House of Mirth (Barnes & Noble Classics - Edith Wharton [48]
These thoughts so engaged her that she fell into a gait hardly likely to carry her to church before the sermon, and at length, having passed from the gardens to the wood-path beyond, so far forgot her intention as to sink into a rustic seat at a bend of the walk. The spot was charming, and Lily was not insensible to the charm, or to the fact that her presence enhanced it; but she was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude except in company, and the combination of a handsome girl and a romantic scene struck her as too good to be wasted. No one, however, appeared to profit by the opportunity; and after a half hour of fruitless waiting she rose and wandered on. She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she walked; the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life was stale on her lips. She hardly knew what she had been seeking, or why the failure to find it had so blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a vague sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the loneliness about her.
Her footsteps flagged, and she stood gazing listlessly ahead, digging the ferny edge of the path with the tip of her sun-shade. As she did so a step sounded behind her, and she saw Selden at her side.
“How fast you walk!” he remarked. “I thought I should never catch up with you.”
She answered gaily: “You must be quite breathless! I’ve been sitting under that tree for an hour.”
“Waiting for me, I hope?” he rejoined; and she said with a vague laugh:
“Well—waiting to see if you would come.”
“I seize the distinction, but I don’t mind it, since doing the one involved doing the other. But weren’t you sure that I should come?”
“If I waited long enough—but you see I had only a limited time to give to the experiment”
“Why limited? Limited by luncheon?”
“No; by my other engagement.”
“Your engagement to go to church with Muriel and Hilda?”
“No; but to come home from church with another person.”
“Ah, I see; I might have known you were fully provided with alternatives. And is the other person coming home this way?”
Lily laughed again. “That’s just what I don’t know; and to find out, it is my business to get to church before the service is over.”
“Exactly; and it is my business to prevent your doing so; in which case the other person, piqued by your absence, will form the desperate resolve of driving back in the omnibus.”
Lily received this with fresh appreciation; his nonsense was like the bubbling of her inner mood. “Is that what you would do in such an emergency?” she enquired.
Selden looked at her with solemnity. “I am here to prove to you,” he cried, “what I am capable of doing in an emergency!”
“Walking a mile in an hour—you must own that the omnibus would be quicker!”
“Ah—but will he find you in the end? That’s the only test of success.”
They looked at each other with the same luxury of enjoyment that they had felt in exchanging absurdities over his tea-table; but suddenly Lily’s face changed, and she said: “Well, if it is, he has succeeded.”
Selden, following her glance, perceived a party of people advancing toward them from the farther bend of the path. Lady Cressida had evidently insisted on walking home, and the rest of the churchgoers had thought it their duty to accompany her. Lily’s companion looked rapidly from one to the other of the two men of the party; Wetherall walking respectfully at Lady Cressida’s side with his little sidelong look of nervous attention, and Percy Gryce bringing up the rear with Mrs. Wetherall and the Trenors.
“Ah—now I see why you were getting up your Americana!