House of Mirth (Barnes & Noble Classics - Edith Wharton [158]
“That was poor Miss Jane Silverton—she came to talk things over with me: she and her sister want to do something to support themselves,” Gerty explained, as Lily followed her into the sitting-room.
“To support themselves? Are they so hard up?” Miss Bart asked with a touch of irritation: she had not come to listen to the woes of other people.
“I’m afraid they have nothing left: Ned’s debts have swallowed up everything. They had such hopes, you know, when he broke away from Carry Fisher; they thought Bertha Dorset would be such a good influence, because she doesn’t care for cards, and—well, she talked quite beautifully to poor Miss Jane about feeling as if Ned were her younger brother, and wanting to carry him off on the yacht, so that he might have a chance to drop cards and racing, and take up his literary work again.”
Miss Farish paused with a sigh which reflected the perplexity of her departing visitor. “But that isn’t all; it isn’t even the worst. It seems that Ned has quarrelled with the Dorsets; or at least Bertha won’t allow him to see her, and he is so unhappy about it that he has taken to gambling again, and going about with all sorts of queer people. And cousin Grace Van Osburgh accuses him of having had a very bad influence on Bertie, who left Harvard last spring, and has been a great deal with Ned ever since. She sent for Miss Jane, and made a dreadful scene; and Jack Stepney and Herbert Melson, who were there too, told Miss Jane that Bertie was threatening to marry some dreadful woman to whom Ned had introduced him, and that they could do nothing with him because now he’s of age he has his own money. You can fancy how poor Miss Jane felt—she came to me at once, and seemed to think that if I could get her something to do she could earn enough to pay Ned’s debts and send him away—I’m afraid she has no idea how long it would take her to pay for one of his evenings at bridge. And he was horribly in debt when he came back from the cruise—I can’t see why he should have spent so much more money under Bertha’s influence than Carry’s: can you?”
Lily met this query with an impatient gesture. “My dear Gerty, I always understand how people can spend much more money—never how they can spend any less!”
She loosened her furs and settled herself in Gerty’s easy-chair, while her friend busied herself with the tea-cups.
“But what can they do—the Miss Silvertons? How do they mean to support themselves?” she asked, conscious that the note of irritation still persisted in her voice. It was the very last topic she had meant to discuss—it really did not interest her in the least—but she was seized by a sudden perverse curiosity to know how the two colourless shrinking victims of young Silverton’s sentimental experiments meant to cope with the grim necessity which lurked so close to her own threshold.
“I don’t know—I am trying to find something for them. Miss Jane reads aloud very nicely—but it’s so hard to find anyone who is willing to be read to. And Miss Annie paints a little—”
“Oh, I know—apple-blossoms on blotting paper; just the kind of thing I shall be doing myself before long!” exclaimed Lily, starting up with a vehemence of movement that threatened destruction to Miss Farish’s fragile tea-table.
Lily bent over to steady the cups; then she sank back into her seat. “I’d forgotten there was no room to dash about in—how beautifully one does have to behave in a small flat! Oh, Gerty, I wasn’t meant to be good,” she sighed out incoherently.
Gerty lifted an apprehensive look to her pale face, in which the eyes shone with a peculiar sleepless lustre.
“You look