The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton (phonics reader .txt) 📗

considerable negotiation, for Mme. Regina had a strong prejudice against untrained assistance, and was induced to yield only by the fact that she owed the patronage of Mrs. Bry and Mrs. Gormer to Carry Fisher’s influence. She had been willing from the first to employ Lily in the showroom: as a displayer of hats, a fashionable beauty might be a valuable asset. But to this suggestion Miss Bart opposed a negative which Gerty emphatically supported, while Mrs. Fisher, inwardly unconvinced, but resigned to this latest proof of Lily’s unreason, agreed that perhaps in the end it would be more useful that she should learn the trade. To Regina’s workroom Lily was therefore committed by her friends, and there Mrs. Fisher left her with a sigh of relief, while Gerty’s watchfulness continued to hover over her at a distance.

Lily had taken up her work early in January: it was now two months later, and she was still being rebuked for her inability to sew spangles on a hat-frame. As she returned to her work she heard a titter pass down the tables. She knew she was an object of criticism and amusement to the other work-women. They were, of course, aware of her history⁠—the exact situation of every girl in the room was known and freely discussed by all the others⁠—but the knowledge did not produce in them any awkward sense of class distinction: it merely explained why her untutored fingers were still blundering over the rudiments of the trade. Lily had no desire that they should recognize any social difference in her; but she had hoped to be received as their equal, and perhaps before long to show herself their superior by a special deftness of touch, and it was humiliating to find that, after two months of drudgery, she still betrayed her lack of early training. Remote was the day when she might aspire to exercise the talents she felt confident of possessing; only experienced workers were entrusted with the delicate art of shaping and trimming the hat, and the forewoman still held her inexorably to the routine of preparatory work.

She began to rip the spangles from the frame, listening absently to the buzz of talk which rose and fell with the coming and going of Miss Haines’s active figure. The air was closer than usual, because Miss Haines, who had a cold, had not allowed a window to be opened even during the noon recess; and Lily’s head was so heavy with the weight of a sleepless night that the chatter of her companions had the incoherence of a dream.

“I told her he’d never look at her again; and he didn’t. I wouldn’t have, either⁠—I think she acted real mean to him. He took her to the Arion Ball, and had a hack for her both ways.⁠ ⁠… She’s taken ten bottles, and her headaches don’t seem no better⁠—but she’s written a testimonial to say the first bottle cured her, and she got five dollars and her picture in the paper.⁠ ⁠… Mrs. Trenor’s hat? The one with the green Paradise? Here, Miss Haines⁠—it’ll be ready right off.⁠ ⁠… That was one of the Trenor girls here yesterday with Mrs. George Dorset. How’d I know? Why, Madam sent for me to alter the flower in that Virot hat⁠—the blue tulle: she’s tall and slight, with her hair fuzzed out⁠—a good deal like Mamie Leach, on’y thinner.⁠ ⁠…”

On and on it flowed, a current of meaningless sound, on which, startlingly enough, a familiar name now and then floated to the surface. It was the strangest part of Lily’s strange experience, the hearing of these names, the seeing the fragmentary and distorted image of the world she had lived in reflected in the mirror of the working-girls’ minds. She had never before suspected the mixture of insatiable curiosity and contemptuous freedom with which she and her kind were discussed in this underworld of toilers who lived on their vanity and self-indulgence. Every girl in Mme. Regina’s workroom knew to whom the headgear in her hands was destined, and had her opinion of its future wearer, and a definite knowledge of the latter’s place in the social system. That Lily was a star fallen from that sky did not, after the first stir of curiosity had subsided, materially add to their interest in her. She had fallen, she had “gone under,” and true to the ideal of their race, they were awed only by success⁠—by the gross tangible image of material achievement. The consciousness of her different point of view merely kept them at a little distance from her, as though she were a foreigner with whom it was an effort to talk.

“Miss Bart, if you can’t sew those spangles on more regular I guess you’d better give the hat to Miss Kilroy.”

Lily looked down ruefully at her handiwork. The forewoman was right: the sewing on of the spangles was inexcusably bad. What made her so much more clumsy than usual? Was it a growing distaste for her task, or actual physical disability? She felt tired and confused: it was an effort to put her thoughts together. She rose and handed the hat to Miss Kilroy, who took it with a suppressed smile.

“I’m sorry; I’m afraid I am not well,” she said to the forewoman.

Miss Haines offered no comment. From the first she had augured ill of Mme. Regina’s consenting to include a fashionable apprentice among her workers. In that temple of art no raw beginners were wanted, and Miss Haines would have been more than human had she not taken a certain pleasure in seeing her forebodings confirmed.

“You’d better go back to binding edges,” she said drily.

Lily slipped out last among the band of liberated work-women. She did not care to be mingled in their noisy dispersal: once in the street, she always felt an irresistible return to her old standpoint, an instinctive shrinking from all that was unpolished and promiscuous. In the days⁠—how distant they now seemed!⁠—when she had visited the Girls’ Club with Gerty Farish, she had felt an enlightened interest