House of Mirth (Barnes & Noble Classics - Edith Wharton [149]
She found him, on the first Sunday after her return to town, pacing her narrow sitting-room to the imminent peril of the few knick-knacks with which she had tried to disguise its plush exuberances; but the sight of her seemed to quiet him, and he said meekly that he hadn’t come to bother her—that he asked only to be allowed to sit for half an hour and talk of anything she liked. In reality, as she knew, he had but one subject: himself and his wretchedness; and it was the need of her sympathy that had drawn him back. But he began with a pretence of questioning her about herself, and as she replied, she saw that, for the first time, a faint realization of her plight penetrated the dense surface of his self-absorption. Was it possible that her old beast of an aunt had actually cut her off? That she was living alone like this because there was no one else for her to go to, and that she really hadn’t more than enough to keep alive on till the wretched little legacy was paid? The fibres of sympathy were nearly atrophied in him, but he was suffering so intensely that he had a faint glimpse of what other sufferings might mean—and, as she perceived, an almost simultaneous perception of the way in which her particular misfortunes might serve him.
When at length she dismissed him, on the pretext that she must dress for dinner, he lingered entreatingly on the threshold to blurt out: “It’s been such a comfort—do say you’ll let me see you again—” But to this direct appeal it was impossible to give an assent; and she said with friendly decisiveness: “I’m sorry—but you know why I can’t.”
He coloured to the eyes, pushed the door shut, and stood before her embarrassed but insistent. “I know how you might, if you would—if things were different—and it lies with you to make them so. It’s just a word to say, and you put me out of my misery!”
Their eyes met, and for a second she trembled again with the nearness of the temptation. “You’re mistaken; I know nothing; I saw nothing,” she exclaimed, striving by sheer force of reiteration, to build a barrier between herself and her peril; and as he turned away, groaning out “You sacrifice us both,” she continued to repeat, as if it were a charm: “I know nothing—absolutely nothing.”
Lily had seen little of Rosedale since her illuminating talk with Mrs. Fisher, but on the two or three occasions when they had met she was conscious of having distinctly advanced in his favour. There could be no doubt that he admired her as much as ever, and she believed it rested with herself to raise his admiration to the point where it should bear down the lingering counsels of expediency. The task was not an easy one; but neither was it easy, in her long sleepless nights, to face the thought of what George Dorset was so clearly ready to offer. Baseness for baseness, she hated the other least: there were even moments when a marriage with Rosedale seemed the only honourable solution of her difficulties. She did not indeed let her imagination range beyond the day of plighting: after that everything faded into a haze of material well-being, in which the personality of her benefactor remained mercifully vague. She had learned, in her long vigils, that there were certain things not good to think of, certain midnight images that must at any cost be exorcised—and one of these was the image of herself as Rosedale’s wife.
Carry Fisher, on the strength, as she frankly owned, of the Brys’ Newport success, had taken for the autumn months a small house at Tuxedo; and thither Lily was bound on the Sunday after Dorset’s visit. Though it was nearly dinner-time when she arrived, her hostess was