Part 2
She stifled a sudden depression. “I’ll do something. I can make hats!”
He looked up from the rarebit. “I bet you can! I’ll tell Aunt Whiteside and the James girls. I know mobs of women....”
He branched off into the eccentricities of his Aunt Whiteside’s hats. “Awful little bonnets with trees and crystal dew-dabs and strings--everything shakes and shivers--all of her hats have the palsy. But she pays like thunder for ’em. And the bills go to my grandfather. He always says: ‘The price of virtue’ when he writes the check. She’s sort of a mother superior in sequins. One day my grandfather said: ‘Robert, have you ever noticed Grace Whiteside’s legs?’ I’d never thought of such a thing! But the next day I looked, and by George, they were magnificent! Something terrible about it.... An old lady with legs....”
“Go on,” Lilah said.
But Robert shook his head. “I’m shockin’ you.”
“No. I’ve known Italian men. They all talk like that, only, in Italian, it sounds like d’Annunzio: _Le gambe belle di una vecchia donna_....”
They laughed.
He had forgotten about her poverty again.
Before he left, standing in the darkened hallway with his muffler on and eyes sympathetic again, he said: “I’m going to ask Grace Fuller to come around and see you. She’s looking for a room-mate. Splendid girl. I’m rather sweet on her. You’d like her.”
“Grace Fuller?”
“She’s a nurse. Took care of me when I had my appendix. And she always sees Aunt Whiteside through the gall-stones.”
He offered his hand.
Lilah felt that, behind her, the ghost had drifted in again. “I’d be very glad,” she said faintly.
“Now you cheer up.” His voice deepened a note. He was genuinely sorry for her. “Good night.”
Lilah leaned against the closed door.... Tired.... Tired.... Grace Fuller.... Sweet on her.... What a damned fool of a man! What a bore! Stupid! Stupid! To have had him here at all! To have tried....
She ran to the window and leaned out. A motor moved away with a silvery clink of chains. It had been raining.... He was gone.... The street lights were like balloons on sticks and an odor of wet dust rose, pungent, acrid.
For a long time she leaned there, with dry eyes, her breath shallow. The day flowed back over her spirit and she saw herself, little, heartless, unsuccessful. She had better make up her mind to do with what she had. To accustom herself to such ugliness as this.
II
She had hoped for a little life-insurance; her father’s wail had been, whenever she wanted a new hat: “I can’t, my dear. I’ve got to pay the life-insurance--twenty dollars.” She had never questioned him; it had seemed unkind, but she knew that there was some sort of a policy. She went through his papers, vaguely excited. There were a few letters from some one who signed herself “Darling,” written in a spidery hand on blue paper. Lilah threw the package into the waste basket, unread.... His knife. His precious letter of recommendation from Hadley.... A note, long overdue, forgotten, outlawed, hardly decipherable.... A long envelope containing snap-shots of his dog, Nellie, the old setter. Lilah felt a penetrating pity--her father, laughing, in a corduroy coat, with Nellie tugging at a leash. Her father, on a jig-saw veranda, with his pipe, and Nellie scratching fleas behind him.... Nellie.... Nellie....
The policy was not there. She emptied the drawers of an accumulation of cherished trash, all faded, incomprehensible.
She was interrupted by a caller, a thin, waspish man who tried to be amiable, as if he expected, before the interview was over, to be thoroughly disagreeable.
“Miss Norris? I represent Bilton and Chiswick, agents for this apartment. We have heard of your misfortune. We would like to know whether you intend to occupy the premises now that you are--alone--or whether you prefer to sub-lease.”
Lilah said impatiently: “I’ll let you know.”
He consulted a black book, very much thumbed. “Your lease expires in twenty days. Shall I prepare a new lease for the coming year? The rent, in all these apartments, has been raised. We are asking sixty-five a month for three rooms and bath.”
“How on earth does he know,” Lilah wondered, “that I’m broke?”
To shock him, she lighted a cigarette.
He jumped up. “We expect an answer in the morning. There’s a great demand for these apartments.”
“Is there?”
Lilah went with him to the door and shut him out with a bang. These agents had a mysterious money instinct--they could smell out poverty. Beasts!
She went back to the library, suddenly conscious of the inestimable blessing of a roof. She had sixty dollars. The doctor could be put off. Doctors never expected to be paid at once.... The nurse, no. Then, where would she be? Why hadn’t her father taught her to do something.... She had forgotten the grocer’s bill, the milk, ice, gas, newspaper....
She would have to borrow. From whom? Not Aunt Jo. Nor her father’s cronies, the book clerks. Nor from any of the professors and assistants. Every one she knew was poor, struggling, limited.
She signed a new lease. The waspish man was suspicious. He made a sucking sound with his tongue and snatched his fountain-pen back before Lilah had added the line and the two dots which usually ornamented her large, flourishing signature. She had no idea how she was going to thwart his obvious intention; he meant to evict her, bag and baggage, at the first opportunity. When he had gone, sucking his teeth all the way down stairs, Lilah telephoned David Brenner. He, at least, would know that coupons don’t grow in geranium pots.
He came, smiling in that way he had of cherishing a secret.
“David, I’m frightened.”
“Broke?”
She emptied her purse on the table. “Forty-one, seventy-seven.”
He shook his head. “I’m not sorry for you, Lilah. You’re looking into a mirror at what you think is life. And the mirror is a trick mirror--it enlarges, distorts everything. You see your poverty--colossal! You see your limitations--gigantic! You see your fear--enormous! And look here--look! The Truth! You’re a pretty little humbug. You can earn your living, only you’re afraid to.”
“David, I thought you loved me.”
“I do.”
The young Jew had eyes that went around her. “I do. Only--between the sublime and the ridiculous there is the breadth of a hair.”
“Am I ridiculous?”
“You are a little humbug,” he said stubbornly.
“What can I do? I won’t cook. I won’t take care of babies. I won’t be a chorus girl.”
“You’re too old.”
“Old?”
“Certainly. What else can you do?”
“I can make hats.”
Suddenly she raised her voice. “I hate poverty! It’s positively immoral.”
“What a pretty speech! Wait until you know real poverty, as I have known it! Did I ever tell you--I escaped from Russia when I was sixteen? I stowed away from Vladivostok to San Francisco and lived like a rat for three years. Only then my name wasn’t Brenner--it was a mouthful! I don’t hate poverty. I hate the system which permits poverty....”
Lilah interrupted. “I shan’t fail! I can get four with one and one-half. I’m quick. But I don’t like having to be quick. I prefer to wear chiffon and to walk in a garden....”
His eyes softened “Poor Lilah.”
“What shall I do?”
“Work.”
“_You_ don’t,” she said sharply.
But he would not part with his secret. Spreading out his hands, he shrugged, and let her believe anything. Suspected of having dodged the draft, David Brenner kept strange company, maintained an enigmatic silence and, like all morose and discontented intellectuals, appeared to be more important than he was. He wore a cloak of vague disapproval. It was more an atmosphere than a militant conviction. He was not a fighter. There was something adolescent in his moody distraction, his hauteur, his indifference.
“Lilah, I am an alley cat, pawing over garbage. I have come upon a glittering little fish, a fresh sardine--and that’s Lilah! I shall never be the same cat again.... I shall always be looking for sardines.... Will you lunch with me?”
She would.
They went to a Greenwich Village restaurant. In certain moods, Lilah enjoyed such places. She liked to sit aloof and peep between her fingers at these pathological bohemians. She smoked, veiled her eyes, and let David Brenner hold her hand. The table was a patch-work of initials and dates, egoistic trademarks. Lilah thought of Dante’s Tomb and the names scratched on the face of the Sphinx--little names, here and there, seen, gone ... nothing....
David Brenner was no better than Robert Peabody. Men only wanted to kiss her.
* * * * *
She left him and walked uptown, seeking the sacred pavements of upper Fifth Avenue with a deep breath of relief. Here, she could be herself. She drifted from one shop-window to another, absorbed, with something in her expression of the devotee. She might have been a woman of elegance, whereas she happened to be a little nobody with forty-one dollars and seventy-seven cents in the world.
Characteristically, she postponed thinking about the future. She enjoyed the great symphony of the streets. The crowds gave her a feeling of security.
She studied the hats. One, in particular, delighted her. It was _chinoiserie_, a poem in colored silks with a funny, pointed crown--no one but Lilah could wear such a hat.
She went on; came back to stare.... Delightful.... Her father had not wanted her to wear mourning. And this little hat would give her some sort of glow....
She went into the shop.
It was a gray, padded, mirrored place. And a woman in a black dress, too short, with long, square sleeves, came forward.
“The little hat in the window,” Lilah said in her best manner. “The Chinese one.” She made a gesture.
“Ah, yes.”
The hat was produced, twirled, tipped, turned upside down.
“Let me see.”
“Certainly.”
Lilah sat down before a mirror and removed the black hat and veil. She ran her fingers through her hair and gave a downward and upward thrust of her head to receive this crown of bright, twisted silks.
“Lanvin,” the saleswoman remarked.
“Really?”
“A copy.”
“I thought so.”
“But, Madam, it is exact. In everything. The silk; the ornament--you won’t see another.”
Lilah studied her profile. She was indeed a quaint and delightful little person....
“Do you like it?”
“Very becoming, Madam.”
Lilah felt a rush of excitement and pleasure.
“How much is it?”
“Thirty-five, Madam.”
“That seems--”
She broke off. It was really not expensive.
“You look very well indeed, Madam. You wear that type of hat wonderfully. So few can!”
“I’ll take it.”
The woman’s manner changed. “May I show you others? We have a few models--it is rather early.... One very beautiful straw, from Molineux. This one ... a little more to one side.... You wear hats so well.”
Lilah wanted to say: “I make them, too.”
Instead, she wrinkled up her nose and became very contemptuous. “I don’t like it.”
“No?”
She went out of the shop wearing the little silk turban, and carrying the black hat in a striped box inscribed: _La Mode Chez Annette_.
* * * * *
Beneath a slate-blue sky the light stone palaces of trade were curiously luminous. The Avenue itself, in shadow, was a revolving chain of motors; the great procession of glittering vehicles moved forward, stopped, was pierced by cross-town traffic, moved forward again. The Towers built about the Plaza rose into sunlight and were gilded at the tip. Lilah found the city very suave, mellow--there was none of the brazen clamor of Chicago, the sullen roar of London.... A woman approaching with a dog on a leash and wearing a long black cape and a plush tricorn, was like a figure by Longhi....
Lilah was conscious of a keen esthetic pleasure. The hat had restored her self-confidence, the certainty of success.
She was always alive to this pageant; its deeper meanings, its trend, escaped her. But she saw every face that passed--she could label them, put them in their niche. Old people touched her heart, if they were brave and jaunty; she could be infinitely sorry for some suffering and haughty face glimpsed in passing. The audacious, bow-legged, and blatant girl of the people, aping fashion, irritated her; vulgarity excluded the picturesque; there was nothing wistful about gum and lop-sided French heels. Lilah was not pitiless, but her pity was aroused by things in themselves not tragic--she was sorry only for the strong who are defeated by time or disease. The weak and helpless annoyed her because they made demands on her sympathy. She preferred to give, unsolicited.
* * * * *
She turned aside at Fifty-seventh Street, eager to wear the hat into all the high-roads of fashion.
Then, superior to fatigue, borne along on the crest of that little personal success, she walked downtown again, with her quick, short steps and the imperious carriage of her head, threading the impersonal crowds, stimulated, eager, warming herself against that pressure of life.
* * * * *
She climbed the four flights of carpeted stairs slowly. All the zest was gone. If her father were only there--some one--
A woman, rather tall, with a curious, ugly face and a bang of lightish hair under a queer hat, was leaning against the wall in the half-shadow at the top of the stairs.
“Miss Norris? I’m Miss Fuller. I rang and you didn’t answer. But I came up anyway. Robert Peabody sent me.”
Lilah said, in a voice she kept for strangers: “I’m so glad. Won’t you come in?”
Miss Fuller followed and looked carefully at everything before she sat down.
“This isn’t my taste,” Lilah said instantly.
“It wouldn’t be. Robert raved about it and about you. He liked both the room and yourself. He has no discrimination, but he is a darling.”
“What, exactly, do you mean by that?”
“I mean that frills are wasted on him. He doesn’t see them. From what he told me, I did not expect--you.”
Lilah laughed. Her good humor returned. She glanced at herself in the mirror.... Reassuring, that hat....
“What did he tell you?”
“Oh.... Pretty.... Sweet.... You’re not sweet. I hate the word. Why do men use it? Men are so stupid. When they think they’re in love with you they call you ‘sweet’ and they always muss up your hair. I hate being made love to. They never do it right. They either choke you or they scratch you. It makes me irritable, and they never try it again.”
“Does Robert scratch you?” Lilah asked sweetly.
“No. He chokes.”
“He would,” Lilah said. “Do you let him?”
“I compromise. I insist on vacations. Then we are platonic and he is pathetic. He is a child. He cries for a lollypop. So I say: ‘Go ahead. Kiss me.’ And he does. And, afterwards, I use liniment to limber up my neck.”
“You look like a Vanderbilt,” Lilah remarked. “All that wooly hair. And that long neck. And those eyebrows.”
“I’m Middle West. My grandfather was a Carlsen, a farmer. But my mother took a trip to Chicago before I was born and saw some wealth and fashion and marked me. I love luxury. I can achieve it with cheese cloth, safety pins and a little rouge. But now I’m bored. I want a French maid.”
“Why don’t you marry Robert?”
“I’m going to. If you don’t.”
“I?”
“He has called you sweet.” Miss Fuller lighted a cigarette. She did it in a characteristic way, a methodical, unhurried movement of her cool, thin hands. “I won’t fight. I can’t. You have all the weapons. And I have none. I’d be kind to him and you’d ruin his life. But you would keep him dancing and I would see to it that he sat by the fire. I understand him. You never will.” She tossed the match away. “And he’ll take you.”
“Nonsense.” Lilah was pleased. She thought: “I’ll take _him_, rather. She’d better watch out.”
Aloud, she said: “Robert says you’re a nurse.”
“I met him six years ago, when I was the starchiest graduate you’ve ever seen--pink and white, with a cap pinned on a blonde pompadour. It used to be fashionable to fall in love with your nurse, and I had a bed-side technique. He asked me to marry him, but I wouldn’t, because that was always part of an appendix convalescence. Afterwards, he forgot. Of course! But later they sent me to the Point to nurse his Aunt Whiteside--”
“I know! The gallstones!”
“He told you?”
Miss Fuller quenched her cigarette with the same, deliberate, unhurried gesture. She had a strange smile, sensitive, in contrast to the clipped irony of her conversational style. Lilah saw that this woman had been grievously hurt, shockingly buffeted. There was something about her calm which suggested the heroic self-control of the victim of a hurricane or an earthquake. She was afraid, but she was hanging on.
“So I went. Starch, blonde bang, wrist-watch. Very cool.... That house.... The grandfather’s house. About Eighteen-Seventy. Carpets. Lots of silver. Walnut and ebony. Gongs for dinner. Velvet. You know the sort of thing.... I don’t like the grandfather.”
“Why?”
“He doesn’t like me. He likes pert women, who hiss like cats and scratch and then purr on his knee. My starch irritated him. But Robert liked it.”
“Did he kiss you, then?”
“No. Not for years.”
Lilah said gently: “You love him.”
“Yes. I do.”
“Well--”
“Something I see, that you get to see when you know him! A gentleness. He is kind to people and doesn’t make any fuss. There’s no mystery about him. I’m sick of mysteries.... Doctors.... You don’t know what those hospitals are! They make a cynic or a huntress out of you, unless you happen to be a Florence Nightingale. I’m not. I don’t believe in anything.”
She broke off and Lilah said: “Tell me about yourself. More! Aren’t you happy?”
“Sometimes. When I’m alone. And I’m never alone.”
Lilah laughed. “Robert said you might live with me.”
“I _could_ live with you! You’re not the sort of woman who talks, or fusses. You make me think of a feminine cat, licked, sitting on a cushion. Indifferent and mysterious, but cozy.”
Lilah enjoyed this admiration; she knew that she possessed in an unusual degree the qualities which Grace Fuller lacked; she could be seductive because she had no particular sense of humor. Grace Fuller was the sort of woman who keeps her emotions under lock and key because she knows that she is ridiculous, that all emotion is ridiculous. She waited for some one to smash in her defenses and rescue her hidden self. In the meantime, she leaned on the door, fearful. But Lilah was a naked heart behind a grill.
With a sudden impulse, Lilah said: “Come, then! There are two bedrooms.... I pay sixty-five a month.... I’ve got to do something ... make hats ... dance.... We’ll manage.”
They lighted cigarettes and sat, talking, watching each other, until midnight.
* * * * *
Grace Fuller moved in--her two trunks and a neat bag were put in the room which had been Mr. Norris’. At once, an array of toilet articles appeared on the bureau--cosmetics and perfumes of very good make in crystal bottles, small, opaque boxes of rouge and lip sticks in metal cases. Miss Fuller had a passion for cosmetics, but she did not look like a woman who painted; her skin was her only claim to seduction, and the faint odor of perfume was an indication of her restraint. She was virginal, and, in her exaggerated loneliness, abnormal. She shut the door of her room against Lilah, and only emerged, fully dressed and curled, for formal conversation.
She left the apartment early in the morning and returned, often, late at night, dog-tired, but unflinching.
Lilah made one attempt to get work to do. She had heard that one of the fashionable men dressmakers wanted a designer. His shop, an entire house in the East Fifties, was furnished in the exotic manner of Poiret’s establishment in Paris. His mannequins inevitably graduated to the stage, or to society. Diana, Kitty, Carmencita ... opulent, tall girls with the hands and arms of goddesses.... Something about this man’s manner had always attracted Lilah. He made the exploitation of feminine vanity an enormously profitable business. She went to see him, relying on the poetic little hat and her manner to carry her past the guardians of his privacy to the inner sanctum, his office, a room decorated by Chanler.
She found the approach unexpectedly easy. He was seated behind a desk. She was surprised, upset, by his youth and his concise greeting:
“Won’t you sit down?”
“Thank you.”
“You are interested in a wardrobe? It is not the season. But there are a few models....”
“No. I am a designer. Hats. I want a position with you.”
“There is no opening.”
“I thought....
“Your experience?”
“None. I have good taste....”
“I see! That hat?”
“Lanvin.”
“Ah.”
“But I am talented, myself.”
“You know Paris?”
“Very well.”
“You are hard up?”
With a flash of anger, Lilah said: “Yes. I am. I want a job.”
“You shouldn’t have come to me. I am a busy man. Why didn’t you see Mr. O’Connor or Mrs. Frazer, at the work-rooms?” He wrote something on a card and tossed it across the desk. “There! If there’s room in the shop, they’ll give you a chance.... First, you must learn to put hats together. Later, perhaps, you can design them.”
Lilah rose. She did not take the card. She felt his eyes, shrewd, appraising, absolutely without illusion, slide over her--it was a physical, a nauseating attachment.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Not at all.” He waved his hand. His expression changed. He dismissed her. “Good morning.”
* * * * *
She postponed reality. There seemed to be no incentive, no immediate need; she was strangely lulled. She had, for years, searched for something vital, something with which to satisfy her restless longing for perfection. She had failed. There was nothing ahead that she could not, now, recognize as dull, inevitable, beyond her capacity for patient endurance.
She was afraid of death, but she believed that, once dead, she would be thoroughly dead. As a child, she had had an overdose of religion; her mother had fed her all the gloomy details of the orthodox legend; on the other hand, she had been conscious that her father, secretly, knew better. It was the old tragedy of credulity, Santa Claus and the cotton beard.
Her dreams were deeper, more hidden than is usual with women. She wanted love but not what she called suburban love. She secretly desired a man who would be indifferent to her contempt and beyond the reach of her irony. She could imagine herself in love, but the co-protagonist was always featureless; she invariably built her romance about her own personality. She was forever clothing herself in the garments of romance and falling in love with herself.
* * * * *
Robert Peabody reëntered her life a week after the relation with Grace Fuller had been established.
He came one evening when the two women were together, Lilah sewing at some impractical square of brocade, Grace Fuller, her narrow feet elevated, smoking a cigarette in an amber holder. She had watched a man die that afternoon--an old man whose pet particular nurse and slave she had been for six months. Yet there was no sign of relaxation, of discouragement. Her pessimism was too deep, established, like some physical disease--slowly, she was hardening in the mold fate had made for her.
Robert Peabody was embarrassed and jovial. Lilah found him amusing because, for the first time, she saw that another woman really wanted him.
While he talked, as usual, about his dogs, Grace Fuller watched him. Her scrutiny, deep, unswerving, made Lilah conscious that he was, in a way, handsome. Always well-dressed, he had the deft outlines of a man accustomed to luxury; and his bland good humor was the result of an existence devoid of anxiety. His appendix had been the outstanding complication, so far. Something of his grandfather’s looks had passed to him; he had the high nose with flaring nostrils. But his eyes were his mother’s and hers the rather sensitive and melancholy mouth.