House of Mirth (Barnes & Noble Classics - Edith Wharton [73]
She had no idea of reading the letters; even to unfold Mrs. Haffen’s dirty newspaper would have seemed degrading. But what did she intend to do with its contents? The recipient of the letters had meant to destroy them, and it was her duty to carry out his intention. She had no right to keep them—to do so was to lessen whatever merit lay in having secured their possession. But how destroy them so effectually that there should be no second risk of their falling in such hands? Mrs. Peniston’s icy drawing-room grate shone with a forbidding lustre: the fire, like the lamps, was never lit except when there was company.
Miss Bart was turning to carry the letters upstairs when she heard the opening of the outer door, and her aunt entered the drawing-room. Mrs. Peniston was a small plump woman, with a colourless skin lined with trivial wrinkles. Her grey hair was arranged with precision, and her clothes looked excessively new and yet slightly old-fashioned. They were always black and tightly fitting, with an expensive glitter: she was the kind of woman who wore jet at breakfast. Lily had never seen her when she was not cuirassed in shining black, with small tight boots, and an air of being packed and ready to start; yet she never started.
She looked about the drawing-room with an expression of minute scrutiny. “I saw a streak of light under one of the blinds as I drove up: it’s extraordinary that I can never teach that woman to draw them down evenly.”
Having corrected the irregularity, she seated herself on one of the glossy purple arm-chairs; Mrs. Peniston always sat on a chair, never in it. Then she turned her glance to Miss Bart.
“My dear, you look tired; I suppose it’s the excitement of the wedding. Cornelia Van Alstyne was full of it: Molly was there, and Gerty Farish ran in for a minute to tell us about it. I think it was odd, their serving melons before the consommé: a wedding breakfast should always begin with consommé. Molly didn’t care for the bridesmaids’ dresses. She had it straight from Julia Melson that they cost three hundred dollars apiece at Céleste’s, but she says they didn’t look it. I’m glad you decided not to be a bridesmaid; that shade of salmon-pink wouldn’t have suited you.”
Mrs. Peniston delighted in discussing the minutest details of festivities in which she had not taken part. Nothing would have induced her to undergo the exertion and fatigue of attending the Van Osburgh wedding, but so great was her interest in the event that, having heard two versions of it, she now prepared to extract a third from her niece. Lily, however, had been deplorably careless in noting the particulars of the entertainment. She had failed to observe the colour of Mrs. Van Osburgh’s gown, and could not even say whether the old Van Osburgh Sévres had been used at the bride’s table: Mrs. Peniston, in short, found that she was of more service as a listener than as a narrator.
“Really, Lily, I don’t see why you took the trouble to go to the wedding, if you don’t remember what happened or whom you saw there. When I was a girl I used to keep the menu of every dinner I went to, and write the names of the people on the back; and I never threw away my cotillion favours till after your uncle’s death, when it seemed unsuitable to have so many coloured things about the house. I had a whole closet-full, I remember; and I can tell to this day what balls I got them at. Molly Van Alstyne reminds me of what I was at that age; it’s wonderful how she notices. She was able to tell her mother exactly how the wedding-dress was cut, and we knew at once, from the fold in the back, that it must have come from Paquin.”ax
Mrs. Peniston rose abruptly, and, advancing to the ormulu clock surmounted by a helmeted Minerva, which throned on the chimney-piece between two malachite vases,ay passed her lace handkerchief between the helmet and its visor.
“I knew it—the parlour-maid never dusts there!” she exclaimed, triumphantly displaying a minute spot on the