House of Mirth (Barnes & Noble Classics - Edith Wharton [52]
“But I should never have found my way there if you hadn’t told me.”
“Ah, there are sign-posts—but one has to know how to read them.”
“Well, I have known, I have known!” she cried with a glow of eagerness. “Whenever I see you, I find myself spelling out a letter of the sign—and yesterday—last evening at dinner—I suddenly saw a little way into your republic.”
Selden was still looking at her, but with a changed eye. Hitherto he had found, in her presence and her talk, the aesthetic amusement which a reflective man is apt to seek in desultory intercourse with pretty women. His attitude had been one of admiring spectatorship, and he would have been almost sorry to detect in her any emotional weakness which should interfere with the fulfilment of her aims. But now the hint of this weakness had become the most interesting thing about her. He had come on her that morning in a moment of disarray; her face had been pale and altered, and the diminution of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm. That is how she looks when she is alone! had been his first thought; and the second was to note in her the change which his coming produced. It was the danger-point of their intercourse that he could not doubt the spontaneity of her liking. From whatever angle he viewed their dawning intimacy, he could not see it as part of her scheme of life; and to be the unforeseen element in a career so accurately planned was stimulating even to a man who had renounced sentimental experiments.
“Well,” he said, “did it make you want to see more? Are you going to become one of us?”
He had drawn out his cigarettes as he spoke, and she reached her hand toward the case.
“Oh, do give me one—I haven’t smoked for days!”
“Why such unnatural abstinence? Everybody smokes at Bellomont.”
“Yes—but it is not considered becoming in a jeune fille à marier;ao and at the present moment I am a jeune fille à marier.”
“Ah, then I’m afraid we can’t let you into the republic.”
“Why not? Is it a celibate order?”
“Not in the least, though I’m bound to say there are not many married people in it. But you will marry some one very rich, and it’s as hard for rich people to get into as the kingdom of heaven.”ap
“That’s unjust, I think, because, as I understand it, one of the conditions of citizenship is not to think too much about money, and the only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.”
“You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to have enough to breathe. That is true enough in a sense; but your lungs are thinking about the air, if you are not. And so it is with your rich people—they may not be thinking of money, but they’re breathing it all the while; take them into another element and see how they squirm and gasp!”
Lily sat gazing absently through the blue rings of her cigarette-smoke.
“It seems to me,” she said at length, “that you spend a good deal of your time in the element you disapprove of.”
Selden received this thrust without discomposure. “Yes; but I have tried to remain amphibious: it’s all right as long as one’s lungs can work in another air. The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else; and that’s the secret that most of your friends have lost.”
Lily mused. “Don’t you think,” she rejoined after a moment, “that the people who find fault with society are too apt to regard it as an end and not a means, just as the people who despise money speak as if its only use were to be kept in bags and gloated over? Isn’t it fairer to look at them both as opportunities, which may be used either stupidly or intelligently, according to the capacity of the user?”
“That is certainly the sane view; but the queer thing about society is that the people who regard it as an end are those who are in it, and not the critics on the fence. It’s just the other way with most shows—the audience may be under the illusion, but the actors know that real life is on the other side of the foot-lights. The people who take society as an escape from work are putting