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

“You in trouble? I’ve always thought of you as being so high up, where everything was just grand. Sometimes, when I felt real mean, and got to wondering why things were so queerly fixed in the world, I used to remember that you were having a lovely time, anyhow, and that seemed to show there was a kind of justice somewhere. But you mustn’t sit here too long⁠—it’s fearfully damp. Don’t you feel strong enough to walk on a little ways now?” she broke off.

“Yes⁠—yes; I must go home,” Lily murmured, rising.

Her eyes rested wonderingly on the thin shabby figure at her side. She had known Nettie Crane as one of the discouraged victims of overwork and anaemic parentage: one of the superfluous fragments of life destined to be swept prematurely into that social refuse-heap of which Lily had so lately expressed her dread. But Nettie Struther’s frail envelope was now alive with hope and energy: whatever fate the future reserved for her, she would not be cast into the refuse-heap without a struggle.

“I am very glad to have seen you,” Lily continued, summoning a smile to her unsteady lips. “It’ll be my turn to think of you as happy⁠—and the world will seem a less unjust place to me too.”

“Oh, but I can’t leave you like this⁠—you’re not fit to go home alone. And I can’t go with you either!” Nettie Struther wailed with a start of recollection. “You see, it’s my husband’s night-shift⁠—he’s a motorman⁠—and the friend I leave the baby with has to step upstairs to get her husband’s supper at seven. I didn’t tell you I had a baby, did I? She’ll be four months old day after tomorrow, and to look at her you wouldn’t think I’d ever had a sick day. I’d give anything to show you the baby, Miss Bart, and we live right down the street here⁠—it’s only three blocks off.” She lifted her eyes tentatively to Lily’s face, and then added with a burst of courage: “Why won’t you get right into the cars and come home with me while I get baby’s supper? It’s real warm in our kitchen, and you can rest there, and I’ll take you home as soon as ever she drops off to sleep.”

It was warm in the kitchen, which, when Nettie Struther’s match had made a flame leap from the gas-jet above the table, revealed itself to Lily as extraordinarily small and almost miraculously clean. A fire shone through the polished flanks of the iron stove, and near it stood a crib in which a baby was sitting upright, with incipient anxiety struggling for expression on a countenance still placid with sleep.

Having passionately celebrated her reunion with her offspring, and excused herself in cryptic language for the lateness of her return, Nettie restored the baby to the crib and shyly invited Miss Bart to the rocking-chair near the stove.

“We’ve got a parlour too,” she explained with pardonable pride; “but I guess it’s warmer in here, and I don’t want to leave you alone while I’m getting baby’s supper.”

On receiving Lily’s assurance that she much preferred the friendly proximity of the kitchen fire, Mrs. Struther proceeded to prepare a bottle of infantile food, which she tenderly applied to the baby’s impatient lips; and while the ensuing degustation went on, she seated herself with a beaming countenance beside her visitor.

“You’re sure you won’t let me warm up a drop of coffee for you, Miss Bart? There’s some of baby’s fresh milk left over⁠—well, maybe you’d rather just sit quiet and rest a little while. It’s too lovely having you here. I’ve thought of it so often that I can’t believe it’s really come true. I’ve said to George again and again: ‘I just wish Miss Bart could see me now⁠—’ and I used to watch for your name in the papers, and we’d talk over what you were doing, and read the descriptions of the dresses you wore. I haven’t seen your name for a long time, though, and I began to be afraid you were sick, and it worried me so that George said I’d get sick myself, fretting about it.” Her lips broke into a reminiscent smile. “Well, I can’t afford to be sick again, that’s a fact: the last spell nearly finished me. When you sent me off that time I never thought I’d come back alive, and I didn’t much care if I did. You see I didn’t know about George and the baby then.”

She paused to readjust the bottle to the child’s bubbling mouth.

“You precious⁠—don’t you be in too much of a hurry! Was it mad with mommer for getting its supper so late? Marry Anto’nette⁠—that’s what we call her: after the French queen in that play at the Garden⁠—I told George the actress reminded me of you, and that made me fancy the name⁠ ⁠… I never thought I’d get married, you know, and I’d never have had the heart to go on working just for myself.”

She broke off again, and meeting the encouragement in Lily’s eyes, went on, with a flush rising under her anaemic skin: “You see I wasn’t only just sick that time you sent me off⁠—I was dreadfully unhappy too. I’d known a gentleman where I was employed⁠—I don’t know as you remember I did typewriting in a big importing firm⁠—and⁠—well⁠—I thought we were to be married: he’d gone steady with me six months and given me his mother’s wedding ring. But I presume he was too stylish for me⁠—he travelled for the firm, and had seen a great deal of society. Work girls aren’t looked after the way you are, and they don’t always know how to look after themselves. I didn’t⁠ ⁠… and it pretty near killed me when he went away and left off writing⁠ ⁠… It was then I came down sick⁠—I thought it was the end of everything. I guess it would have been if you hadn’t sent me off. But when I found I