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

he began again: “Miss Bart, listen⁠—give me a minute. If we’re not to meet again, at least let me have a hearing now. You say we can’t be friends after⁠—after what has happened. But can’t I at least appeal to your pity? Can’t I move you if I ask you to think of me as a prisoner⁠—a prisoner you alone can set free?”

Lily’s inward start betrayed itself in a quick blush: was it possible that this was really the sense of Carry Fisher’s adumbrations?

“I can’t see how I can possibly be of any help to you,” she murmured, drawing back a little from the mounting excitement of his look.

Her tone seemed to sober him, as it had so often done in his stormiest moments. The stubborn lines of his face relaxed, and he said, with an abrupt drop to docility: “You would see, if you’d be as merciful as you used to be: and heaven knows I’ve never needed it more!”

She paused a moment, moved in spite of herself by this reminder of her influence over him. Her fibres had been softened by suffering, and the sudden glimpse into his mocked and broken life disarmed her contempt for his weakness.

“I am very sorry for you⁠—I would help you willingly; but you must have other friends, other advisers.”

“I never had a friend like you,” he answered simply. “And besides⁠—can’t you see?⁠—you’re the only person”⁠—his voice dropped to a whisper⁠—“the only person who knows.”

Again she felt her colour change; again her heart rose in precipitate throbs to meet what she felt was coming.

He lifted his eyes to her entreatingly. “You do see, don’t you? You understand? I’m desperate⁠—I’m at the end of my tether. I want to be free, and you can free me. I know you can. You don’t want to keep me bound fast in hell, do you? You can’t want to take such a vengeance as that. You were always kind⁠—your eyes are kind now. You say you’re sorry for me. Well, it rests with you to show it; and heaven knows there’s nothing to keep you back. You understand, of course⁠—there wouldn’t be a hint of publicity⁠—not a sound or a syllable to connect you with the thing. It would never come to that, you know: all I need is to be able to say definitely: ‘I know this⁠—and this⁠—and this’⁠—and the fight would drop, and the way be cleared, and the whole abominable business swept out of sight in a second.”

He spoke pantingly, like a tired runner, with breaks of exhaustion between his words; and through the breaks she caught, as through the shifting rents of a fog, great golden vistas of peace and safety. For there was no mistaking the definite intention behind his vague appeal; she could have filled up the blanks without the help of Mrs. Fisher’s insinuations. Here was a man who turned to her in the extremity of his loneliness and his humiliation: if she came to him at such a moment he would be hers with all the force of his deluded faith. And the power to make him so lay in her hand⁠—lay there in a completeness he could not even remotely conjecture. Revenge and rehabilitation might be hers at a stroke⁠—there was something dazzling in the completeness of the opportunity.

She stood silent, gazing away from him down the autumnal stretch of the deserted lane. And suddenly fear possessed her⁠—fear of herself, and of the terrible force of the temptation. All her past weaknesses were like so many eager accomplices drawing her toward the path their feet had already smoothed. She turned quickly, and held out her hand to Dorset.

“Goodbye⁠—I’m sorry; there’s nothing in the world that I can do.”

“Nothing? Ah, don’t say that,” he cried; “say what’s true: that you abandon me like the others. You, the only creature who could have saved me!”

“Goodbye⁠—goodbye,” she repeated hurriedly; and as she moved away she heard him cry out on a last note of entreaty: “At least you’ll let me see you once more?”

Lily, on regaining the Gormer grounds, struck rapidly across the lawn toward the unfinished house, where she fancied that her hostess might be speculating, not too resignedly, on the cause of her delay; for, like many unpunctual persons, Mrs. Gormer disliked to be kept waiting.

As Miss Bart reached the avenue, however, she saw a smart phaeton with a high-stepping pair disappear behind the shrubbery in the direction of the gate; and on the doorstep stood Mrs. Gormer, with a glow of retrospective pleasure on her open countenance. At sight of Lily the glow deepened to an embarrassed red, and she said with a slight laugh: “Did you see my visitor? Oh, I thought you came back by the avenue. It was Mrs. George Dorset⁠—she said she’d dropped in to make a neighbourly call.”

Lily met the announcement with her usual composure, though her experience of Bertha’s idiosyncrasies would not have led her to include the neighbourly instinct among them; and Mrs. Gormer, relieved to see that she gave no sign of surprise, went on with a deprecating laugh: “Of course what really brought her was curiosity⁠—she made me take her all over the house. But no one could have been nicer⁠—no airs, you know, and so good-natured: I can quite see why people think her so fascinating.”

This surprising event, coinciding too completely with her meeting with Dorset to be regarded as contingent upon it, had yet immediately struck Lily with a vague sense of foreboding. It was not in Bertha’s habits to be neighbourly, much less to make advances to anyone outside the immediate circle of her affinities. She had always consistently ignored the world of outer aspirants, or had recognized its individual members only when prompted by motives of self-interest; and the very capriciousness of her condescensions had, as Lily was aware, given them special value in the eyes of the persons she distinguished. Lily saw this now in Mrs. Gormer’s unconcealable complacency, and in the happy irrelevance with which, for the next day