Eustacehad been carried upstairs. The nurse had arrived. Dr. Pelham was extracting the bullet on a hastily devised operating-table. The two girls sat before the fire Topper had made in the library, silent, after Elsie had explained that her brother had driven down to Atlantic City the day before on his monthly week-end visit.
It was evident that Gita intended to make no confidences, and Elsie could only guess what had happened. She herself had almost fainted when she saw Eustace lying there, helpless, unconscious, looking as if every drop of blood in his body had run out. She wondered impotently at the perversity of Fate. For the first time she admitted to herself that she loved him. Loyalty to Gita and to herself had kept that knowledge safely locked in a remote inner cell of her brain. . . . She believed that if he had never met Gita Carteret she could have won him. He had admired her and sought her out whenever they had happened to meet. When he had visited Atlantic City he had called on her. She had given up too easily, but at that time she had been infatuated with Gita and felt a white passion of desire to serve her and help her to happiness: after the girl’s long wretched experience. She had cheerfully sacrificed herself, had, indeed, not given her own claims a thought. No doubt there had been also a desire to serve him. And for this! She knew from Gita’s cold disdainful face that he had played his last desperate card and lost.
She asked abruptly: “Will you tell me why you are wearing that gown—powdered your hair?”
Gita jumped as if Elsie had flung something at her more solid than words. “Good heavens! I had forgotten all about it.” The color flooded her face and she turned her head aside. “I had a fancy—a notion——If you don’t mind I think I’ll not explain.”
Elsie made no reply and called on her imagination. But well as she believed she knew Gita she could think of nothing that may have possessed her to dress up as her great-great-grandmother with herself as sole audience. Merely a whim, no doubt. Heaven knew she was full of whims.
Gita, pale once more, turned and looked at her. “You are very angry with me,” she said. “Wouldn’t you have shot a man yourself if you’d found him prowling about your house at midnight in pitch-dark?”
“I don’t see how you could have helped knowing it was Eustace. Surely he must have spoken.”
“Well, I didn’t and he didn’t, and that’s all there is to it.” Her eyes hardened. “You look at me as if you hated me.”
Elsie shrugged her shoulders. “Eustace is a great man, and if he dies American literature will be the poorer.”
“He may be a great writer, but he is not a great man. Some difference. I don’t know that I’d even call him a great writer. That helpless adjective has been so bandied about it’s a wonder there’s any meaning left in it. He’s brilliant, distinguished, subtle, penetrating, and a stylist, but no writer of fiction can be great without drama, and he has no sense of drama at all. There’s not a great moment in one of his books——”
“Oh, for God’s sake don’t dissect the poor man’s books when he may be lying dead upstairs!” And then she added irresistibly: “Wethink him great, and perhaps are better able to judge.”
Gita laughed. “I know you think you are! Sophisticated Reputation Factory. Quite a going concern. Still—not for a moment am I assuming that Eustace Bylant couldn’t have got on by himself. He has indisputable talent and intellect. But not genius.”
“He’s a great psychologist.”
Gita’s lips twisted. “His psychology has a few holes in it. I’m not as incapable of judging as you think. And at least I think for myself.”
This unseemly quarrel was interrupted by the entrance of Dr. Pelham. Elsie sprang to her feet.
“Is he——”
“All right for the present. But his shoulder is badly shattered. I’ve given him an opiate and he’ll sleep for several hours. I’ll be over in the morning and bring a second nurse.”
Gita had risen also. “Come over to the dining-room,” she said. “I’ve told Topper to make coffee and sandwiches.”
Then she saw that he was staring at her—that dress—her powdered hair—why on earth hadn’t she had her wits about her and changed before they came? “You’ll excuse me,” she muttered. “I’m terribly bowled over. Topper will look after you—I can’t thank you enough——” And she fairly ran out of the room and up the stair. They heard a door slam.
“What does it all mean?” asked Pelham. It was the first time he had thought of anything but his patient’s welfare, and he turned to Elsie with a puzzled frown, speculation dawning in his eyes.
“Can’t you guess?” asked his sister shortly. “Well, if you can’t I’ll not tell you. If you don’t want that coffee, let’s go home.”
“But surely you’ll stay—with her?”
“No, I’ll not. I’m not sure I’ll ever enter this house again. Please come. I’ll make coffee for you at home.”
“Very well. Certainly.”
And with his brows still drawn and his mind racing he followed his sister out of the house.
Gitablinked at the sunlight in astonishment. She had believed she was in for another wakeful night; and she remembered nothing but tearing off her clothes and flinging herself into bed—not caring if she never brushed her teeth again, nor washed her face. She must have fallen asleep at once!
She preferred not to think at present, and there was safety in routine. She put on her dressing-gown and went down the hall to one of the two bathrooms the manor house boasted. Very ugly and unluxurious bathrooms, installed in the nineteenth century. After a cold shower her brain felt disconcertingly clear, but she hummed a tune and rubbed herself into a glow.
As she left the bathroom she met the nurse in the hall.
“How is the patient?” she asked politely.
“His shoulder is very painful. I’ve just telephoned to Dr. Pelham, asking if I shall give him another opiate——I couldn’t take the responsibility of letting you see him,” she added hastily.
“Oh, of course not. What time do you expect Dr. Pelham?”
“He’ll come at once.”
Gita nodded and went into her bedroom and dressed slowly.
She was aware that she had slept off her cold fury, and felt something like sympathy for Eustace, disabled, and suffering, no doubt, as much in mind as in body. . . . Probably a man did have a grain of excuse when he loved a woman and despaired of winning her with charm and good manners. Lost his head, poor wretch . . . brain hopelessly confused by fumes of passion and all that . . . tumbled out of hard-won psychological differentiations straight into generalities. Passion must awaken passion; all that old tosh. . . . He must feel like a fool—worse than failure, for Eustace Bylant. . . . She did feel sorry for him, for she had admired him prodigiously, and loved him in a way.
She was devoutly thankful she hadn’t killed him. He’d live to write more books—perhaps better ones. Might get some drama into them after that seismic upheaval inside him that must have astonished him as much as herself. . . . Might even marry again, although he’d done well enough as a bachelor. She doubted if he cared deeply about domestic routine. He’d had his grand passion—like Lee Clavering over that strange Countess Zattiany she’d heard so much about. Doubtful if Clavering would have written a really great play if Zattiany hadn’t shocked him out of his pleasant pastures into a tropical jungle. He might be dour to look at and none too expansive socially, but it was evident his imagination worked at white heat, and no doubt he was grateful whether he admitted it or not. Eustace would live to be grateful toher.
At all events one thing hadn’t happened. She remembered that sometime last night she had experienced a fleeting fear that that horrible episode would destroy all she had learned—recall all she had banished—during this past auriferous year, and she would be as hard and hating and handicapped as when she had just escaped from her old life . . . destroy all power of appreciation and enjoyment, all her new adaptability, all interest in the future.
But all experience counted, apparently. She would always think of last night with a shudder, but at least it had not revived her old abhorrence of men because one man had mauled her—as other men had tried to, sometimes had done, in the past. A second neurosis might be worse than the first. No doubt her sense of justice, of proportion, developing unconsciously, had balanced her unalterably.
She put on a dark blue skirt and sweater, automatically rejecting the bright colors she preferred, and even powdered her face to subdue her own color. Noblesse oblige! And if she didn’t feel hard she certainly felt severely practical as she went down to meet Dr. Pelham. Romance had toppled over the horizon.
He looked at her keenly as he entered and asked professionally: “I hope you got a little sleep?”
“Disgraceful, but I did. Reaction, no doubt. Where’s Elsie?”
He answered evasively. “She’s rather tired. No doubt she’ll be over later.”
“She’s angry with me because she thinks I shot Eustace on purpose. I never knew Elsie to be unreasonable before.”
“Oh—I’m sure she can’t think that! But she’s very sensitive under that calm exterior, and she had a bad shock last night. I suppose you haven’t seen my patient?”
“Nurse said I couldn’t.”
“She must get some sleep as the other nurse can’t be here before night. Perhaps you’ll sit with him for a few hours?”
Gita turned pale, but answered steadily: “Certainly, if you think he can stand having me near him. He probably knows it was I who shot him—might feel a trifle nervous.”
Dr. Pelham smiled for the first time. “I’ll put him to sleep again.” And he nodded and ran up the stair.
Gita wandered about the garden until he came down, but she thought neither of him nor of Eustace, but of Elsie. She must win her back. Life would be unendurable without Elsie. Of course she was in love with Eustace. Well, here was her chance. She could stay here, and read to him when he was better, correct his proofs, take his dictation if he felt inspired to write a story. . . . Ideal marriage. . . . Why had he been so blind?
“Idiots, all of us.” And she sighed.
Dr. Pelham emerged from the house and joined her. She wished she were actress enough to feign wifely anxiety.
“How is he?” she asked, and knew that her tones were flat.
“Well enough, so far. There’s always danger of infection, in spite of every precaution. I shall watch him, of course.”
“You’ll stay on, then?”
“Certainly. He’s my patient, to say nothing of old friendship. I have a vacation due me, and I’ll take it now.”
They were both as emotional as the garden slugs, regarding each other as if their slender past were obliterated.
“Tell Elsie to come along and not be a fool,” she said. “She’d be a brute to leave me alone. I don’t want to sit there all by myself, eaten up with remorse, and if you’ve put him to sleep we can talk.”
His eyes, which had been almost blank, became keen once more. He opened his mouth as if to ask an irresistible question, then turned on his heel and was gone.
WhenEustace had arrived with his luggage on the day after the wedding, Gita, anxious to make every amend for her thoughtlessness, had given him the state bedroom, Mrs. Carteret’s. One of the baths had been installed in the dressing-room and he had that side of the house to himself.
Although she had entered this room many times since her grandmother’s death she had always avoided glancing at the bed, fearing her lively imagination would project a vision of the old lady, high on her pillows.
She stood for a moment beside the bed after she had dismissed the nurse, wondering if she would always see Eustace there in the future. What a contrast! Her grandmother had looked a hundred. Eustace, the blood drained out of his face, narrowing his contours, looked years younger than his age. Almost a youth, in spite of his beard. Pathetic. No doubt, if she loved him she would be yearning over him with those maternal sensations authors of fiction were always reminding the reader—who should know the lesson by heart—surged up in every woman as soon as she fell in love. Well, she didn’t feel maternal a bit, but she certainly felt sorry for him. Elsie could do the maternalizing. Why didn’t she come?
But Elsie had telephoned to Polly, who was with her at that moment.
“I didn’t want Geoff to marry you,” she was saying. “I don’t mind telling you that. But Gita shan’t have him. I’d rather see him dead.”
“Gita?” Polly, who was sitting on the desk in the study swinging her feet, thrilled by the tragic tale of which Elsie had given her a bare hint on the telephone, almost fell off. She had responded to the urgent summons because she knew that Geoffrey was in Atlantic City, but although she had listened agape to the recital, she had merely assumed that Elsie was giving her an inside seat; certainly her due. “I don’t understand.”
“Oh, she’s in love with him and he with her. I’ve known it for some time.”
“Then mother was right,” muttered Polly, and although she rarely risked cutting lines on her lovely forehead, she frowned until her eyebrows met. “But it’s hard to believe it.”
“She’s only recently waked up to the fact—I can’t say just when—I’ve felt it in the air. He’s been interested from the first; that’s the reason he stayed away from her in town. I’ve seen a good deal of him this last winter—stayed with him, you remember. I soon discovered she was haunting him; and something must have happened the night of your mother’s party, for I took lunch with him next day and he was as nervous as a cat and wouldn’t let me mention Gita’s name——”
“I know!” And Polly repeated the shrewd observations of her mother.
“There you are! I don’t propose to have my brother’s life ruined. I don’t know what Eustace will do after this. I should think he’d never want to see her again, but possibly he may be more infatuated with her than ever, go on trying to win her. Fiction-writers are the complete morons where their own love-affairs are concerned. But hemightconsent to divorce her, and then Geoffrey would see no further reason for standing aside. That is if he could still love a woman who tried to murder her husband—but when men are mad about a woman’s black eyes——”
“But you surely don’t think Gita knew it was Eustace?” The digression was unpalatable.
“Yes, I do. She might have run up for her pistol, thinking it was a burglar, but he must have spoken——”
“Not if he went there with the purpose you think—might have thought it the wisest policy to——I can’t quite work it out. Didn’t she give you a hint of how it all happened? Are you sure she ever believed it was a burglar? May there not have been an interview in which Eustace lost his head—and the pistol went off accidentally?”
“I’d think that a plausible explanation if it were not that the shooting took place downstairs in the library, and she’s not the sort to carry a pistol round, even at night—she hadn’t gone to bed, either. No, she heard him in the library, went up and got her pistol, then guessed who it was, saw her chance, and shot him.”
But Polly shook her always reasonable head. “Gita is no double-dyed movie villainess. I believe her story—and I’m rather surprised at you.” She looked at Elsie sharply, and guessed her secret. “It’s not like you, you know.”
Elsie sighed, and ran her fingers through her hair as if its light weight on her head were intolerable. “I don’t enjoy being hard and suspicious, but I feel as if I never could forgive her—and I simply can’t go there at present. But you must. Gita shan’t have Geoffrey! Everything she wants! It would be a little too much!”
Polly stepped down to the floor. “I’ll go. And if it’s war to the knife, all right. Gita’ll not get him, not while I’m on the job.” Her eyes were almost black and her pretty coral mouth was a straight line with sharp corner-depressions. “Trust me.”
“Geoffrey isn’t the man to think about the wife of his friend, lying helpless,” Elsie reminded her insistently. “He’ll turn to you with relief. That’s your chance. Take it. He must believe—half believe—that Gita did it intentionally; and he is—ought to be—the sort of man to be revolted. I wish human nature were more of a chart!”
Gita, hearing the door open softly, turned expectantly and was amazed to see Polly instead of Elsie. She drew her over into a corner of the room and Polly whispered:
“Elsie telephoned and of course I came at once. Have sent for my trunks and I’ll stay till he’s well. She’s got to a place in her new novel where she doesn’t dare drop it (Polly concocted this hastily), but she knows you’ll understand, and will be over before long.”
“Oh? That’s the first clumsy lie I ever heard you get off. It’s plain Elsie still thinks I tried to kill Eustace.”
“What if she does? What does it matter? She’ll get over it—ought to be rather grateful to you—have my suspicions——”
“Yes, it was plain enough last night. Poor Elsie! Well, I’ll give her every chance. But I can’t think why she doubts my word.” And her lip, for the first time since she was a child, quivered.
Polly, whose affection was not even threatened, for she guessed shrewdly that Gita’s pride and almost fanatical sense of honor would prompt her to avoid Geoffrey Pelham and give herself a clear field, patted her hand. “Cheer up. I’ll make her see daylight as soon as she gets over this attack of temperament. That’s what it amounts to. She’s every bit as fond of you as I am.”
Friendshipbetween men may survive rivalry in love. Men have stood shoulder to shoulder through the centuries in the hard business of life, and the need of a strong abiding affection for one of their own understanding sex, is rooted in the depths of being and not to be lightly surrendered. There are instances where the woman has been sacrificed.
But there is always something artificial in the friendship of women. It is a harness lightly worn and has a faint suggestion of carnival about it. Flowers must bedeck the harness, flowers of propinquity, common interests, ambitions, tastes, mutualities of all kinds in their particular sphere. Above all, a dissimilar taste in men. Nature designed them for one purpose only, to carry on the race and guard it in childhood, and if Mind today laughs at her ingenuous plan, she has her subtle revenges. When the flowers wither the harness falls off.
Elsie realized this with a sigh. She knew that she had a certain nobility of character and lofty ideals, and had believed they would survive any test. But they seemed to have staggered under the first hard blow, and cowered aside before a healthy desire for vengeance.
Gita had nearly killed the man she loved and she should not have her almost equally beloved brother. She told herself she had idealized that girl; blinded by her novelty and personality; and now for the first time saw her for what she was. Her instinct of self-protection was strong and if she were to retain her self-respect she must not hate but despise Gita. Better to acknowledge herself a poor judge of character (when glamoured) than admit she was incapable of true friendship.
Moreover, knowing the latent fierceness and ruthlessness in Gita’s nature, she felt she was quite honest in her belief that the shooting had been deliberate; moreover, that if Gita had never met Geoffrey it would not have happened. . . . Sooner or later some man was bound to have demolished that dyke that circumstance had built between conscious intelligence and sex, and an unkind Fate had decreed it should be Geoffrey.
Fine wife for an ambitious hard-working surgeon, always on the lookout for some new kink in the human anatomy he could discover and call by his name. When a woman like that woke up she’d whirl to the other extreme. Have lovers. Snap her fingers at the world. Ruin her husband’s life and career. She’d ruined one man. Quite enough. Even if Eustace accepted his release and came to herself on the rebound—but she was in no mood to indulge in day-dreams. Happiness was not in the air!
In the course of a week what Polly called her attack of temperament wore itself out, and she conceded unwillingly that she might possibly have been unjust. Might have developed an unsuspected capacity for exaggeration. Her brain had felt as if a hot wind were blowing through it. When it whispered itself off, particularly after her brother had given her a bromide and she had enjoyed one night of unbroken sleep, she blushed a little as she regarded herself in the mirror, and peered at her fine brow anxiously. Horrid to have been a mere female. And Eustace may not have spoken, after all. Hard to tell what a man would or wouldn’t do when the throttled beast in him broke loose. She had never seen Gita frightened, but anyone, even an amazon, might be susceptible to fear once in her life.
Then her conscience became active. Love Gita again she never could. That was over. But she could do the decent thing. Moreover, she was curious to see how Polly was conducting her campaign.
She telephoned to the manor and told Topper to inform Mrs. Bylant she would be over at once. She knew that Geoffrey, mortified at her behavior, had told Gita she was in bed with a heavy cold, and at least she would be spared the discomfort of an apology.
But she sighed. She had lost something. She had a curious feeling of emptiness behind that lofty brow. Well, life was life.
Gitawas sitting on the edge of her bed when Topper brought Elsie’s message.
“Tell her to come up—no, show her into the drawing-room.”
She had been beating her heels on the floor, frowning at the window. It was open and voices drifted up from the garden. They were Polly’s and Geoffrey Pelham’s.
It had been a trying week! Another “wooing game.” Polly had “wooed” Geoffrey under her very nose. Exercised every blandishment in her repertory. Anxious when her surgeon was anxious. Gay when his brow relaxed. Sweet, womanly, inexhaustibly and multifariously charming. A white vamp!
And Geoffrey almost clung to her.
She ought to hate her but she didn’t. Odd, but after all, why should she? Certainly, she couldn’t accuse her of treachery; Polly knew nothing of her feeling for Geoffrey. If Mrs. Pleyden had implanted a doubt in her daughter’s egotistical bosom, she had been given the opportunity to pluck it out and had succeeded. She had been sincere enough that day. The lid was still on!
And hadn’t she conclusively renounced Geoffrey Pelham to Polly that night when she had taken out her soul and skewered it? Why shouldn’t someone find happiness in this world if such a thing as happiness really existed?
“Oh, Lord, what a mess!” She sighed. “Eustace wants me. Elsie wants Eustace. Polly wants Geoffrey. Geoffrey wants me. And I? Nothing apparently. I feel as empty as an old hogshead on a junk-pile.”
And in truth she had never, not even in the old days, felt so depressed. This cataclysm had literally left nothing in her life but her manor! Her three friends were lost irretrievably. To resume any sort of relationship with Eustace was unthinkable. Polly would drift away, absorbed in her husband. Elsie had betrayed her.
She felt a deep and harsh resentment toward Elsie. Not for a moment had she believed in the “cold.” That Elsie should have doubted her cut her to the quick. . . . For a night, possibly, shocked as she was, and facing for the first time the fact of her love for the man. But she should have come to her senses before this.
Perhaps she had loved Elsie more than any of the three, and the hurt had gone deeper. Well, she loved her no longer. And she indulged in some bitter musings of her own on the friendship of women.
But she felt terribly alone. Stranded. And she had lost that old boyish independence and hostility to her kind which had made loneliness far from insupportable. Well, she must erect another superstructure.
Polly’s laugh floated up, sustained, as it were, on the deeper notes of her playmate; now quite relieved of anxiety for his distinguished patient and friend. The tapping of her heels became a rat-tat-tat.
“Come.”
Someone had knocked at her door. The day nurse opened it, her face no longer solemn. She was smiling as one who had a pleasant message to deliver. Gita’s heart deliquesced.
“Dr. Pelham promised Mr. Bylant he might see you when he waked up; he’s so much better,” said the nurse. “He’s just had his broth and is looking forward to your visit.”
Gita managed to get to her feet and walk steadily over to her dressing-table. She brushed her hair, powdered, and wished that she rouged and used a lip-stick. She lingered over these superfluities of her toilette as long as she dared, with that woman standing behind her. What was she thinking? She had been told the truth, but did she believe it? Why not? She remembered a story she had once read of a woman killing an idolized husband who had returned at night unexpectedly and been mistaken for a burglar.
What did it matter? She rose from her chair and looked at the nurse much as her grandmother may have done when her arrogant instinct of caste was uppermost.
“You may go out into the garden,” she said. “And kindly tell Mrs. Brewster, when she arrives, that I’ll be down presently.”
It is no longer possible for any but the disappearing ladies of the old régime to “sweep by” those they wish to impress or ignore, for the skirt of the period, short hair, and a limp or free swinging carriage, have put an end to such extrinsic aid to importance. But Gita managed to pass those interested eyes with a cold blankness that gave the innocent object of her disdain the feeling she had somehow evaporated, no longer existed. But she was as sensible as most nurses, and quite used to human vagaries.
“You’ll not stay too long?” she suggested mildly. “Ten minutes, I should think. He’s not very strong yet.”
But Gita was crossing the hall, apparently afflicted with deafness.
She hesitated a moment with her hand on the knob, her knees shaking a little. What would be his cue? Well, whatever it was she would take it. Invalids must be humored.
Bylant was propped up in the bed, very pale and thin, but he smiled whimsically and put out his hand. She shook it limply and sank down into a chair by the bed, her gaze wandering to the window.
His voice was as whimsical as his eyes. “You served me right, my dear,” he said. “Don’t imagine I’ve held it against you for a moment.”
“Of course I didn’t know it was you,” she muttered.
“Of course not! And I hope you won’t hesitate to shoot the next man who breaks into your house. Be sure it will not be I!”
Gita stirred uneasily. But she was relieved that the interview was not to be pitched in the tragic key. Trust Eustace to carry anything off!
“It is I who should ask to be forgiven,” he continued. “But I went progressively mad after you left. Do you remember a book I once gave you to read—‘The Cave Man Within Us’? Well, the cave man in me got the best of several centuries of superimpositions. I remember Darwin says somewhere that man, even in the best of our poor civilizations, is so close to the incalculable æons of savagery behind us, the wonder is the veneer remains on him at all. But I promise you that my veneer shan’t rub off again.”
“Your psychology failed you,” said Gita dryly.
“It did!” he said smiling. “It did!”
She thrust out her foot and gazed at the toe of her shoe. She reminded herself she must not excite him but she would have liked a “show-down” then and there.
She glanced up. He was looking at her pleadingly.
“You haven’t said you forgive me.”
“Oh, yes, of course I forgive you. Forget it and get well.”
She rose but he put out his hand and detained her. “I’d like you to stay.”
“The nurse only gave me ten minutes.”
“Damn the nurse.”
“And Elsie telephoned she was coming. She must be downstairs now. It’s the first time. She thinks I shot you on purpose. Elsie is a very loyal friend of yours—more than she is of mine!”
“Is she?” His voice was indifferent.
“I’ll ask her to read to you as soon as you are better.”
“I detest being read to. It makes me nervous.”
“Well, tell you all the news, then. You know you’ll be glad to see her——”
“I want to see you. You’ll come in every day?” His eyes were entreating but his face was composed. Not likely he would make a fool of himself twice.
“Oh—of course—as often as you like. I owe you that much.” And she smiled ruefully. But she gave a deep inner sigh of relief as the nurse opened the door with a sprightly:
“Time’s up, Mrs. Bylant.”
“Mrs. Bylant!”
Shefound Elsie at the window of the drawing-room watching her brother and Polly Pleyden, who were retreating down a path.
“Hullo, Elsie. Hope your cold’s better.”
Elsie turned swiftly and was annoyed to feel her face flushing. “I’m afraid you think me a brute,” she stammered.
“Not at all,” said Gita briskly. “A cold must be a beastly affliction. Mother used to have them and always went to bed. Eustace had a horrid one last winter. Looked horrid, too. Have a cigarette?”
“No, thanks—bad for a cold.” Elsie could not feign hoarseness, but she was grateful that her face was peaked and pale.
Gita’s eyes were hard and bright. She sat in a high-backed wing-chair, her head very erect. Her resemblance to the portrait of her grandmother behind her smote Elsie; and with a faint sense of amusement but more of regret, she seated herself opposite.
“Geoffrey tells me that Eustace is getting on splendidly,” she said. “I’m so glad to hear it.”
“Your brother is an admirable surgeon. Lucky for Eustace he was in Atlantic City that night. Lucky more ways than one. Averted a scandal, no doubt. I’ve just seen Eustace, and now that he’s so much better I hope you’ll give him some of your time. He always enjoyed talking to you.”
“Of course I will! As often as he can stand me. But I suppose he’ll be up and about before long.”
“He’ll still need amusing. You wouldn’t like to move over again? Eustace will probably go abroad later, but not for quite a while, I should think. He’ll no doubt prefer to get his strength back here in the country. I’ll be glad to have you come.”
Elsie darted a swift glance at the haughty, almost arrogant figure in the stately chair. What scheme lay behind that careless invitation that was more like a command? She fancied she could guess.
“I’ll come, of course, if you want me. And I’m glad Polly was able to be with you this week. She’s not wasting her time, by the way.” Elsie craned her neck toward the garden. “You remember I once told you she had—oddly enough—taken a tremendous fancy to my brother. I’m wondering if it’s really serious.”
But Gita would not discuss Polly with Elsie. And she suddenly remembered that Geoffrey’s sister had expressed intense disapproval of such a marriage. She ranged herself on Polly’s side instinctively.
Dr. Pelham appeared at the window. “Why are you sitting in the house on a day like this?” he asked. “Come out into the garden. How did you find Eustace, Mrs. Bylant?”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me Mrs. Bylant. I’m Gita Carteret to everyone else. He seems all right, and not a bit tired when I left him. Where’s Polly?”
“Just left. Her mother’s car came for her some time ago as she’s expected for lunch. She asked me to explain, as she thought you were still upstairs with Eustace.”
Gita placed her hands on the low sill of the window and swung herself out on to the grass. “Coming, Elsie?” She suppressed an impulse to say “Mrs. Brewster.” “Or will you go over and get your things?”
Elsie hesitated. For the first time the eyes of the two girls met in hostility. No invitation for luncheon came from Gita although it could not be far from one o’clock. Elsie was only half-beaten, however.
“I’ll telephone for a taxi, if I may,” she said. “I don’t feel up to a long walk, and I’d be likely to catch more cold in a trolley.”
She strolled with them in the garden until the taxi arrived, praying it would be late and Gita, in common decency, be compelled to ask her to remain for luncheon, when Topper announced it. She guessed that Polly would return at the earliest possible moment, but there was something about Gita that filled her with misgivings. Even her hair looked wicked. It almost stood up straight. Two hours, at least!
But the taxi arrived in less than fifteen minutes. The absence of traffic laws in Atlantic City—or of enforcement—was conducive to promptness. She offered to drive her brother home. He preferred a walk later. There was no doubt abouthisinvitation! Elsie went off in her dingy cab alone.
Ifone were to tabulate truisms no doubt the prickly wall, towering to the ether, that surrounds the ego, no matter how close its human relationships, would be first on the list. Polly had made up her mind to marry Geoffrey Pelham and felt no misgivings, for life had given her confidence in herself and her power to charm. For five years men had admired, loved, pursued her, and when she wanted a thing it was hers; why not? Nor was there a rival in the field. If Geoffrey had been captivated by Gita for a time it was quite patent he had given her up as a bad job. Who wouldn’t? Both her mother and Elsie had made a mistake. She hadn’t been asleep this last week, she had kept a sharp eye on Gita, missing no change of expression nor inflection. Gita had prowled about the house for the most part, looking sullen and anxious. Pelham might have been an automaton for all the effect he had on her. Gita was not in love with him, probably never would be in love with any man, unless remorse drove her back to Eustace; who would be a greater fool than she took him to be if he didn’t make the most of his helpless dependence and the great wrong she had done him. And Geoffrey was as indifferent to Gita as she to him. Whether he had discovered he was in love with one Mary Endicott Pleyden she was not yet sure; but that he lingered longer and longer at the manor after his visits to Eustace were concluded, and that he sought her as a matter of course, and looked care-free and often exhilarated in her society, was as plain as the nose on her face. And they would be together in intimate association, for weeks. Her brow was smooth, the corners of her mouth curled upward.
Gita had given Geoffrey to Polly with a grand gesture, convinced on her part that she alone was the obstacle to the happiness of her friend. In her brief interviews with her wounded husband’s surgeon the conversation had been strictly technical. Nor had his cool impersonal gaze wavered for a second, nor followed her. It was more likely to follow the enchanting Miss Pleyden. He had come to his senses. Odd if he hadn’t.
But they knew even less of what was going on in Geoffrey’s mind than they did of each other. Nor had he the remotest idea of what either of them was up to. If he had guessed that they were calmly, more or less, arranging his destiny for him he would have resented it for a moment and then laughed.
That Gita loved him, however collaterally, he had never had the happiness to suspect; although he had known that night as they sat opposite in the dim drawing-room, disguised as their more picturesque ancestors, he would have attempted to win her if she had been free—yes, won, in the end, for he had felt that curious vibration between them. And even after that amazing assertion of hers at the Pleydens’ he refused to believe that Polly’s regard for him was anything but bright friendship spiced with coquetry. He had immense confidence in himself as a surgeon, but had given too little time or thought to women for the fostering of conceit. He was quite unlike the vapid men of her circle—he had heard or read somewhere that all society men were vapid—and he amused this brilliant rather metallic little butterfly for the moment.
She certainly amused him, let him down, sent him back to his work refreshed; and during this last week she had been as spring-water in a thirsty desert. That Polly was too proud to reveal a glimpse of her deeper feelings, or even to betray sentiment until he gave her her cue, was the last thing that would have occurred to him. Love alone would have shattered his obtuseness and his love-stream was flowing turbulently in another direction.
After that first meeting in his mother’s house he had found himself thinking of Gita at the most unexpected and inopportune moments. She projected herself abruptly upon his mental retina when he was sterilizing his instruments preparatory to an operation, discussing a case gravely with his chief, taking his brisk morning walk, relaxing his mind at the play, trying to fall asleep. He had been profoundly annoyed, but attributed the phenomenon to her unusual appearance. Those fierce black eyes and extraordinary eyelashes, that spirited head that looked as if it were about to lift her shoulders and fly upward, would probably haunt any man. No doubt she had a personality as remarkable, although she had said nothing he could remember, merely asked a good many questions. But what it might be did not interest him in the least. He would not care if he never met her again. His mind that night had been like an inadvertently exposed plate and the impression it had received would fade in due course.
When her unexpected invitation to the Christmas party arrived he had accepted it in the hope that a second meeting would lay the ghost. But when he had entered that great hall lit with pine torches, flaring down on men and women in white wigs and bygone costumes, as gorgeous a scene as even that old manor house, famed for its hospitality in the days of Colonial governors, had ever witnessed, two centuries seemed to drop out of life; and as he stood in the shadow, watching the mock-stately evolutions of the minuet, a fine haze like a golden cobweb stole over his brain, and he had a quiet conviction he had been there before and was here again for some more definite purpose. Earlier, he had half laughed, half frowned at his reflection in the mirror; but even then it had seemed to him his transformation was so complete as to create a doubt if he would be able to shake off this new personality on the morrow. He certainly would never cease to wonder that for one night in his life he had been handsome.
The romp that finished the minuet had brought him out of his hallucination and he had moved forward merely to find his hostess and do his first duty as a guest. After that he would look on for a while, enjoying the beauty of the pageant, and then slip out. There was no place in such a scene for him.
When he had stood staring for a moment at Gita, hardly knowing what banalities he might be uttering, again with that iridescent cobweb flung over his brain and that curious beating of old memories beneath, his impulse was to flee incontinently. But after a dance with Miss Pleyden, during which he believed that ridiculous illusions had fled forever, he had deliberately sought Gita in the drawing-room, determined to have done with nonsense forthwith.
He was a practical man in a practical age, a surgeon with a brilliant future, a man who wanted no woman in his life to distract him, certainly not the wife of Eustace Bylant. A surgeon, of all men, should find nothing romantic in the most resplendent of women. He had cut too many of them up. They were all made precisely alike inside and if they varied in texture of skin and in feature, inches and symmetry, the best of them could be classified into types and their original purpose hadn’t deviated by a hair’s breadth. To idealize them was as nonsensical as to idealize passion and call it spiritual love. Even what personality they might possess was due to the balance of hormones in their ductless glands. Anything further was the result of imitation and artifice. Women somewhere in the dawn of time had concocted a set of tricks and some were more skillful in the use of them than others, some had a more arresting beauty, some a more powerful magnetism (super-active generative hormones), but not one of them, unless possessed of interesting abnormalities, would cut up differently from the other. They were the vehicles of the race, nothing more. Cut out the sexual organs of the most beautiful woman in the world and she would wither like a rose broken on its stem. Take them out in childhood and she would be a neuter and semi-imbecile or worse. There would be no more “soul” in her, no more ego, nor personality, than in a cadaver on the operating-table. Sterilize the Graafian follicles with the X-ray, coincidentally stimulating and proliferating the interstitial cells, and a faded woman’s beauty would not only be restored but more likely than not she would possess a magnetism lacking when the function was divided. Perhaps develop a higher “spirituality,” soaring mute aspirations: sublimation of the sex-urge.
His scientific mind restored to its balance, he walked into the drawing-room where Gita sat with the candle-light playing on her white wig and golden gown, flickering in the depths of her black eyes, and, without more ado, fell incurably and uncompromisingly in love.
Afterward he wondered how he had managed to confine himself to an oblique declaration, refrained from pouring his passion over her in a flood. But he had clung tenaciously to the thought of Eustace Bylant, even when she casually announced that she was entering upon a travesty of marriage. That had filled him with exultation but left him as little at liberty to speak.
At the altar he renounced her, although he felt as if the world were sinking under him and left him forever suspended in space. But he looked forward to the sanity of the morrow, to daylight, to the unpicturesque garb of his matter-of-fact era. Thankfully he remembered he was to operate on a woman for cancer at ten o’clock.
He managed to shut Gita out of his thoughts for a week, and then welcomed her back. And he thought of her not only as a woman but as a case. He understood that case thoroughly. He also knew its cure, but he was helpless even if she loved him and she did not; although he never doubted he could win her if it were not for the malignancy of Fate. If her husband were any man but his best friend!—but like all men’s men of breeding he had a high and inexorable code.
His outbreak at Mrs. Pleyden’s had been irresistible. Well, let her know it. Why not? He was entitled to that much. And he approached her on the night of her party no more than courtesy demanded, and devoted himself to Polly, who always diverted him.
He had asked no questions of Elsie that night he had been summoned to the manor to save Bylant’s life, but he had thought of little else, arriving at conclusions not far from the truth. Whether she had recognized Bylant or believed him to be a felonious intruder, she had defended not her house from outrage but her body; that body a peculiar neurosis had made more sacred than virtue itself. He fancied he could reconstruct the scene! Eustace had been a brute and a fool and got his just deserts. As a man he might sympathize with him but as a scientist he felt only arrogant contempt.
By this time he knew Gita’s history. What either she or Polly had not confided in moments of expansion, Elsie’s keen analytical mind had divined, and she had found both pleasure and profit in discussing the girl with her brother. Pelham felt an immense pity, and if a surgical operation would have cured her he would have contributed his services as impersonally as when he cut a neat incision and extracted a poisonous appendix. But the knife must come out of the blue. It must find its own way—down through the stagnant waters, and release the sap underneath.
He might have been the man to watch it fall if he had not been compelled to walk down that staircase beside her holding the candelabra over her head and feeling as if he were sinking under the weight of the stone in his breast. If the time were two centuries earlier he would have snatched her from Eustace at the foot of the stair and dashed off with her into the darkness. But illusions had fled. That golden haze had gone whence it came. Men had become mere travesties of themselves.
Although his imagination had shown unexpected activities he indulged in no longings to mount with Gita into the empyrean and dwell with her in spiritual contact. He was a man and he wanted her, comprehensively, exclusively. And he wanted her because he loved her; he was suffering from no mere gust of passion. His scientific balance might be restored, he might converse with himself as reasonably about the fatal similarities and prosaic purpose of woman, but he had never denied (being by no means lacking in observation) that men, at times, were intensely personal in their selection; and whether this were due to a sudden alliance between the generative cells and the unconscious, or eugenic suggestion, or fetishes, or propinquity, or a pretty face, or a restless longing for completion, or whatever, the fact remained that man, sometime during his life, unless thymo-centric, wanted one woman in particular and moved heaven and earth to get her. Well, he had come to that pass, and by what special set of phenomena induced was a matter of no interest to him. He wished that codes had never been invented. Certainly that he had met Gita Carteret before he had known Eustace Bylant.
He had suffered torments enough during that winter in New York. Gita and Eustace in that narrow house! Companions, friends, almost intimates. How could the man fail to win her? He began with everything in his favor, and if a man could not convert a friend into a lover when he lived under the same roof with her he must be a poor apology for one. And Geoffrey had the highest admiration for Eustace Bylant.
He had sometimes gone out at night and stood in front of that narrow house, paralyzed in a sort of nightmare; then fleeing like a man possessed. Once he collided with a policeman and had some trouble explaining himself, for the hour was two and he guessed that his eyes were as wild as his thoughts.
But on the night after he extracted the bullet from Bylant’s body he knew that one phase of his torments had been a waste of nerve-energy. Gita could not have been more cruelly indifferent if she had wounded a criminal just out of Sing Sing. And he had received a subtle message from that golden gown and powdered hair. That she had been indulging in an orgy of intimate psychology, his future as well as her own disposed of in rough outline, he was mercifully ignorant, but that the masquerade was in some way connected with himself and the night they had hovered on the verge of an understanding, he knew as well as if she had told him.
But on this he dared not dwell. She was still Bylant’s wife, and Bylant was his patient. He devoted his skill to saving the man’s life, avoided Gita, and turned to Polly for distraction. And for all he knew Gita might really be consumed with remorse; or if undergoing a profound revulsion of feeling, needed only that first interview with her prostrate husband to melt into pity and the determination to atone with a lifetime of friendly devotion. Not love. If that had been latent it would have sprung to life in the moment she had turned on the light and seen him wounded and unconscious at her feet. But there was small consolation in the thought that even if Eustace, pursuing his new advantage, called in the services of an endocrinologist, it would avail him nothing unless Gita loved him. And Gita was by no means the type of woman to translate pity into love. But she might immolate herself, nevertheless.
He had walked with Polly during that interview, hardly knowing whether his answers to her lively sallies were rational or mere sputterings from an overcharged brain. She had told him finally he was absent-minded and run off to her car.
And when he looked in through the window and saw Gita sitting in that high-backed chair like an image of arrogant fate he knew that Eustace had lost again.
Topperannounced luncheon. It was served in the dining-room, as Gita had taken a dislike to the breakfast-room, so intimately associated with Eustace and Elsie; and although she had sat beside Eustace here on the night of the wedding, their chairs tied together with a white ribbon, and listened to speeches and toasts, the only memory that emerged definitely was the white flounces De Witt Turner had sewed on her dignified ancestor’s uniform of state. He had looked excruciatingly funny and she had fastened her mind on those flounces and refrained from gritting her teeth when toasting bores were congratulating Eustace and assuming she was congratulating herself.
Geoffrey Pelham had sat on her side of the table and she had not seen him again until he bade her good-night. Then she had been too excited over her beautiful wedding-presents to give him a parting glance.
The dining-room was high and dark and austere. Black-browed Carterets in tarnished frames seemed to look out of the wall itself. But she felt a Carteret among them, severed the more completely from that brief period when all but the blessed sophisticates had called her Mrs. Bylant.
Places for two were laid at one end of the long table. Topper had suggested a small table in front of the fireplace for herself and Polly, but Gita was in no mood for compromise. She would sit where her grandmother had sat alone for so many years, save on the rare occasions when she had summoned the county to a formal and depressing function. Otherwise, no doubt, she had sat with her thoughts for company, her dimming vision peopling the long lines of chairs with ghosts. No compromise for her.
Topper, too, was uncompromising. If he could not have a symmetrical small table he would not crowd his beloved silver at one end leaving a long expanse desolate. Candelabra and massive pieces were arranged with precision from end to end, and although he felt no inclination to set places for absent guests, and left all but two of the paneled chairs against the paneled walls, the remote curve patronized by this incomprehensible mistress had never the unseemly effect of being cluttered.
Pelham felt that he had enough to endure without being asked to eat in a tomb. His mother talked sometimes of the past glories of her family, whose ancestral mansion (wooden, painted white, with green blinds) had been in Massachusetts, but he was thankful he was descended from the Dedhams on the petticoat side and had been brought up in a light and airy house in Atlantic City, however unhistoried and architecturally debased.
And Gita, sitting in her grandmother’s high-backed wing-chair, looked less like a descendant than an ancestress. She had been brittle but vivacious during that half-hour in the garden, but here she looked as if the mantle of these infernal frowning Carterets had frozen the blood in her veins. For the moment she once more interested him as a case.
He mentioned Eustace for the first time since he had made his perfunctory inquiry, after her visit. “I was very much worried for a time—afraid of infection. But Eustace has the constitution of an ox.”
“Your good doctoring.” And her smile was grimly gracious.
“Surgeons and nurses can do so much and no more. He may thank his sturdy Dutch ancestors and the healthy life he has led.”
Silence.
“I am afraid that shoulder will be permanently stiff,” he went on impatiently. “Hard on a writer.”
“He can dictate, I suppose.”
“He once told me he couldn’t endure the idea of anyone in the room with him when he wrote. Jealous, or something of the sort. Wanted to be alone with his characters. Authors are afflicted with temperament, you know.”
“He could tap it out with one hand. I’ve noticed one generally manages to do what one has to do. If not one way then another.”
“True. I’m glad he’d just finished his novel. By the time he is ready to begin another——”
“It would be a good idea for him to travel for a time. You might suggest it. He’s been talking of a trip to South America. How soon will he be able to travel?”
“Not for two or three months yet. Shock must be taken into consideration. . . . South America. Good idea. Interesting country. You would enjoy the trip yourself.”
He kept his eyes on his plate, although the excellent fried chicken of the excellent cook might have been a rump steak.
“I have no intention of going to South America. I expect to live in this house for the rest of my life.”
“Oh—rather a monotonous life, that, for a girl of your age. And rather rash to be so certain of anything, isn’t it?”
“Nothing rash about me,” muttered Gita. “When I make up my mind to do a thing I do it.”
Pelham cast out another line, thankful for the discretion of Topper who remained in the room as little as possible. “I can’t imagine Eustace shut up in an old manor house in winter. New York owns him, body and soul.”
“There will be nothing to keep him out of New York. He’s welcome to stay here as long as he’s an invalid, but when he goes it will be with the understanding he’s seen the last of the manor.”
A brief silence and then Geoffrey stammered: “Do you intend to divorce him?”
“How could I? What excuse?” And then she burst into a peal of laughter. The one plea she could advance was a husband’s wild attempt to enforce his rights.
Her mantle fell from her. “Don’t ask me what I was laughing at! Poor Eustace! If he chooses to divorce me he can do so on the ground of desertion. We could meet in Paris. And of course he will want his freedom in time.”
The precipitations of the past week had suddenly resolved themselves an hour since into a half-conscious determination to show Polly her place and Pelham that he was still hopelessly in her toils. But when she found herself alone with him in the dining-room she had anathematized herself as a fool and retreated in stiff panic from the results of any such exercise of power. Now she suddenly felt light-hearted once more. Her intense self-consciousness had fled with her gale of mirth. Blessed be humor.
No reason they shouldn’t be friends until he went out of her life altogether. And she realized sharply that her most crying want this past week had been someone to talk to, a confidant. She had got used to talking things out.
She, too, threw out a line.
“Too bad Polly had to desert you today. I’m a poor substitute. Don’t know exactly how or what I’ve been feeling this last week. Remorse, I think, for not feeling remorse. Been as glum as—can’t think of anything emphatic enough. Felt, rather, as if I’d been stirred up with a spoon and nothing would settle. Better not try to diagnose me,” she added hastily. His gaze was very intense. “Are you and Polly engaged?” She shot out the question and then dropped her eyes in consternation. She had had no intention of being direct.
“Certainly not. Neither I nor Polly has ever thought of such a thing.”
“You’re as blind as a bat!” She fastened her eyes on him with her fiercest expression and he felt as if they had pushed him to the wall and pinned him there. “Of course she expects you to marry her,” she said with harsh and bitter emphasis. “So does everybody else. You’d be a cad if you didn’t——”
Pelham gave a violent exclamation and sprang to his feet, overturning his chair. “How dare you use such a word to me!” he shouted, his face blazing. “After what I’ve been through—done—renounced! You little tiger-cat! I wish to God you were a man!”
He felt no love for her at that moment. He almost hated her. He had had words both high and hot with men who disagreed with him, been abused by unreasonable patients, but it was the first time the most contemptible word in the language had been hurled at him, and the indignity stung him to fury. “Yes, by God! I wish you were a man. I’d beat you black and blue and rub your nose in the dirt.”
Gita had gazed at him fascinated for a moment and then dropped her eyes. A curious thrill rippled over her nerves, and she hid her hands under the table.
“I’ll take it back,” she said hastily. “You know how carelessly and exaggeratedly we use words these days. I only meant that any girl would expect a proposal—after such devotion——”
“Devotion! She knows I enjoy her society. She knows I’ve never given anything further a thought—any more than she has herself. There’s never been a glance of sentiment between us. She amuses herself with one man after another. She told me so herself. What—how could you—after what I told you——”
“Yes, yes, I remember.” She did not raise her eyes. Geoffrey had not looked so attractive in costume as with those flaming furious blue eyes—almost black with temper—exactly like an indignant schoolboy unjustly accused of raiding an orchard. “Please sit down. I’ve apologized. You should forgive me.”
He lifted his chair and dropped into it. “You don’t deserve to be forgiven,” he growled, although his anger was ebbing. “But we’ll settle this once for all. If I’ve made Polly conspicuous there is but one thing for me to do. I’ll place Eustace in the hands of a local practitioner and return to New York. As she will spend the summer here we shall drift apart naturally, and anyone who has gossiped—if anyone has—will forget it. There are too many to take my place. But as a matter of fact I don’t believe anyone has thought of such a thing but you.”
“Oh—I don’t think you should do that—leave Eustace—I——”
She felt unaccountably nervous. Cold. There was a slight tremor in her knees.
She was on the point of telling him that Mrs. Pleyden and Elsie had expressed themselves forcibly, and that Polly was serious . . . that would settle it. But she could not—or would not. Moreover Topper entered at the moment. Gone was the desire to show Polly her place, but Polly had had her chance and lost out. Why should she sacrifice herself further? . . . Sacrifice? She frowned down at the unsteady hands in her lap. What did she feel, anyhow? Damn it.
Then that zealous little censor she had firmly dethroned reinstated itself slyly. Why, of course, she wanted his friendship. She must have a friend. She’d not make a second mistake and marry one—not she—a man whose eyes burned like blue rockets . . . rather interesting, a friendship with a spice of danger in it. Her friendship with Eustace had certainly lacked that. He’d never hung out a danger-signal until that night after the party when his eyes betrayed that the bottom was beginning to fall out of his little game. And in him it was merely revolting. The very thought made her sick.
But it attracted her uncannily in this man, in spite of the fact that she had nothing to give him. Well, she’d have him for a friend if she could manage him. Heaven knew she needed one. Being a hermit in an old manor house didn’t really appeal to her at all. No drama in that. . . . Here might be the bridge to something new. Element of suspense in it, anyhow. . . . Who knew? What, after all, was life but successive links in a chain?
Topper had brought in a lemon pie as light as a soufflé and retired. She looked up and smiled, a hesitating, curiously girlish smile. Geoffrey’s face was calmer but his eyes still burned.
“You won’t really go?” she asked pleadingly. “You know how Eustace depends on you. It might set him back. And now that you’re no longer worried about him you’re enjoying your vacation. If it’s all right about Polly there’s no need to bother. And nobody else will be here but your sister. Mrs. Pleyden thinks Eustace wrenched his shoulder and has only telephoned once to inquire. Topper and the gardener won’t talk. Nor those nurses, I suppose. The other servants think he slipped and fell downstairs. And I don’t want a strange doctor here. And as Elsie’s coming to stay, no doubt Polly will go home. Do, please, stay.”
There was no coquetry in her manner, but he looked at her probingly. There was a new intonation in her voice and her face had softened curiously. She looked not unlike a coaxing child . . . not quite. But his mind felt a little dazed. She had been so many different kinds of female since he had seen her, less than an hour ago, sitting under that portrait of her grandmother. . . . But he was not too bemused to ask pointedly:
“Do you want me to stay?”
“Yes, I do. You see—I haven’t a friend left. I’ll never even like Eustace again. Polly may not be in love with you but she takes no interest in me or any woman when she is concentrating on a man. I’ve barely seen her except at table since she came here, and then she’s almost as silent as myself. I’ll never forgive Elsie. Perhaps you’ve guessed she cares a lot for Eustace?”
“Yes, I think it possible.”
“He should have married her—no doubt will in time. I’ve asked her to stay here and give him a chance to find out his mistake. But she failed me when I needed her most—I’ve been like a lost soul this last week and would have given everything I possessed for one good long talk with her. So, you see——” And her eyes so recently fierce, wicked, arrogant, looked as if pleading to heaven, and she smiled tremulously.
He turned pale and gave the table a sharp rap with his fork. The lemon pie was neglected. “You place me in a beastly position,” he said harshly. “You are asking for friendship, and—well, Eustace is upstairs, wounded——”
She lifted her head, looking less like a madonna than a Carteret. “This is my house and he is my very unwilling guest—unwilling on both sides.”
“He is still your husband.”
“He never was my husband.” She saw where this digression was leading and added hastily: “Not that I want to hear about anything else. I—well, I suppose it doesn’t matter if I say it—I suppose I should have loved you if I could love anyone. But I can’t. That’s final. Your sister and Polly say I’m asexual.”
Dr. Pelham swore fluently and shamelessly.
“But it’s true——”
“That subject—and all it connotes—may not come within the province of surgery, but I happen to have a friend who is a distinguished endocrinologist and psychiatrist, two sciences which are more dependent on each other than is generally known. We have discussed the subject until I know as much about it as he does; and it happens to interest me profoundly. You are no more asexual——”
“I am. I want to be. I don’t wish to talk about it. But if you don’t want to be my friend——”
“I’ll be your friend—God knows I never wanted to help anyone more—until you and Eustace have put an end to your marriage farce. Then, by God—oh!”
Polly’s laugh rang through the hall.
Gita sprang to her feet. “Go out. Don’t let her come in here. Tell her I’ve had to go to the kitchen——”
He followed her precipitate retreat and caught her by the arm. “You must——”
She was cowering away from him. “Let go! Let go!” she said through her teeth. “I hate being touched.” And she pressed her hand against her chin.
He dropped his hand but his eyes flashed. “I’d not do anything you disliked—thought you disliked—for the world. But tell me when I may have a talk with you again. How can we be friends if I never see you alone? Polly and Elsie both here—there’s Elsie’s voice—have you ever been on the salt marshes at night?”
“No.” Her eyes sparkled. “I’ve always wanted to.”
“I’ll meet you at the manor gates at ten o’clock tonight and take you for a row. Don’t fail to be there——”
The door opened and Polly entered followed by Elsie.