The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (if you liked this book .TXT) 📕

at once repay the whole amount. The inability thus to solace her outraged feelings gave her a paralyzing sense of insignificance. She was realizing for the first time that a woman’s dignity may cost more to keep up than her carriage; and that the maintenance of a moral attribute should be dependent on dollars and cents, made the world appear a more sordid place than she had conceived it.

After luncheon, when Grace Stepney’s prying eyes had been removed, Lily asked for a word with her aunt. The two ladies went upstairs to the sitting-room, where Mrs. Peniston seated herself in her black satin armchair tufted with yellow buttons, beside a bead-work table bearing a bronze box with a miniature of Beatrice Cenci in the lid. Lily felt for these objects the same distaste which the prisoner may entertain for the fittings of the courtroom. It was here that her aunt received her rare confidences, and the pink-eyed smirk of the turbaned Beatrice was associated in her mind with the gradual fading of the smile from Mrs. Peniston’s lips. That lady’s dread of a scene gave her an inexorableness which the greatest strength of character could not have produced, since it was independent of all considerations of right or wrong; and knowing this, Lily seldom ventured to assail it. She had never felt less like making the attempt than on the present occasion; but she had sought in vain for any other means of escape from an intolerable situation.

Mrs. Peniston examined her critically. “You’re a bad colour, Lily: this incessant rushing about is beginning to tell on you,” she said.

Miss Bart saw an opening. “I don’t think it’s that, Aunt Julia; I’ve had worries,” she replied.

“Ah,” said Mrs. Peniston, shutting her lips with the snap of a purse closing against a beggar.

“I’m sorry to bother you with them,” Lily continued, “but I really believe my faintness last night was brought on partly by anxious thoughts⁠—”

“I should have said Carry Fisher’s cook was enough to account for it. She has a woman who was with Maria Melson in 1891⁠—the spring of the year we went to Aix⁠—and I remember dining there two days before we sailed, and feeling sure the coppers hadn’t been scoured.”

“I don’t think I ate much; I can’t eat or sleep.” Lily paused, and then said abruptly: “The fact is, Aunt Julia, I owe some money.”

Mrs. Peniston’s face clouded perceptibly, but did not express the astonishment her niece had expected. She was silent, and Lily was forced to continue: “I have been foolish⁠—”

“No doubt you have: extremely foolish,” Mrs. Peniston interposed. “I fail to see how anyone with your income, and no expenses⁠—not to mention the handsome presents I’ve always given you⁠—”

“Oh, you’ve been most generous, Aunt Julia; I shall never forget your kindness. But perhaps you don’t quite realize the expense a girl is put to nowadays⁠—”

“I don’t realize that you are put to any expense except for your clothes and your railway fares. I expect you to be handsomely dressed; but I paid Céleste’s bill for you last October.”

Lily hesitated: her aunt’s implacable memory had never been more inconvenient. “You were as kind as possible; but I have had to get a few things since⁠—”

“What kind of things? Clothes? How much have you spent? Let me see the bill⁠—I daresay the woman is swindling you.”

“Oh, no, I think not: clothes have grown so frightfully expensive; and one needs so many different kinds, with country visits, and golf and skating, and Aiken and Tuxedo⁠—”

“Let me see the bill,” Mrs. Peniston repeated.

Lily hesitated again. In the first place, Mme. Céleste had not yet sent in her account, and secondly, the amount it represented was only a fraction of the sum that Lily needed.

“She hasn’t sent in the bill for my winter things, but I know it’s large; and there are one or two other things; I’ve been careless and imprudent⁠—I’m frightened to think of what I owe⁠—”

She raised the troubled loveliness of her face to Mrs. Peniston, vainly hoping that a sight so moving to the other sex might not be without effect upon her own. But the effect produced was that of making Mrs. Peniston shrink back apprehensively.

“Really, Lily, you are old enough to manage your own affairs, and after frightening me to death by your performance of last night you might at least choose a better time to worry me with such matters.” Mrs. Peniston glanced at the clock, and swallowed a tablet of digitalis. “If you owe Céleste another thousand, she may send me her account,” she added, as though to end the discussion at any cost.

“I am very sorry, Aunt Julia; I hate to trouble you at such a time; but I have really no choice⁠—I ought to have spoken sooner⁠—I owe a great deal more than a thousand dollars.”

“A great deal more? Do you owe two? She must have robbed you!”

“I told you it was not only Céleste. I⁠—there are other bills⁠—more pressing⁠—that must be settled.”

“What on earth have you been buying? Jewelry? You must have gone off your head,” said Mrs. Peniston with asperity. “But if you have run into debt, you must suffer the consequences, and put aside your monthly income till your bills are paid. If you stay quietly here until next spring, instead of racing about all over the country, you will have no expenses at all, and surely in four or five months you can settle the rest of your bills if I pay the dressmaker now.”

Lily was again silent. She knew she could not hope to extract even a thousand dollars from Mrs. Peniston on the mere plea of paying Céleste’s bill: Mrs. Peniston would expect to go over the dressmaker’s account, and would make out the cheque to her and not to Lily. And yet the money must be obtained before the day was over!

“The debts I speak of are⁠—different⁠—not like tradesmen’s bills,” she began confusedly; but Mrs. Peniston’s look made her almost afraid to continue. Could it be that her aunt suspected anything? The idea precipitated Lily’s avowal.

“The fact is, I’ve