House of Mirth (Barnes & Noble Classics - Edith Wharton [18]
Her colour deepened—she still had the art of blushing at the right time—but she took the suggestion as lightly as it was made.
“Why not? It’s too tempting—I’ll take the risk,” she declared.
“Oh, I’m not dangerous,” he said in the same key. In truth, he had never liked her as well as at that moment. He knew she had accepted without afterthought: he could never be a factor in her calculations,and there was a surprise, a refreshment almost, in the spontaneity of her consent.
On the threshold he paused a moment, feeling for his latch-key.
“There’s no one here; but I have a servant who is supposed to come in the mornings, and it’s just possible he may have put out the tea-things and provided some cake.”
He ushered her into a slip of a hall hung with old prints. She noticed the letters and notes heaped on the table among his gloves and sticks; then she found herself in a small library, dark but cheerful, with its walls of books, a pleasantly faded Turkey rug, a littered desk, and, as he had foretold, a tea-tray on a low table near the window. A breeze had sprung up, swaying inward the muslin curtains, and bringing a fresh scent of mignonettef and petunias from the flower-box on the balcony.
Lily sank with a sigh into one of the shabby leather chairs.
“How delicious to have a place like this all to one’s self! What a miserable thing it is to be a woman.” She leaned back in a luxury of discontent.
Selden was rummaging in a cupboard for the cake.
“Even women,” he said, “have been known to enjoy the privileges of a flat.”
“Oh, governesses—or widows. But not girls—not poor, miserable, marriageable girls!”
“I even know a girl who lives in a flat.”
She sat up in surprise. “You do?”
“I do,” he assured her emerging from the cupboard with the sought-for cake.
“Oh, I know—you mean Gerty Farish.” She smiled a little unkindly. “But I said marriageable—and besides, she has a horrid little place, and no maid, and such queer things to eat. Her cook does the washing and the food tastes of soap. I should hate that, you know.”
“You shouldn’t dine with her on wash-days,” said Selden, cutting the cake.
They both laughed, and he knelt by the table to light the lamp under the kettle, while she measured out the tea into a little tea-pot
of green glaze. As he watched her hand, polished as a bit of old ivory, with its slender pink nails, and the sapphire bracelet slipping over her wrist, he was struck with the irony of suggesting to her such a life as his cousin Gertrude Farish had chosen. She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.
She seemed to read his thought. “It was horrid of me to say that of Gerty,” she said with charming compunction. “I forgot she was your cousin. But we’re so different, you know: she likes being good, and I like being happy. And besides, she is free and I am not. If I were, I daresay I could manage to be happy even in her flat. It must be pure bliss to arrange the furniture just as one likes, and give all the horrors to the ash-man. If I could only do over my aunt’s drawing-room I know I should be a better woman.”
“Is it so very bad?” he asked sympathetically.
She smiled at him across the tea-pot which she was holding up to be filled.
“That shows how seldom you come there. Why don’t you come oftener?”
“When I do come, it’s not to look at Mrs. Peniston’s furniture.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “You don’t come at all—and yet we get on so well when we meet.”
“Perhaps that’s the reason,” he answered promptly. “I’m afraid I haven’t any cream, you know—shall you mind a slice of lemon instead?”
“I shall like it better.” She waited while he cut the lemon and dropped a thin disk into her cup. “But that is not the reason,” she insisted.
“The reason for what?”
“For your never coming.” She leaned forward with a shade of perplexity in her charming eyes. “I wish I knew—I wish I could make you out. Of course I know there are men who don’t like me—one can tell that at a glance. And there are others who are afraid of me: they think I want to marry them.