“If you hadn’t told me you were going in for him seriously–but I’m sure you made that plain enough from the beginning! Why else did you ask me to let you off bridge, and to keep away Carry and Kate Corby? I don’t suppose you did it because he amused you; we could none of us imagine your putting up with him for a moment unless you meant to marry him. And I’m sure everybody played fair! They all wanted to help it along. Even Bertha kept her hands off–I will say that–till Lawrence came down and you dragged him away from her. After that she had a right to retaliate–why on earth did you interfere with her? You’ve known Lawrence Selden for years–why did you behave as if you had just discovered him? If you had a grudge against Bertha it was a stupid time to show it–you could have paid her back just as well after you were married! I told you Bertha was dangerous. She was in an odious mood when she came here, but Lawrence’s turning up put her in a good humour, and if you’d only let her think he came for HER it would have never occurred to her to play you this trick. Oh, Lily, you’ll never do anything if you’re not serious!”
Miss Bart accepted this exhortation in a spirit of the purest impartiality. Why should she have been angry? It was the voice of her own conscience which spoke to her through Mrs. Trenor’s reproachful accents. But even to her own conscience she must trump up a semblance of defence. “I only took a day off–I thought he meant to stay on all this week, and I knew Mr. Selden was leaving this morning.”
Mrs. Trenor brushed aside the plea with a gesture which laid bare its weakness.
“He did mean to stay–that’s the worst of it. It shows that he’s run away from you; that Bertha’s done her work and poisoned him thoroughly.”
Lily gave a slight laugh. “Oh, if he’s running I’ll overtake him!”
Her friend threw out an arresting hand. “Whatever you do, Lily, do nothing!”
Miss Bart received the warning with a smile. “I don’t mean, literally, to take the next train. There are ways–-” But she did not go on to specify them.
Mrs. Trenor sharply corrected the tense. “There were ways–plenty of them! I didn’t suppose you needed to have them pointed out. But don’t deceive yourself–he’s thoroughly frightened. He has run straight home to his mother, and she’ll protect him!”
“Oh, to the death,” Lily agreed, dimpling at the vision.
“How you can laugh–-” her friend rebuked her; and she dropped back to a soberer perception of things with the question: “What was it Bertha really told him?”
“Don’t ask me–horrors! She seemed to have raked up everything. Oh, you know what I mean–of course there isn’t anything, really; but I suppose she brought in Prince Varigliano–and Lord Hubert–and there was some story of your having borrowed money of old Ned Van Alstyne: did you ever?”
“He is my father’s cousin,” Miss Bart interposed.
“Well, of course she left that out. It seems Ned told Carry Fisher; and she told Bertha, naturally. They’re all alike, you know: they hold their tongues for years, and you think you’re safe, but when their opportunity comes they remember everything.”
Lily had grown pale: her voice had a harsh note in it. “It was some money I lost at bridge at the Van Osburghs’. I repaid it, of course.”
“Ah, well, they wouldn’t remember that; besides, it was the idea of the gambling debt that frightened Percy. Oh, Bertha knew her man–she knew just what to tell him!”
In this strain Mrs. Trenor continued for nearly an hour to admonish her friend. Miss Bart listened with admirable equanimity. Her naturally good temper had been disciplined by years of enforced compliance, since she had almost always had to attain her ends by the circuitous path of other people’s; and, being naturally inclined to face unpleasant facts as soon as they presented themselves, she was not sorry to hear an impartial statement of what her folly was likely to cost, the more so as her own thoughts were still insisting on the other side of the case. Presented in the light of Mrs. Trenor’s vigorous comments, the reckoning was certainly a formidable one, and Lily, as she listened, found herself gradually reverting to her friend’s view of the situation. Mrs. Trenor’s words were moreover emphasized for her hearer by anxieties which she herself could scarcely guess. Affluence, unless stimulated by a keen imagination, forms but the vaguest notion of the practical strain of poverty. Judy knew it must be “horrid” for poor Lily to have to stop to consider whether she could afford real lace on her petticoats, and not to have a motor-car and a steam-yacht at her orders; but the daily friction of unpaid bills, the daily nibble of small temptations to expenditure, were trials as far out of her experience as the domestic problems of the char-woman. Mrs. Trenor’s unconsciousness of the real stress of the situation had the effect of making it more galling to Lily. While her friend reproached her for missing the opportunity to eclipse her rivals, she was once more battling in imagination with the mounting tide of indebtedness from which she had so nearly escaped. What wind of folly had driven her out again on those dark seas?