hope from her. The mortal maid on the shore is helpless against the siren who loves her prey; such victims are floated back dead from their adventure.

Lily sprang up and caught her with strong hands. “Gerty, you know him—you understand him—tell me; if I went to him, if I told him everything—if I said: ‘I am bad through and through—I want admiration, I want excitement, I want money—' yes,
money!
That's my shame, Gerty—and it's known, it's said of me—it's what men think of me—If I said it all to him—told him the whole story—said plainly: ‘I've sunk lower than the lowest, for I've taken what they take and not paid as they pay'—oh, Gerty, you know him, you can speak for him; if I told him everything would he loathe me? Or would he pity me, and understand me, and save me from loathing myself?”

Gerty stood cold and passive. She knew the hour of her probation had come, and her poor heart beat wildly against its destiny. As a dark river sweeps by under a lightning flash, she saw her chance of happiness surge past under a flash of temptation. What prevented her from saying: “He is like other men”? She was not so sure of him, after all! But to do so would have been like blaspheming her love. She could not put him before herself in any light but the noblest; she must trust him to the height of her own passion.

“Yes; I know him; he will help you,” she said; and in a moment Lily's passion was weeping itself out against her breast.

There was but one bed in the little flat, and the two girls lay down on it side by side when Gerty had unlaced Lily's dress and persuaded her to put her lips to the warm tea. The light extinguished, they lay still in the darkness, Gerty shrinking to the outer edge of the narrow couch to avoid contact with her bedfellow. Knowing that Lily disliked to be caressed, she had long ago learned to check her demonstrative impulses toward her friend. But to-night every fibre in her body shrank from Lily's nearness; it was torture to listen to her breathing and feel the sheet stir with it. As Lily turned and settled to completer rest, a strand of her hair swept Gerty's cheek with its fragrance. Everything about her was warm and soft and scented; even the stains of her grief became her as raindrops do the beaten rose. But as Gerty lay with arms drawn down her side in the motionless narrowness of an effigy, she felt a stir of sobs from the breathing warmth beside her, and Lily flung out her hand, groped for her friend's, and held it fast.

“Hold me, Gerty, hold me, or I shall think of things,” she moaned; and Gerty silently slipped an arm under her, pillowing her head in its hollow as a mother makes a nest for a tossing child. In the warm hollow Lily lay still and her breathing grew low and regular. Her hand still clung to Gerty's as if to ward off evil dreams, but the hold of her fingers relaxed, her head sank deeper into its shelter, and Gerty felt that she slept.

W
hen Lily woke she had the bed to herself, and the winter light was in the room.

She sat up, bewildered by the strangeness of her surroundings; then memory returned, and she looked about her with a shiver. In the cold slant of light reflected from the back wall of a neighbouring building she saw her evening dress and opera-cloak lying in a tawdry heap on a chair. Finery laid off is as unappetizing as the remains of a feast, and it occurred to Lily that at home her maid's vigilance had always spared her the sight of such incongruities. Her body ached with fatigue and with the constriction of her attitude in Gerty's bed. All through her troubled sleep she had been conscious of having no space to toss in, and the long effort to remain motionless made her feel as if she had spent her night in a train.

This sense of physical discomfort was the first to assert itself; then she perceived, beneath it, a corresponding mental prostration, a languor of horror more insufferable than the first rush of her disgust. The thought of having to wake every morning with this weight on her breast roused her tired mind to fresh effort. She must find some way out of the slough into which she had stumbled; it was not so much compunction as the dread of her morning thoughts that pressed on her the need of action. But she was unutterably tired; it was weariness to think connectedly. She lay back, looking about the poor slit of a room with a renewal of physical distaste. The outer air, penned between high buildings, brought no freshness through the window; steam heat was beginning to sing in a coil of dingy pipes, and a smell of cooking penetrated the crack of the door.

The door opened, and Gerty, dressed and hatted, entered with a cup of tea. Her face looked sallow and swollen in the dreary light, and her dull hair shaded imperceptibly into the tones of her skin.

She glanced shyly at Lily, asking in an embarrassed tone how she felt; Lily answered with the same constraint, and raised herself up to drink the tea.

“I must have been over-tired last night; I think I had a nervous attack in the carriage,” she said as the drink brought clearness to her sluggish thoughts.

“You were not well; I am so glad you came here,” Gerty returned.

“But how am I to get home? And Aunt Julia—?”

“She knows; I telephoned early, and your maid has brought your things. But won't you eat something? I scrambled the eggs myself.”

Lily could not eat; but the tea strengthened her to rise and dress under her maid's searching gaze. It was a relief to her that Gerty was obliged to hasten away; the two kissed silently, but without a trace of the previous night's emotion.

Lily found Mrs. Peniston in a state of agitation. She had sent for Grace Stepney and was taking digitalis. Lily breasted the storm of inquiries as best she could, explaining that she had had an attack of faintness on her way back from Carry Fisher's, that fearing she would not have strength to reach home, she had gone to Miss Farish's instead; but that a quiet night had restored her, and that she had no need of a doctor.

This was a relief to Mrs. Peniston, who could give herself up to her own symptoms, and Lily was advised to go and lie down, her aunt's panacea for all physical and moral disorders. In the solitude of her own room she was brought back to a sharp contemplation of facts. Her daylight view of them necessarily differed from the cloudy vision of the night. The winged Furies were now prowling gossips who dropped in on each other for tea. But her fears seemed the uglier, thus shorn of their vagueness; and besides, she had to act, not rave. For the first time she forced herself to reckon up the exact amount of her debt to Trenor; and the result of this hateful computation was the discovery that she had, in all, received nine thousand dollars from him. The flimsy pretext on which it had been given and received shrivelled up in the blaze of her shame; she knew that not a penny of it was her own and that to restore her self-respect she must at once repay the whole amount. The inability thus to solace her outraged feelings gave her a paralyzing sense of insignificance. She was realizing for the first time that a woman's dignity may cost more to keep up than her carriage; and that the maintenance of a moral attribute should be dependent on dollars and cents made the world appear a more sordid place than she had conceived it.