House of Mirth (Barnes & Noble Classics - Edith Wharton [153]
Lily, since her return to town, had not often climbed Miss Farish’s stairs. There was something irritating to her in the mute interrogation of Gerty’s sympathy: she felt the real difficulties of her situation to be incommunicable to any one whose theory of values was so different from her own, and the restrictions of Gerty’s life, which had once had the charm of contrast, now reminded her too painfully of the limits to which her own existence was shrinking. When at length, one afternoon, she put into execution the belated resolve to visit her friend, this sense of shrunken opportunities possessed her with unusual intensity. The walk up Fifth Avenue, unfolding before her, in the brilliance of the hard winter sunlight, an interminable procession of fastidiously-equipped carriages—giving her, through the little squares of broughamscy-windows, peeps of familiar profiles bent above visiting-lists, of hurried hands dispensing notes and cards to attendant footmen—this glimpse of the ever-revolving wheels of the great social machine made Lily more than ever conscious of the steepness and narrowness of Gerty’s stairs, and of the cramped blind-alley of life to which they led. Dull stairs destined to be mounted by dull people: how many thousands of insignificant figures were going up and down such stairs all over the world at that very moment-figures as shabby and uninteresting as that of the middle-aged lady in limp black who descended Gerty’s flight as Lily climbed to it!
“That was poor Miss Jane Silverton—she came to talk things over with me: she and her sister want to do something to support themselves,” Gerty explained, as Lily followed her into the sitting-room.
“To support themselves? Are they so hard up?” Miss Bart asked with a touch of irritation: she had not come to listen to the woes of other people.
“I’m afraid they have nothing left: Ned’s debts have swallowed up everything. They had such hopes, you know, when he broke away from Carry Fisher; they thought Bertha Dorset would be such a good influence, because she doesn’t care for cards, and—well, she talked quite beautifully to poor Miss Jane about feeling as if Ned were her younger brother, and wanting to carry him off on the yacht, so that he might have a chance to drop cards and racing, and take up his literary work again.”
Miss Farish paused with a sigh which reflected the perplexity of her departing visitor. “But that isn’t all; it isn’t even the worst. It seems that Ned has quarrelled with the Dorsets; or at least Bertha won’t allow him to see her, and he is so unhappy about it that he has taken to gambling again, and going about with all sorts of queer people. And cousin Grace Van Osburgh accuses him of having had a very bad influence on Bertie, who left Harvard last spring, and has been a great deal with Ned ever since. She sent for Miss Jane, and made a dreadful scene; and Jack Stepney and Herbert Melson, who were there too, told Miss Jane that Bertie was threatening to marry some dreadful woman to whom Ned had introduced him, and that they could do nothing with him because now he’s of age he has his own money. You can fancy how poor Miss Jane felt—she came to me at once, and seemed to think that if I could get her something to do she could earn enough to pay Ned’s debts and send him away—I’m afraid she has no idea how long it would take her to pay for one of his evenings at bridge. And he was horribly in debt when he came back from the cruise—I can’t see why he should have spent so much more money under Bertha’s influence than Carry’s: can you?”
Lily met this query with an impatient gesture. “My dear Gerty, I always understand how people can spend much more money—never how they can spend any less!”
She loosened her furs and settled herself in Gerty’s easy-chair, while her friend busied herself with the tea-cups.
“But what can they do—the Miss Silvertons? How do they mean to support themselves?” she asked, conscious that the note of irritation still persisted in her voice. It was the very last topic she had meant to discuss—it really did not interest her in the least