The tide was coming in. Gita realized that she was cold and rather
tired. She ran along the beach to quicken her blood, then took a trolley
to the mainland. As she walked up the avenue of the manor she saw a
motor standing before the door of the house and hoped she would be able
to slip upstairs to her room unseen. The elderly and middle-aged
daughters of her grandmother’s contemporaries did not interest her and
she was inclined to pay little heed to the old lady’s adhortations to
lose no time making friends in her new life. She had been at the manor a
month and not met anyone of her own age. Few of any other. She saw her
grandmother in brief interviews only, for the nurse maintained that this
alien relative excited the invalid.
As she was stepping carefully over the old rugs of the hall she sniffed
a familiar aroma, and then observed that the door of the drawing-room
was open, and that a blind had evidently been raised. She had entered
this room only once, on the day after her arrival, when curiosity had
led her to explore the cradle of her ancestors. She had felt no
inclination to visit it again. It was immense and dark and dreary,
paneled with mahogany to the ceiling and crowded with ill-assorted
furniture representing every period from 1660 to 1880. She assumed that
her grandmother’s funeral would be held in its musty grandeur and after
that it would be less inviting than ever.
She heard a light movement. For whom could the drawing-room have been
opened today? Mrs. Carteret’s friends were escorted directly upstairs by
Topper. Curiosity overcame her and she tiptoed to the door and looked
through the crack. Then her heart gave a leap. A girl was standing in
the middle of the room wrinkling her nose. Gita forgot that she hated
everybody and remembered the unfailing kindness of her friends in
California. She had not loved any of them and was too self-centered for
intimacies, but they had given her what little tolerance of life she had
ever known.
This girl looked rather jolly. She wore a very smart tailored suit that
gave her the proper geometrical outline, and the prevailing hat of a
shape once identified only with sport. Her face looked out triumphantly
from its austere setting, for it was a really beautiful face, with its
flower-like eyes and regular features. The bright fair hair was shingled
and a cigarette projected from a mouth like pink coral. There was a
touch of orange in the costume and Gita noted vagrantly that it clashed
with the lips.
Gita hoped she was not married. It was as impossible to tell a young
married woman from a girl as a smart déclassée from a woman of fashion,
and Gita was not interested in babies and housekeeping. But a girl!
However, there was but one way to find out.
She entered the cold drawing-room and held out her hand with a smile.
“I am Gita Carteret,” she said. “I hope you have come to see me.”
The other girl removed her cigarette and shook hands heartily.
“Have I? Rather. I’m Polly Pleyden, and as you’ve rescued me from
melancholia I’m that much more glad to see you. Was just thinking of
laying myself out to see what it would feel like.”
Gita’s eyes sparkled with appreciation. “Isn’t it—just? And we can’t
talk in a mausoleum. Come up to my room.”
“Good! I’ve been walking about to keep myself from freezing to death.
Topping old house, though. Not many of them left. Most of the old houses
about here were built of wood and have vanished long since. Luckily for
me the rats monopolized our old barn before I was born and granny moved
out to Chelsea. Not much tradition there but plenty of light and modern
furniture. Glory! Do you sleep in that?”
They had entered Gita’s bedroom. Large as it was a four-poster seemed to
take up fully a third of it, and highboys, chests, an immense wardrobe,
heavy chairs and sofas, covered with horsehair, left little space for
movement. The windows looked out into the wood. Gita had jerked off the
bed-hangings on the night of her arrival.
“Well,” pursued the irreverent Miss Pleyden, “if you ever get hard up
you can sell this old junk. There are imbeciles that will pay any price
for mahogany and black old oak. I’d pass out if I had to sleep in this
room.”
“I only do sleep in it! Take this chair. I’ve tried them all and it’s
not quite as hard as the others. Have one of mine?”
“Thanks. I prefer Happy Stars. Debased taste. One of the fell results of
the war. Jolly old war. Did _us_ a good turn.”
Both girls smoked in silence for a moment, secretly appraising each
other. Miss Pleyden wriggled until she made herself comfortable and Gita
seated herself on the one unbroken spring of a sofa.
“Going to stay with us long?” asked Polly. “I hope so. I must give you a
party and have you meet our crowd. We do our little best to amuse
ourselves.”
“You look as if you amused yourself,” said Gita, smiling. “But I can’t
go anywhere at present. My grandmother won’t live much longer, I’m
afraid, and I must remain on tap.”
“I should hope not! Over eighty, isn’t she? Well, you’ll molder if you
have to live here much longer. Mother says she’s leaving everything to
you, and I hope you’ll sell this old tomb and buy something over in
Chelsea—no, I take that back. Even I’d keep this house if I had it. All
it needs is new furniture and not so much woods.” She took off her hat
and threw it on the floor. Gita, now that this fashionable extinguisher
was removed, saw how completely beautiful she was. Such locks as had
been spared by the shears curled naturally about her face. She had a
charming little head alertly poised; her forehead was low and full, her
delicate nose a straight line, her curved mouth soft and pink, with
happy corners. She looked sweet and innocent and utterly charming and as
cool and pure as an arum lily; but Gita was wary of judging by Nature’s
irrelevancies. And she had heard her San Francisco friends discuss these
Eastern girls. “Hard-boiled, my dear, doesn’t express it. They’d turn
nails green. We’re little ba-bas beside ’em.”
“Surely you go out occasionally?” asked Miss Pleyden anxiously.
“Oh, yes, I go for a long walk every day. The salt marshes fascinate me,
and I never saw anything like the Boardwalk. It is rather amusing.”
“Amusing is the word for it until you’re tired of looking at people you
never see anywhere else. Ever see the Digue at Ostend?”
“Oh . . . yes!” But Gita scowled. She had particularly unpleasant
memories of Ostend. Her father had gambled away his last sou in the
Kursaal, and been obliged to sneak out in the night as he could not meet
his I.O.U’s. And one of his friends! Gentlemen! Carterets!
“Well, don’t look so tragic about it—I’m going to call you Gita and you
must call me Polly—at once. Time was, I’m told, when we Atlantans were
cold and formal, but that’s ancient history. Our poor parents try to
keep it up, but they’ve given _us_ up. And then you are one of us,” she
added, sincerely casual. “Are you engaged?”
“No!”
“That’s right. Plenty of time. We don’t have to marry these days for the
sake of freedom, and life’s one long dream when you haven’t a
responsibility and can do as you please. Thank heaven I was born twenty
years ago, not forty. Moreover, I’m waiting until the men get over
prohibition and stop acting like naughty boys. I hate the sight of a
hip-pocket. Some of the girls drink because they think it’s funny or
think the men think they like it. But I’m afraid I’d go blind or
something or come out in a rash. Believe in keeping one’s head, too.”
“Rather! Life’s hard enough without looking round for ways to make it
harder.”
“Oh, come now, life’s a jolly nice proposition. I’ve heard you’ve had a
lot of trouble and I’m damn sorry. Trouble never was meant for youth.
We’ll change all that when—ah—you’re free. No use blinking facts. Old
people have to die and not such a bad idea at that. My granny was a real
affliction. We had to kiss her twice a day and she wouldn’t wear her
false teeth. I was always afraid I’d fall in. What’s your type?”
“Type?”
“Men.”
“Oh!” Gita’s black brows met. “I don’t like any type.”
“Wow! Wow! That’ll never do. I haven’t the least respect for men, but
life would be a desert without them. When I’ve exhausted the girl racket
and am ready to satisfy my curiosity about those things our parents
never mention before us, I’ll pick out a New Yorker—father’s one, thank
heaven, and we spend our winters there—with a few millions, dark good
looks, and a pastmastership in the art of love-making. About thirty,
say. It takes an American that long to acquire any sort of technique.
Then when that phase has run its course, he’ll know enough to let me go
my own way. I certainly shall let him go his. Meanwhile a boy and a
girl, blonde and brunette. That’s the perfect life.”
Gita laughed for the first time since she had left San Mateo for the
desert. “Wonderful if life were as simple as that! Why are you so sure
you are going to have your own way in everything?”
“If you know what you want and go for it you get it.” Miss Pleyden had a
crisp metallic voice, which, Gita inferred, expressed her ego more
veritably than her lovely shell.
“That may be,” said Gita. “All things being equal. Life has always
dandled you on her lap and fondled your golden curls. But when she kicks
instead of kisses and you have to fight her every inch of the way, you
don’t get what you want, not by a damn sight.”
Polly Pleyden gave her a long stare. “Now, that is the last thing I
should have expected you to say,” she remarked. “You look high-spirited
and courageous. You don’t mean to tell me you’ve given up——”
“No!” Gita spat out the word. “I’ll fight till I die. But I’ve no
illusions. I’m not one of life’s pets.”
“Look here, Gita Carteret, I’m not going to pretend I don’t know a lot
of what you’ve been through. All your grandmother’s friends, including
my mother, have talked of nothing else since you got here. Uncle Bill
spent half his time in Paris before the war, and we cork-screwed the
whole rotten story out of him. Mrs. Gaunt, mother’s crony, ran across
your mother once, some time after your father’s death. Met her in some
provincial town or other and carried her off to lunch—she had met your
mother when she was visiting here, just after she had married, and
admired her immensely; said she was the loveliest thing she ever looked
at, and far too good for Gerald Carteret, who seems to have been the
last word. Well, she got a few things out of your mother, who was too
glad to talk to a woman of her own sort once more to keep up her natural
attempt at reserve. It wasn’t difficult to find out she was poor and
living in horrid pensions on a pittance from some relative. But she made
Mrs. Gaunt vow she’d never tell Mrs. Carteret, and she never did. You’ve
had a rotten life and I don’t wonder you’re bitter. But—how old are
you?”
“Twenty-two.” Gita, angry at first, had softened at the tribute to her
mother.
“Well—that’s old in one sense, these days. Jane Bull had had three
affairs, married and settled down to a baby before she was twenty-three.
But on the other hand it’s only a bit over three and one-tenth of the
allotted span—less if this rejuvenation thing pans out. Between our new
way of looking at life, and science, we can be young about thirty years
longer than any generation that’s preceded us. What’s more, your
troubles of one sort, at least, are over. You’ll have an independent
income when the old lady shuffles off. For all you know life may have
done her worst by you at the start and have relented for keeps. Don’t go
on making faces at her. That old saying about man’s being his own worst
enemy isn’t such a cliché as most. First thing you know you’ll be down
and out again. Come now. You’re young enough to put all you’ve been
through out of your mind and begin over. And you’ve ripping looks, if
you don’t mind just one personal remark!”
“You are very kind,” said Gita, almost humbly. “But I don’t think it is
possible to forget—the impressions of one’s plastic years are
indelible. It is easier, I fancy, to forget at forty than at twenty.”
“I believe the will can do anything—in spite of Coué. Fancy that’s
what’s the matter with you! Too much imagination, plus habit.”
“Perhaps. But I assure you I have no intention of brooding too much and
making matters worse than they are. Now that I have the chance of ruling
my own life—as far as anyone may—I intend to get _something_ out of
it. But men will play no part in it. Although I’ll be glad to talk to
any intelligent ones I may meet. I haven’t met many so far.”
“I think I can guess the reason for your hatred of men,” said Miss
Pleyden, who appeared to be disconcertingly shrewd. “But that will wear
off, now that you are in a position where they no longer can take
advantage of you. As I told you, I haven’t any respect for the lot I run
with, but there must be men somewhere that have glamour enough to make a
girl feel she’s head over. And what you want is a thumping love-affair.”
“That sounds almost romantic.” The subject was distasteful, but Gita was
forced to smile.
“Not romantic. Merely undiluted nature. Fancy we all get it sooner or
later, although nothing’s worrying me less at present. But what I
haven’t seen I could inscribe on my thumb-nail. You’re built for it.
Just you refurnish this old barrack and leave the rest to me.”
“Oh, I’ll refurnish it if there’s money enough—air it, anyway. But I’ll
stay here for a time and read——”
“For God’s sake don’t tell me you’re intellectual!”
“Far from it. Been too busy. But there are many things I ought to read.”
“Don’t you dare queer my little game! Or if you will read tomey books
keep it dark. It’s what you don’t know that gets you there. Life’s the
Book, anyhow, when you’re young. . . . There’s no hope this summer, but
you’ll visit me in New York next winter if I have to kidnap you. I
haven’t been so interested in anyone before in all my young life. Wish
I’d called before, but mother said you were inhuman and I kept putting
it off. So did the other girls, but they’ll be along soon now. I’m
Columbus, however, and shan’t let them forget it. That means I must
go—mother’s been calling on Mrs. Carteret—but I’ll be over again in a
day or two.”
A motor-horn had sounded discreetly. Miss Pleyden caught her hat on the
point of her swagger-stick, tossed it to the other hand, settled it
carefully on her head, opened her vanity-case and applied her lip-stick.
Then she sprang to her feet and laid her hand on Gita’s shoulder.
“You’re all right,” she said emphatically. “I had an idea you
weren’t——Well, never mind what I mean,” as Gita jerked up her head.
“In some things, I fancy, you’re as green as mint. Dear old Dr. Freud
would say you were heading straight for the rocks, but there’s a thing
or two he didn’t know when he set to work on the sub. Fancy you’ve been
saved by a sound endocrine constitution. You see I know a thing or two
myself, even if I never let on, owing to a perfect policy. There’s
another toot. We’ll have to go down.”