Elsie, after a long and sweeping talk with Polly Pleyden, accepted the invitation. Both agreed that Eustace Bylant was the husband for Gita—eventually. And, as it was out of the question for her to live alone any longer, Elsie was the one to clear his path.
“Not that I’ll say a word to her,” said the young author, whose brows still betrayed perplexity. “I told her once I’d never dare meddle with her sex-stream, and I meant it. But if she can fall in love with Eustace it would be an ideal marriage for her. He’s everything she is not, and yet the differences are not the sort that antagonize, but complement. And he’s just theguideshe needs—in every way. An impetuous passionate man would repel her from the start. I’ve seen them together once or twice, and I got the impression of a subtle bond between them, quite aside from books, or master and pupil, although, so far, of course, Gita regards him merely as a walking intelligence.”
“Oh, let him do the job,” said Polly lightly. “You just stick round and play long-distance propriety. But if he says anything to you, tell him to go slow. I want to see first what Gita’s like when she’s racketing round with us. . . . But I don’t fancy he’ll rush her. Knows that patience is his long suit. If he loses his head some moonlight night—well! I’d like to be there to see the explosion. He’d probably find himself sitting on the roof. But I fancy he’ll watch out. Must make himself as indispensable and familiar as the old furniture and Topper. And then sort of propose without actually proposing. Get my idea?”
“Oh, yes, I get it!” Elsie gave a faint sigh of envy. This radiant assured young person had evidently never met defeat in her life. But she was the more ready to assist in the achieving of Miss Pleyden’s latest whim because on the only two occasions she had seen her brother since the dinner he had asked abruptly after Gita. He had frowned as if annoyed with himself, no doubt recalling his characteristic remark after he had handed her over to Topper. Probably those black eyes of Gita’s had been haunting him! She could conceive of no bond between those two and was determined they should not meet again if she could prevent it. No doubt Bylant would succeed in his suit before Gita went to New York for the winter. If she knew anything of men he was the sort whose enforced patience would come to an abrupt end when he had accomplished his purpose, and he would marry her at once. But she sighed again. She had had her day-dreams. . . .
She moved over to the manor next day, and, as her novel was hanging fire, she determined to make an experiment. “I know at least one novelist,” she told Gita, “who writes every new book in a new place. Finds that surroundings dissociated from habit stimulate the imagination. So, if you will give me a quiet corner——”
Gita, delighted, gave her a room off the library that had been used as an office by her grandfather, and the experiment was a success. The social gods were placated, Elsie wrote from six until noon, while Gita either amused herself alone, or rode, walked, talked with Eustace Bylant; who was the most complacent of the trio. He never deluded himself that he had struck a spark from his own steady flame, but she depended on him increasingly, she did not wince, at least, if he touched her hand, or shoulder, as they bent together over a book, and he had the field to himself. He knew Polly’s plans but had no intention of considering them. He still had four months, for the Pleydens did not move to New York until January, and he was determined to marry Gita as soon as he had worn down her defenses.
They were strolling on the Boardwalk one Sunday morning after what was known as the “summer crowd”—drawn from every state in the Union—had taken possession of Atlantic City, and commenting on the lack of feminine beauty in the American masses after the mere prettiness of youth had surrendered to an utterly commonplace maturity.
“No wonder the girls come here in the hope of picking up a husband,” said Bylant. “This has always been a great marriage-mart, even in the days when visitors were practically all of one class. Now the opportunities are more casual, but in the big hotels there is dancing every night, girls are bound to meet men, and the number of engagements that come off every year in Atlantic City makes it the goal of all mothers with young daughters, whose social circle is narrow and mainly composed of women.”
He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Gita, who shrugged indifferently.
“Don’t your fellow mortals interest you in the least?” he asked.
“Rather.”
“But not the question of marriage?”
“Not a bit.”
“But would you like to think that all these pretty girls could never find a mate—and fulfil their destiny?”
“I always hope women will get everything they want, and if they are silly enough to want husbands, let ’em have ’em by all means.”
“But my dear Gita, is it possible you don’t realize that woman’s one chance of authentic happiness lies in love and mating?”
“I know they think it does—because they’ve been fed on traditions and are the slaves of custom. They’d be a long sight better off by themselves. Love is nothing but a cherished superstition.”
“Oh, no, it is not! It’s the deepest and most inalienable of human instincts.”
“Instinct is nothing but memory.”
“Possibly. We’ll call it by another term. Imperative impulse. And the sex-impulse has its birth in the generative cells. It has nothing to do with tradition.”
“I know that well enough. But you were talking of love. What has that to do with sex cells?”
“Well! More than you seem to imagine. Do you really believe that love between men and women can exist independently of sex?”
“Of course. Look at me. I love you even more than I do Elsie or Polly, and you might wear a one-piece dress for all the difference it would make.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Bylant, pardonably exasperated, almost struck a child in the face with his stick. “As it happens I don’t wear petticoats——”
“We don’t either. Bloomers.”
“Oh, you are impossible!” But he was forced to laugh. He made his voice gay and challenging. “Suppose I should fall in love with you?”
“I don’t see you falling in love with anybody.”
“You don’t?”
“I’ve seen too much of men. They’re divided into three classes: beasts, fools, and intellectuals. You belong to the last and have a great gift besides. You’ve got something better to do than being an abject slave of the race—for that is what it amounts to—and your emotions are all in your head.”
“And that represents your considered observation of intellectuals! Or are you the average American whose creed is: ‘Things are what I want them to be, not what they are’?”
“Of course not,” said Gita crossly. “I wouldn’t recognize the beastliness and stupidity of human nature and of life if I were. But you are as cold-blooded as a codfish and I shouldn’t like you if you were not.”
Bylant nearly strangled as he passed over the diagnosis. “Like? You said just now you loved me.”
“Love only means preference raised a degree higher. Stop arguing on such a silly subject, Eustace. What’s come over you? This is the first time we’ve argued that I haven’t learned something.”
“Well, I’ve taught you nothing on one subject, that’s flat. I merely wanted to sound you out on a topic of somewhat general preoccupation. Your ideas always interest me and you’ve been singularly illuminating this morning. Here’s a tearoom. Shall we go in and have a cup? It’s two hours until luncheon.”
Gitahad an old habit of reviewing the day as she prepared herself for the night. She and Elsie parted at nine o’clock, for both rose early, and as Gita kicked off her slippers that evening she recalled her conversation with Eustace on the Boardwalk.
She had been by no means as obtuse as she had appeared, for love and marriage were subjects never broached by him before and her keen ear had detected a personal vibration in his even mellow voice. But he had talked lightly or brilliantly on strictly impersonal topics during the rest of the morning, they had lunched at the Pleydens’, and played tennis all afternoon; she had not given that conversation another thought until she was alone in her room.
She seized her military brushes and excoriated her scalp.
“Now, what on earth was he driving at?” she demanded of her frowning reflection in the mirror. “Does he want to marry me? Sounding me out? Well, I hope he’s satisfied. Eustace!Whata bore. . . . Or am I to be the heroine of his next novel? More likely.”
She dropped the brushes and fell to pondering. After all, she might have expected it. He was not in love with her—how could he be, sexless intellect that he so marvelously was?—but he had spent the best part of every day with her, taking an indisputable pleasure in her society (and she knew from Polly that his interest in other women had been casual); no doubt he would like to take her on as a permanent companion. She knew that she had an alert and possibly a brilliant mind, untrained as it was, and as he possessed his full share of male egoism, he must derive a tingling satisfaction in molding it. And it was equally manifest that he was stimulated by her Giterish points of view.
She was comparatively obscure now, but she was quite well aware that after she had taken a more prominent place in her world she would be unable to spend hours of every day in one man’s company—year after year. A man to whom she was not even engaged. She would be “talked about,” “dropped,” even in this lenient age. Or if society outwardly condoned the friendship it would not cease from horrible inferences. As Gita’s lively imagination projected them the blood burned all over her body and crimsoned her face to her hair.Thatwould be only less awful than if some man kidnapped her and subjected her to every indignity.
No, she would give him up first.
But what would she do without him?
She had been sincere in her casual assurance that she loved him. After Millicent’s death she had believed she never could love anyone again. But she had been made over in so many ways! She certainly loved Elsie, in a lesser degree Polly; she could have been fond of her grandmother if she had lived a few years longer and been well and companionable. And Eustace. He was the perfect companion and friend. He never struck a false note, he was kind, sympathetic, and understanding—unique among men, she was convinced. He had flashed the torch of his splendid intelligence into every dark recess of her being, and chased out the bogies.
He could not bore if he made a valiant attempt, and he knew when to talk, to listen, and to ask her opinion on subjects of which even she knew more than himself. He never assumed the detestable superiority of the male, and yet was never unmanly. No man could be less so. He was a virile figure on the links and tennis-court, he could outwalk herself, he was a fine swimmer. In France he had served with distinction and she knew that if the peace of his country were threatened again he would be the first to enlist. Even when lounging in the deepest of her chairs or stretched out at full length in the wood he never suggested weakness or inertia.
And his books—she had now read them all—had power in spite of their refinement of phrasing and vocabulary, their supreme mental distinction. He wrote about sex a lot, to be sure, but in the detached manner of a medical student dissecting the physical anatomy. His personal attitude to his characters no reader could guess. He was primarily an intellect handsomely provided by Nature with a sound healthy body that it might send a stream of pure blood to his brain.
In his relations with her he never suggested sex for a moment. Not even this morning. He had been on the psychological hunt as usual. She had encountered the eyes of too many carnalites. Encountered them still.
If he wanted to marry her in order to keep her for himself without scandal, that was natural enough. He had had two perfect comrades in his life, herself and his mother, and as he had lost one irrevocably it was not likely he would lose the other if he could help it.
Nor couldshegivehimup, not even if she were obliged to marry him to save herself from being the object of loathsome suspicions and innuendoes.
Well, why not? The ceremony would be a mere concession to prejudice, and they could go on as they were forever. She would have his protection and companionship, and he would have the one woman in his life who had meant anything to him since Bladina’s death. And be mightily proud of herself besides. She would cultivate the Carteret grand manner and be one more feather in his already decorated cap. He had given her more than one cause for the profoundest gratitude, and it would be her delight to repay him.
She recalled the day when she had sat on the sands after the tilt with her grandmother and reflected that she had not an illusion; and a horror and hatred of life. Well, she still had no illusions but horror and hatred had fled. And although Polly and Elsie had contributed, to him belonged the credit of completing the cure. She was now not happy at intervals but consistently. And satisfied as she was with the present she looked to the future with an eager indubious eye. Under his expert guidance life in all its multiform phases would unroll, for he devoted only his mornings and but eight months of the year to work; and it was quite evident he enjoyed playing his own part in life as well as being one of its chroniclers. And he had every opportunity to live it to the full.
And she, herself, wanted to live, to see all there was to see, learn all there was to know. A girl alone had small chance of that unless she had a gift that brought the world to her feet. If she abandoned her background she became the natural prey of men. She doubted if any man would dare make love to Eustace Bylant’s wife.
She smiled as she thought of Polly, who nonchalantly assumed that no plan of hers could go wrong. She had thought her fatuous, fortunately placed as she was; and here was herself tearing a leaf out of Polly’s book. Well, why not? Life was fairly shoving her at a book with pleasant rustling leaves and bidding her choose.
She determined to put it squarely to Eustace the next time he angled. Have it over. Senseless to fence when the business of life was up for settlement. She’d get more out of life as a married girl than running round with Polly’s crowd, incidentally enlivened with harmless sophisticates. That would be seeing life through the wrong end of an opera-glass.
“So that’s that.” And she climbed into bed and fell asleep at once.
Buttime passed and Bylant betrayed no part of his purpose again. He had lingered on in Chelsea, and finally announced he would make no visits that year, nor return to New York until after Christmas; and while he told Gita frankly that he was remaining on her account, he was as matter-of-fact as if he were a tutor reluctant to leave a promising pupil.
Two days after Gita had sketched out her platform Mrs. Pleyden called her on the telephone and invited her for dinner on the following evening.
“You see, my dear, it is over four months since your grandmother’s death, and you must be dull at times,” she said with crisp sympathy. “I am sure she would agree with me that you should begin to see more of your future friends and associates (she means men, thought Gita), and before you go to New York for the winter. It will make things so much easier for you. And we are very informal. The men do not dress for dinner—of course the girls do!—but when the men are let off that means we are really informal.”
Gita, nothing loath, as Eustace would be there to sustain her, permitted herself to be frankly bored once a week and made no pretense of listening to anyone but Bylant; who sat always at the right of his admiring hostess. His mellow voice came to her across the excited chatter of the others, who, as she had expected, said nothing that interested her, even when she understood what they were talking about.
Bylant had his more distinguished friends down occasionally and one night he brought three to the manor to dinner. Gita dressed herself with even more interest in her appearance than usual and ordered Topper to bring up three bottles of vintage champagne from the cellar, and the cook to excel herself. At last she was to meet three of the most famous of the sophisticates, her future companions and friends. But one was fat, one was bald, and one after his second glass of champagne fell into a sentimental monologue inspired by his wife and two children. Nevertheless, their talk at times was scintillating and provocative, and their manner to herself irreproachable. One of the men at Polly’s last dinner had tried to snatch her hand under the table, his ankle receiving an answering caress from the sharp heel of her slipper; but these men, either because they were more interested in her dinner than herself, or because they looked upon her as Bylant’s private preserve, gave her no cause for future disquiet. She knew so much of their world from Eustace and Elsie that she was able to follow their somewhat random and ejaculatory talk and interpret their casual allusions. Their criticism of this author and that was given with sharp finality, and she rather admired their air of omniscience. She hoped she would acquire it herself when she was one of them. And they were rather lovable creatures, for their blasting comment was without bitterness and it was pleasant to bask in the atmosphere of people so thoroughly pleased with themselves. It was apparent they had a genuine appreciation of Eustace Bylant’s work, and took a friendly interest in Elsie’s. At Polly’s the conversation had been mainly of bootleggers. Not that this subject was one of indifference to the sophisticates; far from it; but the accident of fortune commanded a wider range of interests; and perhaps they were not averse from displaying their resources to this handsome young hostess who hung on their words.
“I liked them all,” said Gita enthusiastically to Bylant on the day following as they sat by the pool in the wood. “I hope they’ll come often. Next summer I shall have house-parties. I’ll know more of your friends by that time and if all are as clever and convenable as these it will be like having a salon. I should feel very proud.”
“Your occasional naïveté and humility are enchanting! But Elsie is going to Europe next summer. You will have to fall back on Mrs. Pleyden’s aunt.”
“I might be married.”
“Married!” Bylant, who had been lounging comfortably, sat up straight. “You?”
“It would be better in some ways,” said Gita musingly.
“What—what—you——” Bylant could hardly articulate.
“I think you’d do very well. What would you answer if I proposed to you?”
Bylant’s face, which had turned white, suddenly looked as if the blood would burst through the skin. “I don’t understand you,” he stuttered.
“Mean to say you don’t want to marry me?”
“Of course I do!” he exploded. “But how did you find it out?”
“Oh, I’m not as dense as you think. I suppose, as you’re really conventional, you’d have liked to do the proposing yourself.”
“Not a bit of it. I don’t care a damn——” And then a flicker of apprehension in Gita’s eyes, otherwise as cold and calm as the pool, struck a warning note in his consciousness. He sank back on his elbow. The blood ebbed from his face and he shrugged his shoulders.
“Let us have this out,” he said practically. “Unless, of course, you are cultivating your sense of humor.”
“Not at all. I’ve known for some time you intended to marry me, and when Mrs. Pleyden insisted I meet those one-ideaed tanked-up friends of Polly’s often enough to convince me of the utter boredom of a winter in their society, and always had you on hand to make them appear like morons by contrast (she doesn’t share Polly’s enthusiasm for my outrée self, you know), and when you trotted out three of your friends, infinitely superior, but by no means dangerous, I knew the siege was closing in.”
“Good lord!” muttered Bylant.
“You needn’t blush. I admire your tactics immensely.”
“I believe you’d see through a stone wall.”
“Say a gauze curtain with an arc-light behind it. I fancy I’ll get a lot of fun out of life.”
“I fancy you will.” His tones were as dry as his tongue.
“And I’d get a lot more with you than I could by myself——”
“But I thought marriage to you was anathema.” Bylant hardly knew what he was saying. What in heaven’s name was this incalculable girl driving at?
“In the commonplace sense, of course. But with us it would be different. We’d just hitch up as a matter of form, and then we could be together always.”
There was no rising inflection in her cool clear voice. Nor any accent of finality. She assumed, beyond question, that the arrangement would be as agreeable to him as to her royal self.
For a moment Bylant did not raise his eyes; he had kept them carefully lowered. Then he sat up and lit a cigarette. His tan did not conceal his pallor but his eyes were as calm and steady as those hard black diamonds opposite.
“I think I’ll accept your offer of marriage,” he said lightly. “You took my breath away or I shouldn’t have been so ungallant as to hesitate—seemingly. I hope you didn’t think me that?” His voice was whimsically anxious.
“I know men are not accustomed to being proposed to even now, although I wouldn’t put it past some of the girls. But I knew you’d take forever to summon up your courage, so why not take the bull by the horns—bad simile, that. You’re just a dear old ox.”
“Thanks!” Once more Bylant could hardly articulate, but the humor of the situation overcame him and he burst into a roar of laughter. Gita smiled in delighted response. She had hated to embarrass him, and any man must feel a bit of a fool who had forced a girl to propose to him.
“Of course,” he said at length, mopping his brow with one of the fine cambric handkerchiefs Gita had so often admired. “I should have asked you to marry me in time. I was only waiting on a propitious moment.”
“But you’re so slow and cautious you’d have kept putting it off—you’re really a little afraid of me, you know.”
“Oh, I am! I am!”
“And I want to be with you next winter, not Mrs. Pleyden. I suppose Polly has told you that gorgeous plan of hers, but it wouldn’t work, not if I know Mrs. Pleyden. She lets Polly have her own way—BUT. Well, she’d freeze the aliens out somehow, if only because she’d be afraid Polly—who’s much too good for the crowd she runs with—would take it into her head to marry one of them. The sense of class may skip a generation but it’s a little brass idol perched right in the middle of Mrs. Pleyden’s inner shrine. . . . I suppose there are hundreds of decent young chaps about, well-born and well-bred at that, but if there are they have no use for the hip-pocket crowd and run with girls of another sort. Too bad. Polly——”
“I’m not interested in Polly. I know no one better able to take care of herself. Are you giving me to understand that you want to marry me at once?”
“About the first of January. Things are all right now, and I’m safe from Mrs. Pleyden until she moves to New York. You won’t mind living at the manor in summer, I hope? And coming here off and on in winter? I really love the manor.”
“Oh, not at all! It is difficult to imagine you anywhere else. But I’ll have to see about an apartment in New York at once. My rooms——”
Gita sprang to her feet and danced on the turf. “And we’ll furnish it together! I always wanted to buy lovely things for a house. When mother and I were at our worst—living in one room in a pension—we used to amuse ourselves furnishing imaginary apartments. It was a regular game and helped a lot.”
“I think on the whole we’d better have a house.”
“Why? An apartment is much less trouble.”
“Well—you see—we’d each be more independent. I could have the top floor to myself—my typewriter makes a horrible racket——”
“I’d love to have a whole floor to myself, and I’d never go near yours. Elsie has me well trained. I’d never dare cross the threshold of her study.”
“You will make a model wife!”
“I hate that word. We’ll just be partners.”
“Right.” He rose also. “Let’s shake hands on it.”
She shook his hand heartily. Then she raised herself on tiptoe and pecked his cheek. “Now, you know I love you!” she exclaimed.
“Haven’t the least doubt of it,” he mumbled. “May I announce the engagement at once?”
“Do. Let’s have it over. Elsie will be delighted, and so will Mrs. Pleyden. Polly won’t, but Polly must find out sometime that she can’t have every least little thing her own way.”
“MyGod!” exclaimed Bylant. He was in Elsie’s study, whither she had summoned him after his return to the house; she frequently sought his advice, and a deep and understanding friendship existed between them. He knew the situation could not have escaped her, and had felt that if he did not disburden himself he should become hysterical and make some fatal mistake. “Was ever a man in such a damnable situation before?”
“But it gives you your great chance,” said Elsie practically. “She just naturally got herself engaged to you and she will just as naturally drift into being your wife.”
“She looks upon me as a male clothes-horse with a conveniently human head. More likely she’ll get too well used to me, see me more and more as an intellectual automaton——My God, how can any woman be so obtuse!”
“Remember that Gita has had a unique and devastating experience. She’s erected a sort of rampart about herself with charged wires on top, and communicates with a few favored mortals through the peep-holes. To be more scientific, I never knew a mind that had itself so thoroughly censored.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of . . . it is a well-known fact that when women deliberately repress their natural impulses, frigidity is the inevitable result.”
“But not at Gita’s age. And frigidity is generally the refuge of unwilling wives. Gita is hardly in their class! When she should have been enjoying a commonplace innocent childhood and adolescence she accumulated a rotten knowledge of depraved men of her own class; but at least, being Gita, she saved herself from the worst. Now, after these months in your constant society, she has learned what a thoroughly decent man is like. I think it quite possible she is more in love with you than she knows. She simply can’t make the connection, that’s all. She’s still inside the fort.”
“Of course if I didn’t believe that I’d never go in for this grotesque marriage. The situation is bad enough as it is, but if I hadn’t that hope—it’ll be hell, all the same.”
“Not nearly such hell as if you’d proposed to her and seen her shudder with disgust if you’d let yourself go. Now you know just where you stand. She really loves you in her own queer way, and I don’t believe another man lives she’d marry. All the cards are in your hands. You’ll have a thousand chances to make her fall in love with you, make her feel she needs you more and more. Did she give you a peck?”
“That is the word for it!”
“You’ve taken a longer stride than you know. It means a lot with her. She’s pecked me several times and held my hand once. Polly has never been honored.”
“You encourage me! But——” He stood up and shook himself, as if in disgust at his moment of panic. “I have no intention of failing. It’s a matter of destiny, anyhow. All we realists are romantics fundamentally, and as she’s the woman I’ve been on the blind hunt for all my life and I recognized her the moment we met, there can be only one ending, however disheartening the prelude. If it were not for her cursed inhibitions she’d have known it too, long before this. But I can wait!”
And Elsie, who had resolutely forgotten her day-dreams, reassured him warmly. “It’s as inevitable as the fructification of the soil when the sun shines on it long enough. We know how we’d work it out in a novel, or rather how, with two such characters, it would work itself out.”
“A novel that doesn’t belie its name and isn’t merely a story, must conform strictly to life, and life has many unexpected cross-currents.” Bylant was gloomy once more.
“True enough. But there comes a moment in every novel when the author for the first time is able to foresee the inevitable end. All signs point one way. That is where predestination comes in. Now, if you’ve calmed down, perhaps you’ll give me a bit of advice on a knot I’ve tied myself into. There are a few things about the novel I haven’t yet mastered, and one is technique.”
“Good!” Bylant smiled wanly. “Just the let-down I need before lunch.”
Gitadecided to have a Christmas party. She knew that from the time the manor house had been built, down through the generations until the Carteret fortunes declined, there had been a ball and a Christmas tree for the servants and tenantry, and a gathering of the far-flung Carteret clan. The tenants were reduced to two farmers and their families, who, no doubt, would resent any hint of patronage, the servants to five, within and without, and the Carterets to one, but at least she could have a tree and a party. The tree and dancing would be in the great central hall with her dark-browed ancestors looking down in approval.
Polly Pleyden and Elsie Brewster entered into her plans with enthusiasm (neither Mrs. Pleyden nor Mr. Donald was consulted), and Bylant, who was feeling somewhat exhausted after weeks of house-hunting and furnishing, and speculating with alternate gloom and hope on his future, looked forward to the occasion as one more ordeal to be endured. He should have to submit to congratulations in company with Gita for the first time, for she had attended no more dinners in Chelsea; and he had been able to dodge felicitations himself for the most part, as his time had been fully occupied in New York. Gita had gone to the Pleyden apartment for several days every week (chaperoned by the aunt) and together they had found a charming old red brick house with white trimmings in West Twelfth Street. It had been renovated by its last owner, who had decided to move uptown, and there was little for Bylant to do but send his own things to the third story, and “stand round” while Gita, who rarely asked his advice, chose rugs and furniture for the two lower floors. Elsie, after she finished her book, undertook the prosaic commission of furnishing the kitchen and the servants’ rooms in the extension.
Gita bought the narrowest brass bedstead she could find, as a contrast, she gayly told Bylant, to her prevailing four-posters, and had her room done up in yellow that it might the more surely reflect the sunlight that streamed through the large southern windows. The chairs and curtains were of chintz and the only pieces of manor furniture were a tulipwood chest, with each of the drawers painted in different design and soft faded colors, and a day-bed she found in the attic; both built in the late seventeenth century. There was no spare bedroom, and the day-bed, its head manipulated by chains, was to offer its inhospitable surface to Elsie whenever she spent a night in New York. Otherwise it was a chaise longue piled with cushions.
Her sitting-room, adjoining, she furnished almost entirely from the manor: with a tavern table (reclaimed from the stables), a pond-lily box with raised carving, an oak box with two rows of arched flutes, a secretary with a single-arch molding and ball feet, two paneled chairs from the dining-room, several Windsor chairs and two new ones for comfort, a pine-paneled settle with a high back, and a Dutch marriage-chest from the house in Albany. The curtains in the manor house were faded and mended, but many of the fine old rugs were in good condition and she sent over a pale Aubusson, ordered curtains of artichoke-green pongee, and had the walls tinted in harmony.
Remembering her mother’s love of old French furniture, she haunted auction-rooms and picked up a set of eight pieces covered with tapestry framed in wood painted black and decorated with gilt bow-knots; which, the auctioneer assured his public, had once graced a château in Brittany. At all events it graced the big drawing-room in West Twelfth Street, and, mindful of man’s love of comfort, she had a large davenport and several easy chairs made that harmonized in color if not in dubious antiquity. The rug was black velvet, the walls were pale gray, and hung eventually with odd old landscapes painted by long-forgotten artists for former Bylants and Carterets. Singly they were caricatures of art, but together, and monopolizing the field, they completed the atmosphere of lightness and charm, and this room also faced south.
Bylant, who was about to re-lease his house in Albany, reserved the dining-room furniture; his family silver, long stored, was little inferior to that of Carteret manor, and included Dutch pieces brought to the settlement from Holland in the early seventeenth century. The chairs were Jacobean and a Knickerbocker Kas served as a sideboard and for the display of the larger pieces of silver. He also sent for two fine tapestries; and hoped that his prosperous brothers in art with fashionable socialist tendencies would not cut him. His own chambers had been comfortable but severe, and so was his refuge under the roof.
The narrow hall was painted white and furnished only with a high wide chair made in Connecticut in the seventeenth century, from the Flemish pattern, and an English ecclesiastical chest.
Gita had been so absorbed in this furnishing of her city home, and in the fulfillment of an old day-dream, that she barely remembered she was to occupy the house with a canonical husband, and Bylant was by no means blind to her attitude. He was impatient with himself when he recognized that he was seething with dull masculine resentment, and heroically made and remade an effort to adapt himself to his fantastic situation with philosophy, and trust to time and daily association to do its inevitable work. To be the sulky misused husband was no part of his program; but playing the rôle of sympathetic friend and intellectual partner under that narrow roof was a discouraging prospect to a highly organized nervous system, already overstrained by months of directing a naturally mobile temperament into channels of unbroken repose—during long hours on duty, at least—and acting the part of a sexless intelligence. He foresaw attacks of nervous irritability in the seclusion of his fortress upstairs.
Gita, who would not consent to sacrifice the least of her pines, bought a large tree in Atlantic City and decorated it with the help of Elsie and Polly. The young gardener was sent in quest of a cart-load of holly, and the vast chimneypiece in the hall and the heavy gilt frames of the Carterets were obliterated. The floor was waxed and the refectory table moved into one of the smaller drawing-rooms. There were to be thirty guests, chosen by Polly and Bylant, but Gita, suddenly remembering Dr. Pelham, wrote a brief note asking him to come if he could find time for anything so frivolous as a Christmas party. Somewhat to her surprise he accepted.
She delegated to Polly and Eustace the task of selecting a trifle for each of the guests, and the more practical Elsie undertook to buy substantial presents for the servants; but the gifts for themselves caused her a good deal of mental perturbation. She was generous by nature but hesitated to send any more bills to Mr. Donald. Bylant had been adamant to her desire to pay half the expense of furnishing the house, but under the tutelage of her two other friends, her trousseau had exceeded her income for the year, and Mr. Donald had formally “advised” her that he had been forced to sacrifice a valuable bond. She had replied haughtily that she had no intention of encroaching on her capital in the future but that marriage was not expected to wait upon income.
She finally poured out the contents of the jewel-casket on her bed one night, and pried out a diamond and emerald from the tiara. She had promised her grandmother not to sell any of the jewels but her conscience reminded her that nothing had been said about giving. A jeweler in Atlantic City set the emerald in a ring for Elsie and the diamond as a pendant on a thin platinum chain for Polly.
But there still remained the problem of Eustace. She rummaged the drawers of a court chest in her grandfather’s dressing-room and found a gold signet-ring with a lapis-lazuli scarab set in a richly carved hoop with tiny dragons on its shoulders. It was indisputably an antique and valuable, and eminently appropriate for a man of fastidious taste. But some submerged feminine instinct warned her that he would appreciate even more highly a supplementary present that betrayed some thought on her part and a modicum of personal sacrifice.
She went to the most expensive shop on the Boardwalk and ordered a dozen fine cambric handkerchiefs to be embroidered with his initials. He might have several dozen already, but at least he would be made subtly aware that she had not confined her attentions to his distinguished top-story. She sent the bill to Mr. Donald.
A few days before Christmas Polly arrived at the manor early in the morning and announced herself possessed of an inspiration.
“Why not have a fancy-dress party——”
“There’s no time.” Gita and Elsie protested in chorus.
“Yes, there is if all those cedar chests in the attic are full of old duds. Modern gowns in this old hall would look horrid and the men even worse. There must be stacks if this old manor runs true to form. They never sold things in those days and of course they were too good to pass on to the servants.”
The three raced one another up to the attic. The chests were locked, and as even Topper could not produce the keys, the gardener was sent for to pry them open. Then the carefully folded garments were shaken out and inspected. There was nothing more modern than the fashions of the eighteen-nineties, for by that time, no doubt, the Carteret ladies had begun to make over their fine clothes and wear them out. But anything later than 1830 was rejected with scorn. They sorted out gowns of taffeta and satin, mousseline-de-soie and velvet, in styles Pompadour, Empire, Watteau, and the Four Georges; tiny pointed waists, voluminous skirts, long trains and mere slips.
“We’ll have to powder our hair and wear corsets,” said Polly, “but we’ll set back a few centuries in that old hall, so who’ll mind a little discomfort?”
“Powdered bobbed hair will be a scream,” said Gita, who had been surveying her new possessions with dazzled eyes and hearing a ghostly patter of tiny feet along her nerves. “Why not wigs? One of the hair-dressers in Atlantic City could telephone for them.”
“Right. Leave it to me.”
Elsie, who had been investigating a chest, hitherto overlooked, lifted out a wedding-dress of heavy satin mellowed to old ivory and covered with priceless point-lace. “Did you ever see anything so lovely?” she gasped.
“I know who wore that!” cried Polly. “Your grandmother, Gita. I’ve seen it in an old album of granny’s, I remember—granny, who was one of her bridesmaids, got going about that wedding to mother one day and wondered why all that lace hadn’t been passed on to your aunt Evelyn when she married.”
Gita laid the gown across her arms and looked at it reverently. She knew the value of old lace, for her mother had possessed several fine pieces before they went to pay a gambling-debt, and part of her education had been in museums where there was always a room devoted to thread filigree; particularly beloved of Millicent. In Bruges and Brussels she had often seen the nuns at work. But although she had found several pieces of Irish and Honiton in a chest in her grandmother’s room, she had hardly glanced at them. Real lace didn’t match short skirts and bobbed hair.
But this mass of point d’Alençon was quite another matter, and she experienced the same sensation as when she had gazed first upon the soft sheen of her pearls.
“I shall be married in this,” she announced. “I’d intended to wear any old thing I happened to have on. Butthis——Oh, yes! And just as it is. The waist will have to be let out for I couldn’t stand a corset five minutes.”
“Gita!” Elsie, who was sitting back on her heels, suddenly sprang to her feet and clapped her hands. “It’s my turn to have an inspiration. Why don’t you marry Eustace on Christmas Eve—spring a surprise at the end of the party?”
Polly, who after months of intimacy with Gita sometimes felt as young as her years, fairly danced. “Gorgeous! It will be the night of our lives. I can see you stepping down those stairs with a powdered footman on either side——”
“Haven’t any footmen——”
“We’ll hire them—no, make two of the men dress up.”
“I can’t have a wedding like that without your mother and Mr. Donald.” Gita, surrounded by these ancestral feminine relics, was feeling every inch a Carteret.
“They’ll be told to arrive with Dr. Lancaster on the stroke of midnight—no, ten minutes before. Leave it to me.”
“But suppose Eustace—he’s the sort that hates to be rushed—I should think.”
“He hasn’t a thing to do but get the license and wedding-ring. Of course he won’t mind.”
Gita turned to Elsie, her brows drawn together. “What do you think? You ought to know him better than any of us.”
“I agree with Polly. Why shouldn’t he be enchanted?” Her eyes were shining, her cheeks burning.
“Why are you so anxious to marry me off in a hurry?” asked Gita suspiciously.
“Anxious? I’m no more anxious than Polly. I want to look on at a wonderful picture, that’s all. I intend to stand on that chair by the fireplace when you come down the stair.”
“But if I’m married like that I’ll have to have bridesmaids, and you’ll both come down behind me.”
“Bridesmaids——”
“Not much,” cried Polly. “We’d spoil the picture. We’ll be bridesmaids all right, but we’ll wait at the foot of the stairs. So will Eustace. Might as well turn all the old regulations upside down while we’re about it.”
Gita jerked up her shoulders. “Well. Have it your own way. But—well—I’m not in such a hurry to marry.”
Her hesitation was unaccountable to herself. What difference did a week make? She glanced at the dress on her arms. It had covered the slim body of a girl glowing with love for the man she was about to marry. Her own wedding would be a caricature of that wedding-day half a century ago. And again something stirred along her nerves, ghostly whisperings, no doubt, of the women who had laughed and loved and danced and coquetted in these gowns which should have been dust with themselves. . . . There was something both ironic and sinister in the living persistence of textile and fashion—over God’s own image! . . . Those Colonial women had loved and married as a matter of course, wasted their time on no problems beyond babies and death and a new gown for the governor’s ball. Life had been very simple in those old days in the Colonies.
She scowled and threw the gown on a box. “All right,” she said sharply. “I’ll speak to Eustace tonight. Now let’s pick out the gowns for the party, and you, Polly, cart off the rest for the other girls to choose from. I think I’ll take this one as it wasn’t made for corsets.”
She held up a narrow gown of gold-colored gauze with a low pointed neck, high belt, and short slashed puffed sleeves. Elsie chose a silk robe printed with foliage, with a Watteau pleat behind extending into a train, wide elbow-sleeves with deep ruffles of lace.
Polly, after rejecting eight or ten of the most elaborate gowns, professed herself satisfied with one of plum-colored velvet over a figured satin petticoat and long pointed waist, panniers and full skirts. Then they carried the gowns downstairs and put all but two into Polly’s motor and the gardener was told to take three chests containing masculine regalia to Eustace Bylant’s lodgings on the following morning.
Bylantcame to dinner and was immediately told of the projected fancy-dress ball and the riches of the attic; but it had been agreed that the plans for the wedding should be communicated by Gita in the privacy of the library, when Elsie, as ever, had retired to her study.
Bylant, who was looking tired and depressed, brightened visibly. He grasped at the idea of being someone quite different from himself for a few hours, and his severely repressed love of the picturesque could have its way for once.
“I’ll go as one of the old governors,” he said. “Cornbury, for choice. He fell in love with his wife’s ear—before marriage, of course—and I’ve permitted even myself that much. Besides, he was a villain, and I’d enjoy being that for a night.”
Gita laughed merrily. “Dear old Eustace! You couldn’t be a villain if you tried. But you must be pompous and stately, for you and Polly are to lead off in a minuet. We haven’t the least idea what a minuet is like, but you’ll line up and bow, turn, dance a few steps forward and retreat. No drinks will be passed till it’s over.”
“Then it will be stiff enough. I’ll not tell the men that or they won’t come.”
As they left the dining-room Gita took his arm and pressed it affectionately. “I’ve a still greater surprise for you,” she whispered.
“Indeed?” He dared not detach himself but he averted his eyes. He had never seen her look so beautiful. She wore a very soft, very clinging gown, the shade of the American Beauty rose; one of the fine flowers of her trousseau. It matched the deep flush of excitement in her cheeks and her eyes were bigger and brighter and blacker than ever.
“Do you mind if we go outside?” he asked. “It’s a clear night.”
“I don’t mind, but we’ll have to walk to keep warm, and you always choose the most comfortable chair in the library for your cigar.”
“I rather feel like walking.”
Her long cape was in the entrance-hall and as she disappeared into its dark folds he gave a sigh of relief and put on his Burberry and cap.
“Now, what do you think it is?” she demanded as they strolled down the avenue.
“My faculty for guessing has dried up these last weeks.”
“I found my grandmother’s wedding-gown in the attic and it is such a dream of beauty that I decided then and there to be married in it. And then we all decided to have the wedding the night of the party. Midnight. Nobody to have a hint of it till I sail down that stair. Of course, if you like the idea,” she added, suddenly tactful. “But we all thought the picture would appeal to that fine artistic taste of yours.”
He was silent for a moment, then replied with a shrug: “Good idea. Something to remember. It will be rather theatrical, of course.”
“Call it dramatic. I mean to get all the drama out of life I can.”
“You do? I suppose you don’t mean what most women would by that, but perhaps you’ll explain just what you do mean. There’s nothing very dramatic in being prosaically married and living in West Twelfth Street.”
“Oh, you can’t plan drama too far ahead. But I’ve always known I was cut out for it. In a not too pleasant way I’ve had a lot of it already. I fancy I draw it like a magnet——”
“And I’m to be the chorus, I suppose!”
“Of course there’s nothing dramatic about you, Eustace dear, or I shouldn’t be marrying you, but——Oh, my goodness! Great heavens!”
“What’s the matter? Do you see drama approaching down the perspective of this damp avenue? I vote we get out of it——”
“There’s something—I never thought of till this minute.”
“Well? What is it?”
“I’m afraid you won’t like it.”
“I probably shan’t.” Bylant was in a thoroughly bad humor.
“Well, I must come out with it. My grandmother wanted me to ask the man I married to take my name. I wouldn’t promise because I never intended to marry—but, well—I find I don’t like the idea of giving up my own name.”
“Sounds like the Lucy Stone League. Continue to call yourself Gita Carteret, by all means. We’re used to it.”
“But wouldn’t you be willing to take the name of Carteret?”
“I would not!” exploded Bylant. “I may be an ass but I’m not an emasculated ass. And Bylant, I’d have you know, is as old and honorable a name as Carteret. It came over from Holland before a Carteret was ever heard of——”
“Oh, of course! I understand,” said Gita hurriedly. “A few months ago—but I do now. But wouldn’t you be willing to call yourself Bylant-Carteret?”
“I would not!”
“Well, that’s that. At least I’ve done my duty and asked you. And you don’t mind if I remain Gita Carteret?”
“Don’t care a hang.”
“I never saw you cross before. Do you think we’ll squabble? It would be rather exciting.”
“Not in our sort of—alliance. Nor have I any intention of doing anything so undignified. I’m sorry I let go, but it hits a man on the raw to be asked to give up his name.”
“Sorry. Let’s forget it. Suppose we go over to the Boardwalk and look at the lights. We might take in a movie.”
“All right. Come along.”
Theband was in a small gallery, built originally for musicians, at the left of the stair. As the manor house was still dependent upon gas the hall was illuminated by pine torches, safely ensconced in tall vases. The minuet, which had terminated in a romp, was over, and the guests were crowded about a punch-bowl which had been wheeled in on a buffet-wagon.
The girls had accepted the idea of bygone costumes with enthusiasm, but the men had required a good deal of persuasion. Bylant’s friends had protested at what would look like giving their countenance to a brand of fiction they despised, and at sacrificing their earnest modernism for even a night. But after they saw the contents of the chests at Bylant’s rooms they succumbed: either out of inherent boyishness or man’s secret love of plumage. There were four of them: Fellowes Merton, dramatic critic, Max Durand, columnist, De Witt Turner, stern realist in fiction, Potts Dawes, high priest of vers libre. Each was obliged to wear the costume that fitted him, approximately; and Turner, who was a very tall heavy man, went out and bought flounces of white cambric and sewed them to the edges of his court uniform’s sleeves and knee-breeches. They were all obliged to invest in long silk stockings, and applied the largest buckles they could find to their evening pumps.
Polly’s young men sulkily took what was left, and having less imagination than the others, announced that they felt like tame monkeys. Bylant sent the fanciest of the costumes to Mrs. Pelham’s house, and Geoffrey cursed his friend and vowed he would not wear it. But he did.
He had not appeared in time for the minuet, and Gita, who was standing apart, saw him as he entered and for a moment did not recognize him. He wore a long coat of pale blue satin, richly embroidered, over a white satin vest reaching to his knees, white silk stockings, satin shorts and black pumps. There were deep lace ruffles at the wrists and a jabot hung from his high stock. His white wig was tied with a blue ribbon, and altogether he looked as little like a hard-working surgeon of the twentieth century as possible. She noticed swiftly that his eyebrows were darker than she had thought, and that the blue of his eyes was intensified by the costume.
It was evident that he had entered into the spirit of the masquerade, for his habitual expression of nervous concentration had been replaced by—mingled boyish wonder and delight in his unexpected good looks? Gita knew that even as a boy he had been serious and ambitious and known few of the common impulses of youth.
He came forward smiling and shook Gita’s hand, then remembered his part and would have raised it to his lips, but she drew it away hastily.
“I wonder if you are my great-great-grandfather or my great-great-greatest?” she asked gayly.
“Your brother, perhaps. Your wig looks every bit as old as mine.”
“That was rather neat.” She swept him a curtsey, diligently practised before the psyche mirror; her spine was limbering.
“If I were really your brother I suppose I should have offered you my congratulations before this. Let us imagine I was off hunting Indians and only returned in time for the ball. . . . Eustace is a lucky dog!”
He was staring very hard at Gita, who in her gown of gold tissue and high-piled white wig above those black eyes and lashes that he had thought of more than once, seemed to him almost fantastically lovely. The sort of girl, he imagined, who, had she lived in a remoter era than the one she had conjured up tonight, would have had men besieging her tower and riding to battle with her ribbon on their lances.
“Thanks. Doesn’t he look the real thing? He padded out his governor’s uniform so that he would look portly and important.”
“He certainly looks older,” said Pelham, regarding Bylant critically, “but as determined as Fate.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Gita sharply.
“Oh—the expression’s gone. He’s no longer looking at you; he’s meditating another glass of punch.”
“You must have one, yourself. Come with me and I’ll ladle it out for you. And introduce you to the other girls.”
“But I don’t dance.”
“Then you can sit out with me. I don’t dance, either.”
She helped him to the punch and introduced him casually. Polly’s eyes glittered and she took him firmly by the arm as the musicians began to play a fox-trot. “Never mind if you don’t know how,” she said, as he protested, almost in panic. “Any man who can wear that get-up like a native—or should I say to the manor born?—can learn to dance in five minutes. Just take my hand and a good grip on my back and I’ll do the rest.”
Gita looked on with a faint throb of resentment. She remembered that Pelham’s conversation had interested her, and had intended to take him into the drawing-room. To her amazement he fell into step almost at once, and smiled down with evident appreciation into the ingenuous orbs of his teacher, who had flung her train over her arm and was dancing with her usual abandon.
“Well, are you satisfied? Your inspiration is a thundering success.” It was Eustace who was smiling down ather. He looked large and dignified in his governor’s uniform and white wig, and a massive gold chain was slung about his neck; but for the first time his narrow pointed beard did not deflect attention from his rather plump cheeks and his lower lip had lost its muscular compression.
“Oh, yes—it looks like it.” But she had drawn her brows together and looked the reverse of contented. “You’ve got yourself pretty well into your part. I don’t know that I like you so well. . . .”
“Too much punch. My eyes feel rather watery, and of course we all fortified ourselves with cocktails at my rooms. I wish you’d let me teach you this dance.”
“Well, I won’t. Run along and trot. You must have asked Joan Ryder, for she’s watching you and is the only girl not dancing.”
“So I did. But I hate to leave you alone.”
“I expected to be alone. And I’m going into the drawing-room to rest. My heels are higher than usual and my feet ache.”
She made her way past the trotting couples—they had had no time to learn even polkas and waltzes—and entered the drawing-room. It was softly lit with wax candles, and looked, she thought, much as it must have done when the costumes worn tonight were new. The paneled walls reflected the blades of yellow light, for Topper had polished them vigorously, and she had a fancy that the stately old pieces of furniture had come to life themselves and wore an air of expectancy.
She removed her slippers and elevated her feet to a stool. She was about to light a cigarette, but shrugged her shoulders. Why spoil the picture? Get out of her part? She had surrendered to illusion out there in the hall.
She wondered idly if another Gita Carteret, long forgotten, had taken possession of her. Then she frowned and jerked her shoulders. Those old Gitas at her age had either been married or were in love with a “swain”—someone as good-looking as Geoffrey Pelham, no doubt; and, if permitted a moment of retirement, would have been dreaming of his perfections, indulging in romantic musings. She wondered if any of the girls would fall in love with him tonight. Polly had evidently marked him for her own, but Polly was as cold-blooded as Eustace; she would flirt with him desperately tonight and forget his existence on the morrow.
Her mind swung uneasily to Eustace. He looked detestable in that puffed wig and with punch relaxing the muscles of his face. Like quite another person. It was all very well to act up to his character as a beefy and dissipated old governor but she’d warn him at the end of this dance that if he didn’t let the punch-bowl alone she’d cut out one part of the program. And she’d never marry him in that wig.
She moved restlessly in her chair and beat with her heels on the stool. Once more she felt an overwhelming reluctance to marry. Of course she had not changed her mind, and of course the Eustace of five months could not be obliterated by the caricature of a night. He was a dear and had inspired in her the deepest affection she had felt since the death of her mother; had, in a measure, taken her place. And he could give her the large free life she craved. But two or three months hence would be time enough. . . . Moreover . . . she dimly felt she was outraging the girls who had left this old manor with their husbands, before her. . . . Who had worn this dress of gold tissue? she wondered. A young married woman, probably, with a baby or two!
She laughed harshly, then almost cried out as she heard Geoffrey Pelham’s voice behind her.
“I suppose you are laughing at your guests,” he said, as he took a chair opposite. “The girls look charming, but the men—well, some of them give pain to a student of anatomy. I wonder if I may smoke?”
“Please do.” Gita had hastily lowered her feet and tucked them under her long skirts. “You never could guess what I was laughing at and I’ll never tell you. How do you like dancing?”
“Good exercise, I should think; but dancing with Miss Pleyden is like dancing with a ball of thistle-down. I felt as if I should be chasing instead of trying to dance with her.”
“If a girl isn’t light she’s not much of a dancer.” The answer was mechanical. She was watching his long sensitive fingers roll a cigarette. “You must be a wonderful surgeon,” she said. “One’s feet are much like one’s hands, I suppose, and perhaps that is the reason you learned to dance so quickly.”
He reddened and grinned. “That’s an idea! Are all your ideas as original as that?”
Gita never blushed, but she lowered her eyelashes more under the frank admiration of his gaze than at the compliment. “Eustace says I have flashes of intelligence. I suppose he’s at that punch-bowl again.” And she frowned.
“Eustace can carry a good deal, I fancy. Don’t worry.”
“I’ve no intention of worrying, but I suppose you know we are to be married tonight, and I don’t care to see him held up by two of his friends, equally lit—as, no doubt, has happened often enough in this house.”
“Are you to be married tonight? Elsie hadn’t told me.” He was staring at her with an expression that made her change her position suddenly and the curious sensation in her nerve-centers gave her the uncomfortable impression that some other Gita Carteret, who had worn this gown, perhaps—heaved suddenly in her long sleep.
“I was sure she had told you——”
“I only had a moment with Elsie tonight. She was at home when I arrived, to make sure I’d wear this costume; and as I gave her some trouble I suppose she forgot everything else.”
“But Eustace told me he not only intended to ask you to be his best man but to walk down the stair with me——”
“I haven’t seen Eustace for a month. If he’s written I’ve missed the letter——”
“But you will, won’t you?”
“I shall be highly honored.” He shook his shoulders impatiently. “What time is the ceremony?”
“At midnight. Then we go in to supper, and after that we have the Christmas tree. Then we’ll dance till morning, when Eustace’s friends will probably carry him home——Oh! How stupid of me! I should have asked him to stay here, but we’ve been so rushed.”
“Oh——Ah——” Pelham found himself stuttering. “It will be a unique wedding and nothing else would be appropriate for you. . . . Do you know?” he burst out irrepressibly, “I believe I should have fallen in love with you tonight if you hadn’t already been bespoken—and by my best friend. . . .”
“What nonsense!” Gita almost shrieked. “I hate that sort of nonsense! And I should have hated you if you had.”
“But surely you must be used to it by this time. Wouldn’t it be more truthful to say it merely bored you?”
“No, it wouldn’t. Men don’t fall in love with me. I don’t permit it.”
“Eustace seems to have succeeded. Or did you——”
“Eustace isn’t the kind that falls in love any more than I am. We’re wonderful friends, and as we couldn’t be together constantly without being annoyed in many ways, we decided to make the stupid concession and go through the ceremony.”
“Oh—I see.” He was staring down at his cigarette, which threatened to fall to the rug. “But—just suppose either of you should fall in love with someone else?”
Gita’s tones were heavy with scorn. “Eustace has never been in love in his life and never could be. As for myself, whatever I might have been, life made me into something quite different, and the very word makes me sick.”
“Ah—you’re a pathological case. I see. But pathological cases may sometimes be cured.”
“Not when they don’t want to be. I thank heaven I shall be free all my life, not a slave.”
“Loveisa form of slavery, I should think. I’ve always steered clear of it, myself.”
“I rather thought you were taken with Polly.” Gita turned in something like panic from any further discussion of herself.
“Miss Pleyden? She is a most charming girl, but I am frank to say I hardly recall what she looks like, at the present moment. And I want as little as you do to be ‘taken’ with anyone.”
He was scowling at Gita, and she scowled back, unreasonably annoyed at his emphatic utterance.
“The music has stopped again and I must go out and row Eustace,” she said haughtily. “Please go ahead. I’ve my slippers to put on.”
“May I——”
“No! That is something I do for myself. Kindly go.”