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February 2 - February 12, 1990
It certainly simplified life to view it as a perpetual adjustment, a play of party politics, in which every concession had its recognized equivalent: Lily’s tired mind was fascinated by this escape from fluctuating ethical estimates into a region of concrete weights and measures.
It certainly does simplify life to look at it in this way
Light comes in devious ways to the groping consciousness, and it came to her now through the disgusted perception that her would-be accomplice assumed, as a matter of course, the likelihood of her distrusting him and perhaps trying to cheat him of his share of the spoils. This glimpse of his inner mind seemed to present the whole transaction in a new aspect, and she saw that the essential baseness of the act lay in its freedom from risk.
Mrs. Gormer, among the rest, was not above seizing such an occasion for the display of herself and her horses; and Lily was given one or two opportunities of appearing at her friend’s side in the most conspicuous box the house afforded. But this lingering semblance of intimacy made her only the more conscious of a change in the relation between Mattie and herself, of a dawning discrimination, a gradually formed social standard, emerging from Mrs. Gormer’s chaotic view of life. It was inevitable that Lily herself should constitute the first sacrifice to this new ideal, and she knew that, once
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Carry Fisher warned Lily of this in Chapter 6
Lily knew that Rosedale had overstated neither the difficulty of her own position nor the completeness of the vindication he offered:
She had rejected Rosedale’s offer without conscious effort; her whole being had risen against it; and she did not yet perceive that, by the mere act of listening to him, she had learned to live with ideas which would once have been intolerable to her.
I have to admit that Lily's ambivalence is becoming annoying. She needs to stop dithering and make a decision to either go to Selden and take him up on his early offer of marriage at Bellomont, find a way to make some kind of living (which Carry Fisher offered her), or follow Rosedale's advice and marry him.
steepness and narrowness of Gerty’s stairs,
“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.
Another person Bertha has destroyed
It seems that Ned has quarrelled with the Dorsets; or at least Bertha won’t allow him to see her,
At first, indeed, while the memory of their last hour at Monte Carlo still held the full heat of his indignation,
his apprehension passed into an incredulous stare, and this into the gesture of disgust with which he tore the paper in two, and turned to walk quickly homeward.
“I wanted to see you,” he said; and she could not resist observing in reply that he had kept his wishes under remarkable control.
To neglect her, perhaps even to avoid her, at a time when she had most need of her friends, and then suddenly and unwarrantably to break into her life with this strange assumption of authority, was to rouse in her every instinct of pride and self-defence.
“But Gerty does not happen to know,” Miss Bart rejoined, “that I owe every penny of that legacy.” “Good God!” Selden exclaimed, startled out of his composure by the abruptness of the statement. “Every penny of it, and more too,” Lily repeated; “and you now perhaps see why I prefer to remain with Mrs. Hatch rather than take advantage of Gerty’s kindness. I have no money left, except my small income, and I must earn something more to keep myself alive.”
The conviction that he had been sent by Gerty, and that, whatever straits he conceived her to be in, he would never voluntarily have come to her aid, strengthened her resolve not to admit him a hair’s breadth farther into her confidence.
She smiled, recognizing the heroism of the offer to the point of being frankly touched by it. “Thank you—I shall be very glad,” she made answer, in the first sincere words she had ever spoken to him.
She realized now that, as she sat in the restaurant, she had unconsciously arrived at a final decision. The discovery gave her an immediate illusion of activity: it was exhilarating to think that she had actually a reason for hurrying home.
She found, however, on reaching home, that the hour was still early enough for her to sit down and rest a few minutes before putting her plan into execution. The delay did not perceptibly weaken her resolve. She was frightened and yet stimulated by the reserved force of resolution which she felt within herself: she saw it was going to be easier, a great deal easier, than she had imagined. At five o’clock she rose, unlocked her trunk, and took out a sealed packet which she slipped into the bosom of her dress. Even the contact with the packet did not shake her nerves as she had half-expected it
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But Wharton never tells us at what decision Lily had finally arrived, and this is very confusing to me.
Her survey of the situation remained calm and unwavering.
The recollection loosened a throng of benumbed sensations—longings, regrets, imaginings, the throbbing brood of the only spring her heart had ever known.
It was strange to find herself passing his house on such an errand. She seemed suddenly to see her action as he would see it—and the fact of his own connection with it, the fact that, to attain her end, she must trade on his name, and profit by a secret of his past, chilled her blood with shame.
This seems to make it clear that Lily was going to Bertha's to make use of the letters, but it seems her change of heart came about so quickly and radically.
Twice he had been ready to help her—to help her by loving her, as he had said—and if, the third time, he had seemed to fail her, whom but herself could she accuse?...
Well, that part of her life was over; she did not know why her thoughts still clung to it.
Has she made the decision to marry Rosedale? Or is she just acknowledging that by using the letters she will be sacrificing Seldon?
now that her consciousness was once more putting forth its eager feelers, she saw that her presence was becoming an embarrassment to him.
“I must go,” she repeated, making a motion to rise from her chair. “But I may not see you again for a long time, and I wanted to tell you that I have never forgotten the things you said to me at Bellomont, and that sometimes—sometimes when I seemed farthest from remembering them—they have helped me, and kept me from mistakes; kept me from really becoming what many people have thought me.”
Her voice had gathered strength, and she looked him gravely in the eyes as she continued. “Once—twice—you gave me the chance to escape from my life, and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward. Afterward I saw my mistake—I saw I could never be happy with what had contented me before. But it was too late: you had judged me—I understood. It was too late for happiness—but not too late to be helped by the thought of what I had missed. That is all I have lived on—don’t take it from me now! Even in my worst moments it has been like a little light in the darkness.
She laid her other hand on his, and they looked at each other with a kind of solemnity, as though they stood in the presence of death.
Something in truth lay dead between them—the love she had killed in him and could no longer call to life. But something lived between them also, and leaped up in her like an imperishable flame: it was the love his love had kindled, the passion of her soul for his.
poor little working-girl who had found strength to gather up the fragments of her life, and build herself a shelter with them, seemed to Lily to have reached the central truth of existence. It was a meagre enough life, on the grim edge of poverty, with scant margin for possibilities of sickness or mischance, but it had the frail audacious permanence of a bird’s nest built on the edge of a cliff—a mere wisp of leaves and straw, yet so put together that the lives entrusted to it may hang safely over the abyss.
If only life could end now—end on this tragic yet sweet vision of lost possibilities, which gave her a sense of kinship with all the loving and foregoing in the world!
he had found the word he meant to say to her, and it could not wait another moment to be said.
He saw that all the conditions of life had conspired to keep them apart; since his very detachment from the external influences which swayed her had increased his spiritual fastidiousness, and made it more difficult for him to live and love uncritically. But at least he HAD loved her—had been willing to stake his future on his faith in her—and if the moment had been fated to pass from them before they could seize it, he saw now that, for both, it had been saved whole out of the ruin of their lives.
