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

the place afforded: distractions ranging from tennis-courts to shooting-galleries, from bridge and whiskey within doors to motors and steam-launches without. Lily had the odd sense of having been caught up into the crowd as carelessly as a passenger is gathered in by an express train. The blonde and genial Mrs. Gormer might, indeed, have figured the conductor, calmly assigning seats to the rush of travellers, while Carry Fisher represented the porter pushing their bags into place, giving them their numbers for the dining-car, and warning them when their station was at hand. The train, meanwhile, had scarcely slackened speed⁠—life whizzed on with a deafening’ rattle and roar, in which one traveller at least found a welcome refuge from the sound of her own thoughts.

The Gormer milieu represented a social outskirt which Lily had always fastidiously avoided; but it struck her, now that she was in it, as only a flamboyant copy of her own world, a caricature approximating the real thing as the “society play” approaches the manners of the drawing-room. The people about her were doing the same things as the Trenors, the Van Osburghs and the Dorsets: the difference lay in a hundred shades of aspect and manner, from the pattern of the men’s waistcoats to the inflection of the women’s voices. Everything was pitched in a higher key, and there was more of each thing: more noise, more colour, more champagne, more familiarity⁠—but also greater good-nature, less rivalry, and a fresher capacity for enjoyment.

Miss Bart’s arrival had been welcomed with an uncritical friendliness that first irritated her pride and then brought her to a sharp sense of her own situation⁠—of the place in life which, for the moment, she must accept and make the best of. These people knew her story⁠—of that her first long talk with Carry Fisher had left no doubt: she was publicly branded as the heroine of a “queer” episode⁠—but instead of shrinking from her as her own friends had done, they received her without question into the easy promiscuity of their lives. They swallowed her past as easily as they did Miss Anstell’s, and with no apparent sense of any difference in the size of the mouthful: all they asked was that she should⁠—in her own way, for they recognized a diversity of gifts⁠—contribute as much to the general amusement as that graceful actress, whose talents, when off the stage, were of the most varied order. Lily felt at once that any tendency to be “stuck-up,” to mark a sense of differences and distinctions, would be fatal to her continuance in the Gormer set. To be taken in on such terms⁠—and into such a world!⁠—was hard enough to the lingering pride in her; but she realized, with a pang of self-contempt, that to be excluded from it would, after all, be harder still. For, almost at once, she had felt the insidious charm of slipping back into a life where every material difficulty was smoothed away. The sudden escape from a stifling hotel in a dusty deserted city to the space and luxury of a great country-house fanned by sea breezes, had produced a state of moral lassitude agreeable enough after the nervous tension and physical discomfort of the past weeks. For the moment she must yield to the refreshment her senses craved⁠—after that she would reconsider her situation, and take counsel with her dignity. Her enjoyment of her surroundings was, indeed, tinged by the unpleasant consideration that she was accepting the hospitality and courting the approval of people she had disdained under other conditions. But she was growing less sensitive on such points: a hard glaze of indifference was fast forming over her delicacies and susceptibilities, and each concession to expediency hardened the surface a little more.

On the Monday, when the party disbanded with uproarious adieux, the return to town threw into stronger relief the charms of the life she was leaving. The other guests were dispersing to take up the same existence in a different setting: some at Newport, some at Bar Harbour, some in the elaborate rusticity of an Adirondack camp. Even Gerty Farish, who welcomed Lily’s return with tender solicitude, would soon be preparing to join the aunt with whom she spent her summers on Lake George: only Lily herself remained without plan or purpose, stranded in a backwater of the great current of pleasure. But Carry Fisher, who had insisted on transporting her to her own house, where she herself was to perch for a day or two on the way to the Brys’ camp, came to the rescue with a new suggestion.

“Look here, Lily⁠—I’ll tell you what it is: I want you to take my place with Mattie Gormer this summer. They’re taking a party out to Alaska next month in their private car, and Mattie, who is the laziest woman alive, wants me to go with them, and relieve her of the bother of arranging things; but the Brys want me too⁠—oh, yes, we’ve made it up: didn’t I tell you?⁠—and, to put it frankly, though I like the Gormers best, there’s more profit for me in the Brys. The fact is, they want to try Newport this summer, and if I can make it a success for them they⁠—well, they’ll make it a success for me.” Mrs. Fisher clasped her hands enthusiastically. “Do you know, Lily, the more I think of my idea the better I like it⁠—quite as much for you as for myself. The Gormers have both taken a tremendous fancy to you, and the trip to Alaska is⁠—well⁠—the very thing I should want for you just at present.”

Miss Bart lifted her eyes with a keen glance. “To take me out of my friends’ way, you mean?” she said quietly; and Mrs. Fisher responded with a deprecating kiss: “To keep you out of their sight till they realize how much they miss you.”

Miss Bart went with the Gormers to Alaska; and the expedition, if it did not produce the effect anticipated by her friend, had