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Night had now closed in, and the roar of traffic in Forty-second Streetwas dying out. As complete darkness fell on the square the lingeringoccupants of the benches rose and dispersed; but now and then a strayfigure, hurrying homeward, struck across the path where Lily sat, loomingblack for a moment in the white circle of electric light. One or two ofthese passers-by slackened their pace to glance curiously at her lonelyfigure; but she was hardly conscious of their scrutiny. The street-lamps were lit, but the rain had ceased, and there was amomentary revival of light in the upper sky.
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The lamentable weakness of the words roused a motion of pity in Lily’sbreast. She too needed friends—she had tasted the pang of loneliness;and her resentment of Bertha Dorset’s cruelty softened her heart to thepoor wretch who was after all the chief of Bertha’s victims. Lily had thus formed, in the tumult of her surroundings, a little nucleusof friendly relations which mitigated the crudeness of her course inlingering with the Gormers after their return.
Setting
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He could not wait for the middayrecess, but seized a moment’s leisure in court to scribble his telegramto Gerty Farish. Mrs. Trenor was still at Bellomont, keeping the town-house open, anddescending on it now and then for a taste of the world, but preferringthe recurrent excitement of week-end parties to the restrictions of adull season. Since the holidays she had not urged Lily to return toBellomont, and the first time they met in town Lily fancied there was ashade of coldness in her manner. Was it merely the expression of herdispleasure at Miss Bart’s neglect, or had disquieting rumours reachedher?
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Mrs. Peniston was the owner of a country-place in New Jersey, but she hadnever lived there since her husband’s death—a remote event, whichappeared to dwell in her memory chiefly as a dividing point in thepersonal reminiscences that formed the staple of her conversation. Shewas a woman who remembered dates with intensity, and could tell at amoment’s notice whether the drawing-room curtains had been renewed beforeor after Mr. Peniston’s last illness. She reaped the reward to which disinterestedness is entitled, and foundan agreeable companion in her niece. There was a little money left, but to Mrs.Bart it seemed worse than nothing—the mere mockery of what she wasentitled to. She sank into a kind of furious apathy, a state of inert anger againstfate. Her faculty for “managing” deserted her, or she no longer tooksufficient pride in it to exert it.
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” she sighed with her eyes inhis; and before he could speak she had turned and slipped through thearch of boughs, disappearing in the brightness of the room beyond. Fortune willed, however, that the hurried approach of Mrs. Fisher, aswhose aide-de-camp Van Alstyne was acting, should break up the groupbefore Selden reached the threshold of the room. One or two of the menwandered off in search of their partners for supper, and the others,noticing Selden’s approach, gave way to him in accordance with the tacitfreemasonry of the ball-room. Lily was therefore standing alone when hereached her; and finding the expected look in her eye, he had thesatisfaction of supposing he had kindled it. The look did indeed deepenas it rested on him, for even in that moment of self-intoxication Lilyfelt the quicker beat of life that his nearness always produced. Sheread, too, in his answering gaze the delicious confirmation of hertriumph, and for the moment it seemed to her that it was for him only shecared to be beautiful.
However, suddenly moved by the thought that they cannot be together, Lily stands up and leaves. The next day, though, she receives a note from him asking to see her and she accepts, knowing that she cannot resist her feelings for him and the sense of the power she has over him. One day, Mrs. Haffen, the cleaning woman at the Benedick, where Selden lives, comes to Lily’s house with a packet of love letters that she believes Lily has written to Selden. However, when Lily examines the letters, she recognizes Bertha Dorset’s handwriting and decides to buy the letters to protect Selden’s reputation. Although Lily initially plans on destroying them right away, she remembers Bertha’s cruel behavior toward her and decides to keep the letters instead. The knowledge of these letters makes Lily feel like she has power over Bertha, and allows Lily to renew her friendship with her.
Selden inadvertently helps by arranging a night's lodging, under the promise that she leave promptly in the morning. The ensuing social scandal ruins Lily's reputation and almost immediately causes her friends to abandon her and Julia to disinherit her. To avoid having to spend time alone with her aunt, the Trenors, Simon Rosedale, or anyone else she considers a possible source of embarrassment or boredom, Lily begins to accept invitations from people with whom she would not ordinarily socialize.
Carry, in her rare moments of prosperity, became so expansively maternalthat Miss Bart sometimes wondered whether, if she could ever get time andmoney enough, she would not end by devoting them both to her daughter. It was no surprise to Lily to find that he had been selected as her onlyfellow-guest. Though she and her hostess had not met since the latter’stentative discussion of her future, Lily knew that the acuteness whichenabled Mrs. Fisher to lay a safe and pleasant course through a world ofantagonistic forces was not infrequently exercised for the benefit of herfriends. It was, in fact, characteristic of Carry that, while sheactively gleaned her own stores from the fields of affluence, her realsympathies were on the other side—with the unlucky, the unpopular, theunsuccessful, with all her hungry fellow-toilers in the shorn stubble ofsuccess. “I can’t see how I can possibly be of any help to you,” she murmured,drawing back a little from the mounting excitement of his look.
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Miss Bart, glowing with the haste of a precipitate descent upon thetrain, headed a group composed of the Dorsets, young Silverton and LordHubert Dacey, who had barely time to spring into the carriage, andenvelop Selden in ejaculations of surprise and welcome, before thewhistle of departure sounded. The party, it appeared, were hastening toNice in response to a sudden summons to dine with the Duchess ofBeltshire and to see the water-fete in the bay; a plan evidentlyimprovised—in spite of Lord Hubert’s protesting “Oh, I say, youknow,”—for the express purpose of defeating Mrs. Bry’s endeavour tocapture the Duchess. Lily was silent, smiling faintly, with her eyes absently resting on hisface. She was in reality reflecting that a declaration would take sometime to make, and that Selden must surely appear before the moment ofrefusal had been reached.
A hum of shrill voicesreverberated against the low ceiling, leaving Lily shut out in a littlecircle of silence. She hadlost the sense of time, and it seemed to her as though she had not spokento any one for days. Her eyes sought the faces about her, craving aresponsive glance, some sign of an intuition of her trouble.
It was horribleof a young girl to let herself be talked about; however unfounded thecharges against her, she must be to blame for their having been made.Mrs. Peniston felt as if there had been a contagious illness in thehouse, and she was doomed to sit shivering among her contaminatedfurniture. When Mr. Rosedale took leave, he carried with him, not only heracceptance of his invitation, but a general sense of having comportedhimself in a way calculated to advance his cause. He had always believedhe had a light touch and a knowing way with women, and the prompt mannerin which Miss Bart (as he would have phrased it) had “come into line,”confirmed his confidence in his powers of handling this skittish sex. Herway of glossing over the transaction with Trenor he regarded at once as atribute to his own acuteness, and a confirmation of his suspicions. Thegirl was evidently nervous, and Mr. Rosedale, if he saw no other means ofadvancing his acquaintance with her, was not above taking advantage ofher nervousness.
Theimportunate memory was kept before her by its ironic contrast to herpresent situation, since her walk with Selden had represented anirresistible flight from just such a climax as the present excursion wasdesigned to bring about. But other memories importuned her also; therecollection of similar situations, as skillfully led up to, but throughsome malice of fortune, or her own unsteadiness of purpose, alwaysfailing of the intended result. As the wife ofRosedale—the Rosedale she felt it in her power to create—she would atleast present an invulnerable front to her enemy. Carry Fisher, on the strength, as she frankly owned, of the Brys’ Newportsuccess, had taken for the autumn months a small house at Tuxedo; andthither Lily was bound on the Sunday after Dorset’s visit.
Rosedale in the paternal role was hardly a figure to soften Lily; yet shecould not but notice a quality of homely goodness in his advances to thechild. They were not, at any rate, the premeditated and perfunctoryendearments of the guest under his hostess’s eye, for he and the littlegirl had the room to themselves; and something in his attitude made himseem a simple and kindly being compared to the small critical creaturewho endured his homage. Yes, he would be kind—Lily, from the threshold,had time to feel—kind in his gross, unscrupulous, rapacious way, the wayof the predatory creature with his mate. She had but a moment in whichto consider whether this glimpse of the fireside man mitigated herrepugnance, or gave it, rather, a more concrete and intimate form; for atsight of her he was immediately on his feet again, the florid anddominant Rosedale of Mattie Gormer’s drawing-room. She stood silent, gazing away from him down the autumnal stretch of thedeserted lane. And suddenly fear possessed her—fear of herself, and ofthe terrible force of the temptation.
Her own stout person and its surrounding implementstook up so much room that Lily, to pass her, had to gather up her skirtsand brush against the wall. As she did so, the woman paused in her workand looked up curiously, resting her clenched red fists on the wet clothshe had just drawn from her pail. She had a broad sallow face, slightlypitted with small-pox, and thin straw-coloured hair through which herscalp shone unpleasantly. But he could neverbe long with her without trying to find a reason for what she was doing,and as she replaced his first edition of La Bruyere and turned away fromthe bookcases, he began to ask himself what she had been driving at.
Aided only by Carry Fisher and Gerty Farish, Lily finds a series of jobs to support herself. She begins by joining the social circle of Mr. and Mrs. Gormer, although Bertha Dorset influences Mattie Gormer in rejecting Lily. Lily then serves as social secretary for a rich divorcée from the West, Norma Hatch, but soon has to leave when Norma is involved in a scandal with Freddy Van Osbourne.
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