House of Mirth (Barnes & Noble Classics - Edith Wharton [79]
He leaned unpleasantly close in order to convey this suggestion, and she fancied she caught a significant aroma which explained the dark flush on his face and the glistening dampness of his forehead.
The idea that any rash answer might provoke an unpleasant outburst tempered her disgust with caution, and she answered with a laugh: “I don’t see how one can very well take country drives in town, but I am not always surrounded by an admiring throng, and if you will let me know what afternoon you are coming I will arrange things so that we can have a nice quiet talk.”
“Hang talking! That’s what you always say,” returned Trenor, whose expletives lacked variety. “You put me off with that at the Van Osburgh wedding—but the plain English of it is that, now you’ve got what you wanted out of me, you’d rather have any other fellow about.”
His voice had risen sharply with the last words, and Lily flushed with annoyance, but she kept command of the situation and laid a persuasive hand on his arm.
“Don’t be foolish, Gus; I can’t let you talk to me in that ridiculous way. If you really want to see me, why shouldn’t we take a walk in the Park some afternoon? I agree with you that it’s amusing to be rustic in town, and if you like I’ll meet you there, and we’ll go and feed the squirrels, and you shall take me out on the lake in the steam-gondola.”bc
She smiled as she spoke, letting her eyes rest on his in a way that took the edge from her banter and made him suddenly malleable to her will.
“All right, then: that’s a go. Will you come tomorrow? Tomorrow at three o’clock, at the end of the Mall? I’ll be there sharp, remember; you won’t go back on me, Lily?”
But to Miss Bart’s relief the repetition of her promise was cut short by the opening of the box door to admit George Dorset.
Trenor sulkily yielded his place, and Lily turned a brilliant smile on the newcomer. She had not talked with Dorset since their visit at Bellomont, but something in his look and manner told her that he recalled the friendly footing on which they had last met. He was not a man to whom the expression of admiration came easily: his long sallow face and distrustful eyes seemed always barricaded against the expansive emotions. But, where her own influence was concerned, Lily’s intuitions sent out thread-like feelers, and as she made room for him on the narrow sofa she was sure he found a dumb pleasure in being near her. Few women took the trouble to make themselves agreeable to Dorset, and Lily had been kind to him at Bellomont, and was now smiling on him with a divine renewal of kindness.
“Well, here we are, in for another six months of caterwauling,” he began complainingly. “Not a shade of difference between this year and last, except that the women have got new clothes and the singers haven’t got new voices. My wife’s musical, you know—puts me through a course of this every winter. It isn’t so bad on Italian nights—then she comes late, and there’s time to digest. But when they give Wagnerbd we have to rush dinner, and I pay up for it. And the draughts are damnable—asphyxia in front and pleurisy in the back. There’s Trenor leaving the box without drawing the curtain! With a hide like that draughts don’t make any difference. Did you ever watch Trenor eat? If you did, you’d wonder why he’s alive; I suppose he’s leather inside too.—But I came to say that my wife wants you to come down to our place next Sunday. Do for heaven’s sake say yes. She’s got a lot of bores coming—intellectual ones, I mean; that’s her new line, you know, and I’m not sure it ain’t worse than the music. Some of ‘em have long hair, and they start an argument with the soup, and don’t notice when things are handed to them. The consequence is the dinner gets cold, and I have dyspepsia. That silly ass Silverton brings them to the house—he writes poetry, you know, and Bertha and he are getting tremendously thick. She could write better than any of ’em if she chose, and I don’t blame her for wanting clever fellows about; all I say is: