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CHAPTER 7
The light projected on the situation by Mrs. Fisher had the cheerless distinctness
of a winter dawn.
It outlined the facts with a cold precision unmodified by shade or colour, and
refracted, as it were, from the blank walls of the surrounding limitations: she had
opened windows from which no sky was ever visible.
But the idealist subdued to vulgar necessities must employ vulgar minds to
draw the inferences to which he cannot stoop; and it was easier for Lily to let
Mrs. Fisher formulate her case than to put it plainly to herself.
Once confronted with it, however, she went the full length of its consequences; and
these had never been more clearly present to her than when, the next afternoon, she
set out for a walk with Rosedale.
It was one of those still November days when the air is haunted with the light of
summer, and something in the lines of the landscape, and in the golden haze which
bathed them, recalled to Miss Bart the
September afternoon when she had climbed the slopes of Bellomont with Selden.
The importunate memory was kept before her by its ironic contrast to her present
situation, since her walk with Selden had represented an irresistible flight from
just such a climax as the present excursion was designed to bring about.
But other memories importuned her also; the recollection of similar situations, as
skillfully led up to, but through some malice of fortune, or her own unsteadiness
of purpose, always failing of the intended result.
Well, her purpose was steady enough now.
She saw that the whole weary work of rehabilitation must begin again, and
against far greater odds, if Bertha Dorset should succeed in breaking up her
friendship with the Gormers; and her
longing for shelter and security was intensified by the passionate desire to
triumph over Bertha, as only wealth and predominance could triumph over her.
As the wife of Rosedale--the Rosedale she felt it in her power to create--she would
at least present an invulnerable front to her enemy.
She had to draw upon this thought, as upon some fiery stimulant, to keep up her part
in the scene toward which Rosedale was too frankly tending.
As she walked beside him, shrinking in every nerve from the way in which his look
and tone made free of her, yet telling herself that this momentary endurance of
his mood was the price she must pay for her
ultimate power over him, she tried to calculate the exact point at which
concession must turn to resistance, and the price HE would have to pay be made equally
clear to him.
But his dapper self-confidence seemed impenetrable to such hints, and she had a
sense of something hard and self-contained behind the superficial warmth of his
manner.
They had been seated for some time in the seclusion of a rocky glen above the lake,
when she suddenly cut short the culmination of an impassioned period by turning upon
him the grave loveliness of her gaze.
"I DO believe what you say, Mr. Rosedale," she said quietly; "and I am ready to marry
you whenever you wish."
Rosedale, reddening to the roots of his glossy hair, received this announcement
with a recoil which carried him to his feet, where he halted before her in an
attitude of almost comic discomfiture.
"For I suppose that is what you do wish," she continued, in the same quiet tone.
"And, though I was unable to consent when you spoke to me in this way before, I am
ready, now that I know you so much better, to trust my happiness to your hands."
She spoke with the noble directness which she could command on such occasions, and
which was like a large steady light thrown across the tortuous darkness of the
situation.
In its inconvenient brightness Rosedale seemed to waver a moment, as though
conscious that every avenue of escape was unpleasantly illuminated.
Then he gave a short laugh, and drew out a gold cigarette-case, in which, with plump
jewelled fingers, he groped for a gold- tipped cigarette.
Selecting one, he paused to contemplate it a moment before saying: "My dear Miss Lily,
I'm sorry if there's been any little misapprehension between us-but you made me
feel my suit was so hopeless that I had really no intention of renewing it."
Lily's blood tingled with the grossness of the rebuff; but she checked the first leap
of her anger, and said in a tone of gentle dignity: "I have no one but myself to blame
if I gave you the impression that my decision was final."
Her word-play was always too quick for him, and this reply held him in puzzled silence
while she extended her hand and added, with the faintest inflection of sadness in her
voice: "Before we bid each other goodbye,
I want at least to thank you for having once thought of me as you did."
The touch of her hand, the moving softness of her look, thrilled a vulnerable fibre in
Rosedale.
It was her exquisite inaccessibleness, the sense of distance she could convey without
a hint of disdain, that made it most difficult for him to give her up.
"Why do you talk of saying goodbye?
Ain't we going to be good friends all the same?" he urged, without releasing her
hand. She drew it away quietly.
"What is your idea of being good friends?" she returned with a slight smile.
"Making love to me without asking me to marry you?"
Rosedale laughed with a recovered sense of ease.
"Well, that's about the size of it, I suppose.
I can't help making love to you--I don't see how any man could; but I don't mean to
ask you to marry me as long as I can keep out of it."
She continued to smile.
"I like your frankness; but I am afraid our friendship can hardly continue on those
terms."
She turned away, as though to mark that its final term had in fact been reached, and he
followed her for a few steps with a baffled sense of her having after all kept the game
in her own hands.
"Miss Lily----" he began impulsively; but she walked on without seeming to hear him.
He overtook her in a few quick strides, and laid an entreating hand on her arm.
"Miss Lily--don't hurry away like that.
You're beastly *** a fellow; but if you don't mind speaking the truth I don't see
why you shouldn't allow me to do the same."
She had paused a moment with raised brows, drawing away instinctively from his touch,
though she made no effort to evade his words.
"I was under the impression," she rejoined, "that you had done so without waiting for
my permission." "Well--why shouldn't you hear my reasons
for doing it, then?
We're neither of us such new hands that a little plain speaking is going to hurt us.
I'm all broken up on you: there's nothing new in that.
I'm more in love with you than I was this time last year; but I've got to face the
fact that the situation is changed." She continued to confront him with the same
air of ironic composure.
"You mean to say that I'm not as desirable a match as you thought me?"
"Yes; that's what I do mean," he answered resolutely.
"I won't go into what's happened.
I don't believe the stories about you--I don't WANT to believe them.
But they're there, and my not believing them ain't going to alter the situation."
She flushed to her temples, but the extremity of her need checked the retort on
her lip and she continued to face him composedly.
"If they are not true," she said, "doesn't THAT alter the situation?"
He met this with a steady gaze of his small stock-taking eyes, which made her feel
herself no more than some superfine human merchandise.
"I believe it does in novels; but I'm certain it don't in real life.
You know that as well as I do: if we're speaking the truth, let's speak the whole
truth.
Last year I was wild to marry you, and you wouldn't look at me: this year--well, you
appear to be willing. Now, what has changed in the interval?
Your situation, that's all.
Then you thought you could do better; now-- --"
"You think you can?" broke from her ironically.
"Why, yes, I do: in one way, that is."
He stood before her, his hands in his pockets, his chest sturdily expanded under
its vivid waistcoat.
"It's this way, you see: I've had a pretty steady grind of it these last years,
working up my social position. Think it's funny I should say that?
Why should I mind saying I want to get into society?
A man ain't ashamed to say he wants to own a racing stable or a picture gallery.
Well, a taste for society's just another kind of hobby.
Perhaps I want to get even with some of the people who cold-shouldered me last year--
put it that way if it sounds better.
Anyhow, I want to have the run of the best houses; and I'm getting it too, little by
little.
But I know the quickest way to *** yourself with the right people is to be
seen with the wrong ones; and that's the reason I want to avoid mistakes."
Miss Bart continued to stand before him in a silence that might have expressed either
mockery or a half-reluctant respect for his candour, and after a moment's pause he went
on: "There it is, you see.
I'm more in love with you than ever, but if I married you now I'd *** myself for good
and all, and everything I've worked for all these years would be wasted."
She received this with a look from which all tinge of resentment had faded.
After the tissue of social falsehoods in which she had so long moved it was
refreshing to step into the open daylight of an avowed expediency.
"I understand you," she said.
"A year ago I should have been of use to you, and now I should be an encumbrance;
and I like you for telling me so quite honestly."
She extended her hand with a smile.
Again the gesture had a disturbing effect upon Mr. Rosedale's self-command.
"By George, you're a dead game sport, you are!" he exclaimed; and as she began once
more to move away, he broke out suddenly-- "Miss Lily--stop.
You know I don't believe those stories--I believe they were all got up by a woman who
didn't hesitate to sacrifice you to her own convenience----"
Lily drew away with a movement of quick disdain: it was easier to endure his
insolence than his commiseration. "You are very kind; but I don't think we
need discuss the matter farther."
But Rosedale's natural imperviousness to hints made it easy for him to brush such
resistance aside.
"I don't want to discuss anything; I just want to put a plain case before you," he
persisted.
She paused in spite of herself, held by the note of a new purpose in his look and tone;
and he went on, keeping his eyes firmly upon her: "The wonder to me is that you've
waited so long to get square with that
woman, when you've had the power in your hands."
She continued silent under the rush of astonishment that his words produced, and
he moved a step closer to ask with low- toned directness: "Why don't you use those
letters of hers you bought last year?"
Lily stood speechless under the shock of the interrogation.
In the words preceding it she had conjectured, at most, an allusion to her
supposed influence over George Dorset; nor did the astonishing indelicacy of the
reference diminish the likelihood of Rosedale's resorting to it.
But now she saw how far short of the mark she had fallen; and the surprise of
learning that he had discovered the secret of the letters left her, for the moment,
unconscious of the special use to which he was in the act of putting his knowledge.
Her temporary loss of self-possession gave him time to press his point; and he went on
quickly, as though to secure completer control of the situation: "You see I know
where you stand--I know how completely she's in your power.
That sounds like stage-talk, don't it?--but there's a lot of truth in some of those old
gags; and I don't suppose you bought those letters simply because you're collecting
autographs."
She continued to look at him with a deepening bewilderment: her only clear
impression resolved itself into a scared sense of his power.
"You're wondering how I found out about 'em?" he went on, answering her look with a
note of conscious pride.
"Perhaps you've forgotten that I'm the owner of the Benedick-but never mind about
that now.
Getting on to things is a mighty useful accomplishment in business, and I've simply
extended it to my private affairs. For this IS partly my affair, you see--at
least, it depends on you to make it so.
Let's look the situation straight in the eye.
Mrs. Dorset, for reasons we needn't go into, did you a beastly bad turn last
spring.
Everybody knows what Mrs. Dorset is, and her best friends wouldn't believe her on
oath where their own interests were concerned; but as long as they're out of
the row it's much easier to follow her lead
than to set themselves against it, and you've simply been sacrificed to their
laziness and selfishness.
Isn't that a pretty fair statement of the case?--Well, some people say you've got the
neatest kind of an answer in your hands: that George Dorset would marry you
tomorrow, if you'd tell him all you know,
and give him the chance to show the lady the door.
I daresay he would; but you don't seem to care for that particular form of getting
even, and, taking a purely business view of the question, I think you're right.
In a deal like that, nobody comes out with perfectly clean hands, and the only way for
you to start fresh is to get Bertha Dorset to back you up, instead of trying to fight
her."
He paused long enough to draw breath, but not to give her time for the expression of
her gathering resistance; and as he pressed on, expounding and elucidating his idea
with the directness of the man who has no
doubts of his cause, she found the indignation gradually freezing on her lip,
found herself held fast in the grasp of his argument by the mere cold strength of its
presentation.
There was no time now to wonder how he had heard of her obtaining the letters: all her
world was dark outside the monstrous glare of his scheme for using them.
And it was not, after the first moment, the horror of the idea that held her spell-
bound, subdued to his will; it was rather its subtle affinity to her own inmost
cravings.
He would marry her tomorrow if she could regain Bertha Dorset's friendship; and to
induce the open resumption of that friendship, and the tacit retractation of
all that had caused its withdrawal, she had
only to put to the lady the latent menace contained in the packet so miraculously
delivered into her hands.
Lily saw in a flash the advantage of this course over that which poor Dorset had
pressed upon her.
The other plan depended for its success on the infliction of an open injury, while
this reduced the transaction to a private understanding, of which no third person
need have the remotest hint.
Put by Rosedale in terms of business-like give-and-take, this understanding took on
the harmless air of a mutual accommodation, like a transfer of property or a revision
of boundary lines.
It certainly simplified life to view it as a perpetual adjustment, a play of party
politics, in which every concession had its recognized equivalent: Lily's tired mind
was fascinated by this escape from
fluctuating ethical estimates into a region of concrete weights and measures.
Rosedale, as she listened, seemed to read in her silence not only a gradual
acquiescence in his plan, but a dangerously far-reaching perception of the chances it
offered; for as she continued to stand
before him without speaking, he broke out, with a quick return upon himself: "You see
how simple it is, don't you? Well, don't be carried away by the idea
that it's TOO simple.
It isn't exactly as if you'd started in with a clean bill of health.
Now we're talking let's call things by their right names, and clear the whole
business up.
You know well enough that Bertha Dorset couldn't have touched you if there hadn't
been--well--questions asked before--little points of interrogation, eh?
Bound to happen to a good-looking girl with stingy relatives, I suppose; anyhow, they
DID happen, and she found the ground prepared for her.
Do you see where I'm coming out?
You don't want these little questions cropping up again.
It's one thing to get Bertha Dorset into line--but what you want is to keep her
there.
You can frighten her fast enough--but how are you going to keep her frightened?
By showing her that you're as powerful as she is.
All the letters in the world won't do that for you as you are now; but with a big
backing behind you, you'll keep her just where you want her to be.
That's MY share in the business--that's what I'm offering you.
You can't put the thing through without me- -don't run away with any idea that you can.
In six months you'd be back again among your old worries, or worse ones; and here I
am, ready to lift you out of 'em tomorrow if you say so.
DO you say so, Miss Lily?" he added, moving suddenly nearer.
The words, and the movement which accompanied them, combined to startle Lily
out of the state of tranced subservience into which she had insensibly slipped.
Light comes in devious ways to the groping consciousness, and it came to her now
through the disgusted perception that her would-be accomplice assumed, as a matter of
course, the likelihood of her distrusting
him and perhaps trying to cheat him of his share of the spoils.
This glimpse of his inner mind seemed to present the whole transaction in a new
aspect, and she saw that the essential baseness of the act lay in its freedom from
risk.
She drew back with a quick gesture of rejection, saying, in a voice that was a
surprise to her own ears: "You are mistaken--quite mistaken--both in the facts
and in what you infer from them."
Rosedale stared a moment, puzzled by her sudden dash in a direction so different
from that toward which she had appeared to be letting him guide her.
"Now what on earth does that mean?
I thought we understood each other!" he exclaimed; and to her murmur of "Ah, we do
NOW," he retorted with a sudden burst of violence: "I suppose it's because the
letters are to HIM, then?
Well, I'll be damned if I see what thanks you've got from him!"