Edith Wharton: Complete Works. Edith Wharton

at her enemy’s mercy? And why should Bertha Dorset have turned into an enemy at the very moment when she so obviously needed the support of her sex? Even while his nerves raged at the subjection of husbands to their wives, and at the cruelty of women to their kind, reason obstinately harped on the proverbial relation between smoke and fire. The memory of Mrs. Fisher’s hints, and the corroboration of his own impressions, while they deepened his pity also increased his constraint, since, whichever way he sought a free outlet for sympathy, it was blocked by the fear of committing a blunder.

      Suddenly it struck him that his silence must seem almost as accusatory as that of the men he had despised for turning from her; but before he could find the fitting word she had cut him short with a question.

      “Do you know of a quiet hotel? I can send for my maid in the morning.”

      “An hotel—here —that you can go to alone? It’s not possible.”

      She met this with a pale gleam of her old playfulness. “What is, then? It’s too wet to sleep in the gardens.”

      “But there must be some one——”

      “Some one to whom I can go? Of course—any number—but at this hour? You see my change of plan was rather sudden——”

      “Good God—if you’d listened to me!” he cried, venting his helplessness in a burst of anger.

      She still held him off with the gentle mockery of her smile. “But haven’t I?” she rejoined. “You advised me to leave the yacht, and I’m leaving it.”

      He saw then, with a pang of self-reproach, that she meant neither to explain nor to defend herself; that by his miserable silence he had forfeited all chance of helping her, and that the decisive hour was past.

      She had risen, and stood before him in a kind of clouded majesty, like some deposed princess moving tranquilly to exile.

      “Lily!” he exclaimed, with a note of despairing appeal; but—“Oh, not now,” she gently admonished him; and then, in all the sweetness of her recovered composure: “Since I must find shelter somewhere, and since you’re so kindly here to help me——”

      He gathered himself up at the challenge. “You will do as I tell you? There’s but one thing, then; you must go straight to your cousins, the Stepneys.”

      “Oh—” broke from her with a movement of instinctive resistance; but he insisted: “Come—it’s late, and you must appear to have gone there directly.”

      He had drawn her hand into his arm, but she held him back with a last gesture of protest. “I can’t—I can’t—not that—you don’t know Gwen: you mustn’t ask me!”

      “I must ask you—you must obey me,” he persisted, though infected at heart by her own fear.

      Her voice sank to a whisper: “And if she refuses?”—but, “Oh, trust me—trust me!” he could only insist in return; and yielding to his touch, she let him lead her back in silence to the edge of the square.

      In the cab they continued to remain silent through the brief drive which carried them to the illuminated portals of the Stepneys’ hotel. Here he left her outside, in the darkness of the raised hood, while his name was sent up to Stepney, and he paced the showy hall, awaiting the latter’s descent. Ten minutes later the two men passed out together between the gold-laced custodians of the threshold; but in the vestibule Stepney drew up with a last flare of reluctance.

      “It’s understood, then?” he stipulated nervously, with his hand on Selden’s arm. “She leaves tomorrow by the early train—and my wife’s asleep, and can’t be disturbed.”

      —————

IV.

      The blinds of Mrs. Peniston’s drawing-room were drawn down against the oppressive June sun, and in the sultry twilight the faces of her assembled relatives took on a fitting shadow of bereavement.

      They were all there: Van Alstynes, Stepneys and Melsons—even a stray Peniston or two, indicating, by a greater latitude in dress and manner, the fact of remoter relationship and more settled hopes. The Peniston side was, in fact, secure in the knowledge that the bulk of Mr. Peniston’s property “went back”; while the direct connection hung suspended on the disposal of his widow’s private fortune and on the uncertainty of its extent. Jack Stepney, in his new character as the richest nephew, tacitly took the lead, emphasizing his importance by the deeper gloss of his mourning and the subdued authority of his manner; while his wife’s bored attitude and frivolous gown proclaimed the heiress’s disregard of the insignificant interests at stake. Old Ned Van Alstyne, seated next to her in a coat that made affliction dapper, twirled his white moustache to conceal the eager twitch of his lips; and Grace Stepney, red-nosed and smelling of crape, whispered emotionally to Mrs. Herbert Melson: “I couldn’t bear to see the Niagara anywhere else!”

      A rustle of weeds and quick turning of heads hailed the opening of the door, and Lily Bart appeared, tall and noble in her black dress, with Gerty Farish at her side. The women’s faces, as she paused interrogatively on the threshold, were a study in hesitation. One or two made faint motions of recognition, which might have been subdued either by the solemnity of the scene, or by the doubt as to how far the others meant to go; Mrs. Jack Stepney gave a careless nod, and Grace Stepney, with a sepulchral gesture, indicated a seat at her side. But Lily, ignoring the invitation, as well as Jack Stepney’s official attempt to direct her, moved across the room with her smooth free gait, and seated herself in a chair which seemed to have been purposely placed apart from the others.

      It was the first time that she had faced her family since her return from Europe, two weeks earlier; but if she perceived any uncertainty in their welcome, it served only to add a tinge of irony to the usual composure of her bearing. The shock of dismay with which, on the dock, she had heard from Gerty Farish of Mrs. Peniston’s sudden death, had been mitigated, almost at once, by the irrepressible thought that now, at last, she would be able to pay her debts. She had looked forward with considerable uneasiness to her first encounter with her aunt. Mrs. Peniston had vehemently opposed her niece’s departure with the Dorsets, and had marked her continued disapproval by not writing during Lily’s absence. The certainty that she had heard of the rupture with the Dorsets made the prospect of the meeting more formidable; and how should Lily have repressed a quick sense of relief at the thought that, instead of undergoing the anticipated ordeal, she had only to enter gracefully on a long-assured inheritance? It had been, in the consecrated phrase, “always understood” that Mrs. Peniston was to provide handsomely for her niece; and in the latter’s mind the understanding had long since crystallized into fact.

      “She gets everything, of course—I don’t see what we’re here for,” Mrs. Jack Stepney remarked with careless loudness to Ned Van Alstyne; and the latter’s deprecating murmur—“Julia was always a just woman”—might have been interpreted as signifying either acquiescence or doubt.

      “Well, it’s only about four hundred thousand,” Mrs. Stepney rejoined with a yawn; and Grace Stepney, in the silence produced by the lawyer’s preliminary cough, was heard to sob out: “They won’t find a towel missing—I went over them with her the very day——”

      Lily, oppressed by the close atmosphere, and the stifling odour of fresh mourning, felt her attention straying as Mrs. Peniston’s lawyer, solemnly erect behind the Buhl table at the end of the room, began to rattle through the preamble of the will.

      “It’s like being in church,” she reflected, wondering vaguely where Gwen Stepney had got such an awful hat. Then she noticed how stout Jack had grown—he would soon be almost as plethoric as Herbert Melson, who sat a few feet off, breathing puffily as he leaned his black-gloved hands on his stick.

      “I wonder why rich people always grow fat—I suppose it’s because there’s nothing to worry them. If I inherit, I shall have to be careful of my figure,” she mused, while the lawyer droned on through