_ His first rush of inarticulate resentment had been followed by a
steadiness and concentration of tone more disconcerting to Lily
than the excitement preceding it. For a moment her presence of
mind forsook her. She had more than once been in situations where
a quick sword-play of wit had been needful to cover her retreat;
but her frightened heart-throbs told her that here such skill
would not avail.
To gain time she repeated: "I don't understand what you want."
Trenor had pushed a chair between herself and the door. He threw
himself in it, and leaned back, looking up at her.
"I'll tell you what I want: I want to know just where you and I
stand. Hang it, the man who pays for the dinner is generally
allowed to have a seat at table."
She flamed with anger and abasement, and the sickening need of
having to conciliate where she longed to humble.
"I don't know what you mean--but you must see, Gus, that I can't
stay here talking to you at this hour---"
"Gad, you go to men's houses fast enough in broad day
light--strikes me you're not always so deuced careful of
appearances."
The brutality of the thrust gave her the sense of dizziness that
follows on a physical blow. Rosedale had spoken then--this was
the way men talked of her--She felt suddenly weak and
defenceless: there was a throb of self-pity in her throat. But
all the while another self was sharpening her to vigilance,
whispering the terrified warning that every word and gesture must
be measured.
"If you have brought me here to say insulting things---" she
began.
Trenor laughed. "Don't talk stage-rot. I don't want to insult
you. But a man's got his feelings--and you've played with mine
too long. I didn't begin this business--kept out of the way, and
left the track clear for the other chaps, till you rummaged me
out and set to work to make an ass of me--and an easy job you had
of it, too. That's the trouble--it was too easy for
you--you got reckless--thought you could turn me inside out, and
chuck me in the gutter like an empty purse. But, by gad, that
ain't playing fair: that's dodging the rules of the game. Of
course I know now what you wanted--it wasn't my beautiful eyes
you were after--but I tell you what, Miss Lily, you've got to pay
up for making me think so---"
He rose, squaring his shoulders aggressively, and stepped toward
her with a reddening brow; but she held her footing, though every
nerve tore at her to retreat as he advanced.
"Pay up?" she faltered. "Do you mean that I owe you money?"
He laughed again. "Oh, I'm not asking for payment in kind. But
there's such a thing as fair play--and interest on one's
money--and hang me if I've had as much as a look from you---"
"Your money? What have I to do with your money? You advised me
how to invest mine . . . you must have seen I knew nothing of
business . . . you told me it was all right---"
"It WAS all right--it is, Lily: you're welcome to all of it, and
ten times more. I'm only asking for a word of thanks from you."
He was closer still, with a hand that grew formidable; and the
frightened self in her was dragging the other down.
"I HAVE thanked you; I've shown I was grateful. What more have
you done than any friend might do, or any one accept from a
friend?"
Trenor caught her up with a sneer. "I don't doubt you've accepted
as much before--and chucked the other chaps as you'd like to
chuck me. I don't care how you settled your score with them--if
you fooled 'em I'm that much to the good. Don't stare at me like
that--I know I'm not talking the way a man is supposed to talk to
a girl--but, hang it, if you don't like it you can stop me quick
enough--you know I'm mad about you--damn the money, there's
plenty more of it--if THAT bothers you . . . I was a brute,
Lily--Lily!--just look at me---"
Over and over her the sea of humiliation broke--wave crashing on
wave so close that the moral shame was one with the physical
dread. It seemed to her that self-esteem would have made
her invulnerable--that it was her own dishonour which put a
fearful solitude about her.
His touch was a shock to her drowning consciousness. She drew
back from him with a desperate assumption of scorn.
"I've told you I don't understand--but if I owe you money you
shall be paid---"
Trenor's face darkened to rage: her recoil of abhorrence had
called out the primitive man.
"Ah--you'll borrow from Selden or Rosedale--and take your chances
of fooling them as you've fooled me! Unless--unless you've
settled your other scores already--and I'm the only one left out
in the cold!"
She stood silent, frozen to her place. The words--the words were
worse than the touch! Her heart was beating all over her body--in
her throat, her limbs, her helpless useless hands. Her eyes
travelled despairingly about the room--they lit on the bell, and
she remembered that help was in call. Yes, but scandal with it--a
hideous mustering of tongues. No, she must fight her way out
alone. It was enough that the servants knew her to be in the
house with Trenor--there must be nothing to excite conjecture in
her way of leaving it.
She raised her head, and achieved a last clear look at him.
"I am here alone with you," she said. "What more have you to
say?"
To her surprise, Trenor answered the look with a speechless
stare. With his last gust of words the flame had died out,
leaving him chill and humbled. It was as though a cold air had
dispersed the fumes of his libations, and the situation loomed
before him black and naked as the ruins of a fire. Old habits,
old restraints, the hand of inherited order, plucked back the
bewildered mind which passion had jolted from its ruts. Trenor's
eye had the haggard look of the sleep-walker waked on a deathly
ledge.
"Go home! Go away from here"---he stammered, and turning his back
on her walked toward the hearth.
The sharp release from her fears restored Lily to immediate
lucidity. The collapse of Trenor's will left her in control, and
she heard herself, in a voice that was her own yet outside
herself, bidding him ring for the servant, bidding him give the
order for a hansom, directing him to put her in it when
it came. Whence the strength came to her she knew not; but an
insistent voice warned her that she must leave the house openly,
and nerved her, in the hall before the hovering care taker, to
exchange light words with Trenor, and charge him with the usual
messages for Judy, while all the while she shook with inward
loathing. On the doorstep, with the street before her, she felt a
mad throb of liberation, intoxicating as the prisoner's first
draught of free air; but the clearness of brain continued, and
she noted the mute aspect of Fifth Avenue, guessed at the
lateness of the hour, and even observed a man's figure--was there
something half-familiar in its outline?--which, as she entered
the hansom, turned from the opposite corner and vanished in the
obscurity of the side street.
But with the turn of the wheels reaction came, and shuddering
darkness closed on her. "I can't think--I can't think," she
moaned, and leaned her head against the rattling side of the cab.
She seemed a stranger to herself, or rather there were two selves
in her, the one she had always known, and a new abhorrent being
to which it found itself chained. She had once picked up, in a
house where she was staying, a translation of the EUMENIDES, and
her imagination had been seized by the high terror of the scene
where Orestes, in the cave of the oracle, finds his implacable
huntresses asleep, and snatches an hour's repose. Yes, the Furies
might sometimes sleep, but they were there, always there in the
dark corners, and now they were awake and the iron clang of their
wings was in her brain . . . She opened her eyes and saw the
streets passing--the familiar alien streets. All she looked on
was the same and yet changed. There was a great gulf fixed
between today and yesterday. Everything in the past seemed
simple, natural, full of daylight--and she was alone in a place
of darkness and pollution.--Alone! It was the loneliness that
frightened her. Her eyes fell on an illuminated clock at a street
corner, and she saw that the hands marked the half hour after
eleven. Only half-past eleven--there were hours and hours left of
the night! And she must spend them alone, shuddering sleepless on
her bed. Her soft nature recoiled from this ordeal, which had
none of the stimulus of conflict to goad her through it. Oh, the
slow cold drip of the minutes on her head! She had a
vision of herself lying on the black walnut bed--and the darkness
would frighten her, and if she left the light burning the dreary
details of the room would brand themselves forever on her brain.
She had always hated her room at Mrs. Peniston's--its ugliness,
its impersonality, the fact that nothing in it was really hers.
To a torn heart uncomforted by human nearness a room may open
almost human arms, and the being to whom no four walls mean more
than any others, is, at such hours, expatriate everywhere.
Lily had no heart to lean on. Her relation with her aunt was as
superficial as that of chance lodgers who pass on the stairs. But
even had the two been in closer contact, it was impossible to
think of Mrs. Peniston's mind as offering shelter or
comprehension to such misery as Lily's. As the pain that can be
told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little
healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the darkness made by
enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion
holding its breath.
She started up and looked forth on the passing streets.
Gerty!--they were nearing Gerty's corner. If only she could reach
there before this labouring anguish burst from her breast to her
lips--if only she could feel the hold of Gerty's arms while she
shook in the ague-fit of fear that was coming upon her! She
pushed up the door in the roof and called the address to the
driver. It was not so late--Gerty might still be waking. And even
if she were not, the sound of the bell would penetrate every
recess of her tiny apartment, and rouse her to answer her
friend's call.
Gerty Farish, the morning after the Wellington Brys'
entertainment, woke from dreams as happy as Lily's. If they were
less vivid in hue, more subdued to the half-tints of her
personality and her experience, they were for that very reason
better suited to her mental vision. Such flashes of joy as Lily
moved in would have blinded Miss Farish, who was accustomed, in
the way of happiness, to such scant light as shone through the
cracks of other people's lives. _