Edith Wharton: Complete Works. Edith Wharton

Чтение книги онлайн.

      The fact that the remark was in distinctly bad taste did not make it any easier to answer, for Lily was vividly aware that it was not the moment for that drawing up of her slim figure and surprised lifting of the brows by which she usually quelled incipient signs of familiarity.

      “I’m very much flattered by your wanting to see me,” she returned, essaying lightness instead, “but, unless you have mislaid my address, it would have been easy to find me any afternoon at my aunt’s—in fact, I rather expected you to look me up there.”

      If she hoped to mollify him by this last concession the attempt was a failure, for he only replied, with the familiar lowering of the brows that made him look his dullest when he was angry: “Hang going to your aunt’s, and wasting the afternoon listening to a lot of other chaps talking to you! You know I’m not the kind to sit in a crowd and jaw—I’d always rather clear out when that sort of circus is going on. But why can’t we go off somewhere on a little lark together—a nice quiet little expedition like that drive at Bellomont, the day you met me at the station?”

      He leaned unpleasantly close in order to convey this suggestion, and she fancied she caught a significant aroma which explained the dark flush on his face and the glistening dampness of his forehead.

      The idea that any rash answer might provoke an unpleasant outburst tempered her disgust with caution, and she answered with a laugh: “I don’t see how one can very well take country drives in town, but I am not always surrounded by an admiring throng, and if you will let me know what afternoon you are coming I will arrange things so that we can have a nice quiet talk.”

      “Hang talking! That’s what you always say,” returned Trenor, whose expletives lacked variety. “You put me off with that at the Van Osburgh wedding—but the plain English of it is that, now you’ve got what you wanted out of me, you’d rather have any other fellow about.”

      His voice had risen sharply with the last words, and Lily flushed with annoyance, but she kept command of the situation and laid a persuasive hand on his arm.

      “Don’t be foolish, Gus; I can’t let you talk to me in that ridiculous way. If you really want to see me, why shouldn’t we take a walk in the Park some afternoon? I agree with you that it’s amusing to be rustic in town, and if you like I’ll meet you there, and we’ll go and feed the squirrels, and you shall take me out on the lake in the steam-gondola.”

      She smiled as she spoke, letting her eyes rest on his in a way that took the edge from her banter and made him suddenly malleable to her will.

      “All right, then: that’s a go. Will you come tomorrow? Tomorrow at three o’clock, at the end of the Mall? I’ll be there sharp, remember; you won’t go back on me, Lily?”

      But to Miss Bart’s relief the repetition of her promise was cut short by the opening of the box door to admit George Dorset.

      Trenor sulkily yielded his place, and Lily turned a brilliant smile on the newcomer. She had not talked with Dorset since their visit at Bellomont, but something in his look and manner told her that he recalled the friendly footing on which they had last met. He was not a man to whom the expression of admiration came easily: his long sallow face and distrustful eyes seemed always barricaded against the expansive emotions. But, where her own influence was concerned, Lily’s intuitions sent out thread-like feelers, and as she made room for him on the narrow sofa she was sure he found a dumb pleasure in being near her. Few women took the trouble to make themselves agreeable to Dorset, and Lily had been kind to him at Bellomont, and was now smiling on him with a divine renewal of kindness.

      “Well, here we are, in for another six months of caterwauling,” he began complainingly. “Not a shade of difference between this year and last, except that the women have got new clothes and the singers haven’t got new voices. My wife’s musical, you know—puts me through a course of this every winter. It isn’t so bad on Italian nights—then she comes late, and there’s time to digest. But when they give Wagner we have to rush dinner, and I pay up for it. And the draughts are damnable—asphyxia in front and pleurisy in the back. There’s Trenor leaving the box without drawing the curtain! With a hide like that draughts don’t make any difference. Did you ever watch Trenor eat? If you did, you’d wonder why he’s alive; I suppose he’s leather inside too.—But I came to say that my wife wants you to come down to our place next Sunday. Do for heaven’s sake say yes. She’s got a lot of bores coming—intellectual ones, I mean; that’s her new line, you know, and I’m not sure it ain’t worse than the music. Some of ‘em have long hair, and they start an argument with the soup, and don’t notice when things are handed to them. The consequence is the dinner gets cold, and I have dyspepsia. That silly ass Silverton brings them to the house—he writes poetry, you know, and Bertha and he are getting tremendously thick. She could write better than any of ‘em if she chose, and I don’t blame her for wanting clever fellows about; all I say is: ‘Don’t let me see ‘em eat!’”

      The gist of this strange communication gave Lily a distinct thrill of pleasure. Under ordinary circumstances, there would have been nothing surprising in an invitation from Bertha Dorset; but since the Bellomont episode an unavowed hostility had kept the two women apart. Now, with a start of inner wonder, Lily felt that her thirst for retaliation had died out. If you would forgive your enemy, says the Malay proverb, first inflict a hurt on him; and Lily was experiencing the truth of the apothegm. If she had destroyed Mrs. Dorset’s letters, she might have continued to hate her; but the fact that they remained in her possession had fed her resentment to satiety.

      She uttered a smiling acceptance, hailing in the renewal of the tie an escape from Trenor’s importunities.

      —————

XI.

      Meanwhile the holidays had gone by and the season was beginning. Fifth Avenue had become a nightly torrent of carriages surging upward to the fashionable quarters about the Park, where illuminated windows and outspread awnings betokened the usual routine of hospitality. Other tributary currents crossed the main stream, bearing their freight to the theatres, restaurants or opera; and Mrs. Peniston, from the secluded watch-tower of her upper window, could tell to a nicety just when the chronic volume of sound was increased by the sudden influx setting toward a Van Osburgh ball, or when the multiplication of wheels meant merely that the opera was over, or that there was a big supper at Sherry’s.

      Mrs. Peniston followed the rise and culmination of the season as keenly as the most active sharer in its gaieties; and, as a looker-on, she enjoyed opportunities of comparison and generalization such as those who take part must proverbially forego. No one could have kept a more accurate record of social fluctuations, or have put a more unerring finger on the distinguishing features of each season: its dulness, its extravagance, its lack of balls or excess of divorces. She had a special memory for the vicissitudes of the “new people” who rose to the surface with each recurring tide, and were either submerged beneath its rush or landed triumphantly beyond the reach of envious breakers; and she was apt to display a remarkable retrospective insight into their ultimate fate, so СКАЧАТЬ