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House of Mirth

E >> Edith Wharton >> House of Mirth



The House of Mirth
BY
EDITH WHARTON




BOOK ONE


Chapter 1

Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand
Central Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss
Lily Bart.

It was a Monday in early September, and he was returning to his
work from a hurried dip into the country; but what was Miss Bart
doing in town at that season? If she had appeared to be catching
a train, he might have inferred that he had come on her in the
act of transition between one and another of the country-houses
which disputed her presence after the close of the Newport
season; but her desultory air perplexed him. She stood apart from
the crowd, letting it drift by her to the platform or the street,
and wearing an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised,
be the mask of a very definite purpose. It struck him at once
that she was waiting for some one, but he hardly knew why the
idea arrested him. There was nothing new about Lily Bart, yet he
could never see her without a faint movement of interest: it was
characteristic of her that she always roused speculation, that
her simplest acts seemed the result of far-reaching intentions.

An impulse of curiosity made him turn out of his direct line to
the door, and stroll past her. He knew that if she did not wish
to be seen she would contrive to elude him; and it amused him to
think of putting her skill to the test.

"Mr. Selden--what good luck!"

She came forward smiling, eager almost, in her resolve to
intercept him. One or two persons, in brushing past them,
lingered to look; for Miss Bart was a figure to arrest even the
suburban traveller rushing to his last train.

Selden had never seen her more radiant. Her vivid head, relieved
against the dull tints of the crowd, made her more conspicuous
than in a ball-room, and under her dark hat and veil she regained
the girlish smoothness, the purity of tint, that she was
beginning to lose after eleven years of late hours and
indefatigable dancing. Was it really eleven years, Selden found
himself wondering, and had she indeed reached the
nine-and-twentieth birthday with which her rivals credited her?

"What luck!" she repeated. "How nice of you to come to my
rescue!"

He responded joyfully that to do so was his mission in life, and
asked what form the rescue was to take.

"Oh, almost any--even to sitting on a bench and talking to me.
One sits out a cotillion--why not sit out a train? It isn't a bit
hotter here than in Mrs. Van Osburgh's conservatory--and some of
the women are not a bit uglier." She broke off, laughing, to
explain that she had come up to town from Tuxedo, on her way to
the Gus Trenors' at Bellomont, and had missed the three-fifteen
train to Rhinebeck. "And there isn't another till half-past
five." She consulted the little jewelled watch among her laces.
"Just two hours to wait. And I don't know what to do with myself.
My maid came up this morning to do some shopping for me, and was
to go on to Bellomont at one o'clock, and my aunt's house is
closed, and I don't know a soul in town." She glanced plaintively
about the station. "It IS hotter than Mrs. Van Osburgh's, after
all. If you can spare the time, do take me somewhere for a breath
of air."

He declared himself entirely at her disposal: the adventure
struck him as diverting. As a spectator, he had always enjoyed
Lily Bart; and his course lay so far out of her orbit that it
amused him to be drawn for a moment into the sudden intimacy
which her proposal implied.

"Shall we go over to Sherry's for a cup of tea?"

She smiled assentingly, and then made a slight grimace.

"So many people come up to town on a Monday--one is sure to meet
a lot of bores. I'm as old as the hills, of course, and it ought
not to make any difference; but if I'M old enough, you're not,"
she objected gaily. "I'm dying for tea--but isn't there a quieter
place?"

He answered her smile, which rested on him vividly. Her
discretions interested him almost as much as her imprudences: he
was so sure that both were part of the same carefully-elaborated
plan. In judging Miss Bart, he had always made use of the
"argument from design."

"The resources of New York are rather meagre," he said; "but I'll
find a hansom first, and then we'll invent something." He led her
through the throng of returning holiday-makers, past sallow-faced
girls in preposterous hats, and flat-chested women struggling
with paper bundles and palm-leaf fans. Was it possible that she
belonged to the same race? The dinginess, the crudity of this
average section of womanhood made him feel how highly
specialized she was.

A rapid shower had cooled the air, and clouds still hung
refreshingly over the moist street.

"How delicious! Let us walk a little," she said as they emerged
from the station.

They turned into Madison Avenue and began to stroll northward. As
she moved beside him, with her long light step, Selden was
conscious of taking a luxurious pleasure in her nearness: in the
modelling of her little ear, the crisp upward wave of her
hair--was it ever so slightly brightened by art?--and the thick
planting of her straight black lashes. Everything about her was
at once vigorous and exquisite, at once strong and fine. He had a
confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to make, that
a great many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious way,
have been sacrificed to produce her. He was aware that the
qualities distinguishing her from the herd of her sex were
chiefly external: as though a fine glaze of beauty and
fastidiousness had been applied to vulgar clay. Yet the analogy
left him unsatisfied, for a coarse texture will not take a high
finish; and was it not possible that the material was fine, but
that circumstance had fashioned it into a futile shape?

As he reached this point in his speculations the sun came out,
and her lifted parasol cut off his enjoyment. A moment or two
later she paused with a sigh.

"Oh, dear, I'm so hot and thirsty--and what a hideous place New
York is!" She looked despairingly up and down the dreary
thoroughfare. "Other cities put on their best clothes in summer,
but New York seems to sit in its shirtsleeves." Her eyes wandered
down one of the side-streets. "Someone has had the humanity to
plant a few trees over there. Let us go into the shade."

"I am glad my street meets with your approval," said Selden as
they turned the corner.

"Your street? Do you live here?"

She glanced with interest along the new brick and limestone
house-fronts, fantastically varied in obedience to the American
craving for novelty, but fresh and inviting with their awnings
and flower-boxes.

"Ah, yes--to be sure: THE BENEDICK. What a nice-looking building!
I don't think I've ever seen it before." She looked across at the
flat-house with its marble porch and pseudo-Georgian facade.
"Which are your windows? Those with the awnings down?"

"On the top floor--yes."

"And that nice little balcony is yours? How cool it looks up
there!"

He paused a moment. "Come up and see," he suggested. "I can give
you a cup of tea in no time--and you won't meet any bores."

Her colour deepened--she still had the art of blushing at the
right time--but she took the suggestion as lightly as it was
made.

"Why not? It's too tempting--I'll take the risk," she declared.

"Oh, I'm not dangerous," he said in the same key. In truth, he
had never liked her as well as at that moment. He knew she had
accepted without afterthought: he could never be a factor in her
calculations, and there was a surprise, a refreshment almost, in
the spontaneity of her consent.

On the threshold he paused a moment, feeling for his latchkey.

"There's no one here; but I have a servant who is supposed to
come in the mornings, and it's just possible he may have put out
the tea-things and provided some cake."

He ushered her into a slip of a hall hung with old prints. She
noticed the letters and notes heaped on the table among his
gloves and sticks; then she found herself in a small library,
dark but cheerful, with its walls of books, a pleasantly faded
Turkey rug, a littered desk and, as he had foretold, a tea-tray
on a low table near the window. A breeze had sprung up, swaying
inward the muslin curtains, and bringing a fresh scent of
mignonette and petunias from the flower-box on the balcony.

Lily sank with a sigh into one of the shabby leather chairs.

"How delicious to have a place like this all to one's self! What
a miserable thing it is to be a woman." She leaned back in a
luxury of discontent.

Selden was rummaging in a cupboard for the cake.

"Even women," he said, "have been known to enjoy the privileges
of a flat."

"Oh, governesses--or widows. But not girls--not poor, miserable,
marriageable girls!"

"I even know a girl who lives in a flat."

She sat up in surprise. "You do?"

"I do," he assured her, emerging from the cupboard with the
sought-for cake.

"Oh, I know--you mean Gerty Farish." She smiled a little
unkindly. "But I said MARRIAGEABLE--and besides, she has a horrid
little place, and no maid, and such queer things to eat. Her cook
does the washing and the food tastes of soap. I should hate that,
you know."

"You shouldn't dine with her on wash-days," said Selden, cutting
the cake.

They both laughed, and he knelt by the table to light the lamp
under the kettle, while she measured out the tea into a little
tea-pot of green glaze. As he watched her hand, polished as a bit
of old ivory, with its slender pink nails, and the sapphire
bracelet slipping over her wrist, he was struck with the irony of
suggesting to her such a life as his cousin Gertrude Farish had
chosen. She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which
had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like
manacles chaining her to her fate.

She seemed to read his thought. "It was horrid of me to say that
of Gerty," she said with charming compunction. "I forgot she was
your cousin. But we're so different, you know: she likes being
good, and I like being happy. And besides, she is free and I am
not. If I were, I daresay I could manage to be happy even in her
flat. It must be pure bliss to arrange the furniture just as one
likes, and give all the horrors to the ash-man. If I could only
do over my aunt's drawing-room I know I should be a better
woman."

"Is it so very bad?" he asked sympathetically.

She smiled at him across the tea-pot which she was holding up to
be filled.

"That shows how seldom you come there. Why don't you come
oftener?"

"When I do come, it's not to look at Mrs. Peniston's furniture."

"Nonsense," she said. "You don't come at all--and yet we get on
so well when we meet."

"Perhaps that's the reason," he answered promptly. "I'm afraid I
haven't any cream, you know--shall you mind a slice of lemon
instead?"

"I shall like it better." She waited while he cut the lemon and
dropped a thin disk into her cup. "But that is not the reason,"
she insisted.

"The reason for what?"

"For your never coming." She leaned forward with a shade of
perplexity in her charming eyes. "I wish I knew--I wish I could
make you out. Of course I know there are men who don't like
me--one can tell that at a glance. And there are others who are
afraid of me: they think I want to marry them." She smiled up at
him frankly. "But I don't think you dislike me--and you can't
possibly think I want to marry you."

"No--I absolve you of that," he agreed.

"Well, then---?"

He had carried his cup to the fireplace, and stood leaning
against the chimney-piece and looking down on her with an air of
indolent amusement. The provocation in her eyes increased his
amusement--he had not supposed she would waste her powder on such
small game; but perhaps she was only keeping her hand in; or
perhaps a girl of her type had no conversation but of the
personal kind. At any rate, she was amazingly pretty, and he had
asked her to tea and must live up to his obligations.

"Well, then," he said with a plunge, "perhaps THAT'S the reason."

"What?"

"The fact that you don't want to marry me. Perhaps I don't regard
it as such a strong inducement to go and see you." He felt
a slight shiver down his spine as he ventured this, but her laugh
reassured him.

"Dear Mr. Selden, that wasn't worthy of you. It's stupid of you
to make love to me, and it isn't like you to be stupid." She
leaned back, sipping her tea with an air so enchantingly judicial
that, if they had been in her aunt's drawing-room, he might
almost have tried to disprove her deduction.

"Don't you see," she continued, "that there are men enough to say
pleasant things to me, and that what I want is a friend who won't
be afraid to say disagreeable ones when I need them? Sometimes I
have fancied you might be that friend--I don't know why, except
that you are neither a prig nor a bounder, and that I shouldn't
have to pretend with you or be on my guard against you." Her
voice had dropped to a note of seriousness, and she sat gazing up
at him with the troubled gravity of a child.

"You don't know how much I need such a friend," she said. "My
aunt is full of copy-book axioms, but they were all meant to
apply to conduct in the early fifties. I always feel that to live
up to them would include wearing book-muslin with gigot sleeves.
And the other women--my best friends--well, they use me or abuse
me; but they don't care a straw what happens to me. I've been
about too long--people are getting tired of me; they are
beginning to say I ought to marry."

There was a moment's pause, during which Selden meditated one or
two replies calculated to add a momentary zest to the situation;
but he rejected them in favour of the simple question: "Well, why
don't you?"

She coloured and laughed. "Ah, I see you ARE a friend after all,
and that is one of the disagreeable things I was asking for."

"It wasn't meant to be disagreeable," he returned amicably.
"Isn't marriage your vocation? Isn't it what you're all brought
up for?"

She sighed. "I suppose so. What else is there?"

"Exactly. And so why not take the plunge and have it over?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "You speak as if I ought to marry the
first man who came along."

"I didn't mean to imply that you are as hard put to it as
that. But there must be some one with the requisite
qualifications."

She shook her head wearily. "I threw away one or two good chances
when I first came out--I suppose every girl does; and you know I
am horribly poor--and very expensive. I must have a great deal of
money."

Selden had turned to reach for a cigarette-box on the
mantelpiece.

"What's become of Dillworth?" he asked.

"Oh, his mother was frightened--she was afraid I should have all
the family jewels reset. And she wanted me to promise that I
wouldn't do over the drawing-room."

"The very thing you are marrying for!"

"Exactly. So she packed him off to India."

"Hard luck--but you can do better than Dillworth."

He offered the box, and she took out three or four cigarettes,
putting one between her lips and slipping the others into a
little gold case attached to her long pearl chain.

"Have I time? Just a whiff, then." She leaned forward, holding
the tip of her cigarette to his. As she did so, he noted, with a
purely impersonal enjoyment, how evenly the black lashes were set
in her smooth white lids, and how the purplish shade beneath them
melted into the pure pallour of the cheek.

She began to saunter about the room, examining the bookshelves
between the puffs of her cigarette-smoke. Some of the volumes had
the ripe tints of good tooling and old morocco, and her eyes
lingered on them caressingly, not with the appreciation of the
expert, but with the pleasure in agreeable tones and textures
that was one of her inmost susceptibilities. Suddenly her
expression changed from desultory enjoyment to active conjecture,
and she turned to Selden with a question.

"You collect, don't you--you know about first editions and
things?"

"As much as a man may who has no money to spend. Now and then I
pick up something in the rubbish heap; and I go and look on at
the big sales."

She had again addressed herself to the shelves, but her eyes now
swept them inattentively, and he saw that she was preoccupied
with a new idea.

"And Americana--do you collect Americana?"

Selden stared and laughed.

"No, that's rather out of my line. I'm not really a collector,
you see; I simply like to have good editions of the books I am
fond of."

She made a slight grimace. "And Americana are horribly dull, I
suppose?"

"I should fancy so--except to the historian. But your real
collector values a thing for its rarity. I don't suppose the
buyers of Americana sit up reading them all night--old Jefferson
Gryce certainly didn't."

She was listening with keen attention. "And yet they fetch
fabulous prices, don't they? It seems so odd to want to pay a lot
for an ugly badly-printed book that one is never going to read!
And I suppose most of the owners of Americana are not historians
either?"

"No; very few of the historians can afford to buy them. They have
to use those in the public libraries or in private collections.
It seems to be the mere rarity that attracts the average
collector."

He had seated himself on an arm of the chair near which she was
standing, and she continued to question him, asking which were
the rarest volumes, whether the Jefferson Gryce collection was
really considered the finest in the world, and what was the
largest price ever fetched by a single volume.

It was so pleasant to sit there looking up at her, as she lifted
now one book and then another from the shelves, fluttering the
pages between her fingers, while her drooping profile was
outlined against the warm background of old bindings, that he
talked on without pausing to wonder at her sudden interest in so
unsuggestive a subject. But he could never be 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 from
the bookcases, he began to ask himself what she had been driving
at. Her next question was not of a nature to enlighten him. She
paused before him with a smile which seemed at once designed to
admit him to her familiarity, and to remind him of the
restrictions it imposed.

"Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough
to buy all the books you want?"

He followed her glance about the room, with its worn furniture
and shabby walls.

"Don't I just? Do you take me for a saint on a pillar?"

"And having to work--do you mind that?"

"Oh, the work itself is not so bad--I'm rather fond of the law."

"No; but the being tied down: the routine--don't you ever want to
get away, to see new places and people?"

"Horribly--especially when I see all my friends rushing to the
steamer."

She drew a sympathetic breath. "But do you mind enough--to marry
to get out of it?"

Selden broke into a laugh. "God forbid!" he declared.

She rose with a sigh, tossing her cigarette into the grate.

"Ah, there's the difference--a girl must, a man may if he
chooses." She surveyed him critically. "Your coat's a little
shabby--but who cares? It doesn't keep people from asking you to
dine. If I were shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out
as much for her clothes as for herself. The clothes are the
background, the frame, if you like: they don't make success, but
they are a part of it. Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected
to be pretty and well-dressed till we drop--and if we can't keep
it up alone, we have to go into partnership."

Selden glanced at her with amusement: it was impossible, even
with her lovely eyes imploring him, to take a sentimental view of
her case.

"Ah, well, there must be plenty of capital on the look-out for
such an investment. Perhaps you'll meet your fate tonight at the
Trenors'."

She returned his look interrogatively.

"I thought you might be going there--oh, not in that capacity!
But there are to be a lot of your set--Gwen Van Osburgh, the
Wetheralls, Lady Cressida Raith--and the George Dorsets."

She paused a moment before the last name, and shot a query
through her lashes; but he remained imperturbable.

"Mrs. Trenor asked me; but I can't get away till the end of the
week; and those big parties bore me."

"Ah, so they do me," she exclaimed.

"Then why go?"

"It's part of the business--you forget! And besides, if I didn't,
I should be playing bezique with my aunt at Richfield Springs."

"That's almost as bad as marrying Dillworth," he agreed, and they
both laughed for pure pleasure in their sudden intimacy.

She glanced at the clock.

"Dear me! I must be off. It's after five."

She paused before the mantelpiece, studying herself in the mirror
while she adjusted her veil. The attitude revealed the long slope
of her slender sides, which gave a kind of wild-wood grace to her
outline--as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the
conventions of the drawing-room; and Selden reflected that it was
the same streak of sylvan freedom in her nature that lent such
savour to her artificiality.

He followed her across the room to the entrance-hall; but on the
threshold she held out her hand with a gesture of leave-taking.

"It's been delightful; and now you will have to return my visit."

"But don't you want me to see you to the station?"

"No; good bye here, please."

She let her hand lie in his a moment, smiling up at him adorably.

"Good bye, then--and good luck at Bellomont!" he said, opening
the door for her.

On the landing she paused to look about her. There were a
thousand chances to one against her meeting anybody, but one
could never tell, and she always paid for her rare indiscretions
by a violent reaction of prudence. There was no one in sight,
however, but a char-woman who was scrubbing the stairs. Her own
stout person and its surrounding implements took up so much room
that Lily, to pass her, had to gather up her skirts and brush
against the wall. As she did so, the woman paused in her work and
looked up curiously, resting her clenched red fists on the
wet cloth she had just drawn from her pail. She had a broad
sallow face, slightly pitted with small-pox, and thin
straw-coloured hair through which her scalp shone unpleasantly.

"I beg your pardon," said Lily, intending by her politeness to
convey a criticism of the other's manner.

The woman, without answering, pushed her pail aside, and
continued to stare as Miss Bart swept by with a murmur of silken
linings. Lily felt herself flushing under the look. What did the
creature suppose? Could one never do the simplest, the most
harmless thing, without subjecting one's self to some odious
conjecture? Half way down the next flight, she smiled to think
that a char-woman's stare should so perturb her. The poor thing
was probably dazzled by such an unwonted apparition. But WERE
such apparitions unwonted on Selden's stairs? Miss Bart was not
familiar with the moral code of bachelors' flat-houses, and her
colour rose again as it occurred to her that the woman's
persistent gaze implied a groping among past associations. But
she put aside the thought with a smile at her own fears, and
hastened downward, wondering if she should find a cab short of
Fifth Avenue.

Under the Georgian porch she paused again, scanning the street
for a hansom. None was in sight, but as she reached the sidewalk
she ran against a small glossy-looking man with a gardenia in his
coat, who raised his hat with a surprised exclamation.

"Miss Bart? Well--of all people! This IS luck," he declared; and
she caught a twinkle of amused curiosity between his screwed-up
lids.

"Oh, Mr. Rosedale--how are you?" she said, perceiving that the
irrepressible annoyance on her face was reflected in the sudden
intimacy of his smile.

Mr. Rosedale stood scanning her with interest and approval. He
was a plump rosy man of the blond Jewish type, with smart London
clothes fitting him like upholstery, and small sidelong eyes
which gave him the air of appraising people as if they were
bric-a-brac. He glanced up interrogatively at the porch of the
Benedick.

"Been up to town for a little shopping, I suppose?" he said, in a
tone which had the familiarity of a touch.

Miss Bart shrank from it slightly, and then flung herself into
precipitate explanations.

"Yes--I came up to see my dress-maker. I am just on my way to
catch the train to the Trenors'."

"Ah--your dress-maker; just so," he said blandly. "I didn't know
there were any dress-makers in the Benedick."

"The Benedick?" She looked gently puzzled. "Is that the name of
this building?"

"Yes, that's the name: I believe it's an old word for bachelor,
isn't it? I happen to own the building--that's the way I know."
His smile deepened as he added with increasing assurance: "But
you must let me take you to the station. The Trenors are at
Bellomont, of course? You've barely time to catch the five-forty.
The dress-maker kept you waiting, I suppose."

Lily stiffened under the pleasantry.

"Oh, thanks," she stammered; and at that moment her eye caught a
hansom drifting down Madison Avenue, and she hailed it with a
desperate gesture.

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