A determinedadmirer of Miss Ryder cut in early in the dance and Eustace Bylant slipped out of the hall, found his overcoat and hat, and a moment later was driving his roadster furiously toward Atlantic City. Snow lay on the ground but the stars were brilliant overhead, and the clear frosty air cooled his hot face. His brain had not been too befuddled to receive a vibration from the misgiving in Gita’s, and he had skirted too many pitfalls during the past months to make a mistake tonight. He went to a hotel and took a cold shower, then visited a chemist who mixed him a reliable bromide.
He felt he had his own reasons for annoyance. It was like Gita to forget that after a man married a woman he would be expected to remain in her house unless they left at once on a wedding journey; but although he had thrown out several hints to that effect her mind had been too distracted to receive them. Nor had he been able to have a word with Elsie, who, however, might have been depended on not to overlook so important a detail.
Luckily, his friends would go directly from the manor to their hotel and leave by an early train for New York, either to spend Christmas day with their families or to pay visits elsewhere. As he was, in a way, the host of the occasion, he had an excuse to linger until the other guests had left—and then sneak home to his lodgings! But he’d have an understanding tomorrow. No one was more anxious to avoid gossip than Gita.
With a clear complexion and clearer head he presented himself before the future partner of his days shortly after a one-step had begun, and Polly once more was dancing with Dr. Pelham.
“Oh!” exclaimed Gita. “You look yourself again—except for that wig. I was going to give you a piece of my mind.”
“Glad I escaped it,” he said, smiling. “I went outside and cooled off my head. I’ll take off the wig if you say the word. Only too glad to be rid of it.”
“No. Not yet. The other men would follow suit and I don’t want my picture spoiled. But mind you take it off before I come down. Nothing would induce me to marry you in it. I’d feel as if I were marrying old Cornbury.”
“Well, if you wear yours I’ll feel as if I were marrying my great-grandmother.”
Gita laughed merrily, her equilibrium restored now that Eustace was himself again. And she felt a sudden inexplicable desire for his protection. She took his arm and led him to the deep window-seat behind the Christmas tree that stood in an angle beside the fireplace.
“It was terribly thoughtless of me not to ask you to bring your things over,” she said. “But I’ll have a room prepared tomorrow. Unless you’d like to go to New York at once?”
“I’d far rather stay in the country.” He drew a deep sigh of relief. Gita had a way of coming to her senses—tardily, but with a satisfying completeness. It augured well for the future, and his reward would be in just proportion to his torments.
He took her hand tentatively, and to his surprise she did not draw it away. She smiled at him serenely. “It’s odd,” she said musingly, “but I don’t mind you touching me in the least, and I hate even to shake hands with another man.”
He tightened his grasp. This was the scene and the hour for love-making, and the seclusion was complete. “I suppose you wouldn’t kiss me?” Then as she frowned he added hastily, “Even men kiss one another in Europe, you know.”
“Only on the cheek and always look too silly for words. But you may kiss me there if you are feeling sentimental.”
The icy shower had steadied his nerves. He implanted a chaste salute on a cool cheek. “I’m not feeling in the least sentimental, but somehow it seemed the thing to do. Old Cornbury, no doubt, kissed every girl he managed to get into a corner. And knocked her wig off. By the way, we represent various eras tonight and I’m not sure they wore wigs in all of them.”
“I was thinking of my party, not history. And they certainly improve most of the men, as well as the girls. I never thought anything could improve Polly, but she looks like the most exquisite miniature ever painted.”
“Old Geoff evidently thinks so. He’s been dancing with her all evening. He’s come out of his triple-plated shell with a vengeance. Never saw such a metamorphosis. Always took for granted he had the same ugly mug as the rest of us, and he looks like a stunning old picture come to life. Polly may have met her fate.”
“Wouldn’t that be splendid!” Gita’s voice rang with enthusiasm.
“Hardly for Geoff. But——” He gave her a sharp narrowed glance. “Odd that you should countenance even your friends’ falling in love!”
“Ah, but Polly’s bound to marry some day. They all think they must. And it is something to satisfy the artistic eye of one’s friends. They harmonize in looks, in height and in coloring—oh! I forgot—Polly said once she couldn’t endure being married to a fair man.”
“Girls have been known to change their minds.” Bylant’s tones were both dry and hopeful. “Nothing is safer to bet on.”
“Gita! Are you there?” Elsie appeared round the corner of the tree. “It’s half-past eleven. Time for you to dress.”
Gita sprang to her feet wildly, her eyes darting about like those of a forest animal caught in a trap. “Oh, I can’t! I——”
She met Bylant’s smiling gaze, and her nerves, which had seemed to arch all over her body and hiss with a thousand voices, received a sharp admonition from her brain and subsided.
“Come along!” Her voice was gay again. “And Eustace, take off your wig.”
Gita, attended by Polly and Elsie until the last minute that she be given no time to change her mind, stood before the psyche mirror and smiled at her reflection. She had no intention of changing her mind, for she knew that such an opportunity to outshine all other women and etch an indelible picture into the minds of all beholders, was granted to few girls even on their wedding-day.
The mass of delicate lace billowed widely about her slender figure, and the long veil (exhumed from the chest later and almost as transparent as tulle) hung from a high coronet of orange-blossoms “built” by Polly and dipped in weak coffee. She had removed her wig, and her hair, wiry and vibrant, and of an intense dusky blackness, had been drawn forward to soften the uncompromising stiffness of the head-dress. She wore her rope of pearls, and, about the base of her throat, a string of larger pearls, a present from Eustace. They had belonged to his mother.
Her eyes blazed with excitement, and her mouth, which had begun to take an upward curve at the corners, was very full and very red. Polly took out her lip-stick with a sigh.
“You are the loveliest thing on earth, Gita,” announced Elsie, with the enthusiasm of both artist and friend. “If ever you are in the mood to hate life just remember tonight.”
“Night of your life,” agreed Polly. “Don’t make any mistake about it. Spin out the descent of that stair as long as you can. Such a chance doesn’t come twice in a lifetime. Come along.”
Pelham and John Trowbridge, a friend of Polly’s and of corresponding height, armed with large silver candelabra, stood near the head of the stair. (They had flatly refused to put on livery.) Polly posed Gita between them and regarded the tableau critically.
“Hold those candelabra a bit higher,” she commanded. “And don’t wabble. Nor, what is equally important, spill grease on that lace. Now, rest your arms until the band strikes up. I must go ahead and drive them to this end of the hall. Elsie, better light these candles first.”
The guests were dancing, but the arrival of Mrs. Pelham, Mr. Donald, and the clergyman in his robes of office, had advised them of some startling change in the program, and they were not surprised when the music stopped abruptly and Polly, her hand admonishing, appeared on the stair.
“Come down to this end all of you—over there; and afterward move into the middle of the room.” A moment later a mass of white wigs looked like a sudden descent of snowballs above a variegated flower-bed, ruffled by a faint but agitating breeze. On the broad landing Elsie applied a lighted taper to eight long candles set in high brackets.
Dr. Lancaster took his position solemnly in front of the chimneypiece that had looked down on so many Carteret brides. Mrs. Pleyden, who had no intention of striking too incongruous a note, wore a gown of rose-pink velvet with panniers made from a point-lace shawl, and had powdered her hair. She looked haughty and disapproving, however, and so did Mr. Donald, who was to give, thankfully, the bride away. Both were astonished that Polly and Eustace Bylant, the quintessence of modernism, should lend themselves to anything so theatrical. Of course, anything might be expected of Gita, and, no doubt, she had been encouraged by Mrs. Brewster, who was by way of being a “bohemian.”
Eustace, wigless and very pale, took his position at the foot of the stair, the bridesmaids behind him. Topper and the other servants, who had been put into dominos, stood in the background.
The slow opening strains of the Lohengrin wedding-march stole down from the gallery and there was a faint rustle from above. The hush became breathless. A moment later three figures appeared and stood on the high landing beneath the soft glow of the candles, into whose aspiring flames they seemed for a moment to merge as if to soar upward themselves. Pelham and Trowbridge, holding the candelabra aloft with rigid arms, looked like graven images. Gita, a white wraith, her arms hanging at her sides, her eyes fixed on space, but dazzling with their own light, stepped slowly down the wide stair, her attendants beside her. All three were consumed with fear of taking a false step and stumbling headlong, but preserved their outward composure.
A deep sigh rose from the audience, and one or two of the men whose secret life was ruled by a passionate devotion to beauty, winked away tears. Even the scornful muscles of Mrs. Pleyden’s face relaxed, and she reflected that she would have a tale to tell on many morrows.
The music rose and swelled through the old hall. The torches seemed to flame higher, and the dark faces of Carterets stood out as saliently as the living members of the drama enacting below. The stately trio reached the foot of the stair and Eustace took Gita’s hand and led her forward, unmindful of Mr. Donald’s crooked arm and heightened color. The bridesmaids spread out their trains and stepped daintily behind. The candelabra were lowered with a sigh of relief and Pelham advanced to his position as best man. The ceremony began.
Once Eustace felt Gita’s hand twitch as if she would snatch it away, but he held it firmly. Dr. Lancaster had a deep solemn voice and it boomed out much as it had done at the funeral ceremonies eight months before. Gita shivered, but she uttered her vows firmly, and held out a rigid finger for the ring. Then she sank to her knees on the cushion thoughtfully provided by Topper, and set her teeth as the solemn blessing rolled over her head. A moment later she was on her feet again listening to a loud excited buzz of congratulations. She submitted to being kissed by Mrs. Pleyden and the girls, then broke away and ran toward the dining-room.
“If you are not all famished I am,” she cried in a high and not unhysterical voice. “And you must lose no time drinking our health.”
PART II
“Nothing and Nobody, By Elizabeth Pelham” was published in the spring, and as critics and columnists pronounced it another notable contribution to undiluted Americanism and as her publisher’s enthusiasm expressed itself in picturesque advertising it had a fair success. The sale barely reached seven thousand copies, but the event established her in sophisticate society and the Lucy Stone League invited her to sit at the Speakers’ Table at their annual dinner.
“But privately I don’t think much of it,” she said to Gita. “They are all very kind and overlook defects because it is modern and sincere and rather disagreeable. But I know I’ll do better and better, and I never was so happy in my life.”
“Eustace thinks it a remarkable first novel, and I know it by heart. Seems all right to me.”
Elsie shook her head solemnly. “It has holes in it. But it is seeing your stuff in print that educates, not critics.”
They were in Gita’s sitting-room in the West Twelfth Street house, the windows open to the warm breezes of spring.
“How is Eustace’s book getting on?” asked Elsie, who was still able to interest herself in the work of other authors. “It should be nearly finished.”
“Haven’t seen him for two weeks. He has his meals sent upstairs. Says he always becomes the complete hermit toward the end. I suppose he doesn’t even shave.”
Gita was smoking placidly and Elsie looked at her speculatively.
“Your experiment has been a success,” she observed. “I wondered if it would——”
“Of course it has been a success. We’ve even had our little tiffs. Sometimes, particularly at the table, I feel almost domestic. But when we have an evening at home he comes downstairs to call and we have one of our old wonderful talks. The more I see of all these clever men the more I admire Eustace, for he has a mental grace that seems to be a sort of left-over and successfully eluded by the rest of them. I’ve missed him terribly these last weeks.”
“Too bad more husbands don’t take a leaf out of his book! In some ways your marriage is an ideal one.”
“All ways.”
“Well, of course all women wouldn’t think so.”
“More fools they.”
“Gita——” Elsie hesitated. She seldom pressed too close to this still incalculable friend, but no artistic faculty would continue to function without curiosity. Moreover, she was still more interested personally in Gita than in anyone she had ever known, save, possibly, Eustace Bylant.
“Well?” Gita, who had returned at two in the morning from a party at Potts Dawes’s, was sunken deep in her chair, enjoying the sensation of complete repose. She had lost some of her color, but her pink negligée shed a soft glow over her face that would have softened it as well had it not been for her hair, which, springing away from her face and very thick at the back, gave her, Elsie thought, the appearance of an eagle about to lift its wings and take flight. And her eyes, in spite of her mild dissipations, never looked heavy, although less fierce than formerly.
Gita had ceased to fear men and found many of Eustace’s friends as likable and amusing as she had anticipated. Whether a bride was sacrosanct even in a circle whose bugle-cry was scorn of tradition, or they cared for no reckoning with Bylant, or thought her too difficult game for a busy age, was a matter of indifference to her. They admired her extravagantly, but they let her alone. Once Peter Whiffle kissed her instep, but she had turned her eyes away from so much worse that she was inclined to be lenient and merely brushed him off as she would a mosquito. They discussed esoteric literature at odds with the censor for the rest of the evening.
“Gita——”
“Well—once more. You look as if you had something on your mind. Better get it off.”
“I can’t help wondering—I witnessed a good many changes before you married . . . but this winter in New York has changed you still more——”
“Developed, dear Elsie. You’re careless in the use of words, for a stylist. We don’t change, you know.”
“Not literally perhaps—unless, to be sure, the endocrines go wrong. But it looks a good deal like it sometimes! Perhaps ‘thawed’ would be a better word still. I shouldn’t be at all surprised to see you dancing next winter.”
“I don’t think so. There are some things I dislike as much as ever. Men are all very well as long as you don’t get too close to them. Then they smell of gin. And—well, I shouldn’t like it, that’s all. Some of those men are all right but it takes just one cocktail to turn two or three I could mention into silly beasts. If I danced with one I couldn’t refuse any of them and then anything might happen. So far, I’m safe from all but stuttering compliments on my eyelashes or my ears.”
Elsie laughed. “You’re safe enough. And probably right. There isn’t one of them, I fancy, who wouldn’t like to take you away from Eustace, but they’re afraid of you both. . . . But youhavethawed, and you’ve become a good deal of a woman of the world; you’ve cast out a good many inhibitions and prejudices. You’ve gotusedto things. You even took Marian Starr Darsett for a drive the other day, and it is the particular pride of our sophisticates that she has had more lovers than any woman in the world for her age. You find her charming and you’ve grown as indifferent as the rest of us to conduct as long as the personality pleases you and jiggledy morals don’t interfere with table manners.”
“That’s all true. I look upon life as a pageant and am grateful for its variety and not out to reform it. Miss Darsett is a beauty and a genius and a charming creature; and her private life—personal rather; nothing very private about it—is her affair, not mine.”
“But don’t you see what a stride you’ve taken? Any hint of sex, even under the ægis of holy matrimony, utterly disgusted you. If Polly and I had been even the usual susceptible females, let alone Marian Darsetts, you’d have swept us out with a broom.”
“True enough. But that was owing to a neurosis, and you and Polly and Eustace, my grandmother and the life she made possible, did the sweeping. I am able to adjust myself, take life as I find it, that’s all.”
“Well, it’s a good deal! I’m wondering if you won’t go further and fall in love with Eustace.”
Gita stared at her. “With Eustace? What an idea! Why don’t you ask me if I don’t think of spoiling the very most ideal—and satisfactory—relationship that ever existed between a man and woman?”
“Well—that’s a matter of opinion.”
“Only one opinion under this roof.”
“Then you’ve changed—developed if you prefer it—less than I thought.”
“Odd if I should change in that respect.”
“Some women, you know, even women that have been inhibited for one reason or another. . . . You might fall in love with someone else. You’ve met a good many attractive men these last months.”
“None half as attractive as Eustace. He always both rests and stimulates me and his manners are flawless. More than can be said for most.”
“And do you mean to live like this for the rest of your life?”
“Of course. Why not? Life is perfect. When I look back on those long twenty-two years before I landed in Carteret Manor I can hardly realize my good luck.”
“Oh, I admit that. And you were doubly fortunate to have the mental equipment to make the most of it. But you’re missing something, you know.”
“I’m not.” Gita set her mouth obstinately. “Don’t talk that old tosh.”
“Call it what you like, but no woman escapes it. Even Polly is more than half in love with my brother.”
“Is she?” Gita opened her eyes. “She’s never said a word to me about it.”
“Bad sign, as you see her nearly every day. He’s been there to dine several times and I know they take walks together in the Park. I fancy the pursuit is on her side, but when a woman makes up her mind to marry a man she generally does.”
“Funny if Polly went back on that old hard-and-fast program of hers. And I don’t quite see her as the wife of a struggling young surgeon.”
“Nor I. But love has been known to do queer things to people. And Polly has the tenacity of the devil.”
“I always said she was far too good for her crowd, and I’ve seen signs more than once she was sick of it. But—well,but!”
“Exactly. She’ll blind herself and perhaps him for a time, but they’re not suited at all.”
“Have you given him a talking-to?”
“Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“I haven’t seen him since the night of the Christmas party. Then he looked like a beau cavalier and was certainly devoted to Polly.” She almost blushed as she remembered his explosive declaration to herself.
“I rather thought you’d made an impression on him,” said Elsie. “And that wouldn’t have done either. I suppose I don’t want him to marry at all. He’s the sort of man who is better off alone. Perhaps I’m all wrong. I’d be a fool if I thought I knew my own brother . . . I wish you’d ask them to dine and then tell me what you think of it.”
“I’ve asked him several times but he always gave some excuse. When Eustace has finished his book we’re going to have a celebration and I’ll tell Polly to bring him.”
“Well—if I were a different person, and you were a different person, I’d ask you to use your own wiles and break it up. But as it is——”
“I should think not!” Gita sprang to her feet. “Let’s go for a walk.”
Eustace, unshorn and unshaven, banged out the last word of his novel, tore the page from the typewriter and flung it to the floor. Then he hit his machine a blow with his fist, rattled the case over it, and swinging about in his chair, scowled at the scattered manuscript. He gave full rein to his temperament when writing a book in the seclusion of his chambers and bore little resemblance to the Eustace Bylant known to his world.
He had begun his novel in Atlantic City, but interruptions had been frequent and interests conflicting; he had confined himself to a rough draft, working only at night and not vitally interested. But he had plunged into it as a beneficent refuge the day after he found himself shut up in this narrow house with Gita; and as art had been his queen-mistress for so many years, she showed but a few days of coyness before remounting her throne. His theme had not only absorbed but exhausted him. A cold shower and he was ready to meet Gita at the table or sit with her in that austere living-room of hers during the evening with nerves that longed only for rest. They rarely met before dinner, for he rose at nine and worked until four, and on what he called his off-days he went to a gymnasium, played golf, or took a long walk in the country. This last week the pace had been terrific and he had barely left his rooms.
He hardly knew whether he loved his book or hated it. He always finished a novel with regret, and this assuredly had been a friend in need! But his nerves were jumping and his violated ego clamored for utterance.
He gathered up the sheets resentfully. Why hadn’t he spun it out? Made it a third longer? Even now he might pad it, dazzling both critics and public with pyrotechnical brilliancy. But he shrugged impatiently. He was an artist and incapable of crime. Perhaps he was more artist than man. He wished to God he were.
He took a hot bath and cold shower, and not daring to trust his unsteady hands, slipped out of the house and went to his barber. An hour later he was sauntering up Fifth Avenue to one of his clubs, cool, aloof, immaculately groomed, the frenetic artist submerged in the man of the world. This club, of which he was a member almost by inheritance, always called him at the end of an intellectual orgy. The reaction from the long strain was apt to be sharp and violent and it was some time before he cared even to lunch at The Sign of the Indian Chief, where the sophisticates foregathered and had created something resembling a salon. A woman novelist once told him that as soon as she finished a book she hastily adjusted her feminine wings and flew to the shops. His reaction was not dissimilar and he moved automatically toward men who hardly knew him as a novelist and were quietly amused by the word temperament.
At half-past seven he met Gita in the Brittany drawing-room and gallantly raised her hand to his lips.
“I feel as if I had just risen from the dead,” he said, smiling, “and had ascended not to earth but to a vision of paradise.”
“Nice to hear your pretty compliments again, dear Eustace, and nicer still to have you back. But you look rather fagged—must have been working frightfully hard.”
“Pegging away like an old cart-horse, but the job’s finished, thank heaven. A week or two of polishing and then nothing more arduous than proofs to correct.”
“I’d love to help you with them.”
“Well, you shall. We’ll be over at the manor then and I’ll really see something of you once more. Have we anything on tonight?”
“Music at the Pleydens’. I hope you’re not too tired to go? I dared not accept for dinner but promised Mrs. Pleyden I’d bring you later if it were humanly possible.”
His sigh of relief was inaudible. He meant to woo her and win her but he was very tired and a part of his brain still reverberated to the echoes of his creative energies. “Nothing would give me more pleasure than an evening of music except to dine alone with you and enjoy a good dinner once more. By the time a tray reaches the third floor things are lukewarm and tasteless. Shall we go in?”
The long narrow dining-room was at the front of the house, rather somber, with its tapestries and Jacobean furniture, but lit with long red candles as slender as reeds. Topper had been left in charge of the manor and they were served by a trim maid. Gita, at the head of the table in a shining yellow gown with a jeweled sunflower (Bylant’s wedding-gift) at her breast, was a grateful and refreshing figure after his incarceration, and he felt as he would toward any beautiful woman who had never stirred his pulses; although they talked of intimate things. Gita purred like a contented house-cat restored to the warmth of the hearthstone, her eyes dwelling affectionately on the bland and hungry gentleman opposite.
“You’ve no idea how I’ve missed you!” she exclaimed as their eyes met and smiled. “But of course you forgot my existence.”
“Ah—well, I must be rude and confess that I did. But I am sure you understand.”
“Of course I do. And I never resented it even when I wanted to talk to you more than anything else in the world.”
“I once told you that you would make a model wife—and, I remember, you retorted that you hated the word, and substituted partner.”
“Oh, I’m used to hearing myself called your wife and don’t mind a bit. Words only mean what you put into them, anyhow. To most foreigners, for instance, all our words mean nothing.”
“Quite true. What have you been doing with yourself?”
“Lunching with Polly at some restaurant in Park Avenue or with Elsie at The Sign of the Indian Chief, or with both of them here; going to the opera, matinées, concerts, parties, dinners, walking, shopping—getting summer things—enjoying myself every minute.”
“Not a bit tired of this gay life?”
“Rather not. But I’ll be glad to get back to the manor.”
“I suppose you intend to have house-parties?”
“I should think so! Dozens have promised to come.”
“Wouldn’t you like to be quiet for a while?”
Gita shook her head. “No, and you wouldn’t, either. You never look as much at home as at a party.”
“But it would be a delightful change to have you to myself for a bit—say a month.”
“ ’Fraid we’d get talked out and bore each other, but a week between each party would strike a happy medium. I never intend to give you a chance to tire of me.” And she gave him a dazzling smile.
He made the proper gallant retort, and asked, “What time do we show up at the Pleydens’?”
“Ten-thirty. You’ve just time for a cigar in my ark. I simply long to see you in your chair again. It’s over a fortnight since you paid me a call.”
ThePleydens lived in a double apartment on Park Avenue and until lately the large drawing-room had resounded with jazz at least once a week. During the winter Mrs. Pleyden gave two musical evenings, a large dinner once a fortnight, followed by bridge, and numerous luncheons. She had no intention of retiring to a backwater, and Polly, to do her justice, never demanded the ignominy and even asked a few of her friends to the concerts.
Tonight, although it was late in the season, a large company was assembled, and several of the women wore tiaras—less ponderous than Gita’s heirloom, however—supported their chins with high diamond collars, and clung to the elaborate coiffure of the past; but others, like Mrs. Pleyden—still in her forties despite two married daughters—covered their ears, indulged in a permanent wave, or arranged their hair in the manner best suited to their individual style.
Mrs. Pleyden wore a jeweled band above her eyebrows, and her gown of eucalyptus-green satin embroidered with silver finished eight inches above the instep and was as modish as Polly’s. A short string of pearls clasped the base of her throat, and at the end of a long chain of platinum and small diamonds she carried a lorgnette. Her eyes were still clear and bright but growing defective in vision, and although lorgnettes were no longer employed to annihilate they were useful for casual print.
Her concerts were always events, for she had the fine taste in music of educated New Yorkers, and a liberal understanding with stars of the opera and concert stage. The musicians performed on a raised dais at the end of the long room, and the guests sat as comfortably as might be on rows of gilt chairs. The decorations were yellow chrysanthemums, and a soft golden light was becoming to complexions both sacred and profane. Mr. Pleyden was not present. He was the able and industrious president of a railroad system and spent his evenings in his library reading detective stories.
But Mrs. Pleyden looked less placid than usual as she stood by the door receiving late guests while a coloratura warbled. Her eyes wandered to Polly, who sat in a niche by the chimneypiece with Dr. Pelham. Her brilliant restless daughter merely blew rings in her face when, forgetting diplomacy, she remonstrated or probed lightly; and refused to discuss the subject. Mrs. Pleyden was not as worldly as the mothers of her own youth but she drew the line at obscure surgeons whose parents she had never met. That he was the highly esteemed associate of Dr. Gaunt, whose mother wore a tiara in the front row, and whose wife was her intimate friend, in no way tempered the misfortune that threatened the house of Pleyden. He might be a famous surgeon himself twenty years hence but at present he was a nobody; and although girls sometimes married young men obliged to toil and economize, and were content to live in unfashionable neighborhoods, saved from complete ignominy by one servant, it was always with a husband of their own class, and their position was still as assured as that of their friends with spectacular American incomes. But Mrs. Pleyden had seen enough of Geoffrey Pelham to comprehend that if Polly married him she would drop out. It was only too plain that society bored him, and if her dainty and fastidious daughter accomplished what looked to be a fell purpose her flat in the Bronx would be as disconcerting to her old friends as that dreadful house on States Avenue, Atlantic City. Her father would be willing to give her a large allowance, but Pelham was not the man to live on his wife, and she knew that he contributed to the support of his mother and sister. The future looked dark and dubious. She had seen Polly interested before but never serious.
And then she noticed that Pelham, whose ear was bent to Polly’s irreverent whisperings, was looking at Gita Bylant. Staring at her. His eyes looked bedazzled. She was convinced that he had not yet asked Polly to marry him, and although he was obviously attracted by her, he had never, to Mrs. Pleyden’s experienced eye, given the impression of a man desperately in love. She had concluded that the pursuit was Polly’s, but it was a conclusion that had given her little solace. Polly was born to have her way.
But at this moment her heart gave a throb of mingled hope and resentment. Although she disapproved of Gita more than ever, since that refractory charge preferred the society of what her own set persisted in calling bohemians, to the exalted circles into which, true to her promise, she had launched her, the creature might have her uses; and if she chose to exert her wiles on Geoffrey Pelham, so much the better.
Eustace was able to take care of himself.
But Gita, after a smile and nod to both Polly and Dr. Pelham, had devoted herself raptly to the music.
The musical program lasted but an hour and a half. As the company moved toward the dining-room Gita found herself beside Geoffrey Pelham, who had surrendered Polly to Park Leonard, a new and increasingly determined admirer. Gita noted under her eyelashes that he more nearly filled Polly’s old ideal than any of her numerous court, certainly far more than Geoffrey Pelham. He was a partner in his father’s eminent law firm, and in spite of a personal fortune, was ambitious, active and diligent, going rarely into society and never to jazz parties. He had met Polly at a dinner to which he had been enticed by his sister, and his attentions, at first sporadic, had of late grown assiduous. He had dark hair and gray eyes, clean features almost sharp, and a square chin. His devotion to the law in no way interfered with his grooming, and as he took quiet possession of Polly it would have been difficult to find a couple so at one in breeding and so complementary in looks.
Polly found him useful as a red rag, and nodded indifferently to Pelham as she gave Leonard permission to sit beside her at supper. That Gita’s black eyes had played havoc in Geoffrey’s unsusceptible heart had never entered her mind.
Gitahad learned the lesson familiar to all American women, that conversational initiative was one to be cheerfully assumed, more particularly with men as silent as Geoffrey Pelham. She began by reproaching him for his neglect.
“I’ve been working very hard,” he replied, avoiding her eyes.
“But Eustace! He’s devoted to you and has felt hurt. You might have made an exception in his favor. Do you really go nowhere?”
“I won’t say that. I couldn’t very well, as I’m here tonight! Dr. Gaunt insists that society is the best relaxation for a busy man, although I don’t agree with him, but I do go out now and then. It just happened I could not accept any of your invitations.”
“Well! You’ll come to our party a week from Thursday. Eustace has finished his novel and we’re going to have a blow-out. Don’t try to think up an excuse. We’ll expect you.”
“I was only trying to say I’d be delighted.”
They found a table for two in a corner, and although surrounded by high chatter their tête-à-tête was unlikely to be interrupted.
Gita was still uninitiated in coquetry but her eyes as she turned them on Pelham were not devoid of challenge, although she was, at the moment, consumed by nothing more dangerous than curiosity.
“I hear you are devoted to Polly,” she remarked.
He flushed but answered coolly: “Devoted is hardly the word. I have a great admiration for Miss Pleyden and she has shown me much hospitality. I—I’ve never found time to be interested in anyone.”
“Polly has more in her than you suspect. She is not only a dear but she really has a mind if she would cultivate it.”
“I more than suspect it. As I told you before I find her admirable.”
“I was delighted when I heard of the friendship. I’ve always feared she’d marry some duffer and come to her senses too late.”
“I should say she was less likely to make a mistake than most girls, and Leonard, for instance, is a fine fellow.”
Gita glanced across the room at Polly, whose flower-like orbs were lifted sweetly to the compelling gaze of the distinguished young lawyer.
“He’d do very well,” she said musingly. “Polly always said she’d never marry until she met a man of that sort.” She shot a glance at Pelham, who was calmly consuming a plover.
“I’m sure she couldn’t do better.”
“But——” If Polly were as serious as Elsie suspected was it not her loyal duty to aid her in what might be the supreme crisis of her youth? No doubt Pelham was in love with her without realizing it, so scant was his experience with women.
“Well?” Pelham looked up, and in his own eyes there was something of challenge.
“I mean—well—you see—I hardly know how to say it, but I believe Polly is really interested in you.”
“I have amused her because I am a rank outsider, something entirely different from what she has been accustomed to.” And he helped himself to chicken salad.
Gita was torn between what might be a betrayal of Polly and the desire to come to her assistance. She had heard that men sometimes needed but a seed deftly planted to be flattered into complete surrender. And Pelham was not the type to feel only the joy of the hunter. Affection for Polly conquered.
“I believe she is really in love with you,” she said.
He turned pale but looked at her steadily. “If I thought that were true I should refuse to discuss the subject at all. But it is not. . . . Am I to understand that you have turned matchmaker?”
“Not I. But I’d like to see Polly happy.”
“Do you mean that you want me to marry her?” His voice had a harsh directness, quite unlike the mellow subtle tones of Eustace Bylant.
To her surprise Gita felt her face flush, and she dropped her eyes.
“Yes—I think I do.” But she frowned, not at him but herself.
“I never saw but one woman I wanted to marry and as—that is forever denied me I shall never marry at all. I’m not the sort of man, I hope, to make love to the wife of my friend, but—I’d be grateful if you would take no further interest in my casual friendships with other women.” He was very white but his voice was hard and deliberate and his eyes angry. He lifted his fork and his sensitive fingers were steady.
Gita turned cold and the blood left her face and seemed to settle about her heart, whose thumping stirred the sunflower on her breast. She was astounded and horrified—and not at Geoffrey Pelham! And then she felt a sensation of sheer terror. What had happened to her? Of love in the sexual sense she was incapable and she assuredly felt for this man none of the calm active affection she so liberally bestowed on Eustace and her two other friends. She was barely conscious of liking him, although he had haunted her thoughts occasionally and had given her an odd sensation the night of the Christmas party. She had heard a great deal of the magnetic vibrations between men and women, inspired by nothing more elevated than the automatic response of the opposite poles of sex, but she was far removed from that category. She had lived in an atmosphere of sex since she came to New York and its vibrations had glanced off her as harmlessly as lightning from basalt. If she no longer regarded the subject with profound distaste she was totally uninterested. Eustace had taught her that men could be clean and decent and wholly admirable, and as a rule she chose to see only the fine side of the others and viewed their moral divagations with indifference.
She dropped her handkerchief on the side farthest from Pelham and bent down until the blood returned to her head, then switched on her analytical faculty. She had been startled—who would not be? Geoffrey Pelham!—and horrified that she was the innocent cause of desolation in two hearts capable of the highest happiness. Polly was doomed to bitter disappointment, and this honorable and remarkable man would go through life a dreary bachelor for her sake. (She was unable to visualize Polly as an old maid.) She felt Jezebelian. And loyalty flooded her for Eustace. For the moment she was almost angry at the man whose life she had unwittingly ruined, and craned her neck until her eyes found her husband, seated at a distant table, laughing and talking with every appearance of enjoyment. She caught his eye and they exchanged a glance of gay understanding which suffused her with a virtuous glow and enabled her to turn to Geoffrey, now at work on a peach. She said calmly:
“That was an awkward silence but you frightened me out of my wits. Will you peel me a peach? It’s a pleasure to watch you. And when I eat a hothouse peach in winter I feel as if I had dissolved a pearl in champagne—although Cleopatra’s wines must have been stronger than bootleggers’.”
Itwas Mrs. Pleyden’s habit to move to Atlantic City in April and she began her usual preparations on the day after the party in spite of remonstrances from Polly.
“I’m sick to death of Atlantic City and besides I hear they’re having a rainy spring. I’ve a lot of things on here and simply can’t go.”
She was lying on a sofa in her mother’s bedroom and wore a pale green negligée in delicate harmony with the pink of her cheeks, unimpaired by a cacophonous winter. As usual she was smoking.
Mrs. Pleyden, who was packing her jewels for the safe-deposit vault in her bank, looked up critically.
“I wish you would not smoke so much, if only for the sake of your complexion. The house in Chelsea is ready and the servants go tomorrow. I am surprised you made any engagements.”
“I don’t think I’ll go,” announced Polly. “I can stay here with father. He told me yesterday he’d be delighted to have me, and if he can make himself comfortable with two servants and a caretaker I can.”
Mrs. Pleyden bent over the large box with an anxious line between her brows. It was seldom she came to an issue with her daughter.
“But—my dear—you would have a dull time. All the girls will have left shortly, either for Europe or the country—I dislike Europe since the war but if you’d like to go——”
“I shouldn’t.”
“Even before your friends left you couldn’t have parties. I don’t mean only in my absence but in that of the servants.”
“I’m sick of parties. I only want to be quiet for a while. Nothing very quiet about Atlantic City.”
“I am afraid, my dear, you have another reason. You want to be able to continue to see Dr. Pelham.”
“Well—what if I do? He’s the only man that interests me—makes me feel as if I had brains instead of jazz in my skull.”
“He’s an intellectual man, of course, and if he ever talks at all, no doubt what he says is illuminating. But aren’t you rather young for intellectual friendships? Better enjoy yourself while youareyoung and leave those until later. Besides, how about Park Leonard? I should think he was quite as clever as Dr. Pelham and a good deal more versatile. Certainly more your own sort.”
“I like him well enough but I happen to like Geoffrey Pelham better. He interests me and Park does not. Those things are not to be explained. Matter of spark, perhaps.”
“Isn’t it merely because he is rather difficult? You are used to having men fall in love with you, pursue you as Leonard does.”
“Maybe. What does it matter?”
Mrs. Pleyden abandoned diplomacy. It had come to what Polly herself would call a show-down.
“Do you intend to marry him?” she asked.
“I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Have you thought what it means?”
“Financially? A flat in Harlem or the Bronx or commuting to some—at present—unknown suburb? Yes, I’ve thought of it—considerably. But if Nell Croydon and Hallie Le Kay can stand it I guess I can. Besides, I always like anything for a change! And in a few years he’ll have a large income. Dr. Gaunt told me the other day that his personal practice was increasing rapidly, and of course he has his associate fees.”
“Very well. If you are able to see yourself living—with resignation—in an uptown flat or suburban cottage, changing an incompetent servant at least once a month and making over your clothes, cut off from everything to which you have been accustomed, and with a man who hardly opens his mouth, I have nothing to say. But are you sure he is in love with you?”
“No, I am not, and that is what makes it exciting. I rather like doing all the work for a change. Waking him up. And don’t you imagine he never talks. He’s bored stiff at dinners, and that he comes at all means a good deal; but when we take walks together he opens up, and sometimes is almost boyish.”
“Ah. You are sure you can make him love you?”
“I am,” said Polly serenely. “Just you wait.”
“And”—Mrs. Pleyden took another plunge—“has it never occurred to you that he might love someone else?”
Polly sat up straight, dropping her cigarette. “What on earth put such an idea into your head?”
“Please pick up that cigarette before it burns a hole in the rug. I mean he is in love with Gita Carteret.”
Polly rose slowly to her feet, her eyes staring. “Mother! What are you saying?”
“I know what I am talking about. I saw him looking at her last night when he was pretending to listen to you. No man looks at a woman like that unless he loves her. And I watched them afterward in the dining-room. He said something that made her turn as white as a sheet and she didn’t speak for at least five minutes. It seems he’s not only in love with her but is not above making love to the wife of his best friend.”
“I don’t believe it! You imagined it—every bit of it! In the first place he wouldn’t do such a thing and in the second he wouldn’t dare. You don’t know Gita as I do. She’d have thrown a plate at him.”
“It is fortunate that her evident complaisance—reciprocation, shall I say?—averted a scandal. For unless all signs fail she’s in love with him.”
“You’re crazy. You hate Gita and you don’t like Geoffrey. You’ve let your imagination run away with you. That’s all.”
“Have I ever struck you as an imaginative woman? I doubt if there’s a more practical woman in New York. And I don’t hate Gita, although I disapprove of her, and was only too thankful when poor dear Eustace took her off my hands. A pleasant prospect for him!”
“You needn’t worry. Neither would do anything dishonorable even if there were anything in it, and there’s not. If you didn’t imagine it all you were mistaken.”
“Has he never talked to you about her?”
Polly raked her memory. “Yes—I suppose he has. It’s quite the thing to discuss Gita.”
“Hasn’t he talked of her a good deal? May not that be one secret of your attraction for him?”
“You are not very complimentary!”
“I don’t mean, my dear, that you couldn’t charm anyone you thought worth while, whether you let him talk to you about some other girl or not. I am merely trying to open your eyes.”
“Well, I’ll not believe it,” said Polly stubbornly. She was walking up and down the room, her eyes puzzled and angry. “But I’ll sound out Gita this very day. And warn her off the grass if I find she’s been flirting with him. She’s come out of her ‘fort’ to such an amazing extent this winter and has got so accustomed to men raving over her that no doubt she’s as keen as the next girl to stir a man up——”
“Do you believe that Gita is incapable of falling in love?”
“Yes, I do. When I first met her I got the impression she was just the sort to burn herself up over some man, but I know better now. No one could call her sub-normal, but she’s what is known as asexual. Shell’s all right but emotional content gone fluey. Do you know that she doesn’t live with Eustace? That they had an understanding to that effect?”
Mrs. Pleyden blushed slightly. “I inferred as much, but it cannot last.”
“Not with anyone but Gita. Perhaps not forever even with her. Time works wonders even to one’s inside. But no one but Eustace will turn the trick. He’s the man for her in every way and she really adores him in her own queer fashion. She’ll never give ten cents for Geoffrey Pelham nor anyone else.”
“I’m not so sure. She is Gerald Carteret’s daughter, and the living image of him. Nor were the Carteret women, although their virtue was proverbial, ever known as what you call asexual. The men were lawless, and Gita strikes me as more like them than like the women of her family. And although she started out in life by hating men you can see for yourself how she’s changed. Nothing she did would surprise me. You know how high-handed she is. What she wants she will have——”
“No more high-handed than I am. You forget this is the age of high-handedness. What we want we’ll damn well get. And the devil take the hindmost. Well, I’m off to dress.”
Gitawas only half-dressed when she heard Polly’s voice downstairs. She had not slept until long after daylight. To her intense annoyance and perplexity her mind iterated and reiterated the scene between herself and Geoffrey Pelham. As a rule she fell asleep the moment she turned off the light, no matter how exciting the preceding hours may have been, and she looked upon Pelham almost with awe that he could disturb the habit of a lifetime. Even the ugly worries and agitations of the past had never interfered with sound healthy nights.
The moment she was encompassed by darkness she had been back in the Pleyden dining-room with Geoffrey Pelham’s voice in her ears, her eyes on his white strained face until she dropped them in consternation. She supposed that another woman, recalling a declaration from a man as attractive as that would have thrilled at the haunting memory; but her body was quiescent, it was only her brain that blazed like a bonfire. . . . She was not even sure he had captured her imagination, he had merely “started something.” . . .
No doubt her vanity. . . . But she had had a good many spasms of vanity this last year. She had been inordinately set up when she had made a conquest of Eustace Bylant. . . . Her mirror had received a good many confidences. Yes, she was as vain as a peacock. No need of a man more or less to keep it awake. Certainly wouldn’t keep her awake. . . .
She recalled the night of the manor ball when she and Pelham had sat alone in the drawing-room. He had outshone every man at the party in looks and distinction. . . . She remembered certain odd sensations. . . . Another Gita Carteret. That was it. No doubt if she had sat in that room two hundred years ago with a young man as handsome and winning as that she’d have fallen in love with him then and there. For the first time she was conscious of regret that such an exciting experience was denied her. It would be immeasurably interesting to love a man like Geoffrey Pelham—especially as he looked that night. Nothing very romantic about a man dressed like a waiter and eating chicken salad. . . .
That, perhaps, was it. Romance. It was not the dearth of sex-fires she was regretting—that idea was as abhorrent as ever—but the romances all those beautiful Carteret girls had experienced before her and handed down as her birthright. She would even have been glad if her mother—who would have been happier dead anyhow—could have gone when she was a child and her father had sent her to her grandmother. She would have grown up a true Carteret girl and come into her birthright. She might or might not have met Geoffrey Pelham but she would have had her romance sooner or later. . . . But no, she had met a good many men now, some of them charming and congenial enough. It would have been Geoffrey Pelham and no other. Perhaps they were both living again after two hundred years’ sleep and had once met and loved in that old manor. There had been something oddlyawarethat night—but that was nonsense. She might be too educated to assume that anything, including reincarnation, was fabulous, but she didn’t believe it all the same. It was merely the law of mutual attraction at work. Men and women were falling in love every day all over the world with no assistance from metempsychosis. . . . And she was by no means “in love.” Silly phrase. Moronotic. . . . What might have been and what was were two entirely different matters. It was merely that some subtle magnetic quality in his personality suggested romance—every girl’s birthright—or had that night. There was nothing very romantic about a surgeon always carving up people and getting blood all over himself . . . and they had to cut up corpses before they could do that, and hardly ever read anything but stiff medical journals.
. . . Still he did and that was the end of it. When that set grimness left his face it looked sensitive and eager, almost boyish . . . and no doubt he could be ardent enough. He was boxed up—had been—would have to be now more than ever if he loved her as much as he thought he did. She gave a sigh of pity. Poor devil. Why had he lit on her of all girls? Polly was——But she turned her thoughts away from Polly.
And Eustace. If she had grown up at Carteret Manor she never would have married Eustace; she’d have taken him on as a brother. He wouldn’t have done for a hero of romance at all, perfectly delightful as he was in so many ways. Odd, too. He and Geoffrey were not unlike. Both were fair, had much the same compact tall figures, both intellectual and the product of their times. Perhaps they both belonged to what Polly would call her “type,” and it was just that subtle difference that made Geoffrey romantic (in costume) and Eustace prosaic. Costume certainly didn’t improvehim. He’d looked simply awful as old Cornbury. . . . It was nice to be married to dear Eustace. Not for a moment could she regret it. What use? No romance for her. But it was exciting to imagine what it would have been like if she had been one of those other Gita Carterets. She couldn’t even feel sad over it—too much of a philosopher, no doubt. She felt more like the heroine of a play—acting someone else’s lines but feeling the real thing for the moment. . . .
No wonder she had been upset at that very real declaration in that very prosaic dining-room. . . . Horribly upset. Thought she was going to faint. . . . Odd, though, she hadn’t felt . . . what was it. . . . What. . . . She yawned prodigiously and fell asleep.
WhenPolly entered she was standing before the long mirror of the dressing-table in her yellow bedroom, brushing her hair back and up. She liked the springing effect it gave her head, as if she were about to leap upward and fly, and she was full of vanity and had forgotten Geoffrey Pelham.
“Hullo, Polly darling,” she exclaimed. “You look as fresh as if you’d gone to bed at nine last night. I’m disgracefully lazy. I’ll be glad to get back to the manor and go to bed at a decent hour once more.”
“I’m tired of late hours, myself.” Polly adjusted her flexible spine to a comfortable chair and lit a cigarette. She wore a red gown and had painted her lips to match.
Gita smiled sympathetically. “Your mother told me she’s going to Atlantic City this week, but I hope you don’t mean to go before the party. You could stay here and sleep on that day-bed.”
“No, thanks. I lay down on it once! I’m not going with mother. Dad always keeps the apartment open and I’ll stay with him for a while.”
“Good! We leave in about ten days and it will be heavenly to have you here. I suppose you’ll be going about the same time?”
“I may stay here all summer.”
Gita, who had looked like a boy once more in her silk union suit, slipped a negligée of ivory-white silk and lace over her head and shook it down. “You made me get these things,” she grumbled. “I always feel rather a fool in them. What on earth are you staying in town all summer for? You’ll pass out with the heat.”
“You can always be comfortable in New York in summer if you stay in the house all day and live in north rooms. It just occurred to me I’d like a change.”
“It will be a change, all right.” Gita stretched herself on the despised day-bed and stuffed a cushion under her head. “Won’t you be bored to death?”
“Not while there’s a man in the offing.”
“Park Leonard?”
“No. Geoffrey Pelham.”
Gita, prepared, did not change countenance. “Interesting man, rather, but it seemed to me last night that Mr. Leonard exactly fitted into that old program of yours.”
“Forget what it was. Might have filled the bill once but Geoffrey Pelham is unique in my experience, and that suits me better.”
The girls’ eyes did not clash but met calmly.
“Well, you always get what you want, Polly dear,” said Gita, and felt an inclination to strangle her.
Polly blew a ring. “Mother said you flirted desperately with Geoffrey last night.”
“I!” Gita’s spine rose as if propelled by a spring. “I never flirted in my life and you know it.”
“I told her she was crazy, but she will have it that you have lost your heart at last.”
Gita gasped. “Lost my heart? I feel as if I were turning pea-green. It’s enough to make a dog sick.”
“So it is. You may be sure she didn’t convince me. If you ever did anything so commonplace we’d all be horribly disappointed. Now, you’re the one and only Gita. . . . But—do you know?—I think you’ve rather grown to like admiration, and are not above encouraging it.”
Gita shrugged and settled back to her pillow. “I’m vain enough. I even put cold cream on my face at night before I wash it. But I don’t flirt and I don’t encourage them. Just let them yap to their hearts’ content.”
“But do tell me that you think Geoffrey interesting,” cried Polly, still angling. “I’d be frightfully disappointed if you didn’t.”
“Yes—I’d call him interesting. He doesn’t say much, but he has a quality—magnetism, I suppose. And then he’s rather unsusceptible and that’s always intriguing. Glad he’s fallen in love with you if you want him.” Her conscience suddenly pricked. “By the way, he spoke of you with the greatest enthusiasm last night.”
“Did he?” Polly seldom blushed but she did now and her eyes sparkled. “What did he say?”
“Oh, a lot of things. Different. More admirable than all other girls rolled into one. Almost warmed up.” Gita had a very vague remembrance of what Geoffrey had said about Polly.
“Well, he ought to know something about me. We’ve seen enough of each other.”
“Are you really in love with him?” Gita infused her tones with warm interest.
“I have a queer feeling I am. I don’t like it very much. He’s not at all the sort of man I expected to marry, and it will be horrid to be poor—although I bluffed it out to mother just now. But—well—those things happen.”
“Don’t they! But I don’t quite get it. You don’t seem to fit the picture somehow. Sure you’re not deluding yourself? Novelty does wonders.”
“Don’t think I am. Got a queer feeling I never had before. Thrills and all that. Turn hot and cold. Lose my breath. Stay awake nights thinking about it. Dr. Pelham—at a time when I was still calling him that—told me that love in our sex was an over-secretion of hormones in interstitial cells adjacent to the Graafian follicles; stimulation induced by powerful photographic image of someone of the opposite sex on the mental lens, which responds to certain old memories in the subconscious. Makes me fearfully set up to be anything as scientific as that, but I fancy I’d feel about the same anyway. Only hope the sub won’t find it’s mistaken and go into retreat when I’m living in Harlem and marketing on Sixth Avenue of a morning.”
“And you really don’t think it will?”
“No, I don’t!” Polly suddenly became serious. “Oh, yes, I really don’t. It would be wonderful to make a man like that happy. Grow with him. Really amount to something. I shouldn’t mind being poor for a few years.”
Gita was appalled (albeit conscious of conflicting emotions underneath). She knew how little likely was Polly to realize her potentialities if she depended upon Geoffrey Pelham. For the moment she hated herself and him. What blind idiots men were.
To give herself time to think she went into her “ark” to get a cigarette. She cared little for smoking but a cigarette had its uses.
. . . If she really had any influence over him couldn’t she manage to steer him to Polly? He knew that his love for herself was hopeless and any man who made the mistake of falling in love with the wrong woman must come to his senses in time. Men were always falling in love with the wrong woman, getting over it, married, became fatuous fathers, and increased complacently in girth. Love was nothing but a superstition anyway. . . . Geoffrey was no fool to moon over one woman all his life. Besides, there was always the rebound if a sufficiently charming woman who wanted him was on the alert. . . . She wished she’d had more experience. Pretty delicate. She’d have to watch her chance; and also watch out.
She returned to the day-bed, and exclaimed with enthusiasm: “It would be perfectly splendid, Polly. You’d bring each other out. I’ve always believed that all you needed was to fall in love with a really fine man and I was always afraid you wouldn’t.”
Her eyes glowed with affection and Polly responded with a quick smile, wholly reassured. She’d been a brute to doubt Gita, and as a matter of fact she hadn’t. Her mother had stirred her up, thrown a wrench into her well-oiled mental machinery. That was all. Dear Gita.
Her face fell a little. “I’ll confide to you I don’t think he cares for me yet. I’m merely educating him up to it. That is the reason I’m staying on in town. Hope he’ll realize in time that I’m all in all.” Her tones were flippant again. “It takes an earthquake to wake some men up.”
“Why don’t you break your leg and then he’d not only set it but call daily and feel so sympathetic he’d find out right off he loved you? Pity for a beautiful frail helpless creature, bravely suffering, would turn the trick with any man not a stone, and you look lovely in bed.”
“That sounds almost romantic from you! No. It wouldn’t work. Mother would call in Dr. Gaunt and not let Geoffrey through the front door. But time is all I need and I mean to take it.”
“Atlantic City won’t be the same without you. I shall miss you terribly.” The words were automatic. Her mind was racing.
Polly rose and snapped her vanity-box. “If I pull it off sooner than I expect, I’ll leave town in a hurry. I long for salt water and long rides and a game of tennis. I suppose Geoffrey takes a vacation like other men and he could spend it in Atlantic City, to say nothing of weekends. You’re the best pal in the world and you’ve bucked me up. Had a séance with mother and was feeling down and out. When is the party?”
“Week from tomorrow.”
“I’ll be here with bells on. Don’t come down. You look tired, and if you find that ancient relic comfortable——Bye-bye.” And she ran down the stair.