_ 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.
Look at those spangles, Miss Bart--every one of 'em sewed on
crooked."
The tall forewoman, a pinched perpendicular figure, dropped the
condemned structure of wire and net on the table at Lily's side,
and passed on to the next figure in the line.
There were twenty of them in the work-room, their fagged
profiles, under exaggerated hair, bowed in the harsh north light
above the utensils of their art; for it was something more than
an industry, surely, this creation of ever-varied settings for
the face of fortunate womanhood. Their own faces were sallow with
the unwholesomeness of hot air and sedentary toil, rather than
with any actual signs of want: they were employed in a
fashionable millinery establishment, and were fairly well clothed
and well paid; but the youngest among them was as dull and
colourless as the middle-aged. In the whole work-room there was
only one skin beneath which the blood still visibly played; and
that now burned with vexation as Miss Bart, under the lash of the
forewoman's comment, began to strip the hat-frame of its
over-lapping spangles.
To Gerty Farish's hopeful spirit a solution appeared to have been
reached when she remembered how beautifully Lily could trim hats.
Instances of young lady-milliners establishing themselves under
fashionable patronage, and imparting to their "creations" that
indefinable touch which the professional hand can never give, had
flattered Gerty's visions of the future, and convinced even Lily
that her separation from Mrs. Norma Hatch need not reduce her to
dependence on her friends.
The parting had occurred a few weeks after Selden's visit, and
would have taken place sooner had it not been for the resistance
set up in Lily by his ill-starred offer of advice. The sense of
being involved in a transaction she would not have cared to
examine too closely had soon afterward defined itself in the
light of a hint from Mr. Stancy that, if she "saw them through,"
she would have no reason to be sorry. The implication that such
loyalty would meet with a direct reward had hastened her flight,
and flung her back, ashamed and penitent, on the broad
bosom of Gerty's sympathy. She did not, however, propose to lie
there prone, and Gerty's inspiration about the hats at once
revived her hopes of profitable activity. Here was, after all,
something that her charming listless hands could really do; she
had no doubt of their capacity for knotting a ribbon or placing a
flower to advantage. And of course only these finishing touches
would be expected of her: subordinate fingers, blunt, grey,
needle-pricked fingers, would prepare the shapes and stitch the
linings, while she presided over the charming little front
shop--a shop all white panels, mirrors, and moss-green
hangings--where her finished creations, hats, wreaths, aigrettes
and the rest, perched on their stands like birds just poising for
flight.
But at the very outset of Gerty's campaign this vision of the
green-and-white shop had been dispelled. Other young ladies of
fashion had been thus "set-up," selling their hats by the mere
attraction of a name and the reputed knack of tying a bow; but
these privileged beings could command a faith in their powers
materially expressed by the readiness to pay their shop-rent and
advance a handsome sum for current expenses. Where was Lily to
find such support? And even could it have been found, how were
the ladies on whose approval she depended to be induced to give
her their patronage? Gerty learned that whatever sympathy her
friend's case might have excited a few months since had been
imperilled, if not lost, by her association with Mrs. Hatch. Once
again, Lily had withdrawn from an ambiguous situation in time to
save her self-respect, but too late for public vindication.
Freddy Van Osburgh was not to marry Mrs. Hatch; he had been
rescued at the eleventh hour--some said by the efforts of Gus
Trenor and Rosedale--and despatched to Europe with old Ned Van
Alstyne; but the risk he had run would always be ascribed to Miss
Bart's connivance, and would somehow serve as a summing-up and
corroboration of the vague general distrust of her. It was a
relief to those who had hung back from her to find themselves
thus justified, and they were inclined to insist a little on her
connection with the Hatch case in order to show that they had
been right.
Gerty's quest, at any rate, brought up against a solid wall of
resistance; and even when Carry Fisher, momentarily penitent for her share in the Hatch affair, joined her efforts
to Miss Farish's, they met with no better success. Gerty had
tried to veil her failure in tender ambiguities; but Carry,
always the soul of candour, put the case squarely to her friend.
"I went straight to Judy Trenor; she has fewer prejudices than
the others, and besides she's always hated Bertha Dorset. But
what HAVE you done to her, Lily? At the very first word about
giving you a start she flamed out about some money you'd got from
Gus; I never knew her so hot before. You know she'll let him do
anything but spend money on his friends: the only reason she's
decent to me now is that she knows I'm not hard up.--He
speculated for you, you say? Well, what's the harm? He had no
business to lose. He DIDN'T lose? Then what on earth--but I never
COULD understand you, Lily!" _