Edith Wharton: Complete Works. Edith Wharton

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СКАЧАТЬ sense of physical discomfort was the first to assert itself; then she perceived, beneath it, a corresponding mental prostration, a languor of horror more insufferable than the first rush of her disgust. The thought of having to wake every morning with this weight on her breast roused her tired mind to fresh effort. She must find some way out of the slough into which she had stumbled: it was not so much compunction as the dread of her morning thoughts that pressed on her the need of action. But she was unutterably tired; it was weariness to think connectedly. She lay back, looking about the poor slit of a room with a renewal of physical distaste. The outer air, penned between high buildings, brought no freshness through the window; steam-heat was beginning to sing in a coil of dingy pipes, and a smell of cooking penetrated the crack of the door.

      The door opened, and Gerty, dressed and hatted, entered with a cup of tea. Her face looked sallow and swollen in the dreary light, and her dull hair shaded imperceptibly into the tones of her skin.

      She glanced shyly at Lily, asking in an embarrassed tone how she felt; Lily answered with the same constraint, and raised herself up to drink the tea.

      “I must have been over-tired last night; I think I had a nervous attack in the carriage,” she said, as the drink brought clearness to her sluggish thoughts.

      “You were not well; I am so glad you came here,” Gerty returned.

      “But how am I to get home? And Aunt Julia——?”

      “She knows; I telephoned early, and your maid has brought your things. But won’t you eat something? I scrambled the eggs myself.”

      Lily could not eat; but the tea strengthened her to rise and dress under her maid’s searching gaze. It was a relief to her that Gerty was obliged to hasten away: the two kissed silently, but without a trace of the previous night’s emotion.

      Lily found Mrs. Peniston in a state of agitation. She had sent for Grace Stepney and was taking digitalis. Lily breasted the storm of enquiries as best she could, explaining that she had had an attack of faintness on her way back from Carry Fisher’s; that, fearing she would not have strength to reach home, she had gone to Miss Farish’s instead; but that a quiet night had restored her, and that she had no need of a doctor.

      This was a relief to Mrs. Peniston, who could give herself up to her own symptoms, and Lily was advised to go and lie down, her aunt’s panacea for all physical and moral disorders. In the solitude of her own room she was brought back to a sharp contemplation of facts. Her daylight view of them necessarily differed from the cloudy vision of the night. The winged furies were now prowling gossips who dropped in on each other for tea. But her fears seemed the uglier, thus shorn of their vagueness; and besides, she had to act, not rave. For the first time she forced herself to reckon up the exact amount of her debt to Trenor; and the result of this hateful computation was the discovery that she had, in all, received nine thousand dollars from him. The flimsy pretext on which it had been given and received shrivelled up in the blaze of her shame: she knew that not a penny of it was her own, and that to restore her self-respect she must at once repay the whole amount. The inability thus to solace her outraged feelings gave her a paralyzing sense of insignificance. She was realizing for the first time that a woman’s dignity may cost more to keep up than her carriage; and that the maintenance of a moral attribute should be dependent on dollars and cents, made the world appear a more sordid place than she had conceived it.

      After luncheon, when Grace Stepney’s prying eyes had been removed, Lily asked for a word with her aunt. The two ladies went upstairs to the sitting-room, where Mrs. Peniston seated herself in her black satin arm-chair tufted with yellow buttons, beside a bead-work table bearing a bronze box with a miniature of Beatrice Cenci in the lid. Lily felt for these objects the same distaste which the prisoner may entertain for the fittings of the court-room. It was here that her aunt received her rare confidences, and the pink-eyed smirk of the turbaned Beatrice was associated in her mind with the gradual fading of the smile from Mrs. Peniston’s lips. That lady’s dread of a scene gave her an inexorableness which the greatest strength of character could not have produced, since it was independent of all considerations of right or wrong; and knowing this, Lily seldom ventured to assail it. She had never felt less like making the attempt than on the present occasion; but she had sought in vain for any other means of escape from an intolerable situation.

      Mrs. Peniston examined her critically. “You’re a bad colour, Lily: this incessant rushing about is beginning to tell on you,” she said.

      Miss Bart saw an opening. “I don’t think it’s that, Aunt Julia; I’ve had worries,” she replied.

      “Ah,” said Mrs. Peniston, shutting her lips with the snap of a purse closing against a beggar.

      “I’m sorry to bother you with them,” Lily continued, “but I really believe my faintness last night was brought on partly by anxious thoughts——”

      “I should have said Carry Fisher’s cook was enough to account for it. She has a woman who was with Maria Melson in 1891—the spring of the year we went to Aix—and I remember dining there two days before we sailed, and feeling sure the coppers hadn’t been scoured.”

      “I don’t think I ate much; I can’t eat or sleep.” Lily paused, and then said abruptly: “The fact is, Aunt Julia, I owe some money.”

      Mrs. Peniston’s face clouded perceptibly, but did not express the astonishment her niece had expected. She was silent, and Lily was forced to continue: “I have been foolish——”

      “No doubt you have: extremely foolish,” Mrs. Peniston interposed. “I fail to see how any one with your income, and no expenses—not to mention the handsome presents I’ve always given you——”

      “Oh, you’ve been most generous, Aunt Julia; I shall never forget your kindness. But perhaps you don’t quite realize the expense a girl is put to nowadays——”

      “I don’t realize that you are put to any expense except for your clothes and your railway fares. I expect you to be handsomely dressed; but I paid Celeste’s bill for you last October.”

      Lily hesitated: her aunt’s implacable memory had never been more inconvenient. “You were as kind as possible; but I have had to get a few things since——”

      “What kind of things? Clothes? How much have you spent? Let me see the bill—I daresay the woman is swindling you.”

      “Oh, no, I think not: clothes have grown so frightfully expensive; and one needs so many different kinds, with country visits, and golf and skating, and Aiken and Tuxedo——”

      “Let me see the bill,” Mrs. Peniston repeated.

      Lily hesitated again. In the first place, Mme. Celeste had not yet sent in her account, and secondly, the amount it represented was only a fraction of the sum that Lily needed.

      “She hasn’t sent in the bill for my winter things, but I know it’s large; and there are one or two other things; I’ve been careless and imprudent—I’m frightened to think of what I owe——”

      She raised the troubled loveliness of her face to Mrs. Peniston, vainly hoping that a sight so moving to the other sex might not be without effect upon her own. But the effect produced was that of making Mrs. Peniston shrink back apprehensively.

      “Really, Lily, you are old enough to manage your own affairs, and after frightening me to death by your performance of last night you might at least choose a better СКАЧАТЬ