Part 19

Twenty-five a week was not enough. Lilah left the room near Astor Place and moved to Tenth Street. An old house, the house of a merchant of the ’Eighties, had resisted the tide of factories and sweatshops. It stood, peeling, cracked and damp, between two towering buildings occupied by fur manufacturers and printers. A smell of hides dominated, indoors and out of doors. Packing cases littered the sidewalks and trucks stood wheel to wheel for blocks. Spring, a hint of sunlight, brought out an army of workers. Before the aquiline façade of the old house a polyglot crowd lock-stepped, making wide gestures and speaking the dim languages of southeastern Europe. At night, the street was deserted.

Lilah’s room, three flights up, faced a courtyard which must have been, in the old days, a formal garden. Now, in a litter of boxes, cans and barrels, a lilac tree fought to live. Lilah recalled the cypresses of Vincigliata.

She had lost the last vestiges of her hard brightness, her security.

She lunched every day with the young girl who had warned her not to wear the Maurice dress, that conspicuous miracle of simplicity. And painstakingly, as if everything depended on it, Lilah acquired from this girl a new standard of judgment based on the unpalatable facts of life. She was surprised at her own flexibility. But something unalterable, fixed, in her nature demanded achievement, justification. There would be, must be, a way out....

Summer was stifling; the city seemed closed beneath a dome of steel, its reverberations intensified, the air was thick and hot.

In the store, a few limp and wilted shoppers wandered aimlessly about, but there was so little business that, it was rumored, some of the sales force would be dropped. Lilah knew the daily panic which comes of uncertainty. Her record was not good; she had never reached the average sales required to justify her presence in the shop, her salary, which was, after all, percentage on an investment. The other clerks were sharper; they had the tenacity of women born in poverty. Her instinctive mental attitudes, beyond their comprehension, made competition, playing the game on their terms, impossible.

She was not surprised when Miss Craig sent for her.

“I’m sorry. We’re letting fifty people go. There’s no business.”

“And I’m one of the fifty?”

“Yes.” Miss Craig looked away, as if Lilah’s expression hurt her. “It isn’t _me_, Mrs. Peabody. _I_ don’t decide these things. I’m told that fifty must go. I look through the averages--”

“Like the massacre at Dinard,” Lilah said. She felt cold and stiff and her fingers tingled.

“Don’t you know any one--” Miss Craig suggested.

Lilah shook her head. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll manage.”

“I’m _sure_ you will.” Miss Craig was evidently relieved. She said brightly: “Why not try the uptown shops? You don’t belong here. I’ll give you a letter to ‘Emilie.’ He’s Irish. He’ll like you.”

“You are very kind.”

* * * * *

Lilah knew, now, that there were two phases of life--life with illusion and life without it. To exist, to reconcile living with life, something must take the place of the lost beliefs. There must be faith in the abstract promise, the idea, withheld, mysterious and penetrating, of immortality.... She did what she always did, in moments of questioning. Facing herself in a mirror she thought: “Flagg would have told me this, only I wouldn’t have understood. I wasn’t ready.”

She was conscious, too, of an apathy that was new to her, an indifference, a shadow of the lassitude which comes with a surrender of personality. She shrugged the feeling away. She must live. She must take, while there was still time, the advantage offered by her youth, her charm. “Humbug! Humbug!” she said to her reflection.

She glanced at Miss Craig’s letter addressed to the firm of “Emilie.” “Dear Reilly: Mrs. Peabody is the rustle of silk in our cotton goods department. Have a heart. Edna.”

Lilah smiled. This letter was so sharp and bright and cold, so cocksure. It might mean everything or nothing. She wondered how any one--a woman--could scratch off a letter like that and give it to another woman who was desperate and friendless. “Have a heart!”

She found “Emilie” on Park Avenue. A small, ornate, Venetian house with grilled windows and a loggia beneath a tiled roof had been converted into an “establishment.” A man in livery opened the heavy door and scrutinized the letter. “Mr. Reilly’s busy. Come Wednesday at four o’clock.”

Lilah pushed her way in. “I’ll wait. I’ve got to see him. Tell him the letter is from Miss Craig. He’ll see me.”

The man hesitated, turning the letter over and over between cotton-gloved fingers. “I’m sorry, but Mr. Reilly gave particular orders--”

Lilah glanced beyond him. A thin, spry man in a cutaway coat was running down a flight of carpeted stairs, yards of purple chiffon hanging across his arm and trailing behind him like the robes of a Pharaoh. Lilah’s heart contracted. She was amazed to hear herself saying: “Oh, Mr. Reilly!” in a loud, confident voice. Inwardly she quaked. She had never done such a thing. She had no idea whether or not this was the dressmaker.

He bounded toward her, gathering up the chiffon, all the time staring at her as if he intended to take a bite out of her. He looked like a very angry fox-terrier.

“Mr. Reilly--”

“Oh, God.”

He tripped over the chiffon and threw it on the ground. He snatched at the letter, read it, showed his teeth and almost growled. “Can’t you wait? I’m busy. No. Come upstairs. I’ll let you help. Bring this stuff, Fred.”

While they mounted the stairs, Reilly running just ahead, his patent shoes and white gaiters twinkling, he carried on an irritable monologue. “Everyone’s sick. Mrs. Mason went to Lake George this morning. I’m short-handed. Twenty-five models came on the _Olympic_ yesterday and they’ve got to be photographed. If you can wear hats you can go over to the studio with Duncan and he’ll get the collection.”

“I’m not a model,” Lilah interrupted.

He turned sharply and surveyed her. She felt that he could see more than it was decent for any stranger to see--he could see her crouching within herself, afraid of hunger. “We’ll try.” He kicked open a door and she followed him into a room paneled from floor to ceiling with mirrors. She encountered herself, little, with scared eyes, profile, three-quarters, her back turned, face to face. She raised her hand and a dozen images of herself all raised their hands in a sort of salute.

The floor was littered with packing cases from which spilled tissue paper and hats. “We’ll try,” Reilly repeated. He swooped down, growled, came up with a bonnet. Lilah understood that she was to remove her own hat and assume this fashionable coal-scuttle, this modern, French adaptation of a mode seventy-five years old. “My dress is wrong,” she said. The challenge excited her. She felt, suddenly, re-animated, alive, after a period of stillness.

Reilly said: “Never mind. You have a charming head.”

She bent her head quickly and looked up at herself.

“Very good. Now, this one.” He swooped again. Lilah had never seen such a flexible human being; he seemed not to have any bones. “Don’t wear it too far forward. These hats need eyes.... Too violent for you. You’re pale....” He made a vague gesture. “Paisley. Amber. Blonde lace. Pink net and camelias.... _Ah!_” He emerged from a heap of tissue-paper with a small _cloche_. “Try this.”

A dozen Lilahs adjusted the expensive trifle of straw, a hat magnificently disdainful, unornamented, copyrighted by an astute and talented milliner.

“I’ll call Duncan.”

Reilly disappeared and Lilah was left alone with the manifold reflection of herself.

Well, it was over, now. She had known from the beginning that she could not escape--

Reilly returned with a stout, breathless man in an alpaca coat who wore a straw hat pushed back.

After a brief inspection, wholly impersonal, he said: “Too blonde. She’d photygraph like a white mouse.”

Reilly waved him out again. The sense, the implication of the photographer’s remark was clear. Lilah removed the _cloche_ and tossed it aside. She groped for her own hat. “Don’t go,” Reilly interrupted sharply. “Wait. You can take Katherine’s place--”

He beckoned to her.

The front of the house, from basement to loggia, was given over to salesrooms, luxurious, miniature shops designed to attract and hold devotees at the shrine of that elusive deity, the mode. Reilly was an astute priest. He had capitalized his serious interest in women; he was unaware of his own incongruity. Sharp, alert, inexhaustible, he worshipped women and exacted payment from them--he “burned incense and passed the plate” he told Lilah. Something effeminate in his gesture, the use of his hands, was contradicted by the shrewdness of his eyes.

He preceded Lilah into a room furnished in the Venetian manner, dimly lighted, opening upon the loggia. Through the delicate, turned columns, a prismatic confusion of vertical stone shafts picketed the smoky sky--the city. A girl rose from a bench, approached with the languid gait of the trained _mannequin_. “Duncan wants you. This is Mrs. Peabody. She’ll take your place.”

Reilly turned. “There’s no business at this time of year. But if any one should come in, sell! The hats are in these cases. Use your own judgment and get as much as you can for them. Nothing under thirty-five dollars. Poor models, more. Good models, less. That’s excellent psychology. A woman who pays fifty dollars for an ugly hat will wear it to spite the devil, and she’ll like it, in spite of herself. A woman who gets a beautiful hat for thirty-five dollars will advertise it--and us!”

He sat down, clasped his knees and asked abruptly: “Who are you? Not Mrs. Robert Peabody?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t tell any one! Call yourself Mrs. Isaac Peabody--anything! If you stay here, you are not likely to meet your friends. I cater to actresses, rich middle-westerners and fashionable demi-mondaines. They’ll like your looks and your manners. Women are always fascinated by the unattainable.”

“Thank you.”

“We’ll say thirty to start with. If you make good, I’ll give you this department, at seventy-five. Katherine is a beautiful bonehead....”

He leaped up. “I’ll send a stock-girl. For God’s sake don’t ask any questions. Use your common sense and sell hats.”

He stepped forward and with no softening of his expression, touched her hair. “That’s a good girl.”

* * * * *

Lilah discovered before long that Reilly was withholding the reward, the promise of that first day. Summer melted into the stifling heat of September and beneath a metallic, dark blue sky the city shimmered, quivered as if licked by the minute flames of an infernal fire. “My God, it’s hot,” the stately Katherine remarked. She stood by the open window, in silhouette, her attitude reminiscent of Francesca, the disdainful melancholy of Duse. “My God, it’s hot. Why don’t Reilly close on Saturday?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do. He might lose a dollar.”

Lilah had changed her opinion of Reilly; he paid very little attention to her; she had never again had to endure that brief, impersonal caress. He had called her, without preface of any sort: “Lilah.” And he had left her to her own devices.

She came to the conclusion that Reilly was either a fraud or an artist. The room in which he received his clients had only one window and three doors, one leading into the workroom, one into his bath and the other into the “Salotto d’Oro.” His desk bore, in addition to an alabaster lamp, stacked copies of _La Vie Parisienne_: a copy, in French of _Le Mariage de Loti_; a box made of lacquered leather heavily embossed; and a small colored bust in terra-cotta that at first glance might have been Florentine but was, actually, Egyptian. Behind him, in an angle of the wall, a secretary of inlaid wood towered almost to the ceiling. There were three Venetian chairs, ornate and faded. And hung together above a small cabinet, signed photographs of Ibanez, Poiret, Chaliapin and Nora Bayes.

Lilah found that Reilly was a man of violent enthusiasms. His interest in her had been immediate, sharp; he had, perhaps, been studying her. There was a certain zest in competing for his attention, since he had indicated in the beginning, a definite award. Lilah held aloof from the other women of the establishment, because Reilly had warned her that she could expect jealousy, and that she must avoid conflict if she expected to advance. Her ambition was trivial. But faith in herself, her potentiality, returned slowly. She was humble and, in her recollection of Flagg, disciplined. As the actuality of that experience receded, its meaning became more clear.

Katherine, stretching her long arms above her head, yawned. “I could stand the present if it wasn’t for the future,” she said. “Waiting’s hell when nothing happens.”

She caught herself as the mirror-paneled door of the elevator slid back and two women stepped into the room. “_B’ jour, mesdames_,” she murmured; her body undulated; she swam toward them.

Lilah’s expression of polite concern deepened into surprise, dismay. She recognized Grace Whiteside, fat, over-ornamented, placid in the secure possession of family and position, and, behind her, Miss Fuller, as always, in gray with a little pan-cake hat made of leaves.

Lilah held up her hand to ward off their recognition. Grace Whiteside came to a full stop; she seemed to spread, to puff out, like an angry turkey.

“Don’t,” Lilah said faintly. She turned and ran out of the room.

She waited, leaning against the closed door. She heard a murmur of voices, Katherine’s suave and insinuating: “Very _chic, madame_. Very new. Reboux. Just try this one, _madame_.”

Presently they were gone. The elevator came up; the door rattled; it descended again, making a hollow, reverberating sound in the wall.

Lilah wondered at her own fear; it was not a moral cowardice, of that she was certain; she was not ashamed. She had a different sense of responsibility toward herself and the opinion people had of her. She was unwilling to face Miss Whiteside and Grace Fuller because she had not, as far as they could see, progressed; the change that had taken place within her was beyond their comprehension. The new self had always been there, dormant; but it had been disclosed by Flagg’s death, by the questioning which had followed.

Katherine emerged from the “Salotto d’Oro” suddenly. Her expression was sly and gratified, as if she had caught Lilah in an indiscretion. She passed, without a word, going toward Reilly’s office, the black satin drapery of her skirt slipping over the carpet like a smooth serpent.

Lilah went back to the salesroom. Grace Whiteside had been trying on bonnets, Reilly’s rare confections of lace and spangles designed for grandmothers of the stage. It had been, apparently, a perfunctory inspection.

As Lilah put the hats back in their place, she pictured Miss Whiteside rushing to the nearest telegraph office to wire Junius Peabody.... Grace Fuller would probably try to prevent what, in the end, would mean her own happiness. But nothing could turn aside the fanatical thrusts of the outraged spinster; she would plant her vengeance sooner or later. Now, Lilah must let herself be divorced; an eventuality which would deprive her of her position with Reilly, since the inevitable scandal would affect her usefulness. Reilly was beginning to cast in social waters, and he was baiting his hook cautiously. He was shrewd but he was not sophisticated. His knowledge of society had been derived at second hand. Into his vocabulary the word “form” had appeared. He had subjugated the theatrical world and now, longing for other, more difficult attainment, he was angling for what he termed, in a whisper, “Newport and Bar Harbor....”

Lilah’s mind went off at a tangent; she caught herself wondering whether Grace Fuller had been chaperoning Robert’s aunt through another attack of gallstones, or whether--

Reilly came in, shutting the door with an irritable bang. “What’s this? What’s Katherine trying to put over?” Lilah did not answer and snatching the bonnet away from her, Reilly tossed it aside. “I hate tittle-tattle! She came down stairs, gloating, as if she had caught you picking the safe. What happened?”

With a sense of the futility of any explanation, Lilah said: “I lost my head and Katherine lost a sale....”

“Damn the sale!”

Reilly stood, wrapped in a sort of angry contemplation, his hands in his pockets, his small, gaitered feet spread. “You’d better let me go,” Lilah said. “It might happen again.” She added, with a curious smile: “I’m sorry, more so than I can say.”

He fixed his eyes on her face.

“I’ll let you know,” he answered sharply and left the room.

A week later, he sent for her.

“I’m going to put you in the workroom. I think you have the makings of a designer. Later, perhaps, I’ll send you to Paris, Vienna.... It won’t do to have you upstairs.”

He hesitated and then said sharply: “I’ve heard from your family.”

Lilah had not expected this. She leaned against the desk with a feeling of faintness.

“They’ve written me. One of them--a Mr. Junius Peabody--wants to see you.”

“I can’t! No.... For heaven’s sake, no! I don’t want to see him.”

Reilly considered her. “I thought I’d warn you. He’s downstairs. There’s his card.” He tossed it across the desk. “You’d better see him.” Reilly rose and came around to her; his hand fell on her shoulder. “You’re not a coward, are you?”

“No.”

“Then face things! If you don’t, they steal up behind you and knock you down. Always keep your eye on your fears.” His clasp tightened. “Do you know why I hired you? I was afraid of you! I’m not familiar with your sort. You made me ashamed of what I am.... Now, it seems, you are ashamed of what you are.... Either you’re stubborn or you’re guilty. I don’t pretend to understand. I’d like to put across to you--well, don’t make a mistake.”

Lilah smiled, made a gesture of surrender. “I’ll see him.”

“That’s a good girl.” Reilly paused on the threshold. “And listen. Don’t hold out against him because of any resentment ... don’t be a damn fool. There is more than one way of making good.”

A moment later, rigid, consciously and painfully correct, he bowed Junius Peabody into the room and closed the door again, softly, as if he were closing it upon the sacred essence of good form.

Lilah faced Junius with a trace of confusion; her lips trembled; she smiled unsteadily, because he was so unfalteringly Junius in spite of everything. He carried his overcoat on his arm; his head, bared, was held erect, the white, thick hair brushed carefully back from the veined forehead. Immaculate, even exquisite, at eighty-seven he still gave the impression of vigorous and aristocratic possession. He said: “Lilah,” and, leaning forward, she kissed him, clung to him suddenly with a passionate eagerness to be understood. Forgiveness was not required, looked for, since she had had to do what she had done.

She felt his hand, patting, patting her back. “_There, there_,” he said.

She made an effort and controlled herself, remembering that at Junius’ age emotion is painful and perhaps ugly.

He sat down; disposed of his coat, his hat and the heavy, goldmounted cane, and glanced about him. “My first visit to a dressmaker’s since ’Eighty-six,” he said. “They’ve changed. No ribbons here!” He made a gesture of dislike. “That fellow--that popinjay--”

“Emilie,” Lilah said, wiping her eyes. A flash of her old self came through, evoked by Junius’ presence. But she could not, now, laugh at Reilly. He was her destiny. She was forced to admit that without Reilly she might be caught in the tide and carried out to sea.

“He’s really very clever.”

“A man dressmaker,” Junius stated dryly, “puts me on edge. I will never be reconciled--”

He broke off and scrutinized her. “Well, Lilah.”

With sudden violence she burst out: “I know! You can’t understand why I’ve hidden myself away. I had to. You and I are alike, but you’ve never had to remake yourself. You still look down on people you consider inferior, and I’ve had to learn to respect them. I’ve had to kill my old self--or starve.”

“I have always admired you inordinately,” he remarked.

“But you have never cared--how could you--whether I was being cowardly and selfish, so long as I was superior, like you, a snob. We’re both materialists, you, because you could afford to be and I because I wanted to be. I haven’t changed. I want finished, rare, superlative things as much as ever. But I hate myself because I am a materialist. And that’s as good as changing.”

“You’ve been unhappy.”

She turned away. And Junius continued: “You are coming back, of course?”

She shook her head.

With a trace of impatience, Junius Peabody demanded: “Why not? There isn’t any one else--another attachment--” Rebuked by her quick glance, he apologized: “I know. What you felt was genuine. But since it is over, done with--”

She interrupted: “I wonder if you can understand. What happened is as immaterial as a dream. I can’t repent. Atone. Do any of the expected things.... I’m not sorry or ashamed. I am not even, in the accepted sense, chastened. As you say, it is over. But I am different, deep down, out of sight, beyond my knowledge....”

She smiled at him. “It’s a mixed-up world. I know, now, that it isn’t nasty.... We, ourselves, are nasty.”

“Robert needs you.”

With a flash of scorn she demanded: “Did he expect you to tell me so?”

Junius shook his head. “Don’t misunderstand. Robert hasn’t any illusions. They are all gone. He is burned out, Lilah. But I like him better than I ever did when he was moon-struck. I think, at times, he hates you because you took away his belief in that moon of his. I could have told him that he was worshipping, not a moon but a glow-worm, because, as you say, we are very much alike, you and I.”

“We give a lovely light,” Lilah said.

The memory of an old appreciation warmed them both. The door of the workroom opened suddenly, and violently a head was thrust in. “Mr. Reilly, here’s that fitting--_Oh, excuse me!_” The door slammed again, shutting out the noisy clatter of machines, the snip-snip of scissors, the staccato treble of women’s voices.

Junius rose.

“We are living very quietly at the Point,” he said. “I came down on purpose to see you, talk to you. I won’t urge you. After all, what more can I say than that you are needed?”

Lilah cried desperately. “But I don’t love Robert, Junius.”

Junius Peabody faced her, a moment, in silence. She noticed that every detail of his dress was correct, meticulous; he displayed the interest of a young man in the outward semblance of superiority, of pride. Something unfamiliar in her nature caused her to recoil, almost to resent this deliberate conforming to prejudice.... Then, as suddenly, she admired him for this very tenacity, this unswerving adherence to an ideal of behavior, of appearance. He took her hand. “There is such a thing as being beyond personal happiness. I hoped that you had learned to do without it. There is no other serenity.... You’ll come back?”

“Perhaps.”

She covered her face with her hands.

She saw herself, not in the garden, not in the forest, but on the green before the kennels, where Robert’s spaniels romped and barked. She saw herself kneeling in the grass, fondling a wriggling puppy, stroking and kissing the soft fur. She heard herself saying: “Oh, Robert, aren’t they darlings!”

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Typos corrected: “saxaphone” to “saxophone” (page 114); “skiis” to “skis” (page 191); “Troisieme” to “Troisième” (page 272); “spinister” to “spinster” (page 315).

Extraneous/missing punctuation corrected on pages 30, 177, 191, 269, and 277.

Author’s spelling of “Nietzschan” (page 14) retained.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been left unchanged.